When tested, will you stand firm?
April 30, 2007
By Jerry Scott
“Consider it a sheer gift, friends, when tests and challenges come at you from all sides” (James 1:2, The Message).
I want to embrace that command, but it is hard to do so. Who likes hard times, those moments when questions are many and answers few?
I am not talking about the “mini-trials” common to life. We need to develop much greater patience when dealing with computers that don’t work properly, cars that don’t start, traffic that doesn’t flow — those are life’s normal headaches.
The real tests are those things for which we have no explanations — chronic illness, tragic accidents, shattered relationships. How do we reconcile our revelation of an all-powerful, all-knowing and perfectly loving Father God with a life devastated by tragedy?
How does one rejoice when those on whom he leans let him fall?
How does one feel joy when the pull of the flesh is so strong that failure seems imminent?
The story of Abraham’s journey to Mount Moriah is a model for me. In Genesis 22, God tells Abraham to take his beloved son, Isaac, and to sacrifice him. That journey had to be the longest in Abraham’s life! I tried to think of the emotions he felt on the two-day trip to the mountain.
Testing can cause us to feel confusion. Don’t you think Abraham was more than a little confused by a God who gives him a miracle son and then asks for him back about 12-15 years later?
Testing can cause us to feel doubt. “God is that really Your voice? Why would You ask such a terrible thing?” I’ve wondered that more than once in my life when tested.
Testing can cause us to feel alone. That trip across the plains to the hills had to be one of the loneliest in Abraham’s life. As he approached the mountain, Abraham even left his servants and traveled on with just Isaac. How do you enjoy the company of a boy you’re going to sacrifice tomorrow?
I’ve learned God often ministers to the deepest place in my life when I am feeling most alone and focused most intensely on Him.
Testing can cause us to feel God is unwilling or unable to answer our prayers. When we feel abandoned by God, it is the most desperate feeling, especially for those who have loved Him intimately. When God asks the “impossible” of us we may cry out as His Son did, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken me?” Of course, God hasn’t forsaken us, but it can sure feel like it.
Testing can cause us to feel hopeless. Stand with Abraham on the top of Moriah. Drag the rocks, one by one, into a heap to make an altar, each one becoming heavier as you realize the moment of decision is imminent. Then raise the knife! The contents of your stomach rise in your throat. A sorrow beyond description wrenches sobs so violent from your body you feel you could die. Where are You, God?
Will you stay steady when the wind blows strong?
Will you obey when your natural self screams to take another way?
Hard questions, aren’t they?
In those moments, we desperately hold onto the only hope that remains: “Here is a trustworthy saying: If we died with him, we will also live with him; if we endure, we will also reign with him. If we disown him, he will also disown us; if we are faithless, he will remain faithful, for he cannot disown himself” (2 Timothy 2:11-13, NIV).
Abraham had known the faithfulness of God through times when he failed. He wasn’t trusting his own righteousness, his own ability to please God. He trusted the faithfulness of God to keep him. And in this most intense trial, at just the critical moment, God revealed himself as “Yahweh Yireh, the Lord, my Provider.” Just as Abraham was about to take his son’s life, he looked up and saw a ram caught in the bushes, a substitute sacrifice provided by God himself.
Paul repeats this phrase again and again in his letters to believers. “Be on your guard; stand firm in the faith; be men of courage; be strong” (1 Corinthians 16:13).
“He called you to this through our gospel, that you might share in the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. So then, brothers, stand firm and hold to the teachings we passed on to you, whether by word of mouth or by letter. May our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and by his grace gave us eternal encouragement and good hope, encourage your hearts and strengthen you in every good deed and word” (2 Thessalonians 2:14-17).
Jerry D. Scott is senior pastor of Washington (N.J.) Assembly of God.
