God Tests Those Who Are His

-
The next important lesson that we can learn in becoming a disciple is how God molds, shapes and trains us to be all that He wants us to be. It is a clear revelation in the Scriptures that God allows and sometimes initiates times of testing to open our eyes to see that our character is not yet at the place where God wants us to be. Our Father is the Gardener and prunes the dead wood of old fleshly habits in our lives, so that fresh life and fruit may come forth (John 15:2). Not all mishaps in life are God's doing, however. The Lord often gets the blame for such things as earthquakes, tornados and other difficulties that humankind faces. Some things are natural tragedies, while other things happen to us as a result of personal choices as well as choices that our nation or culture has made. Then there are situations we go through that are attacks of the enemy to try to keep you asleep and no threat to his world system. We cannot explain all things this side of heaven, but let's look at those things that God allows for our testing:

1Be careful to follow every command I am giving you today, so that you may live and increase and may enter and possess the land the LORD promised on oath to your ancestors. 2Remember how the LORD your God led you all the way in the wilderness these forty years, to humble and test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands. 3He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD(Deuteronomy 8:1-3).

The first thing we see about this passage above is that it was God who led the Israelites into the wilderness, the place of barrenness and dryness. Have you been going through a dry season in your life at this moment? Then maybe this meditation is for you! The testing (v. 2) was for the Israelites to realize that even though they had been set free from the bondage and slavery of Egypt, the ways of Egypt was still in their hearts. Slavery's effects still dominated them. It is similar for us; even though we have been released from Satan’s bondage of sin, our sinful habits still rule over us until we become aware that we no longer need to serve our lower nature or fleshly desires. The Lord has to shake us spiritually and wake us up so that we realize and see ourselves as God sees us, free from slavery to sin. 

We are no longer enslaved to habitually sin with our lips and with our actions. In our thought life, we still default to sin until we come to a place where we don't live on bread alone, but we need spiritual food, the Word of God, for our spiritual growth and health. The test is to wake us up to see our complete dependence on God, the Gardener of our lives. Jesus is the Vine that we are spiritually connected to, we are the fruit-bearing branches and the Father is the Gardener (John 15). The only way the people of God can produce the fruit of changed character was to have His life in us, flowing through us. This is what Jesus came to do, give us new life. The church is not an organization, but an organism and believers are organically connected to the life-source: Jesus the Vine. Man does not live on bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. How much do you value the truth of the Word of God at work in your life? Keith Thomas

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

An Organic Union with Christ

-
Image
Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me (John 15:4). If you have come to the place where you have entrusted your life to Christ, at the point of repentance and abandonment to Him (believing), something happened at the core of your being. The Spirit of God came into your life and baptized you into the Body of Christ. Here’s what Paul the apostle wrote: 12 Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ.  13 For we were all baptized by one Spirit  so as to form one body —whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink (1 Corinthians 12:12-13). In some unseen mystical way, the Spirit dipped us, soaked and saturated us (that's what the word baptism means) into an organic union with Christ. Notice that Paul the apostle writes that it is not  some ...
Read more

Paul’s 3 Things That Must Happen Before the Rapture

-
1 Concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and  our being gathered to him , we ask you, brothers and sisters,  2 not to become easily unsettled or alarmed by the teaching allegedly from us—whether by a prophecy or by word of mouth or by letter—asserting that the day of the Lord has already come. 3 Don’t let anyone deceive you in any way, for  that day will not come until the rebellion occurs and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the man doomed to destruction.  4 He will oppose and will exalt himself over everything that is called God or is worshiped, so that he sets himself up in God’s temple, proclaiming himself to be God (2 Thessalonians 2:1-4).   The apostle Paul has received a letter back from the Thessalonian church after his first letter that was in part about the rapture. We know this for he starts out this chapter with the word “concerning.” The Thessalonians had received some communication from some people t...
Read more

The Passover Supper of Jesus

-
Image
We are continuing to meditate on the last supper of Jesus and His disciples the day before Christ's crucifixion. Jews from the Galilee region had a different time-keeping system to the Jews in the south. The Galilean Jews counted the day as starting at the time when the sun came up; whereas, the Jews of Judah and Jerusalem counted a new day as starting as soon as two stars could be seen in the sky. This difference in timing was beneficial when it came to the sacrifices going on in the temple. Jesus could eat the Passover on a Thursday night and deliver Himself in Jerusalem as the Passover Lamb slain before the foundation of the world on the Friday we remember as "Good Friday." 8 Jesus sent Peter and John, saying, "Go and make preparations for us to eat the Passover."   9 "Where do you want us to prepare for it?" they asked.  10 He replied, "As you enter the city, a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him to the house that he e...
Read more