I became frustrated and felt defeated that I was not able to excel in my schooling, which lead me quickly to just give up. Now, thankfully, God didn’t give up on me. God knew that he had a life outside of College planned for me. A life where I would excel and he would give me every single tool I needed to have a strong career.
I didn’t know that as an eighteen year old freshman, trying very hard to maintain a C average. I still don’t do well with test taking, many years later, and I thank God that he has put me in a career where my personality has nothing to do with my ability to take tests.
All of this came to my memory tonight as
I was taking my time to read the Bible and pray. I began reading the sixth chapter of John, as
I have decided prayerfully, to start understanding the Love of God, so that I
am firmly planted in God’s Love and allow that to birth new things into my
life.
As I was reading John 6:5-6, where Jesus
had just asked Phillip where they could buy bread to feed the mass of people
that had gathered to hear Jesus speak.
In verse six Jesus said he asked Phillip where to buy the bread to feed
the crowd to prove (test) him, for Jesus well knew what He was about to do.
I chuckled to myself thinking about all
the hours, tears and frustration spent during my school years to just get
passing grades so I could play sports. I
thought, as I have many times throughout my journey with God, that he must have
a sense of humor. God already knew back
then when I’d beg him to help me pass my tests that I was going to be fine and
he already knew exactly what he was going to do with and in my life.
The torment that we put ourselves
through trying to figure out what our purpose is or what career are we supposed
to have, when we grow up. I am very
blessed that I have a career that I truly enjoy. I am thankful that I was able to be lead to
this career and I recognize that God has given me the ability to do my job
daily. If I could go back to that High
School student I’d say ease up a bit, it’s all going to work out, just do your
best, life might have been a little easier on me.
God will allow these tests to come into
our lives knowing all along what the outcome is going to be. I think that’s another reason why I believe
God has a sense of humor. You are
testing me already knowing what I am going to do. Nothing that I have done has been a surprise
to God. There is nothing that I have
said, thought, done or have not done, that he is surprised about, so why test
me then?
If we know that God already has the
answers to all of our tests, then the tests must be for us. We must need the tests that he allows to come
into our lives. These tests must
be a way at either strengthening us, changing us or a way to bring us closer to
Him. It truly could be a mixture of all three;
again, God has a sense of humor. That’s
why it hurts us so much to go through these tests, because we are humans
striving to be the best that we can be, we want to pass the test and pass it
quickly, so we can move on to the next test.
We want the gold star and high five as quickly as possible, but that’s
not how it works.
There are no letter grades in God’s
world. There is only pass and fail. You either learn the lesson and move on, or
you didn’t learn the lesson, and you get to try again until you do. This is part of the struggle. Our flesh wants to move quickly through the
test and receive a passing grade and get on with life, but that’s not how we
are going to learn.
We are only going to learn by the going
through. You can’t bypass anything in
God’s economy. If you try to find a
short cut through the process you can be sure to find yourself standing at the
place you had once started but this time with some battle wounds that are self-inflicted,
by the way.
The going through, is what is so hard. The beginning and end of the test isn’t the hard part, it’s the middle, it’s the day by day, going through time that makes you want to fall to your knees and weep.
In the beginning of the test, you are excited;
you are ready to go, let’s tackle this test and learn what we need to learn
here. Depending on how intense your
lesson is and your attitude towards the test, will dictate how long the test
will last. If you are like me and have
some issues with patience, your test may be a long one, and the bigger the
test, the longer, the harder and the more painful the going through is.
Ending a test is just as easy as
starting one. At the end you are so
happy that it’s over and you are seeing not only the light at the end of the
tunnel but you are seeing sky from the end of the tunnel that pure adrenaline
is keeping you persevering through to the end.
You also know that at the end you get to tell people you’re done, and
share your testimony so that’s pretty easy again.
Back to the middle. The middle, is brutal. The middle is
sometimes white knuckling it through the day or even just through the
moment. The middle can be when you want
to spend the day in bed and pull the covers way over your head and just
hide. The middle is also the time when
the enemy will begin to play with your emotions, if you let him. This is the time when you will start to hear
all the negative things about your test.
How you will never make it through, how God obviously, doesn’t love you
or care for you, if he is making you suffer like this… The list goes on and on and hopefully, by
this time, we have learned to not fall victim to the lies of the enemy.
What if you haven’t learned or been able
to block out the lies that Satan will tell you, what do you do then? If you are like me you cry, pray, cry, read,
pray, and then realize after a period of time, this is a choice. I have the choice to decide to have Faith in
God or stay miserable. Usually I am
able to be rational and choose to have Faith in God and my joy returns. Now, there are times when I want to be
self-indulgent and impatient and stay in the place of darkness, why I do this
to myself I will never understand, but I would be lying if I said I
didn’t.
These are the times when I want to stay
in bed and hide from the world, including myself. These are the times when I am silent. Silent with God, silent with myself and
silent to the people around me. Silence
for me is not a positive thing. Silence
can represent giving up for some people, as it usually does for me. It means that I have come to the end of
myself and am unsure of what or where I should go. If you ever find yourself in this space,
which I really hope you don’t, this is the space where you have to fight. You have to start to speak back to the voice
in your head telling you to give up!
This is not your voice, though it may
sound like it and this is not the voice of your God. This is the voice of your enemy and if he is
working on you this hard, there must be a reason for it. Our hardest tests come before our biggest
victories. The devil is going to work
extra hard on the person he knows is going to do big things for God. You might not even understand that thought
right now, but think about it. Would you
spend your time trying to attack someone who wasn’t bound for victory? I wouldn’t.
Speak to your thoughts and tell them how big your God is. Tell them that they have no control over your mind. Tell them that you belong to Jesus! Speak life to your evil thoughts and see how quickly your mood will change.
This is one of the ways to pass a God
given test. God’s tests are actually
pretty easy if we think about it. All we
have to do is keep our eyes on God, do as he tells us to do and we will pass
the test, get our gold star and quickly start sharing our testimony with
others.
When you are in the middle of your
testing time, keep in mind, and maybe this will give you some solace, that just
like Jesus knew in John 6:6 how the test that he was giving Phillip would end,
he also knows how your test will end.
Trust him that he will not only help you get through all phases of test
taking, but that he will even give you the answers!
No comments:
Post a Comment