The End of True Testing


Whose feet they hurt with fetters: he was laid in iron: Until the time that his word came: the word of the LORD tried him. (Psa 105:18-19)


Testing serves to establish or to validate the authenticity of our true inner nature (Duet 8:2) and the Lord will again and again use the pain of it to try us but never beyond what we are able (1 Cor 10:13). The only way of escape is the narrow orifice of His way and will. Hence we glory in tribulation because it is the vehicle whereby the purposes of God lead us to the place of the generous pouring forth of His Love in our hearts (Rom 5:1-5). We may question that this is a rather strange way to experience the wholeness of God’s love toward us, but this seemingly cruel method that our God again and again employ to bring about the reality of death unto resurrection, mortification unto vivification, bringing to us His love through the cross. He will use people and circumstance as instruments but His ultimate Word will be the plumb line; we will be tested for what we believe and preach (Heb 4:12) for His Word will bring division of the soulish and the spiritual. The Lord’s Word will try our will to obey in the given situation of trial.


The cost of disobedience is to come short of God’s initial intent of a glorious church (Rom 3:23). The cost of discipleship is the cross that puts to death self, death of self is not total loss but there is a transaction of a lesser life to the glorious Life of the Son of God.


But think on me when it shall be well with thee, and shew kindness, I pray thee, unto me, and make mention of me unto Pharaoh, and bring me out of this house… Yet did not the chief butler remember Joseph, but forgat him. (Gen 40:14, 23)


We should not avert testing, if we do this will short circuit His plan in our lives. He may allow us to be forgotten by man, loosing any human respect, to be humbled to the point of being unrecognized. We may wonder if anyone still remembers us in our dungeon of despair. He will. It is at the end of ourselves that God intervenes and graduates us to present the Life of God to others. The discipline of God upon Joseph built a man of strong Godly character worthy to wear the hat of power and authority to give life when all of man’s abilities and capabilities fail (Gen 47:15). Unless bread in the hands of the Master is blessed and broken (Matt 14:19) through suffering, there cannot bear life giving significance. Are we willing to be laid in iron, not by man, by our God to be a life giver? God will only give what is worthy in His hands.