Why Does God Test Us?
I don’t know about you, but if I’m honest, I don’t really like God’s tests. Especially the ones that involve pain and self-sacrifice. Why does everything have to be a test? Why does God’s way have to be the hard way? Do we really have to drink from this cup? Do I sound like Jesus in Gethsemane?
Sorry, folks, there is no quick fix here, no instant gratification, and no pill you can take to make it all go away. God tests His children for two extremely important reason: Brokenness and Dependence.
Brokenness
Before God can make you, He must break you. This is a fundamental spiritual principle. The seed must fall to the ground and die before it can become new life. You know this already, but what you’re likely missing is the fact that your Acting-Out Cycle is a major part of the breaking process, because tests trigger your ITCHES. Pain, pressure, stress, crisis, loneliness, horniness, poverty—ITCHES reveal the real you, the “you” that you didn’t even know was there. As in the “me” that was literally inside an oversized dumpster digging through the trash so I could find the porn magazine I had thrown away the night before. I was a pastor at the time (I’m ashamed to say), and still addicted. I had bought some porn, and in order not to bring it into my house, I drove to a local park so I could drool over it and masturbate while sitting in my car. In the usual post-relapse fit of self-disgust, I tossed the dog vomit into the dumpster—then naturally returned to said vomit the very next morning.
This was a reverse epiphany, if you will. I wasn’t just an addict. No, I was the dumpster, and my heart was full of garbage. Oh, how I loved that trash, selling my soul for the human waste of wickedness!
Ah, the moment when at long last you uncover the true extent of your own depravity, degeneration, and degradation. It’s a revelation of back-breaking, life-changing dimensions!
Here’s the good news—indeed, I’ve never recovered from the shock of this surprise. You see, down in the dumpster of my personal Wilderness and Acting-Out Cycle, I discovered that there was much more to me than I’d ever realized. The perversion, the shame, the lies—this was only surface stuff, the devil’s counterfeit destiny for my life. For as much as I thought I loved sexual sin, I found that I loved Jesus far more.
This came as a great shock to one who, having been sexually and ritually abused as a child, was as steeped in sexual addiction as you can get. And yet I found that I wanted God, I wanted my wife, I wanted a healthy marriage, I wanted to be a great role model for my kids, and I wanted to lead others into freedom. Indeed, I want to be one of God’s captains in the end times, a member of the Greatest Spiritual Generation! Destroying the devil’s work isn’t enough for me; I want to stomp on that bastard’s face until each and every captive is set free!
I never imagined that one day, given the choice between the devil’s dumpster and God’s glory, I would repeatedly choose the glory, not to mention become a slave of righteousness as it says in Romans. I didn’t know I could encounter the Holy Spirit so powerfully that it makes an orgasm seem boring. I didn’t know the utter satisfaction that comes from pulling yet another brother out of the pit. I didn’t realize that once you pay the price and start living out your divine destiny, it just starts getting better and better, because God is doing even more than I ever asked or even imagined. You see, God doesn’t just put you into the dumpster to reveal all the dross. His goal is that we dig past the darkness and discover our true identity, our original Image—because we were made for glories beyond imagining.
But wait, there’s more—and excuse me if I start getting excited. Even as I was digging through the dumpster of life, I discovered—much to my surprise—that Jesus was right there alongside me digging through the very same dumpster. Here’s the kicker: Jesus wasn’t dumpster diving for porn; He was searching for me! I was the object of His desire. He cared for me far more than anything I could ever imagine, even in my disgusting state at the time.
Tears are running down my face as I write, because Jesus really does love the lost sheep. He really did leave the perfection of heaven to go sewage diving for the likes of me and the likes of you. Indeed, I was part of Jesus’s ultimate test when He chose the brokenness of the Father’s plan for His life. You see, even the perfect Son of God was not yet complete; He had not been tested, nor was He fully mature. Even Jesus had to learn the breaking of self, and—in dying even to His own sinless desires—to learn total dependence on His Father.
Dependence
God cannot make us until He breaks us, but God breaks us to make us dependent on Him. Man cannot live on bread alone, much less porn, masturbation, drugs, alcohol, food, or money. But most of us learn this all-important lesson only through suffering. We’re like a toddler—we have to stick everything in our mouths first and taste it all, no matter how dangerous the substance. Indeed, some people never learn; they just keep choking themselves to death, spiritual speaking.
Human beings can be incredibly stubborn and prideful. To break Moses, it took God 40 years—we’re talking about the God of the universe here. In the desert these forty years, to humble you and to test you… (Deuteronomy 8:2). Note the close connection between humility and testing. Brokenness engenders the humility, which creates in us both the deep desire to learn and the capacity for following instructions. Breakage produces dependence—not only do we see ourselves as we truly are, but we realize we can do nothing without God’s strength and guidance. Humility and dependence go together like the sheep and the Shepherd.
A person in great pain is normally desperate to stop the suffering and highly motivated to find a solution. They are willing to listen and apply what they are taught, particularly if the teacher has a proven method for ending the agony. I could never, as a pastoral counselor, teach “normal” people again, because these people are often neither broken nor desperate. Simply put, they don’t listen and therefore don’t change. Truth be told, “normal” people are often just as screwed up as addicts—they just don’t know it yet, because they’ve yet to be broken. Unbroken people are independent, not dependent.
Would you rather go through life on easy street only to discover on Judgment Day that you were a complete mess? Or would you rather hit bottom now and expose who and what you really are? Messy, broken, humble people are smart enough to ask for help and follow God’s role models wherever they lead. Dependence truly is the art of walking through the minefield of life, stepping precisely where your fearless Leader steps—your footprints in His.
Isn’t it ironic that dependence is another word for addiction? Being dependent on porn or drugs or food is once again just the satanic substitute for true dependence on God’s will. Imagine if you craved God’s presence and power as strongly as you’ve craved porn and sex? Imagine if you lived and breathed and thought God’s will as often as you remembered your drug of choice?!
The deeper you go with God, the stronger your “addiction” becomes to His presence. Note how Moses consumed neither food nor water when he spent 40 days in God’s presence. You see, Moses was not some grasping toddler anymore. The only thing he needed in his mouth and soul was the pure presence of God. Moses learned this incredible level of dependence by spending 40 years in the desert—I mean, imagine how quiet it must have been! Be still for 40 years and know that I am God, to paraphrase Scripture…
The Israelites also had their 40 years in the desert, but they remained spiritual babies gumming the same old manna day after day, year after year, and learning nothing from the daily supernatural provision of food. Note how the manna stops after the first Passover in the Promised Land—at this point, the Israelites should have been ready for the spiritual meat of divine presence. Unlike Moses, however, they failed God’s tests, refused to be broken, and remained proud and independent right up until the day the Bread (Manna) of Heaven (John 6:32) came down from heaven and walked among them. Sadly, having never acquired the taste for heavenly food—even its symbolic, prophetic form—the Israelites had no stomach for God’s own Son come in the flesh, so they passed on the True Passover meal. In other words, if you reject the Manna of God’s testing and breaking process for your life, sooner or later you will reject God’s Man.
Do you trust God enough to surrender to His plan, even if it means suffering and hardship, maybe for years to come? To be sure, there will be blessings too—wonderful things way beyond your imagination. Indeed, your awesome destiny is the point of all the testing! Getting there, however, means you become skilled at depending on God’s leading, day in and day out. Even when He leads you where you don’t want to go, at least initially.
What if you never get married? What if you never heal? What if God never answers the questions that haunt you so? What if certain dreams so precious to your heart never come to pass? What if this testing process and dying to self is the hardest, longest obedience in the same direction you could imagine? Will you submit yourself to God day in and day out? Will you drink from the cup set before you?
Your Brother in the Battle,
Timothy
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Excerpt taken from Pureheart Ministry’s Basic Training! Stage 1: Operation Purity
Copyright ©2023 Timothy Davis