SESSION NOTES:

No workout this week

Word of the Day (WOD):

This is a test

With human tests, the key is knowing all the answers. But with God’s test, the key is not knowing all the answers.

With God’s test you’ve got to trust God to know the answer.

When God tests us, the test is a trial or some sort of difficulty in your life. The test is a trial used by God to purify and prepare you. In this life you will always being tested. You’re always being prepared. Always being shaped & reshaped.

“In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith – of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire – may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.” (1 Peter 1:6-7)

If you fail to see this then you’ll interpret the challenges in your life as problems without purpose. And we as humans will try to avoid any challenge that’s painful. What we often times fail to remember is there is always purpose in the troubles that come our way. There is PURPOSE in our pain. When your faith is tested your faith has a chance to grow.

The primary way that God grows you is by testing you.

Whether you choose to acknowledge it or not, there’s a purpose behind every problem in your life and a chance to learn something from it, and chance to grow. If you can choose to look at it from a faith perspective, then the problems that come into your life are there to test your character and to grow your faith and help you become all that God wants you to be. Become the man God wants you to be and the woman God wants you to be.

So every problem has a purpose, and it’s designed to help you grow.

When God puts you to the test and you pass the test, He blesses you. I have seen this in my own life countless times. I have been severely tested since giving myself to God. However, as hard and as painful as each of these tests has been, when I can keep myself together and keep my faith in God there has always been a reward or blessing at the end of the test. Whether that be spiritual, emotional, financial, or whatever.

The greater your calling in life the greater the tests and the challenges you will face. I believe this one hundred percent, because I have lived it. He’s not coming back with less of a struggle – the only way he’s going to get your faith where it needs to be is to keep pushing you. He tests you, and what happens is the next time the test is stronger because He’s not going to let you allow you to stay where you are. The test could be financial, it could be in your relationships, it could be with your health, with your job, whatever.

Regardless, remember this that God’s for you. He’s working all things our good if we trust Him and rely upon Him.

I wrote about this in my post God’s Waiting Room – God has not forgotten you. You can’t interpret this time of testing as the absence of God, actually just the opposite.

What’s really interesting is the Old Testament word for test comes from a Hebrew word that means to examine, to take a keen look at. So if you’re being tested it is because God is looking at you, He is choosing to prepare you for something in the future. When God spoke to me last year, some months later He spoke to me again and told me exactly what that future was, so I know this to be true. But sometimes in the test the teacher is silent, and you don’t hear anything, you don’t see anything improving, but you have to know in the dark moments God still has you in the palm of his hand.

He knows it’s difficult. He knows you feel overwhelmed. He knows you don’t think you can go on.

Take heart though, as the saying goes weeping endures for a night, but joy is coming in the morning. You have to keep standing one day at a time. Don’t worry about tomorrow, you don’t have grace for tomorrow. Stand today and when you get to tomorrow, you’ll have grace for that day. This is so important to realize. God sees the needs of tomorrow, and accordingly prepares the test. You will never be tested with more than you are able to overcome.

Perhaps you can even get to a point where you say thank you Lord and consider it with joy as the scripture says, when you passed through various types of trials. That you thank God that He would consider you worthy of this test.

“Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.” (James 1:2-4)

So as you press into the test of today, you trust God in the season of testing, and you trust God for the timing. You may be in this test right now “the when test” where you’ve been waiting for an answer and it doesn’t seem like there’s any end in sight…

When are you going to take care of this problem?
When are you going to take care of this issue?
When are you going to take care of this relationship?
When are you going to take care of my finances?
When are you going to take care of my health?
When are you going to take care of my future?

Faith is waiting for God’s timing & trusting it without knowing when.

Some of us been waiting long time for our prayer to be answered. Its hard, but be patient & trust God for the timing. God is always at work. God is always at work for the good of everyone who loves Him. Our call is simply to wait while God works. You just keep trusting God in the testing. You keep trusting God in the timing. Trust me I know this, when you’re down in the pit there’s only one way to look, and that’s up. You keep looking up and the same God who reached in to rescue Joseph is the God who will reach in to rescue you.

It’s probably be taking longer than you thought, you get tired and say to yourself it’s never going to work out & you’ll never see your family restored – don’t believe those lies… that test is not permanent. God will always give you back way more than He took away from you.

God has already set an end to the difficulty. You have to get your second wind. God didn’t bring you this far to leave you. What he started he’s going to finish. Dig down deep and keep passing the test. Keep thanking Him that it’s on the way. Keep declaring what He promised. Keep believing when you don’t see any sign of it.

So stay in this attitude of faith without knowing when. Faith is expecting a miracle without knowing how. Faith is trusting God’s purpose without knowing why. Faith is continuing to persist without knowing how long.

This is a test.