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God is testing you to see if you REALLY love Him…

Deuteronomy 13:3

Like it or not… you must be tested. Yeah… You. And me…

Sometimes I’m in class and I’ll be reading a scripture and I come across a passage… and it hits me… I’m talking about something that I need to work on in my OWN life… and I look up and some of the kids are smiling at me. They know it! They know me! They hear me talk about stuff like TRAFFIC!

*important driving notes: don’t cut in line… left lane fast, right lane slow… and if someone is tailgating you on the interstate> hit your windshield washer fluid and they’ll go around you*

Not just traffic… but things in life that stress you out! It affects us. Patience. I gotta get some more of that stuff.

It all comes down to passing a test. There’s no cramming at the last minute for these tests… you don’t even realize you are taking them. And they’re upon you before you know it. You don’t see it coming… But your love for God is being tested.
Someone once told me that when we sin… it’s in a moment when we don’t love God. I thought long about that… trying to make it not true. I just didn’t want to believe that I didn’t love God at anytime—but it’s true. If we are talking about the right kind of love… the CAPITOL ‘L’ love that I talk about in class. The REAL love. The love that never fails. When we sin… we fail the test. We put our own wants before God and that basically means we are at a point in life when we love something more than him—and that translates to ‘we don’t love God’. It’s basic to idolatry. He wants all of us… not part.

Love the Lord your God with HALF your heart??? Nope. Love the Lord your God on Thursdays??? Nope.

Hard pill to swallow, I know. I sin. I’m there when I do it so I can say it with authority.

In Exodus 16, God tells Moses that He’s gonna give them bread from heaven and a certain amount to gather on certain days to TEST them… to see if they do it like He wants them to.

God led the children of Israel in the wilderness for 40 years to test them…
I Corinthians 10 speaks of this… and it warns us to heed the mistakes they made… in failing their test. Think of the Red Sea as your Baptism… and the Promised Land as heaven… we are tested in between.

In our wandering through this wilderness.

If you get a minute sometime… read Exodus 15:22-27. And realize… God is testing us. Right now. On this Lord’s day (or whatever day you happen to read this on). He wants to know if we REALLY love him. God allows for our moral training. He wants us to show him that we’re not just calling out “Lord, Lord!” but that we are doing the His will.

“Be diligent to present yourself approved to God” (2 Timothy 2:15).

What could be more important than doing that…?