Have You Been Tested?

Psalms 66:8-14 ESV

“Bless our God, O peoples;

    let the sound of his praise be heard,

who has kept our soul among the living

    and has not let our feet slip.

For you, O God, have tested us;

    you have tried us as silver is tried.

You brought us into the net;

    you laid a crushing burden on our backs;

you let men ride over our heads;

    we went through fire and through water;

yet you have brought us out to a place of abundance.

I will come into your house with burnt offerings;

    I will perform my vows to you,

that which my lips uttered

    and my mouth promised when I was in trouble.”

If we are genuine followers of Jesus Christ, we are going to be tested and tried so that we can see whether or not our faith is genuine, or so that we can grow in our walks of faith and become more like Jesus and have greater commitments to Christ and to his word and to walks of obedience and holiness. And we will also be persecuted for our walks of faith, too, especially if we are sharing the truth of the gospel and if we are exposing the lies of the enemy which are opposed to the gospel.

[Matt 5:10-12; Matt 10:16-25; Matt 24:9-14; Luke 6:22-23; Luke 21:12-19; John 15:1-21; John 16:33; John 17:14; Acts 14:22; Rom 5:3-5; 2 Co 1:3-11; Php 3:7-11; 2 Tim 3:12; 1 Thess 3:1-5; Heb 12:3-12; Jas 1:2-4; 1 Pet 1:6-7; 1 Pet 4:12-17; 1 John 3:13]

But the Lord will help us so that our feet do not slip and so that we don’t fall back into sin, or so that we don’t become discouraged or disheartened and withdraw from being his servants and witnesses. But we must cooperate with him in his working in our hearts and lives. We have to do what he says to do. We have to obey him. For he is not going to just zap us and do it all for us. We have to do the works that he prepared in advance that we should walk in them. And we must walk according to the Spirit and not according to the flesh, and we must resist Satan and flee temptation, etc.

[Matt 5:27-30; Matt 7:21-23; Rom 1:18-32; Rom 6:1-23; Rom 8:1-14; 1 Co 6:9-10; Gal 5:16-24; Eph 2:10; Eph 4:17-32; Eph 5:3-6; Col 3:5-11; 1 Thes 4:1-8; 1 Tim 4:7; Titus 2:11-14; Heb 12:1-17; 1 Pet 1:14; 1 Pet 2:24; 1 Jn 1:5-10; 1 Jn 2:3-6; 1 Jn 3:4-10]  

Yet even though the Lord allows us to suffer, and to be persecuted, and to go through trials and tribulations which test our faith, if we cooperate with him in what he is doing in our lives through these difficult times, then he will bring us through them on the other end to a place of spiritual blessings. For he disciplines us for our good so we will share in his holiness, so we will become like him in his death, and so that when we have been trained by these disciplines, some or many of which are painful, the disciplines will yield the peaceful fruit of righteousness in our lives.

And we will fulfill our vows to our Lord, our commitments we made to him when we believed in him by God-given faith, and when we entered into a marriage covenant with Jesus Christ to be wholly his and to die with him to sin and to live to him and to his righteousness. And it isn’t that we weren’t already doing this, but these trials and tribulations, which test our faith, and these persecutions and rejections have a way of rearranging our priorities and of drawing us closer to our Lord in walks of surrender to him. And that really is the point of them all.

Have You Been Tested

Video Talk

February 24, 2023

https://youtu.be/05ITVMS_jEE

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All The Way My Savior Leads Me

Lyrics by Frances J Crosby, pub. 1875

Music by Robert Lowry, pub. 1875

All the way my Savior leads me,

What have I to ask beside?

Can I doubt His tender mercy,

Who through life has been my Guide?

Heav’nly peace, divinest comfort,

Here by faith in Him to dwell!

For I know, whate’er befall me,

Jesus doeth all things well.

All the way my Savior leads me,

Cheers each winding path I tread,

Gives me grace for every trial,

Feeds me with the living Bread.

Though my weary steps may falter

And my soul athirst may be,

Gushing from the Rock before me,

Lo! A spring of joy I see.

All the way my Savior leads me,

Oh, the fullness of His love!

Perfect rest to me is promised

In my Father’s house above.

When my spirit, clothed immortal,

Wings its flight to realms of day

This my song through endless ages:

Jesus led me all the way.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWdmZGik1Jw

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