Testing

Do you sometimes find yourself going to extreme lengths NOT to say yes to God? Maybe you tell yourself that it isn't that you're saying No, but that you're just trying to figure out whether or not God really means it. You figure that if God really wants you to do what He's asking, then His request will stand a little test or two...

"Okay, God, if you really want me to apologize to my friend, then she'll answer when I call. If I get the answering machine, I'll know I wasn't supposed to."

I've had so many of those moments. I call them, "Oh but what ifs."

One of my most memorable (and comical) times where I tested what God was asking me to do actually happened before I had accepted Christ. Steve and I were living in New York, we had just had our first child, and we were struggling. Like, "Let's share a jar of peach cobbler baby food for dessert" struggling. Steve was working two full time jobs, and I was getting ready to go back to college for a 16 credit semester. How in the world I thought for even a moment that that was going to fly is beyond me.

God knew better. He knew that wasn't the best path for us. So we started getting little clues...

I had a dream one night that we had moved back to Wisconsin. In the dream, we had family surrounding us, Steve had a better job, and all was running smoothly. I woke from that dream completely confused. Wisconsin? Really? The cheese state? The COLD cheese state?!?!

That was when that funny feeling that I now welcome began. Now, I believed that God existed back then. I didn't have any kind of relationship with Him, but I believed in Him as much as you can believe without really knowing anything at all. And I started to wonder...

A few weeks later Steve and I drove out to Wisconsin for his sister's wedding. I brought up the thoughts I'd been having, and Steve raised an eyebrow but didn't really say anything in response. He knew that I wanted to live near my family, he knew I loved New York, and he didn't want to be any part of any kind of decision that took those things away.

And so I had a brilliant idea. After all, what better way to test God than to leave it up to a game of chance?

So I bought a scratch-off lottery ticket. And I got back into the car, and as Steve watched in amusement, I "prayed" out loud...."God, if we are meant to move to Wisconsin, let me win one of these games."

(This is one of the moments in our life where Steve and I hang our heads at our own absurdity.)

I wish I could tell you that I didn't win any of the games on that ticket. Because I wish that back then I would have realized how ridiculous I was being. I really wish that I would have just stopped and given the whole thing to God in prayer; but that time in my life would come a little later.

Well, I won. Two games out of three.

And in my made up religion where a deity named God answers questions by gifting people $5.00 through convenience store cardboard, I guess I should have had my answer.

But I didn't even listen to that.

And we came home to New York. As the weeks passed, I continued to feel that same conviction that I had felt after that dream. I felt like I was supposed to move. I didn't know why, and it didn't make sense. But I believe today that God's hand was on my thoughts.

And eventually, when I just never said Yes, He made it very clear.

One week before school was to start, I received a phone call from an adviser at my college. My GPA was (I'm not kidding) two one-hundredths of a point too low for me to take the next class in my program. Two one-hundredths. I needed a 2.74. I had a 2.72. And no one would budge on the decision and let me into that class.

So we faced a choice: stay in New York and wait up to another year before I could get back on track with my degree, or move to Wisconsin and transfer into the Education program there.

Finally, I got it. The dream didn't do it, the lottery ticket didn't do it (thankfully), but those .02 points did it. That felt like God to me.

So we moved. And looking back on it, I can see so clearly why He wanted us to go. Because a little over one year later, a family who my husband had known for years witnessed to me. And I went from being a person who's life was a complete disaster - a pathological liar who self mutilated from the pain that was tearing her apart on the inside - to an honest woman of God who finally loved herself because He found her worthy of love. And God knew that my life changing moment was supposed to be here, in this town, with those people.

Why do we test Him with our little silly "Oh but what ifs?" If we feel God is leading us to say Yes to Him, and through prayer we truly feel like that is the will of God, why do we find a hundred excuses not to?

It's easier to stay in our comfort zone. It's easier to say, "I don't have to apologize to my friend because she doesn't know that it was me who said that hurtful thing," or whatever it is. It's easier to convince ourselves at the first roadblock that God must not really want us to go down that difficult path.

I challenge you to do away with the little tests. I challenge you that when God asks you to do (or not do) something, that we instead go to him in prayer. Ask for His will to be clear, and if it is pleasing to Him, and you feel He is asking you to make that choice, then make it.

Don't ask Him to prove Himself. He already did that for us. He wants our faith and our obedience, and we will be blessed immeasurably when we give it.