Hungry for God: The Test You Won't Win

“ Jesus said to him, ‘Again it is written, “You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.”'"—Matthew 4:7

Don’t try and test God. It’s a test you won’t win. Who are we to speak back to our Creator? We who are we to demand of God? What can a worm demand of the elephant? What can the pebble demand of the mountain? Or what can the drop of water demand of the ocean? Absolutely nothing. That God could care for us is beyond imagination, but He does. He loves us with a zealous love beyond any type of love this world could show. All other loves we experience—the love of a lover for his mate, the love of a parent for a child, or a man for his friend, are all small crumbs of His divine love.

When tempted by Satan to take His life in His hands to demand of God the Father (something that, as the divine Son of God, He could have done), He refused. Citing the Scripture, “You shall not put the Lord your God to the test” (Deuteronomy 6:16).  God is not a performing monkey that calls when asked. We cannot pretend to tame, deceive, cajole, or coax God to do what it is we want to have done. No! He is the omnipotent, holy God! The God who dwells in inapproachable light! The God who shows Himself in thunder, lighting, and smoke, of whom the Israelites said, when they saw His power manifested at Mount Sinai,

“Now when all the people saw the thunder and the flashes of lightning and the sound of the trumpet and the mountain smoking, the people were afraid and trembled, and they stood far off and said to Moses, ‘You speak to us, and we will listen; but do not let God speak to us, lest we die’”—Exodus 20:18-19.

A that we would have a dose of the Divine Presence! O, that we would see God in all of His glory! To see His power! To uphold His majesty! We no longer would test God by our feeble manipulations! No, we would stand away from the mountain, aware that He is God and that we are not, that He is the author of salvation and we are woeful rebellious sinners!

We must rest in His written Word, my brothers and sisters! He has given us His Word not to restrict us, but to free and empower us! His written Word is so that we might know who He is and how we might live for Him and we must learn to rest in it. There is no manipulation for the child of God who learns to rest in His Word, there is only magnificent mystery as the child learns that he or she is loved. That God does care for us, that God has given us a guide to live by so that we might truly seek to know Him for His unbelievable and majestic glory and our inexhaustible joy. Amen.