The Problem
I hope that this week's series about how God tests us has been useful to you. A faith that denies this, but says that God will never test or stretch you, is a flimsy and unbiblical faith indeed.
But sadly, many people don't handle tests well. Tests become problems that they can't navigate through.
Shallow Faith Falls Away
You might remember Jesus' parable of the seed - a farmer scatters seed and some falls on a path and gets trampled and eaten by birds; some falls on rocky ground, some falls among thorns, but some falls on good soil. In Luke's gospel, Jesus explains this parable to the disciples like this:
"The seed is the word of God. Those along the path are the ones who hear, and then the devil comes and takes away the word from their hearts, so that they may not believe and be saved. Those on the rocky ground are the ones who receive the word with joy when they hear it, but they have no root. They believe for a while, but in the time of testing they fall away." (Luke 8:11-13)
This was interesting to me. Jesus claims that those who fall away from faith in times of testing are the ones who have no root. In other words, the truth of the gospel has always been a 'surface' thing to them. It's never sunk down deeply into their souls and begun to truly impact their lives. It's a shallow faith, that peters out when tests come.
God's offer is not to bless you with a shallow faith that sort of touches your life, but that doesn't really mean a lot to you. That sort of faith will be a problem, when tests come! It will not help you at all!
But if you’re committed to a deep faith - a faith on which your daily life is built - then tests will come, and they won't be a problem! You'll handle them because your faith is stronger than the tests.
Climbing on the Bumps
Now, I'm not suggesting that deep faith will mean you just cruise through life. It doesn't mean you'll just ace every test with ease. Not at all - there will be pain and tears and difficulties for the deep Christian too, certainly.
A young boy was hiking with his little sister. Soon she began to complain, "There's no path; it's all rocks and bumps." "That's right," explained her brother, "the bumps are what you climb on."
The bumps in the roads are gonna come! They can be problems, obstacles that cause you to fall away from the faith, or they can be rocks on which you climb to greater heights!
Go deeper today. Commit to your God, come what may. And then climb, when those tests come, and see how your life goes from strength to strength.
