Leave the Testing for the Teacher

The Israelites experienced some of God’s first miracles that He did in all history of mankind. And those miracles were amazing! Besides that, they were practically a daily occurrence for them. In Egypt, they saw the 10 plagues, and the Red Sea parted in half. Their very existence thrived on God’s miraculous provision all throughout their years in the wilderness, with the bitter waters at Meribah turning sweet, and the water coming out of the rock, and the nations opposing them being defeated.

But despite all that, they continued to question God day after day. When they got hungry, they complained to God so He sent them manna. When they got tired of manna, they grumbled and God sent them quail. When God promised them Canaan, they said it was too hard to get. They just kept testing God, even though they were almost daily experiencing the incredible works of the Lord!

Psalm 95:9 says, “When your fathers tested Me, they tried Me, though they saw my work.”

That really displeased God. The verse before it tells us why God didn’t want them to test and try Him. It says, “Do not harden your hearts, as in the rebellion, as in the day of trial in the wilderness, when your fathers….” God is saying that when they questioned Him, and tested Him during the ‘day of trial’ (or ‘hard times’), that caused them to develop hard hearts, and bring them to rebellion. When we do the same thing, those are steps to becoming hard-hearted and rebellious like the Israelites were. In the books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and all those prophets, we read over and over again how God pleads with them not to be hard-hearted, and punishes them because of their rebellious hearts. And yet, if we let it, it can easily become a habit to always test God when something goes wrong.

Make it a goal not to test God. When you feel like circumstances are just NOT the way they should be, praise God, ask Him for strength, tell Him you’re having a hard time—anything like that. But don’t test Him. Don’t let yourself become hard-hearted.