Recently in church I heard a message that challenged me with thefollowing thought, do I trust God enough to believe He can make away in my person situation? Now the situation I am talking about isnot a hardship, nor is it some great spiritual battle or a strugglefor a lost soul, etc. It is just my own, very small, very privatepersonal situation that I question all the time if God will move in.

The teaching somehow came around and was talking about “testingGod.” Well I've heard about that before, but for some reason thistime I asked the questions, is it right to test God? Not knowing theanswer I turned to the Bible and of course found the verse Mal 3:10.

Malachi3:10 NIVBring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food inmy house. Test me in this," says the LORD Almighty, "andsee if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out somuch blessing that you will not have room enough for it.

Ialso found a lot of verses where it is asked why are you testing theLord and verses that say not to test the Lord (Luke4:12 NIVJesus answered, "Itsays: 'Do not put the Lord your God to the test.'".So now on one hand are we told to test God and not to test God.

Iwas woke up from sleeping tonight and this thought was rolling aroundin my head. Thinking about it I think God showed me the answer. InMal 3:10, God tells the Israelites to bring into the storehouse theirtithes and offerings and challenges them to prove to themselves ifGod will follow through with His promise to bless them abundantly. Iliken this to a parent telling their child to take that risk and obeywhat the parent says to do and see if they will follow through on thepromises they made. This is the only place that God explicitly saysto test Him at His word.

Now,unlike Mal 3:10, there are many other areas where we see the Lordbeing “tested.” For example, in Ex 17:2 when the people werecomplaining for water, they were not proving God's promises. In factit was their lack of faith that was “putting the Lord to the test.”They were doubting the promise God has already made to take them tothe promised land and turned to complaining.

InLuke 4:12 when Christ said “Donot put the Lord you God to the test,”He was referring to needlessly putting yourself into danger (jumpingoff a cliff) just to see if God would save you (trying to force God'shand to act). In Acts 5:9, Sapphira was “testing” the Lord bylying about the sale price of the property she and her husband hadsold (claiming they were giving all when they were not). These isnot examples of “testing” God's promises but testing Hispatients? It's like the child you tell to stop doing something andthey technically stop only to do a similar activity that istechnically not what you told them, but close enough. The example Ican think of if telling your child to stop hitting their youngersibling only to have them start poking them, and then to startrubbing them, and then to just touch them. Sure, they stoppedhitting them, but they were still going out of their way to stillbother their brother or sister.

Howoften have I technically obeyed the “directive” only to findanother way to do what I wanted? In my mind a way around thecommand? How many times have I “tried God's patience” with mylack of obedience and my selfishness? More than I care to admit.