Romans 12:2-And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.There is a lovely twofold proving that goes on. God says ‘Prove me!’ or ‘Try me!’ and when we prove the Lord, we are the ones who are likewise proved.
There are 3 different aspects in which the proving comes about:
1)The Promise
2)The Proving
3)The Possessing
As we come into renewed knowledge and our longing is more and more with real dedication unto the Lord, we get a hold of the blessedness of some of the promises the God has made. We often get the Promise and the Possessing mixed up. We may think about every single promise being ours, but how about the reality of the promise being brought out.
In Genesis, God brought Abram out of the land of the Chaldeans and made a promise that Abram’s descendents would be more than the stars of the sky and the sand on the seashore (Genesis 15:5). Abraham was thrilled with the promise that God has made. But he went through a long period of proving. Finally, through Isaac, he came to possess a son. And when Abraham wants to continue his family through Isaac, God commands Abraham to kill his son. Abraham proved God by obeying God’s commandments to kill his son, Isaac. This is the proving. And in return, God proves himself by offering also his begotten son, Jesus Christ, for our sacrifice.
Deuteronomy 6:1-”Now this is the commandment, the statutes and the judgments which the Lord your God has commanded me to teach you, that you might do them in the land where you are going over to possess it,
God is giving the Israelites a promise, that he is going to give them a land to possess. God has brought them out of slavery in Egypt, in order to bring them into the Land. If God has brought us out of bondage and we present ourselves to him, he will bring us in.v2- so that you and your son and your grandson might fear the Lord your God, to keep his commandments, which I command you, all the days of your life, and that your days may be prolonged.
v3-”O Israel, you should listen and be careful to do it, that it may be well with you and that you may multiply greatly, just as the Lord, the God of your fathers, has promised you, in the land flowing with milk and honey.
Why can’t God immediately just go and let us possess a thing? It is a law in human nature that we cannot get certain things without proving them.
v5-”And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.
The proving that takes place here is the taking of a new heart and making it wholehearted before the Lord. When we were redeemed, God gave us a new heart. But there is a vast difference before a new heart and a wholeheartedness before the Lord.
God’s desire was not so much in giving the land to Israel. The land was incidental. He was wanting to, in the land, give them himself. That is his true desire.But when Israel got into the land and possessed it, they used the land for themselves, for their own interest. The land was so good and wonderful that over a period of 490 years, seventy sabbaths, they fail to let it lie idle. But they were not careful and used it for themselves. They were still in the proving stage. So the Lord allowed Babylon and Assyria to keep them in captivity for 70 years.Jeremiah 29:10-13-For thus says the Lord, ‘When seventy years have been completed for
Babylon, I will visit you and fulfill my good word to you, to bring you back to this place. For I know the plans that I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. And you will seek me and find me, when you search for me with all your heart.The proving work, then, is to develop a wholeheartedness within us.
There is something the Lord requires of our wholeheartedness in our life. Our dedication unto the Lord, for the full thing that he wants, is that our place is set and we learn to live in our will that God gives to us.
Sadly, the great majority of God’s children live in the fickleness of their feelings. One day we may feel good and on another we might feel something else. We can go to a meeting, get all stirred up with fire and say, ‘I will serve the Lord’. Three hours later, we are away from the climate and the fickleness of our feelings come in. And our will is a captive of our feelings. We must come to hate the fickleness of our feelings.
We must pray for God to help us to know what it means to say ‘I will’. The will must be present and God will do the performing. We must will to be proved. We must will in our wholeheartedness to be brought to real proving. It is the heart that is proved.
The proving will bring about the possessing. God will bring us out, to bring us in.
So many of God’s children think that they have the possession just because they have the promise. It is as good as saying we have the knowledge but we don’t live in the reality of what we know. Deuteronomy 6:16-You shall not put the Lord your God to the test, as you tested Him at Massah.
When does the proving slip away from proving to testing? What is the difference between proving and testing? God wants us to prove, but when does it become a tempting to God?
Tempting God is demanding or requiring of signs from God that is greater than he is pleased or willing to give.
Psalms 78:41-And again and again they tempted God, snd pained the Holy One of Israel.
Psalms 78:17-22-Yet they still continued to sin against him, to rebel against the most high in the desert. And in their heart they put God to the test by asking food according to their desire. Then they spoke against God. They said, “Can God prepare a table in the wilderness? Behold, he struck the rock, so that waters gushed out, and streams were overflowing. Can he give bread also? Will he provide meat for his people? Therefore the Lord heard and was full of wrath, and a fire was kindled against Jacob, and anger also mounted against Israel; because they did not believe in God and did not trust in his salvation. It is the spirit in which we approach God that draws the line.
God will be very patient with our reasonings. There are times when questioning is legitimate. It is proper to reason with God like Gideon.
Is our spirit in which we approach God a murmuring or complaining spirit? God is very severe against a rebellious spirit. He will be patient as long as it is a questioning, if we just want to be sure if his is right. We have to watch our spirits. There is that rashness that comes out of the moment where our spirits is wrong, asking greater of a sign that God is willing to give.
God is not only doing the transforming work of the soul, to bring our minds into renewing, but God in the proving of our hearts gets down to the innermost, the proving of our spirit, the hidden man within our hearts.
Exodus 17:1-Then all the congregation of the sons of Israel journeyed by stages from the wilderness of Sin, according to the command of the Lord, and camped at Rephidim, and there was no water for the people to drink.
At this point, the sons of Israel were there according to God’s will. God had brought them there. But it seems strange that there was no water for the people to drink. Why did the Lord lead them to a place where there is no water?
We all start out with the mentality that when we come to know the Lord everything is going to be all right from then on. It is true, but we need a renewing of our knowledge.
The Israelites were in God’s will, the very centre of it, but how could they be in God’s will and come to a no-water situation?
We would easily question immediately whether we are in God’s will if we were to be placed in such a situation e.g no job, no money, no friends, nobody understands. But we are actually still in God’s will.
God wants to prove to them that they will get through the wilderness and it will be by God as their supply.
The whole of our dedication is not seeing what needs to be done and doing it by ourselves. What God ends is to be done by his name, not our names.
The first blessed part of the proving is no water, in the will of God. Do not think that just because difficulty comes, we must have missed the will of God.
v2-3- Therefore the people quarreled with Moses and said, “Give us water that we may drink.” And Moses said to them, “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord” But the people thirsted there for water; and they grumbled against Moses and said, “Why now, have you brought us up from Egypt, to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst?”
There is a wrong spirit within them. God did not bring them out to kill them. They have not understood the claiming of the promise. He brought us out, to bring us in.
God wants us to step out, to take a promise. We can play it safe, stay back and say we don’t have any promises and no proving. It is a lot easier to do so. But we will miss out on the wonderful promises of God. God will tell us to come to him out of our cautiousness. He wants to prove our hearts and give us an opportunity for our hearts to be prepared for us to be brought into our possession that he has for us.
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