The Testings of our Faith--by Linden Malki

Abraham's faith was given one of the most dramatic and scary tests, and he passed.  God commanded him to take his son Isaac to a special mountain and offer him on an altar.  (Child sacrifice was common among their pagan neighbors at that time, and later.) As he was preparing to do this, God stopped him and showed him a ram in the bushes nearby.  The writer of Hebrews explains that Abraham's faith extended to the confidence that God could have raised Isaac up again, to keep the promise of descendants from Isaac. One thing it did was to challenge the tradition of human sacrifice among Abraham's descendants and served as a lesson.

Abraham's nephew Lot and his family were also given a challenge to faith when they were told to abandom Sodom, which was facing iminent destruction for its sins. There was, however, a touch of Satan in the story: the family was told to get out as fast as possible and not look back. We know what happened; Lot's wife couldn't turn her back on this city, even with the threats to their lives and the provision of an escape. I see her standing there rooted to the valley floor as the minerals from the eruptions rained down on her until she was covered with toxic salts. (There could have been other attempting escapees who were also caught in the toxic rain.) This was judgment; those cities have
never been rebuilt.

We see the interweaving of tests and discipline through the story of Jacob and his sons; in most cases you can see the disciplinary results of the various incidents--the rest of the sons had to face their father's grief in the loss of Joseph. Joseph himself had a series of disciplines--being sold as a slave, and then imprisoned for a false accusation (people don't change much, do they?) and then being restored not just to his former status but to a great position which enabled him to save his family from  famine.

We have been challenged to learn to understand the differences between testing and discipline, and between God's dealings with us and the Enemy's. We are constantly tested; we are either learning every day or falling backwards. As we weigh our choices, we need to recognize what will grow us into physical and spiritual health, and what will damage us. Our physical bodies are constantly changing, and we struggle to stay as healthy as possible, or allow unhealthy changes. I try every day to provide the best service I can to people who need their transportation up and running properly. We have to be aware if things that happen because evil is real and there are people and powers who do not have our best interests at heart. We need to call on God's strength and realize that He can deal with our lives better than we can, deliberately pray for deliverance from evil, and express our gratitude for how He works things out for us.