This week, as with many students in many high schools, my daughter is being tested in each of her courses of study. It is the end of the semester and they are having semester finals testing, sometimes referred to as midterms.

I am reminded of the many tests that I faced in my school career and also in life. We all face tests in life. In fact, we face them daily.

I also think of the many examples in the Scriptures of how God tested the hearts of His people. I recall the tests of Abraham, Moses, Joshua and Joseph. No less were the tests that the Apostles faced. Paul even lists the many tests and challenges he had faced: beatings, shipwrecks, stoning and false imprisonments. The Lord was even tested forty days in the desert, in the Garden of Gethsemane and at the Cross.

Hezekiah was tested and the Scripture teaches us that God allowed Hezekiah to see all that was in his heart through that test.
The interesting aspect here is that what was revealed was the way his heart already was. The test didn’t make his heart become that way; it merely was the instrument which revealed the current, already existing condition of his heart.

The same was true for all of the tests. In some cases, like Abraham and Job, it revealed the great faith, love and devotion that their hearts contained for the Almighty. In other cases, it revealed a lack. The times where lack was revealed, however, was not something which God used to point out lack and condemn them for. Instead He used it as evidence of their need and also as a tool to use in order to lead them on to something greater.

The test doesn’t ‘Create” results, it reveals them. Tests show us the current condition. When that truth is revealed to us, it is sometimes different from what we thought was the case and when that happens, it often feels like it just happened, but in reality what happened was that our understanding caught up to reality. The good news is that now we’re dealing with reality and can do something new, different, better and most of all real.

Remember, this is only a test. The results can lead you beyond the boundaries of yourself if you’ll let God use them to lead you there. Blessings!

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