Prove me. Try me. Test me.

I mean it...

“Prove me, O Lord, and try me;

Test my heart and my mind.“ (Psalm 26:2)

My heart sunk. Low. When nobody is home, and I am all alone, I sometimes read my Psalm of the day out loud. Nuka, my Siberian Husky, often stares at me, waiting for the word ‘walk’ or ‘treat’ to enter the reading, but it rarely does. Today, I couldn’t get past verse 2. I stopped and reread it silently, over and over.

Prove me. Try me. Test me, Lord.

I tell my Sunday school class that we speak to God through prayer, and God speaks to us through His Word. With the Psalms, it’s different. God speaks to me through the Psalms, but I also pray the words right back to Him. Attempting to emulate David, His words become my words.

But today, I want to take back the spoken words, regifting them back to David and refusing to keep them as my own.

Prove me.

Try me.

Test me.

Uggh!

Have you ever had a really bad cold? The tickle in the back of your throat starts. You know it’s coming and overdose on Vitamin C in an attempt to kill the virus before it multiplies into an army of sickness forcing to put your life on hold for a week. You’re soon sucking popsicles for your throat pain while simultaneously snuggled under a mountain of blankets with a box of Kleenex by your side. The dreaded cough keeping you up all night wraps everything up with a nice bow. Experience tells you that you’ll be functioning by tomorrow, but then you wake up the next morning with the slightest tickle in the back of your throat and scream, “NOT AGAIN!!” I just want to feel good!

You see, I don’t think I can do it. I don’t want to be proven, tried, and tested again. Not now; not tomorrow; not ever. Can we take a little break, God? How about a month? Can we take a month off from being proven, tried, and tested? Just a little vacation from trials? Can life just be easy for a little while?

“Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” Winston Churchill

I guess life can’t be easy for me, because it wasn’t easy for Jesus.

“In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence. Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered.” (Hebrews 5:7-8)

Jesus learned obedience from what He suffered?

Have I learned obedience from what I have suffered?

I think back to when Jesus saved me. I know that He opened my eyes and ears and heart so that I could see, hear, and understand who He is. He opened my eyes because I was completely unable to see Him of my own accord.

Even though I had repented of my sins and was following Jesus, I look back now and am able to see who I was before the trials. Yes, the Lord had completely taken away my sin. My sin is as far as the East is from the West. It is buried underneath the ocean floor. My heart was surrendered, but I was still sin-stained, and I was still sinning. It wasn’t pretty. My wretchedness had created a stench of sin everywhere I went. Kinda like Pigpen from Peanuts.

Before the molding and shaping.

Before the dead babies.

Before the four-plus years of illness.

Before my son skied head first into a tree and had brain surgery.

Before I started to look like Jesus.

It’s painful being molded and shaped. He breaks us and reforms us; like broken bones being cast, only the bones are now reset in new places to reflect His image. As I suffer, I learn. I learn to desire what He wants for me, not what I want for me, kinda like Jesus learned obedience from what He suffered.

I have been honest in my outcries to my Heavenly Father. He knows I am a wimp who will become a warrior only when I trust that I can only do all things when He gives me strength. Breathing deeply, I trust. I know He has good plans for me, even if they involve trials. Trust. Prove me. Try me. Test me. I close my eyes, reciting out loud from memory.

“Search me, God, and know my heart;

test me and know my anxious thoughts.

See if there is any offensive way in me,

and lead me in the way everlasting.” (Psalm 139:23-24)

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Photo by Elijah Grimm on Unsplash