“Some time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, ‘Abraham!’ ‘Here I am,’ he replied. Then God said, ‘Take your son, your only son, whom you love—Isaac—and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you’” (Genesis 22:1-2, NIV).

A friend from Baltimore, Maryland called me last week. He had been talking to a neurosurgeon from Houston, Texas about his daughter-in-law. She and his son had been living the perfect life when she recently developed severe headaches. My friend is a physician, and the neurosurgeon had described for him the frontal lobe glioma he had just removed from his son’s wife. Over the phone with me, he cried out, “God is testing me almost more than I can stand.”

Does God test us?

He certainly tested His people in the past.

In Deuteronomy 8:2, Moses describes how God tested his people to know their hearts when He kept them in the wilderness.

In James 1:2, James describes the benefit of testing that leads to perseverance.

In Psalm 139:23-24, David even asked God to test him.

But, oh—the suffering of a daughter-in-law just to prove something to God seems tragically different and so unlike the Father we know through Jesus. Is God testing my friend?

In circumstances like these, I lean on the God I know in Christ and on the understanding that “association does not confirm causation,” as the saying goes. Scripture describes how God at times brings situations into our lives to test our faith and to help purify our love for Him. However, I think it unlikely in this circumstance that my friend’s suffering comes as a test designed by God, and it is instead a natural consequence of fallen creation, as is true for most tragedies in our lives.

However, God will not waste our pain. Within each difficult experience of our lives, God will work to refine our trust in Him and test our obedience to His will, building character from heartache, fashioning persons more like Christ from broken pieces (Romans 8:28).

I do pray I will prove true to Him when I am so tested.

Dear Father,

Test me when you will. Build me through life’s circumstances into the image of Christ.

Amen