A Modern Reformation (5)
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Testing and Timing
Testing and Timing
We’ve talked about these topics through the last few weeks in the Modern Reformation Series
wk 1 - If we don’t reform, we are left to believe what others have told to us without searching those things out for ourselves. I told a story about my personal reformation of faith in my mid twenties. We learned that Martin Luther, the German Theologian, disagreed with 95 aspects of the Roman Catholic doctrine.
wk 2 - Jesus didn’t come for a perfect church, he came to a broken and fractured people that couldn’t agree on doctrine or practices. He wasn’t impressed with their worship, he came to save us in spite of it.
wk 3 - We traded our will for the Father’s will. Learning from the example of jesus that even though we are anointed to do ministry, the only truly effective ministry is aligned with the Father’s will, not our great ideas. If it’s the Father’s will, it has the Father’s favor.
wk 4 - We reformed our understanding of the identity of Jesus as Jesus was reshaping Peter’s identity in Matthew 16:16. Then we practiced our faith by praying for each other.
Here’s why we’ve been in a Reformation Series.
This is the first time we get to start from the very beginning as a church.
My belief is that we should ask the “Why”questions about our faith.
We should continually seek revelation from the Lord from His word.
This keeps us from worshipping doctrines and traditions over the Lord of the doctrines and traditions.
Today I want to reform our understanding of being tested.
This is a message called Testing and Timing
The distinctions and the connections between testing and timing.
As we are nearing Easter Sunday, during the Passover Season and the Resurrection Story - The resurrection has been viewed as the promised-land. An yet if the resurrections is the promised-land, why did Jesus say, In this world you would have trouble.
Didn’t he conquer all trouble?!?
He didn’t erase all trouble, he conquered death, hell and the grave. He conquered the penalty of sin but he didn’t erase sin altogether.
He made it so that our sin can’t be held against us in the father’s eyes.
His blood covers our sin.
Now we have access to the Father.
Story:
I heard this profound analogy in recent weeks - This is going to change some of your lives… if you can get the revelation of what I’m about to say.
A child is the only person that is not afraid to wake up a king at 2am
His closest friend wouldn’t wake up the king at 2am.
His wife would be scared to wake up the king at 2am.
Q: Who has access to a king in the middle of the night? A: His child.
When you see yourself as a child of God, it changes everything.
What does this have to do with testing and timing?
Testing is the process of our father teaching us His ways.
Timing is the result of our faith and obedience to these lessons.
I’m not saying the God causes everything that happens to you.
I am saying that God uses everything that happens to you.
We have biblical examples of Timing being directly connected to Testing
Because the Children of Israel didn’t pass the test, they weren’t able to go into the promised-land.
8 do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion,
on the day of testing in the wilderness,
9 where your fathers put me to the test
and saw my works for forty years.
10 Therefore I was provoked with that generation,
and said, ‘They always go astray in their heart;
they have not known my ways.’
11 As I swore in my wrath,
‘They shall not enter my rest.’ ”
Why do we willingly push ourselves to be better at the gym, or in studies, or in our careers?
Yet it’s a mental hurdle to want to be tested in our faith.
We must overcome a desire to have a comfortable faith.
We must press into a desire to be tested.
33 I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.”
These two things are happening at the same time.
We are spiritual people in a spiritual reality.
We are physical people in a physical reality.
When we learn to desire the testing… because we KNOW the strength that comes from it.
THERE’S the maturity right there.
Lord we thank you for the tests!
2 Consider it pure joy, my brothers, when you encounter trials of many kinds,
The two things are so opposed to each other in our hearts.
Joy and Tests
You want to know if you are mature in Christ?
HERE IT IS!!!
“Do you have joy during trials and testing?”
Do those two things happen at the same time?
Several people around me have made the statement, I’ve learned not to pray for patience because I know that God will give me a test to learn it.
Why do we lean away from things are that going to make us better? More Christ-like.
Because there hard?
The Lesson from the Desert
10 For forty years I was angry with that generation,
and I said, “They are a people whose hearts go astray,
and they have not known My ways.”
Isreal could have shortened their time in the wilderness through faith and obedience.
11 About this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing. 12 For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food, 13 for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. 14 But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.
All of this goes back to the very beginning.
Adam and Eve’s way - They chose to grab all the knowledge of Good and Evil before the Lord was able to teach it to them.
God came to them and asked “who told you that?”
God’s Way - Knowledge comes through faith and obedience over time, testing builds us and makes us wiser.
The heart and the mind becoming like the mind of Christ.
We aren’t meant to hold the truths of God without the mind of Christ.
Today we are reforming our understanding of Testing and Timing.
We don’t want to get ahead of God. It doesn’t go well.
Adam and Eve messed it up for everyone else because they didn’t stay in Faith and Obedience.
God, where do we need to lean into your timing today? Are we trying to shortcut what your trying to build? Are we trying to get ahead of you because we are impatient?
Forgive us, remind us of your plan and your good design. Fix anything that we’ve broken. Tell us the truth where we’ve believed a lie. In Jesus name.
