Testing?

The Pharisees and Sadducees came to Jesus and tested him by asking him to show them a sign from heaven.                                                                         Matt. 16.1

Were the religious leaders truly ignorant of the real identity of this man they were testing?  Or were they merely being arrogantly disrespectful by taunting Him? They would surely have known the Law (Deut. 6.16) which Jesus Himself reminded Satan of when he sought to tempt Him in the wilderness: Jesus answered him, “It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’ ” (Matt. 4.7)

The leaders knew to not test God. They flaunted this knowledge by their request of Jesus. Jesus responds in truth: “A wicked and adulterous generation looks for a miraculous sign, but none will be given it except the sign of Jonah.” (Matt. 16.4)

Jonah spent three days in the belly of a large fish.

The sign was made clearer for us when Jesus spent three days in the earth before His resurrection.

What, then, do these verses tell me? Clearly I am not to put God to the test. So where do I stand in respect to “putting out a fleece”? I see a fleece as more of a request for guidance rather than a testing. God cannot, and will not, be tested!

But I have been given a sign. The amazing death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is the sign for all time. I need nothing more than this. I have asked God, it is true, for signs and wonders and miracles to manifest through my walk with Him. I see all these as part of God’s amazing ministry to His people. He is the God of the impossible, the miraculous. It is part of His relating to us that these things be seen and experienced.

I do not wish to put God to the test. I earnestly want to know His way for me, and so I may, from time to time, put out a fleece. I am totally assured by the sign of the cross and resurrection. I need no other sign from God. Yet I desire to see Him work the miraculous in me and through my ministry for Him.

I trust these are correct understandings! I pray to God that this is so.

Holy Father,

I offer to You the understanding I have written above. Please correct me in the clearest way if I am mistaken. Lead me further into enlightenment in You. Show me more of Your glorious Being and doing. Let me never put You to the test, but simply rest in Your love and receive Your comfort, strength and enabling.

More than anything, I seek You. May You be so real to me, inhabiting my being and all that I do. I love You. I ask You to accept my humble, frail, human love – in Jesus’ name.                                  Amen.

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