I received an email from a student asking whether it was okay to \u201cput God to the test.\u201d <\/p>\n
I just came back from a strange church service, and I have a question. Lately, I have been learning quite a bit about God up there. The pastor\u2019s wife shouted out loud that the Lord wants us to \u201ctest\u201d him in prayer, meaning see if our prayers are answered. I was confused about this statement, as I recalled the temptations of Christ, when Satan tempts Jesus, and Jesus quotes scripture, \u201cthou shalt not test the Lord your God.\u201d Am I getting caught up in a technicality, or is there some merit to this claim, which I do not understand? I can see how God would want us to pray and ask for proof in life, but I feel such a strong injustice to this thought. Any thoughts?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
As I frequently field this question or a variant thereof, I thought my response might be of more general interest.<\/p>\n
Are we to test God or not?<\/p>\n
In Deut 6:16 we are commanded not to put God to the test. In Malachi 3:10 God tells us to test him. <\/p>\n
Is this a contradiction? No, not at all. The Hebrew word in Deuteronomy 6:16 is nacah http:\/\/www.blueletterbible.org\/cgi-bin\/words.pl?word=05254
\nwhereas the word in Malachi 3:10 is bachan
\nhttp:\/\/www.blueletterbible.org\/cgi-bin\/words.pl?word=0974<\/p>\nSo what we have is two words in Hebrew that can both be translated \u201ctest.\u201d Some tests are forbidden and others are commanded.<\/p>\n
So what are we forbidden to do? Jesus tells us not to tempt God in Luke 4:12 (quoting Deuteronomy 6:16). If we look up Deut 6:16 (\u201cDo not tempt the Lord your God as you did at Massah\u201d) we will notice that it is a reference to Exodus 17, wherein the Israelites demand that God do a specific thing to prove he is with them. That\u2019s the same temptation Satan set before Jesus: make God perform an action of your own choosing.<\/p>\n
However, we read in Malachi 3:10 that God desires us to test his goodness and his faithfulness. We are to expect God to perform actions of his choosing.<\/p>\n
That makes sense. In the first case we are giving orders to God, in the second case we are receiving orders from God. In the first case we are trying to be God ourselves, in the second case we are allowing God to be God.<\/p>\n
Perhaps we could phrase the distinction thus:
\n\u201cDon\u2019t try to tell God what he ought to do, but expect God to do what he has promised to do.\u201d<\/p>\nSo in your specific case, it all depends on what sort of prayers you\u2019re expecting God to answer.<\/p>\n
Did that help clear it up?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I received an email from a student asking whether it was okay to \u201cput God to the test.\u201d I just came back from a strange church service, and I have a question. Lately, I have been learning quite a bit about God up there. The pastor\u2019s wife shouted out loud that the Lord wants us to \u2026 Continue reading \u201cStudent Administers Test\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-of-random-interest"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Ded-6K","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=418"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}