March 10, 2021: How Does God Draw Us to Himself? Do Our Trials Have A Purpose in God's Plan for Us?

As I was reading in the Book of Deuteronomy this morning, I came upon the following verses that addressed the purpose of why God allowed the people of Israel to go through some difficult testing over their forty years in the wilderness on their way to the Promise Land. Read the following:

Deuteronomy 8: 2-3 (NKJV)

2 And you shall remember that the Lord your God led you all the way these forty years in the wilderness, to humble you and test you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not. 3 So He humbled you, allowed you to hunger, and fed you with manna which you did not know nor did your fathers know, that He might make you know that man shall not live by bread alone; but man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord.

God tested the people of Israel, to humble and test them and "to know what was in their heart", whether they would keep His commandment or not. He allowed them to go through hunger to show them "that man shall not live by bread alone", but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the God.

Why did God continually chasten or discipline the children of Israel? Because the children of Israel were God's chosen people to represent Him to the world and to lead the people of the world to Himself. And if the people of Israel were to represent God, He had to make sure that they represented Him in a manner that was worthy of God's Holy character.

Deuteronomy 10: 12-13 (NKJV)

And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you, but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all His ways and to love Him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, 13 and to keep the commandments of the Lord and His statutes which I command you today for your good?

We too represent God with our lives and God wants us to be holy as He is Holy. But the only way we can be holy like God is by allowing the Holy Spirit to control our hearts and minds.

The hardest thing for man or woman to understand is that God made us, and He knows what will fulfill our hearts and meet our deepest needs, and this is a close relationship with Him. There are times when God needs to discipline us as His children as a father disciplines his own children.

Deuteronomy 10: 2-3 (NKJV)

"You should know in your heart that as a man chastens his son, so the Lord your God chastens you".

PERSONNAL COMMENT:

Our God loves us and wants the very best for us. But many times we can see what God is trying to do because we get in the way of His plans. I like what the Apostle Peter says in 1 Peter 5: 6: "Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time". The only way we can humble ourselves before God is to "absolutely surrender" fully to Him and begin to understand that everything God allows into our lives, like trials and/or blessings, is for our good and for the purpose of drawing us into a more enriched relationship with Him.