Tests of the Heart

As we get ready for the next leg in our season, we are making preparations for many long days with week after week on the road. It is the part of the season that will test who you are as an individual, your family and your motives for doing what you. It is our desert season and it comes every year.

When you see the desert ahead, it will make you wonder if what you are doing is the right thing for your life. The desert is never easy and can be filled with many difficulties, yet it is a part of life that we must all go through. What’s even harder is you eventually understand the desert always returns and the tests become more difficult. Life experiences are the only path to maturity.

How you deal with adversity speak to who your are in Christ. Through my relationship with Him, I have found a place of peace. Am I always like that, no, but I am much better than I have ever been and it’s all because of Him. Left to my own devices, I can be a mean and nasty person. I know there is no way I could do what I do without Him. He gives me a peace that surpasses all understanding. Things just don’t bother me anymore because He has changed my perspective on life.

I can not speak for the others who work for us, but for my team (my wife and I) we do this because it is what the Lord has called us to do. In our weakness we bring Him glory. From start to finish, I see His hand in my life and in our business. I can’t express how grateful I am for that. My question for you today…when life gets hard, whom do you look to for strength?

Blessings

Tests of the Heart
by Os Hillman

“Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the desert these forty years, to humble you and to test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep His commands.” – Deuteronomy 8:2

Has God performed a heart test on you lately? There are times in our lives when God leads us into the desert in order to let us find out what is in our heart. These times can be very difficult and humbling. They can test our mettle like no other time. Desert times often mean we are living without those things we are normally accustomed to: water, food, limited supplies – and with few comforts. In modern terms, it may mean a different environment. God is performing a very important work during these times. He wants to know if we can be obedient to Him in these times; or will we be obedient only when times are good?

“He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your fathers had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. Your clothes did not wear out and your feet did not swell during these forty years. Know then in your heart that as a man disciplines his son, so the Lord your God disciplines you” (Deuteronomy 8:3-5).

These desert times may mean experiencing new ways of provision from the Lord. Like manna from Heaven, it may mean seeing miracles we’ve never seen before. Like clothing that never wears out, it may mean seeing your normal capabilities expanded. Like walking hundreds of miles without pain, desert experiences provide new lessons and new experiences that only these times can teach us.

What desert experience has He brought into your life lately? Perhaps it is a lean time in business. Perhaps it is a new environment. Whatever it is, when God decides to bring new disciplines into our lives by bringing us into the desert, do not fear the heat that is sure to come. He is walking beside you in order to test you and find out what is really in your heart. Ask for His grace to pass the test. He wants to bring all of His children into the Promised Land.