God Wants To Know What Is In Your Heart.

Passage to be read: Deuteronomy 8: 1-20

Remember how the Lord your God has led you in the desert for these forty years, taking away your pride and testing you, because He wanted to know what was in your heart. He wanted to know if you would obey His commands.

(Deuteronomy 8: 2)

                As a lecturer in a state university, I observed and experienced recently, for the first time, the real impact of students’ uproar and the violent behaviors that follow the uproar. As a member of the academic body of the institution I personally felt fed-up of the things that continued to happen around and was able to observe the same among my colleagues. In the midst of such calamities and challenging situations, I remembered an important advice that the Vice-Chancellor of our university gave us few months ago, pointing at the possibilities of such incidents. He said, “It is in these kind of situations the academics are observed.” True. Our real personality and character is known by the way how we react and handle the situations; situations that shock, bring in calamities and pain. It shows what is in our hearts!

        If you are being led through a time of personal uproar and inner calamities, then understand that God wants to know what is in your heart!

           The Israelites, who were heading towards the Land of Canaan from Egypt (one of the mass migrations in history), led by God miraculously, had to spend forty years to travel across this desert on the way. The actual amount of time someone needs to cross this desert on foot is just eleven days. Yes! An eleven-day journey in forty years! Why? Something important to contemplate on.

            This whole migration had a great purpose. God had His bigger plan when he brought out the Israelites who were slaves in Egypt and led them miraculously, showing His power and might. God, indeed, had a greater plan; to make them into a great nation, the Nation of Israel. And God wanted it to be a steady and slow progress. Not a nation that ‘happened’ overnight. God wanted the Nation of Israel to be strong and well built up. So God took His time. 

           This ‘nation-making’ took place not in a place where all things were provided, or taken for granted, but in a place where nothing was available. Wow! What a learning experience. Everything had to be asked for, everything was received with thanksgiving, everything had to be made from scratch, and nothing was taken for granted. What a classroom it was for experiential learning to take place. What a laboratory it was for things to be tested and identified. Amazing!

            Look at the delays in your life. Look at the forty-years-journeys in your life that should have finished in eleven days otherwise. Ever wondered why such delays? The passage we have read today, Deuteronomy 8, gives us the answer in a clear way. God wants to take away our pride and test us! He is doing this, so that He can know what is in our heart. He wants to know whether we would obey His commands (Deuteronomy 8: 2).

           As we keep waiting and waiting, undergoing all kinds of sufferings, with all the calamities within and around, we slowly realize that our dependence is no more on ourselves but on God. We learn to put our trust totally on Him. Even though the delay would be painful, it leads us towards a total submission. Thus, our Pride is taken away. We stand as a person who is humbled to the bottom, and awaits God’s help in overcoming the situation. And that’s when God tests you. He puts in His plans, slowly introduces His greater plans and privileges that awaits you at the end of this painful journey. You are tested! God knows how you are reacting towards each and every plan He has for you. He knows what is in your heart!

           God finds the right time for us to enter into the Promised Land, to enjoy the God given privileges in life and He continues to lead us.

          I pray that God will give all of us the strength to stand firm during such moments in life. We may have to lose away our pride, be tested and then enter into the promises that God has for us. We would reap the fruits of waiting patiently, because God knows what is in our hearts.

May God bless you.

Yours in Christ,