The PERFECT Test!

Do you remember taking tests in school?  Maybe you’re still in school and have tests you have to take (at least online right now 😉).  Do you dread tests?  Do you study for them?  Do you benefit from them?  Do they not test your knowledge and even your ability to think and reason about facts and even greater things in life?  Testing is important; testing is necessary; really, all of life is about testing!  As I’ve noted many times before, all of life is about learning.  And learning is how we change and grow!  Life teaches us many lessons, if we let it!  It is actually The Creator of life Who is teaching us through the reality that HE Created and HIS Personal involvement with each of us, and HE IS THE MASTER TEACHER!  So, how does HE test us?  How does HE want us to learn?  I don’t think I’ll be able to fully address those questions, but I do want to address the greatest and most far-reaching test that modern mankind has more knowledgeably faced together.  I am talking about The PERFECT Test!

This Coronavirus is certainly schooling our Country (and really all of mankind, throughout the whole earth) and bringing us to the ultimate place of personal testing!  Think about it.  Especially think about it from the beginning, when there was little to no hope of recovery, if it took hold in you!  If you are really seeing how deadly and serious this is in those it impacts, then did you pass this PERFECT Test? How did you do at that first moment you realized it then?  How are you doing now with a greater spread and more deaths and many increasing restrictions impacting each of our lives?  What a test!  And it isn’t just for a moment, it continues! America has been on top of responding to this as good or better than many other places in the world.  The 15 day plan to slow the spread has tested us, for we are not accustomed to such limited activity in this day and age and with the freedom we normally have in this Country!  Now, we are tested even further and looking at another 30 days of limitations to try to hold down the number of deaths that today were projected to be as high as 100-200 thousand people (but hopefully far less)!  If authorities had done nothing but let this ride out, it is said that the peak would have been higher and likely over sooner, but deaths would have been in the millions (as high as 2.2 million!).  Well, you may still be skeptical, but if the virus does hit near you or takes one of your friends or family members, you will be tested there, too! This PERFECT Test continues for now!

Now, just why is this such a PERFECT Test for the world and for you?  Well, all the facts are not known!  As noted in my last blog, it is Novel, or new, so the effects are UNCERTAIN!  We have had to learn what it is, how it spreads, who is vulnerable, where it came from, when it is most dangerous, why it does what it does, how can you treat symptoms, etc.  This highly contagious virus humbles us all!  True science will help us find the answers, but science can’t just guess here (at it does with origins or unrecorded history 😉). Science still doesn’t know all the answers here, because science is about observing and testing until you can prove something!  We do know that this virus primarily attacks the weak, but it can also attack the strong and healthy!  A weak immunity leads to it filling the lungs with fluid and a very strong immunity can lead to the body attacking the lungs.  The elderly are at the greatest risk, then the sick, but even healthy and young people can be hurt or killed by this novel virus! This Coronavirus is a PERFECT Test because it forces you (unless you just deny it) to at least consider that you could catch it, get very sick and even die!  What really happens after death? What if we end up suffering?  Will we get this virus and infect others around us, making them suffer or even die?  Wow, what a PERFECT Test for me, for you, for The Church and for the world!

Why is GOD allowing this and letting these concerns continue?  HE tests each of us (Psalm 11:4)!  HE tests our minds and our hearts (Jeremiah 11:20; 17:10; Proverbs 17:3)!  When the people of Israel became fearful after seeing the natural effects of HIS POWER on the mountain, when God had written out the 10 Commandments, Moses exhorted them: “Do not [only] fear; for God has come to test you, and that HIS fear may be before you, so that you may not sin” (Exodus 20:20).  HE wants us to not live by our fears, but by fear/faith toward HIM!  HE wants you to trust that HE can take care of you, no matter what HE allows to happen and that HE will keep you safe Eternally!  HE wants you to trust The Risen JESUS CHRIST, who died to pay the penalty that justice required for your sin (pride, lack of faith, etc.).  Will this PERFECT Test bring you to trust?  Will it turn you inward to attempt to satisfy yourself with media and pleasures or will Faith allow you to trust HIM, so you can be confident and encourage and serve others and help those that are weak?!  I trust HIM and test all things (I Thessalonians 5:21).  I do have the personal advantage with this PERFECT Test of the Coronavirus, since I have already been tested to my core (my book details this).  I have learned to walk by Faith and not by sight or emotion (fear).  I have learned to “Trust GOD and HIS Word, no matter what!” (the theme of my book).  Will you?  Will HIS Church humble Itself and PRAY, to help heal and end this Coronavirus threat? Will you, my friend, pass this, The PERFECT Test!?