Testing God: Playing The Probabilities

“Why do you put the Lord to the test?”

Exodus 17:2

When we live by the system that is going instead of by the system that is coming, we take a risk. The system that is going—"this world in its present form is passing away"—has rules and probabilities.

The rules of this present, passing world hardly tempt us to sin at all. We understand the absolute cause and effect nature of rules—"eat from the tree and you will surely die.” No, we know the rules of the world, and we avoid them like a plague.

Instead, we get into trouble when we over-enjoy the world and play the probabilities. We indulge when we should only taste. Many things we do are permissible but not beneficial. When we do the permissible but not beneficial, we test the probabilities; we put the Lord to the test.

For example, surely there is nothing wrong with owning and enjoying a touring motorcycle. I had one for many years. I also suffered several accidents. Having an accident isn’t a rule of motorcycling; it isn’t cause and effect—ride and wreck. But having an accident was a high probability.

Not long ago a friend bought a motorcycle. He always longed to own one, and it was family entertainment. Riding to the beach to meet his family one day, he cruised along an open country highway toward the coast.

At a major back-country crossroads, an eighty-year-old man with poor vision pulled in front of his sleek touring cycle, and they collided. The impact flung his flimsy body up over the hood of the car, and he sailed fifty feet before pasting the pavement with denim and leather.

His helmet cracked, and the coarse asphalt slashed at the flesh on his face. His cheeks turned cherry red as the blood trickled from the multiple cat claw-like lacerations covering his face, but he survived. Fortunately his daughter, a frequent rider, was not along that day. He played the probabilities of this present world—what is permissible—and survived.

The problem, of course, is that many of us play the probabilities and don’t survive. We take the bet-the-ranch business gamble and fail, we neglect our families and lose them, we overwork and stress out. I don’t suppose there is anything wrong with enjoying worldly pleasures, but some things are just plain risky. Why take a chance?

You and I would never consider living by the rules of the world that is going. We would not live by a system that is anti-God. But neither have we fully surrendered to the rules of the world that is coming. We live in the gray; we live on the middle ground between two worlds, one coming and one going. We push the limits of the probabilities—that we will beat the odds. We put the Lord to the test. How are you testing the Lord? What are you doing that is permissible but not beneficial? Why take a chance?

I SURRENDER

Lord, by Your grace alone I have not crashed. I have never lived by the rules of this world, but I often play the probabilities. Show me where I have been testing You so that I may abandon it. Reveal to me what I am doing that is permissible but not beneficial. Amen.