In the moment of our testing, when God must take away what threatens our love for him, when God gives us an opportunity to consciously choose him over everything else, in that moment, will your faith prevail? A man who loves his career more than God is suddenly fired for no particular reason. God has taken it away. Will that man trust in God’s promise to take care of him? God is testing him. A teenager who loves to be popular more than she loves to worship God with her life, suddenly finds that her classmates have turned against her. Is her life over? Hardly. God is testing her. A mother in perfect health finds a lump on her breast. God is testing her. God tests his children. The adversities we face in life are God’s tests. They are not meant to make you fail. They are meant to give you an opportunity to love God above everything else. They are meant to wake our faith up from its slumber and hold on to God’s promises.

A young solider was riding in the troop carrier about to land on the beach of Normandy on D-Day. He could hear the mortars going off in the distance, and the popping of machine gun fire on the beach. As the carrier struck ground and the door swung open the sergeant yelled to the soldiers, “Remember your training and you will stay alive!” The adversities of our life are God calling out to you, “Remember my promises and you will survive. Remember my love and you will make it through.” Sometimes God has to strip everything away from us, sometimes the things that are most dear to us, to get us to see this one point: that he has loved us first, so that we could love him first.