As for God, His way is perfect! The word of the Lord is tested and tried; He is a shield to all those who take refuge and put their trust in Him.
Psalm 18:30 AMPC
In my world of aerospace engineering and design of complex systems, a good idea is a dime a dozen. A good design is harder to come by, but we do come across many systems that seem to have been designed well. Many meetings take place where the merits of a certain component are advertised, and many people sign off on the associated engineering drawings.
My primary work takes place, however, in a test laboratory. It is in the test lab that the performance and survival of the component is truly evaluated. Many of these components have indeed been designed well. They all have all been shown through analysis and computer simulation that they will work under the excruciating pressure of the rocket launch and space environment. In spite of all these glowing analysis and simulation results, however, things still break during environmental testing, and they usually fail when and where nobody expects it. You simply do not know whether a thing will work as advertised or not without performing robust, rigorous, and ruthless testing. Only the components or systems that have been tested well beyond the expected environment and have continued to perform flawlessly–time and time again–are they finally deemed fit for flight. These are the spacecraft that we actually launch.
A few years ago, our youngest son, Joel, woke up covered in a full-body rash and coudn’t hardly move due to pain in all his joints. He had a very high fever and stopped eating. After a day of this, he was admitted to a local hospital, then shortly was moved to a hospital about two hours away for specialized children’s care. The doctors kept coming in, rubbing their chins, showing us research papers, and being transparent about the fact they didn’t really know what to do with such a unique case.
This was also the first week of the fall course of my graduate studies, and I was attending lectures online and doing homework problems, along with my own research activities, from a hospital room. Our family was living out of a hospital room and Jenny and I were swapping out staying with Joel overnight so at least one of us would get decent sleep in a hotel room every other night.
In the middle of the night, I woke up; my head swimming with everything going on and the feelings any other parent would feel if their little child was in a hospital bed, hardly able to move, unwilling to eat, and with an unknown and apparently serious prognosis. I was thinking about the faithfulness of God and how He had always come through for our family before, and that this would be no different. Immediately I thought of Psalm 18:30: “As for God, His way is perfect! The word of the Lord is tested and tried; He is a shield to all those who take refuge and put their trust in Him.”
“The Word of the Lord is tested…” These words echoed through my mind and my spirit.
“tested” = sarap = to smelt, refine, test; goldsmith.
As I meditated on how God’s Word has been rigorously, heavily, and repeatedly tested over thousands of years (and countless times in my own life), I began to be filled with faith and peace. My faith reached out and found solid rest on the promises of God like never before. I felt like my faith had a bedrock-strong foundation to stand on, and I began speaking the Word of God over our son. God’s Word is tested and tried. His Word has made it through the highest heat of all the ages across all time and space. His Word is like pure gold: refined, tested, heated, purified, and perfect.
Joel made a massive turnaround the next day, and we travelled home the following day. God had made personal promises to our family, and I was not about to let anything God promised us slip through the cracks. I engaged my faith in the Word of God; no striving, no stressing: just simple faith in God’s promises. It was a beautiful resting in Him that brough peace to my soul; a calm and quiet confidence in the faithfulness of God. And why should I not trust Him? His Word was tested. And I know that when something is tested and makes it all the way through, that thing is fit for service.
Friend, God’s Word over your life is fit for service. It has made it through all the environments you will ever need it to survive in, and you can rest assured His Word will not break down or fail you when you need it the most. His Word is tested and tried, and He will come through for you.
I think it is critical that we take God at His Word and develop this mindset that His Word has travelled through the fire and has come through perfect and resilient on the other side. That is a Word I will put my trust in.
What are you going to do now? How are you going to engage with God’s Word more fully today and this week? How does this idea of God’s Word being tested rigorously and ruthlessly–yet it remains solid, true and powerful—affect you right now? What adjustments do you need to make to your mindset towards God’s Word after reading this?
I pray this encourages you to step into God’s Word deeper than ever before, and that you put every ounce of your trust in Him more fully than you ever have before.
With all my love,
