Worshiping God is easy… when you’re blessed. But if you really want to know the condition of your walk with God, consider what your attitude is toward Him when things are hard.

Will you worship God just as passionately when a child dies… your marriage falls apart… you lose all your money… you get fired… your friends turn on you… when God doesn’t answer your prayers?  If you only worship God when life is good then you are far from a healthy relationship if you have one at all.

When Job lost his family and possessions he said, “The Lord gives and the Lord takes away.  Blessed be the name of the Lord!”  After David had fasted, wept, and asked God to spare the life of his child… and the child died… David got up, cleaned himself up, went to the House of the Lord and worshiped.  Then there is the passage from Habakkuk 3:17-19…

Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the LORD; I will take joy in the God of my salvation.  GOD, the Lord, is my strength; He makes my feet like the deer’s; He makes me tread on my high places.

If we only worship, serve, and love God when things are good… then we want God for His things and not for who He is.  For that reason God periodically tests us to show us the condition of our heart.  The way He does that is to take back some of the “things” He’s given us SO THAT our joy is in HIM and not His things.

Hmmm.  What have hardship and difficulty shown you about your walk with God?  What ARE they showing you?