One premise of a good education is that once we’ve completed a course, we pass the test, and we move on. The course is complete. We no longer have to be tested over the same material.
Yet, in our Christian walk, the courses we must learn are never complete. Even as we gain success and pass the tests God gives us, new and harder tests come our way. It seems as if each new level of skill we reach only encourages God to push us to a higher level.
Take the widow in 1 Kings 17:8-24. A poverty-stricken gentile woman, she had reached the end of her rope. Not only was there a famine in the land, but she was out of food. She had gathered sticks so that she could cook her last handful of meal for herself and her son, and then they could die together.
God put the poor woman to a test few people could hope to pass.
God sent Elijah to ask her for her last bit of food, assuring her that if she fed him first, her meal and oil would last her through the end of the famine.
You and I would have laughed at the prophet’s words. In our terms, he said, “Give me your last ten dollars. If you do so, your wallet will not lack for money until the time when the economy recovers from the current recession.”
The Bible doesn’t record the reason the widow did as Elijah asked, but her faith in him proved itself a hundred times over, for the Word records that the barrel of meal and the cruse of oil never failed to provide food to sustain the widow, her son, and the prophet Elijah.
However, God wanted more from the widow. She had placed her faith in Elijah, but God wanted her to place her faith in him.
God put another test of faith before the widow. In Verse 17 we read that the widow’s son became ill and died. She cried unto Elijah, “Did you come to me only to kill my son?”
She had already forgotten the mighty power of God, for she had only learned to trust in a man. Now was her chance to learn to trust in God.
Elijah took the boy and breathed upon him, and God heard Elijah’s cry. He gave life back to the boy.
Did the widow pass the test? Verse 24 tells us her response: “I know by this that you are a man of God, and the words of God in your mouth are truth.”
Our spiritual education is never done. Each level we reach only prepares us for the next course God intends for us to take.
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