Taking Tests!

By Dr. Alice Maria Crawford | July 24, 2019

Beloved educator, Dr. Barbara Sizemore was adamant about teaching African American children how to take tests. She was honest enough to say what all of us know, that long after you leave school you will still be taking tests – for employment, for driver’s license, for educational advancement. Failure  to learn the mechanics of taking tests can create a serious handicap.

School isn’t the only place where  we’re tested. Life is going to test us too. It will reveal what we are made of. The conscientious Christian understands this and welcomes testing and even entreats God to be the administrator of the test:

Examine me, God, from head to foot, order your battery of tests. Make sure I’m fit inside and out​​. Psalm 26:2 (The Message)

When we get serious with God, we come into a place where we know that wee are as prone to sin as the sun is prone to rising in the east. Failures and shortcomings can take us off the "plain path" that God has prepared for us.  We must take to heart the teaching of the Apostle Paul to the church at Corinth:

5-9 Test yourselves to make sure you are solid in the faith. Don’t drift along taking everything for granted. Give yourselves regular checkups. You need firsthand evidence, not mere hearsay, that Jesus Christ is in you. Test it out. If you fail the test, do something about it. I hope the test won’t show that we have failed. But if it comes to that, we’d rather the test showed our failure than yours. We’re rooting for the truth to win out in you. We couldn’t possibly do otherwise.

We don’t just put up with our limitations; we celebrate them, and then go on to celebrate every strength, every triumph of the truth in you. We pray hard that it will all come together in your lives.2 Corinthians 13:5-9 (The Message)

God is not out to get us. Just as the Apostle Paul states above, he would rather that the failure of their not passing the test was on him, rather than them. He was praying hard for them. So too is our Father. And Jesus, is sitting on the right Hand of the Father ever living to make intercession for us. So we have to ask ourselves:

​31-39 So, what do you think? With God on our side like this, how can we lose? If God didn’t hesitate to put everything on the line for us, embracing our condition and exposing himself to the worst by sending his own Son, is there anything else he wouldn’t gladly and freely do for us? And who would dare tangle with God by messing with one of God’s chosen? Who would dare even to point a finger? The One who died for us—who was raised to life for us!—is in the presence of God at this very moment sticking up for us. Do you think anyone is going to be able to drive a wedge between us and Christ’s love for us? There is no way! Not trouble, not hard times, not hatred, not hunger, not homelessness, not bullying threats, not backstabbing, not even the worst sins listed in Scripture: Romans 8:31-39 (The Message)

​Think about it!

Maria