I must be careful, Lord, never to tempt You. I am commanded never to tempt the Lord thy God (Matthew 4:7, KJV). Your anger was constantly aroused against the Israelites because they tempted You with their murmurings and complainings.
I must distinguish between proving You and tempting You. You invite me, Lord, to prove You (Malachi 3:10), and You glory in demonstrating Your power to Your children. When Gideon tested You in the matter of the fleece, You willingly accommodated him (Judges 6).
I must learn the difference between the two. To prove God is to take His Word and act upon it, put it into action. To tempt God is to go beyond His Word and overtest Him. Whenever I go beyond the Word of God I always desecrate the character of God, which is something God will never tolerate. That is why He becomes angry at being tempted.
Tempting God occurs in many ways: being impatient with Him, quarreling with His directions, comparing unfavorably His treatment of me with the world’s treatment of me, complaining about my lot that He gives me, making greater demands on Him than He intends to fulfill, and refusing to submit to the authority He has placed over me.
God loves to have His Word obeyed and put to the test, but He resents having His character and name defamed. Lord, members of the wilderness generation left their bones in the desert because they decided Your word was not good enough for them. Lord, let me never treat You as not good enough for me. Let me never revile You because I consider You less than You promised You would be! Let me shout with Joshua: Not one thing hath failed of all the good things which the Lord …[promised] (Joshua 23:14, KJV).
‘I love Thee, O Lord, my strength.’ The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge (Psalm 18:1–2).
Daily with the King 