Do not test the LORD your God as you did at Massah. – Deuteronomy 6:16
Deuteronomy 6 teaches us to trust that God will take care of us in good and bad times. We shouldn’t become overconfident in times of plenty, but we also need to patiently endure times of adversity. God will never leave us. He will be near us in our troubles. Unbelievers don’t have this confidence in God, because they put their trust in earthly things.
If what we need isn’t available to us, we have to rely on God’s promises. If we don’t rely on God, we are testing him. This is what Moses was writing about when he said, “as you did at Massah.”
At Massah, Israel complained and asked, “Is the LORD among us or not?” (Exodus 17:7). The people didn’t trust God’s promises because he didn’t fulfill them in the time, place, or manner they expected. Therefore, they gave up and stopped believing. When we try to dictate to God the time, place, and manner for him to act, we are testing him. At the same time, we’re trying to see if he is really there. When we do this we are putting limits on God and trying to make him do what we want.
It’s nothing less than trying to deprive God of his divinity. But we must realize that God is free—not subject to any limitations. He must dictate to us the place, manner, and time that he will act.
From Faith Alone: A Daily Devotional by Martin Luther, James C. Galvin. ©2005 by Zondervan. All rights reserved. No part may be reproduced without written permission from Zondervan, 5300 Patterson Avenue SE, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 49530. Sent from the Martin Luther’s Faith Alone Devotional. For devotionals like this one for your iPhone, visit us at 43rdElement.com
Echoes and Stars 
So often I forget, or truly cannot wrap my brain around that simple sentence ‘God will never leave us.’ ‘God is free~not subject to any limitations.’ I truly do go about my life with God and then one moment in time I realize how human I am making God in my thoughts; I am not speaking of Jesus here I understand that He was human for a period of time; I am talking about minimizing God, the Creator of Heaven & Earth, by giving Him human characteristics…and the realization of that is not what is painful for me, realizing that I have completely lost contact with his majestic, almightyness is what proves the struggle for me. Then I read the kind, gentle words of a Sweet Soul and get snapped back into reality, (as it were)…I cannot even fathom in my finite mind how truly large and majestic and mighty the God of the Universe truly is…and the notion that He, that God, will NEVER leave me…makes wanting of anything seem pretty insignificant. Thank you for this post and Blessed Day to you and your family.