Why Does God Allow Testing?
Two reasons behind the hardest seasons of faith: brokenness and dependence
This post is part of our
Basic Training! Stage 1 series.
“Welcome to Stage 1: Operation Purity”
Nobody enjoys testing, especially the kind that involves real pain or sacrifice. It’s fair to ask: why does God’s path so often run through difficulty rather than around it? Scripture points to two deep, connected reasons — brokenness and dependence.
Brokenness
There’s a consistent spiritual principle throughout Scripture: before God builds something new, He often has to break down what was there before. A seed has to fall to the ground and die before it can become anything else (John 12:24). This isn’t destruction for its own sake — it’s the necessary first step toward genuine transformation.
For many people walking through addiction recovery, this breaking process involves a real moment of reckoning — a point where the full weight and reality of the struggle can no longer be minimized or hidden, even from themselves. That moment is painful. It’s also often the turning point. Rock bottom, however it arrives, has a way of stripping away every excuse and every layer of self-deception that had been protecting the addiction until then.
What tends to surprise people most is what’s found underneath all that wreckage: not just shame, but also a deeper love for God than the addiction had ever allowed room for. The addiction, however powerful, was never actually the deepest thing about a person’s heart — it was often just the loudest.
Dependence
Brokenness matters because of where it leads: dependence. Scripture teaches that man cannot live by bread alone (Matthew 4:4) — meaning nothing we reach for to fill an inner need was ever going to actually satisfy it, whether that’s food, substances, or sexual sin. Most people only learn this the hard way, through real suffering rather than simple instruction.
Consider Moses: it took forty years in the wilderness to prepare him for his calling — a long, humbling season most of us would never choose. Deuteronomy connects humility directly to testing (8:2) — the breaking process produces the humility that then produces real dependence on God, rather than self-reliance.
This is a hard trade to make willingly. Human nature tends to resist dependence and cling to self-sufficiency, even when self-sufficiency has clearly failed. But a person in real pain, genuinely desperate for relief, tends to become teachable in a way comfort rarely produces. Sometimes it takes hitting a real limit before anyone becomes willing to actually receive help.
The Manna Principle
When Israel wandered the wilderness, God provided manna daily — enough for each day, no more, precisely so His people would learn ongoing dependence rather than self-sufficient stockpiling. Even so, most of Israel never fully absorbed the lesson; they took the provision without ever developing a deeper hunger for God Himself. When the true “Bread of Heaven” arrived in Jesus, many who’d eaten manna for decades still didn’t recognize what they’d actually been hungry for all along.
The pattern is a warning worth taking seriously: rejecting the process of testing and breaking often means rejecting the deeper relationship with God that process was meant to produce.
The Question Worth Asking
If you’re currently in a season of real difficulty, the question isn’t only “when will this end,” but also, “what dependence is this producing in me?” Testing is rarely comfortable. But Scripture consistently frames it as purposeful — not punishment, but preparation for something genuinely good on the other side.
Adapted from Pureheart Ministry’s Basic Training! Stage 1: Operation Purity
Copyright ©2023 Timothy Davis
Related Reading:
Previous: “God’s Ten Tests: Which One Are You In Right Now?”
Series start: “Breaking the Acting-Out Cycle”
Learn how Pureheart walks with you through testing toward lasting freedom →