October 21, 2019 – Psalm 139:23–24

Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.
—Psalm 139:23–24

I will mention some [more] ways in which God answers these petitions.19
He will lay open our temper to us and enable us to see whether we are impatient or otherwise, and he will show us whether we are ambitious—whether we desire to climb and scramble up some height from which we can look down with scorn or contempt on others.
God often gives us opportunities to show off, and, on the other hand, he often denies us such opportunities, to see if we will murmur and be envious of those who have them. Many people will be found often speaking against ostentation—when they do not have the means to indulge in it. They will be very loud in their censures on others who ride in their coaches and furnish their houses in a superior style. But give these sermonizers the means of doing the same, and see what they will do—see if they will not imitate and, perhaps, act more extravagantly than those whom they before condemned.
Sometimes God will deny you many things, to see if you will be satisfied with his provision. Do you bear poverty well, or are you envious at the rich? Are you, in your poverty, what Christ would have been in your circumstances? Thus riches and poverty, sickness and health, and a thousand other things are sent to try us and prove to us, and to those around us, what our real state is.
God often tests us to show if we are self-willed—to show if our wills are ready to submit to his will or whether we will make ourselves unhappy and wretched because God wills so concerning us. How often is it the case that people do not know they are self-willed; so long as the providence of God seems to favor them they are very pious and can talk about submission with the greatest apparent sincerity. But let God just drive across their path, lay his hand on them, blow their schemes to the winds of heaven, and see whether they will talk of submission then; see whether they are self-willed or whether they will instantly submit. How have [such things] affected you? What was the state of mind that you discovered in yourselves? God was searching you, applying the tests that would, without fail, show what was the working in your minds.
—Charles G. Finney