What comes to your mind when you think of being “tested”? For students, testing means awaiting a grade. From the lips of your doctor, testing triggers worry. During the pandemic, tests were a way to diagnose Covid 19. Maybe.
My point is that, generally, testing feels like something we want to avoid. But Scripture mentions a surprising test which looks, at first glance, like an exam we all want and could easily ace.
What Is the Surprising “Test”?
Solomon, the wisest man to ever live apart from Jesus, calls it the test of praise. “The crucible is for silver, and the furnace is for gold, and a man is tested by his praise” (Proverbs 27:21).
Unwrap the metaphor. A crucible and furnace both play the same role for precious metals—they test by heat, causing impurities to rise to the surface. Solomon seems to be saying that praise jacks up the soul’s thermostat. Applause inflames desires that generate a different form of heat; a laser version targeting places in the heart untouched by sacrifices or suffering.
Soloman is flagging the danger of loving praise. Or seeing it as an inalienable right.
One of the more common places this surfaces is social media. An entire industry, worth billions of advertising dollars, is built on people’s proclivity to seek praise. For some, it’s a legitimized (and monetized!) pursuit of approval. People post pictures to hear how beautiful they are or what an amazing life they live. Tweets are written to be liked and passed along. Videos are created to gain a few more followers. We experience disappointment when a post does not elicit the response we expected. Even as I type those words, I think of myself.
We are awash in a world that panders to praise. It’s a currency we generously spread around. Everyone’s a winner. Everyone deserves a prize. Or a trophy. But it also introduces our heart to an unexpected test.
Where does our heart go when praise comes our way? Does it make us more humble towards God or more hungry for praise from others?
Who Gets Glory When You Are Praised?
When praise meets godly desires, it does not deflect the gracious words. Praiseinspires gratitude towards God. One telltale sign of our maturity is how easily we transfer honor to God, recognizing him as the source and power of our performance. Why? Because when the heart is tested by this praise, it reveals we did it for his glory in the first place.
But when we crave our own glory, we hoard praise. We don’t pass it along. Like a gluttonous prince, we feast on every morsel, then demand a larger portion.
In the book of Esther, the adviser Haman was promoted to top dog under the king. Everyone bowed to pay homage to him—except a Jewish man named Mordecai. Haman went rabid and announced he would exterminate all the Jews. God intervened, Mordecai was protected, and Haman found infamy at the end of a noose.
Such was his hunger for honor: Haman was ready to exterminate an entire ethnic group because one man wouldn’t praise him. The praise of most was not enough. He demanded the praise of everyone. His heart was certainly revealed. God’s opinion surfaced as well.
The irony is, when we long to be worshiped, praise towards us stirs discontent. It passes too quickly and becomes empty calories for the soul. It can also set a new bar of expectations for how we should be treated. A leader with selfish ambition willmisconstrue praise as a calling to become even greater before others. An employee with a self-seeking desire for upward mobility will reinterpret unsolicited honor as a call to jockey for her boss’s job.
We all love to see the engine of praise chugging in our direction. The question is, what happens in our heart when praise finally arrives? How will we score on the testof praise?
Today’s Tenacious Question
Think about the last time you received praise from someone. What did it do to your heart? Be honest: Did your mind move towards gratitude towards God, or was it more about you?
Prayer
Lord, I pray that you would help me to connect even good things to the activity of my heart. I want to use what you give me for your glory, not my own. Help me to remember that everything which I have comes from you and that even the good works I do are yours. Condition my heart to receive affirmation from others in a way that you receive all praise. Amen.
Photo by Ben Mullins on Unsplash
