Why does God test His devotees?

This is one the frequent question a spiritual aspirant faces during his spiritual journey. our spiritual journey is filled with ups and downs. The materialistic world affects our spiritual journey too.

During the difficult times of our life, we often ask God, Why me? why is God testing me? What wrong have I done? Am I doing something wrong? We have so many questions.

To be honest, most of the difficulties that we face are mainly due to our own ill-nature and inability to understand and adjust accordingly. Hence blaming God is not practical and logical always, yet for sincere devotees, this may be helpful.

Let us discuss Why exactly does God test us?

Firstly let us understand that the difficult times in a ‘devotee’s’ life are a test by God. God personally takes care of His devotees.And whatever he does, he does for their spiritual betterment. When it comes to non-devotees, they suffer according to their Karmas.

So does God test his devotees so that he can know which of his devotees is strong in his faith and which one needs improvement?

Well, we have often heard that God is omniscient and omnipotent, then why does he need to test his devotees? Doesn’t he already know who is strong and who is weak? If he does not then He is not omniscient. Then makes him that much powerless.

Then why does he exactly test his devotees?

It is for the devotee to realize his shortcomings.So that the devotee realizes that I still need to improve on certain aspects of spirituality. God already knows, but if the devotee becomes overconfident, there is a high chance of him to fall and to avoid that, God introduces some difficulties, to prevent the fall. It is a small stumble to avoid a great fall.

Another thing we need to understand as spiritual aspirant is that the tests are according to our level of spirituality. So we cannot compare ourselves with other aspirants. For example,  if you are doing your masters in any subject, then the questions and challenges are according to that, you won’t be asked Kindergarten question. Then you cannot complain why does the child get so easy to question and me such difficult? It is because of you at a different level from the fellow aspirant.

So one must become more enthusiastic and practice spirituality with more zest when faced with difficult situations. More difficulties should be countered with more devotion(bhajan). Just like one increases the dose of medicine if the illness becomes severe. So one must not try too much during adverse situations, one must stay calm, and do one’s duty, and remember God.