God tests people under pressure to determine their conduct and to prove their trustworthiness. Trials produce patience, and patience produces proof of trustworthiness, which in turn produces hope. The word translated as experience in some passages means test, trustworthiness, proof of genuineness, or process of proving. God places individuals under pressure through suffering to bring them to completion. This process equips them for service as kings and priests. In the wilderness God led the children of Israel through experiences designed to test them so that He and they could discover what was in their hearts. Those experiences proved their understanding, loyalty, and willingness to live by every word of God. Abraham was approved when he faced the test of sacrificing Isaac. Timothy demonstrated proven character through the experiences of life that showed he would follow God no matter what. Heresies and divisions in the church serve to reveal those who have passed the test and those who have not. Adam and Eve failed the test in the Garden of Eden when their conduct proved unfitting. Failures lack hope, while those who have proved themselves possess great hope. God creates and then tests to learn what further work is needed to produce the full collection of qualities in His image. People prove themselves by walking the walk, yielding, and obeying, thereby showing that the creative work of God is believed, understood, trusted, and effective.

Suffering really tests loyalty to God and commitment to His purpose. The entire wilderness experience of the Israelites when God freed them from their slavery was to prepare them for living in the Promised Land. In like manner God has willed that His people suffer because it prepares them for what lies ahead and helps complete them for the Kingdom. God is whipping His people into shape to see that they have the character to govern themselves and to follow His Son in whatever instruction He gives. People do not have the character that is tested and tried so that they will not in any way depart from what God's purpose is at that time. God took a direct hand in causing suffering because He wanted Christ to be prepared. Suffering comes with the territory of being prepared. The path to glory lies through suffering for righteousness' sake. Righteousness' sake is the pace through which God is putting His people. Much of the value of suffering lies in being loyally committed to God personally, committed to His purpose, and committed to His will with steadfast devotion that overrides personal suffering. After God put Christ through what He did, Christ was completed, and it so impressed the Father that He gave Him the name. Because Christ did it, those who are joined to Him can also do it by being willing to delay gratification while still faithfully carrying out the responsibility. Suffering is inevitable. Suffering will come if one is devoted to this way. Suffering is not coming because evil has been done, and therefore it is not punishment. Suffering can be seen as a test supplied or permitted by God's discipline and training. Suffering is sharing with Christ in His suffering, and it is the way to glory. The Father and Son require people to go through some measure of the kind of suffering that Christ went through. God sees it as something positive that prepares people for working under Jesus Christ. From that will come the kind of mind that will help once people are in the Kingdom of God because they will be prepared to face anything the world throws at them. God is bringing people to perfection so that they are perfectly adapted to working under Jesus Christ. People are put through the paces by God and are made to suffer for a reason, and that reason is to be made perfect for carrying out something in the distance. People are part of His spiritual body, and in order to be prepared to work under Him they have to go through a measure of suffering of an intensity not equal to Christ but toned down in order to prepare them to be perfect for working with Him. Tests and trials and sufferings are way toned down so that they can be borne.

Tests of faith require rising above emotional pulls and feelings by choosing loyalty to God rather than to personal desires or sight. Abraham faced such a test when commanded to sacrifice Isaac, adding up God's promises and character to conclude that obedience would lead to resurrection or continued life for Isaac. This decision set his will firmly before reaching the place of sacrifice. Daily moral and ethical choices function as tests of faith even when the stakes seem distant or minor, such as small deceits or lustful thoughts, because they reveal commitment and surrender. God gives tests of varying sizes, like a teacher giving pop tests, weekly tests, monthly tests, semester tests, and finals, where each counts toward the overall pattern of life. These tests determine whether God can trust a person's surrender so that the creation of His image can be completed. Living faith produces the works that pass these tests, while dead faith fails because it remains inactive toward the things of God. God promises never to test beyond what a person is able to bear when truly surrendered, allowing patient waiting for outcomes while accepting all consequences of obedience.