“Our forefather Avraham was tried with ten tests…”
The Mesilas Yesharim explains that all actions we take in this world, whether they are good or bad, are nisyonos. Every person is confronted with different challenges, and they generally entail a facet that will compel the individual to do something against his nature. One outstanding element of the battle is that although the individual aspires to increase his spirituality, he is nevertheless grounded in the olam hagashmi, the physical world.
Thus, when a person does a favor for somebody and it takes two hours of his time, the nisayon is whether he will say, “But I wasted so much time on this. Couldn’t he have asked someone else to do the favor?”
When a person contemplates doing bad and succumbing to an aveiroh, the nisayon is how he will follow up on this aveiroh. Will he try to do teshuvah for the aveiroh? Will he do the aveiroh privately so that nobody sees it and he avoids a chilul Hashem? Will he involve others in his aveiroh? Will he attempt to justify his aveiroh with the performance of a mitzvah?
