Isaiah 30:20a: And though the Lord gives you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction,
Do you remember being in school? Maybe you’re in school now. At the beginning of a semester in school, you attend your first class and commence with listening to the teacher or professor offer up his/her instruction on the topic of the course. Over the next several weeks, you continue attending the class, listening to the teacher, and probably making notes or doing some homework. Then one day when you arrive to class, you find out the teacher is not there to teach. He/she has something else in mind – a test is given! To the typical student, the purpose of a test is to demonstrate to the teacher whether or not you are getting the proper grasp on the coursework – whether or not you truly understand what the teacher is teaching.
There is a second purpose of a test, though – for you to gauge how much of the material you understand. Moreover, the tougher the test, the more likely your understanding and grasp of the coursework will be revealed. We all may want a simpler test because it is easy, but it isn’t really helping us or the teacher know much about where we are in our learning curve.
Jesus is called “Teacher” almost 50 times in the four Gospels. His designation of teacher implies that those who are following Him are students and, therefore, are expected to learn from Him. Just as your school teacher will occasionally administer a test to determine the depth of your understanding of what is being taught, so Jesus will do the same.
Today’s verse clearly states that the Lord will give the bread of adversity and the water of affliction. For many Christians, this verse is hard to stomach. “Why would God want to give adversity and affliction?” God administers adversity and affliction for the same reason the teacher administers a test. He wants to reveal to us how deep our trust is in Him – how strong is our faith. Being omniscient, the Lord already knows where we are in our faith, so the purpose of His tests is to show us where we are in our walk with Him. Are we as strong as we think/hope we are, or are we overestimating our faith?
The Apostle Paul understood the importance of our faith being tested. 2 Corinthians 13:5 says, “Examine yourselves as to whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Do you not know yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?” In chapter 3 of his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul spoke of the kind of tests we should expect when it comes to our faith, “each one’s work will become clear; for the Day will declare it, because it will be revealed by fire; and the fire will test each one’s work, of what sort it is.” God will turn up the heat in our lives to help us to find out if we’re walking with Him to glorify Him – our principal purpose in life, or if our relationship with Him is less than pure and holy.
Unlike the test given the student, our faith is not graded by the Lord. However, the level, or grade, of our relationship with Him only gets better when we pass the tests of adversity and affliction. How do we know if we pass a test by God? Paul revealed the purpose of his tests to the Corinthians – whether they were obedient in all things (2 Corinthians 2:9). The degree of your obedience to God’s will and commandments perfectly correlates with the depth of your faith – or your grade.
If we accept that God is love and God is good, then we can better accept the motivations behind the tests of adversity and affliction – to deepen our relationship with Him. He created us, and He knows nothing in life is more satisfying than a close and intimate relationship with Him. That is why Jesus died for us – that’s how important a relationship with you is to Him. He wants you to know where you are in that relationship with Him. God’s tests are often painful, but passing them leads to greater joy – they don’t produce a grade – they produce results.