Trust God in Life’s Tests
Have you ever been tested by God, experiencing a trial so grueling it caused you to think, “How can God be good, loving, or just in this?”
Several years ago, I experienced this kind of test.
As my husband and I planned our family, eager to give our only child a sibling, I became pregnant but kept miscarrying. One. Two. Three. Four times these precious souls slipped from my womb.
As I pleaded with the Lord in prayer and searched my Bible for answers, it became clear God was asking me to lay my family, my plans, and my timing on the figurative altar and trust him with the outcome.
Perhaps this is an inkling of how the prophet Abraham of the Bible felt when God tested him by saying, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering” (Genesis 22:2).
This command would have not only been heartbreaking but also confusing. It seemed to contradict God’s character and the previous covenant he had given Abraham, which promised that his offspring would be more numerous than the stars (Genesis 15:5). Isaac, his long-awaited miracle son, was essential to that covenant's fulfillment.
Further, why would God test Abraham in this way, piercing the most tender place in his heart?
“God’s testings are tailor-made for each child of God,” because he knows exactly where we struggle most to surrender to him, wrote Warren Wiersbe in The Bible Exposition Commentary.
This was certainly true for me.
As a child of divorce, my family’s future was of utmost importance to me. Yet, instead of surrendering my family to the Lord, I had unknowingly fallen into a cycle of trying to control it. This doesn’t mean that God caused my miscarriages, only that he would use them to refine my family and me as promised in Romans 8:28, which says, “God causes all things to work together for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purposes.”
While God never tempts us, He will test us to reveal and heal our weaknesses.
In this case, “God tells Abraham to override the affection and love he has for his son” in light of God’s authority, said Phillip Bethancourt in Christ-Centered Exposition: Exalting Jesus in Genesis.
God wasn’t asking Abraham to love Isaac less but to love him more. In the same way, God wasn’t asking me to love my family less but to love him more.
God is asking the same of you in whatever trial you’re enduring.
In tests, God isn’t being a cruel teacher trying to catch us unprepared, set us up to fail, or punish us for past mistakes. God is revealing the wonder and glory of who he is while refining us to become more like him.
Tests, when given by God, are often severe mercies that lead to greater grace. In trials, we learn “our faith is not really tested until God asks us to bear what seems unbearable, do what seems unreasonable, and expect what seems impossible,” writes Wiersbe.
Like Abraham, I had walked with God for many years. But nothing would fortify my faith like trusting him with the future of my family.
Amazingly, we don’t see Abraham questioning God or delaying obedience, but instead rising “early in the morning” and setting out for this treacherous task (v3). This doesn’t mean Abraham didn’t deeply struggle, but that those feelings weren’t the ultimate driver of his decision to trust and obey God.
We, too, can struggle deeply in our trials while trusting that Jesus, our Good Shepherd, is with us and leading us through the darkest valleys.
As the passage progresses, the parallels between Isaac and Jesus become clear. This test isn’t just about Abraham but about the coming Messiah. Likewise, our tests are rarely just about us but about our witness to a world in desperate need of the Savior.
On the third day, Abraham saw the place God had chosen for the sacrifice and told his servants to wait while he and the boy “worship and come again” (v5).
This one phrase reveals how Abraham reconciled the conflict between God’s character, covenant, and command to sacrifice Isaac.
Abraham believed God would raise Isaac from the dead (Hebrews 11:19)!
The tests of life reveal what we believe about God. They are tangible invitations to grow our faith.
When Abraham “took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac his son,” it foreshadowed the appointed day when God the Father would lay the burden of sin on his Son (v6). As Isaac carried the wood on his back to the mountain of Moriah, so Jesus carried the cross to the hill of Calvary.
Declare in advance that God will provide
When Isaac asks Abraham where the lamb is for the offering, he responds with resolve that “God will provide for himself the lamb” (v8). As Abraham binds Isaac on the wood, we see a clear picture of Jesus, “the Lamb of God who came to take away the sins of the world” (v9; John 1:29). Isaac, likely a young man at the time strong enough to resist being bound, submitted to his father just as Jesus submitted when he willingly endured the cross (Hebrews 12:2).
Isaac must have winced as he watched his father raise a knife to slaughter him (v10). But without a second to spare, the angel of the Lord stayed Abraham’s hand and provided a ram in Isaac’s place (v13).
Where God spared Isaac, he did not spare Jesus “but gave him up for us all” providing the perfect, all-sufficient sacrifice for our sins (Romans 8:32; Hebrews 10:12-14).
After Abraham passed this excruciating test, God reaffirmed the covenant: “In your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because you have obeyed my voice” (v18). Abraham’s faith set into motion the family from whom Jesus, the promised seed of Eve, would come.
God’s tests provide a present and future hope
As the passage closes, it cites Abraham and his servants returning to Beersheba but doesn’t mention Isaac (v19). The next time Isaac is mentioned in Scripture is when he meets his bride, painting the picture of Christ’s return for his bride, the Church (Genesis 24:67, Revelation 21:1-4).
It is with this hope that we who confess Christ can endure life’s tests, as the expectant bride awaiting the blessed day when all of God’s promises are fulfilled through Jesus, our bridegroom.
Through a long season of loss, God grew my faith and my family. While I was tempted during that time to doubt and even reject him, he patiently revealed himself to me as a good, loving God whose ways and thoughts are higher than mine, who does exceedingly and abundantly more than we can ask for or imagine (Isaiah 55:8-9, Ephesians 3:20).
Now, with four babies in heaven and four beautiful children on earth, I can say with confidence the Lord will provide.
