The Algebra of Adversity

 The Algebra of Adversity: Solving for X in the Equation of Your Breaking

Scripture: "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose." (Romans 8:28)

I. The Divine Sum

From my veranda here in Akasia, where the Pretoria winter has scorched my lawn to a crisp brown, I watch a small boy attempting to solve a mathematics problem on the pavement. He scratches his head, chews his pencil, and erases furiously. He does not yet understand that the frustration is part of the finding. You cannot arrive at the answer without wrestling with the equation.

Life is not a series of random events. It is a classroom. And the problems you face—the financial collapse, the marital fracture, the sudden sickness—are not God's punishment. They are His curriculum. The Scripture declares unequivocally: "All things"—not some things, not the pleasant things, but all things—are conscripted into service for your good.

We must define our terms clearly here. "Good" in the biblical sense is not comfort. It is Christ-likeness. It is the weight of glory that can only be forged in the furnace of affliction. The gold does not complain about the heat, for it understands that its value requires transformation. You cannot become who you need to be without walking through fires that refine.

II. My Story: The Year the X Became Visible

Let me take you back to a season I do not enjoy revisiting. It was 2019, and I had just released my first book. The launch was glorious—friends gathered, hands laid on me, prophecies declared. I waited for the breakthrough to hit like a Highveld storm. Instead, the drought came.

The book did not sell. The royalties trickled to nothing. My bank balance became a barren landscape, and I sat in this very house in Akasia, staring at an electricity bill I could not pay, with Stage 4 load-shedding plunging me into darkness every four hours. I remember thinking: Lord, I did the work. I wrote the book. I praised Your name. Why this silence? Why this subtraction?

The temptation was to believe the lie—that I had missed God, that my calling was a hallucination, that I was a failed writer eating wors and pap while my contemporaries in Joburg flourished.

But here is what I learned in the dark, with only the hum of my neighbour's generator for company: The X was being isolated. The variable was being exposed. The problem was not that God had abandoned me. The problem was that my faith had been built on the wrong side of the equation. I had assumed that obedience equalled immediate reward. I had forgotten that the wilderness always precedes the promised land.

III. The Theology of the Unknown Variable

Imagine, if you will, a standard algebraic equation: 3x + 5 = 20. You do not look at that and despair. You know the rules. You subtract the constant. You divide by the coefficient. You isolate the variable until the answer emerges.

South Africa today is an equation screaming to be solved. We face load-shedding that humiliates our economy. We read reports of the 2024 elections revealing a nation fractured along tribal and political lines . Our youth face unemployment statistics that should break the heart of any person with a pulse. We see the Vaal River, choked by sewage and neglect, a metaphor for our national toxicity .

But here is the confrontational truth, the prophetic alarm we must sound: Your enemy wants you to curse the equation. God wants you to solve it.

The argument can be formulated thus:

1. Premise One: God is sovereign. He is not surprised by your adversity. He is the Mathematician who wrote the problem set (Isaiah 46:10).

2. Premise Two: God is love. He does not assign problems to destroy you, but to develop you (Jeremiah 29:11).

3. Premise Three: The development He seeks is your transformation into the image of His Son (Romans 8:29).

4. Conclusion: Therefore, every trial is a precisely calibrated instrument designed to carve Christ-likeness into your character.

A common objection arises: "But Pastor, you do not understand my pain. This is too much. This is not a lesson; this is destruction." I hear you. I sat where you sit. But this objection fails because it measures God's love by your comfort, not by your holiness. It assumes that the goal of life is the absence of pain, rather than the presence of God.

IV. The Pit Latrine and the Promise

Let me ground this in a recent South African reality that haunts me still. The news reports tell us that nearly 300 public schools in our beautiful country still rely solely on pit latrines. A few years ago, a five-year-old boy, Lumko Mkhetho, fell into one and died. The ocean of systemic failure—government delays, bureaucratic incompetence—stretched before us .

Now, picture a teacher at that school. She weeps. She rages. She asks, "Why?" The equation seems unsolvable. The problem is too vast.

But here is where the theology of Romans 8:28 must grip us. God is not the author of that tragedy, but He is the Redeemer of it. From that horror, community activists rose. Non-profits mobilized. Parents demanded change. The Church began to speak. The X was isolated. The problem became visible. And while we have not solved the national crisis, teaspoons of change began to scoop. A toilet here. A safe enclosure there. The equation is being worked, one faithful step at a time .

Your breakthrough, beloved, is hiding inside your breakdown. You cannot solve the problem you refuse to face. You cannot isolate the variable you keep ignoring.

V. Practical Wisdom: The Calculation of Courage

So how do we solve this algebra? How do we move from cursing the darkness to calculating the answer?

1. Subtract the Noise: The first step in any equation is simplification. You must subtract the voices that are not God's—the fear-mongering news anchors, the gossiping neighbours, the demons of self-pity. Get alone. Get still. Let the sediment settle so you can see the stars again .

2. Divide the Burden: You were never meant to carry the weight of the entire ocean. God only asks you to carry your teaspoon. Your assignment is not to fix South Africa by Friday. Your assignment is to be faithful with the one conversation, the one prayer, the one act of kindness. Do your part, and leave the outcome to the One who parts seas .

3. Isolate the Variable X: What is the unknown in your life right now? Is it your identity? Your provision? Your direction? Identify it. Name it. Bring it to the Light. You cannot solve for a variable you refuse to acknowledge.

4. Check Your Work Against the Answer Key: The Word of God is your answer key. Does your proposed solution align with Scripture? If your "breakthrough" requires you to compromise your integrity, you have solved incorrectly. The answer must always point to Jesus Christ.

VI. The Supreme Reality

Reason itself, illuminated by Scripture and confirmed in our deepest longings, compels us to acknowledge that we are not qualified to judge the process by the pain we feel in the moment. We see the equation from the underside, a tangle of threads and knots. God sees the finished tapestry, radiant with purpose.

Your feelings and your circumstances are facts, but they are not the final truth. They are the known quantities in the equation. But the X—the unknown, the thing you are waiting for, the breakthrough you desperately need—is being revealed through the very process you wish to escape .

The man who avoids all problems avoids all progress. The clay that refuses the wheel remains a lump. The gold that evades the fire remains ore. But you? You are called to be a vessel of honour, fit for the Master's use.

VII. A Prayer for the Mathematicians of Faith

Let us pray:

Father, I confess that I have cursed the equations I could not understand. Forgive me. Give me wisdom for the problem and courage for the calculation. Help me to subtract the noise of the enemy, to divide my burdens with the Body of Christ, and to isolate the variable X—the revelation of Your Son in my life. I trust that You are working all things together for my good, not because I deserve it, but because I am called according to Your purpose. In the name of Jesus Christ, the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, the One who solved the ultimate equation of sin and death on the cross. Amen.

Go now. Pick up your pencil. Face the equation. Your breakthrough is hiding inside your breakdown. Solve it.