LEARNING DAILY

 

Job 1:8, Then the Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered My servant Job, that there is none like him on earth, a blameless and upright man, one who fears God and shuns evil?”

 

I am not sure why the authors of the Chronological Bible I am reading for my devotional this year has placed the book of Job in this particular place. When it was written is not my purpose today. My purpose goes back to the thoughts about why a just and loving God permits a faithful and upright man like Job to go through the intense suffering he had to endure. For those who want to say and do all they can to discredit God when there seems to be prosperity in the land, do so even more when stuff happens.

 

That takes us to the faithful who must endure the hardships occurring around them with the ungodly. This was no doubt happening in biblical days when Jerusalem was destroyed and people were taken to Babylon. After remaining true to God while all others chased after the idols and philosophies of the nations around them, their reward was the same. They saw their children were killed. They experienced the same famine as everyone else. They were taken captive along with everyone else. One might wonder what happened to the promises given to the righteous and faithful! Where is the justice of God in difficult circumstances? God’s Word tells us the wicked will be punished; what sin(s) has led to the suffering of the righteous?

 

These are the questions generations of people have asked because of facing death, sorrow, pain, and suffering. That takes us to considering Job. The author writes that God gives Satan permission to test the faith of Job to see if it is genuine or not. He is allowed to afflict Job with all sorts of suffering – his family is all taken from him, he suffers all sorts of physical and mental (due to his friends) difficulties and has basically lost all things in his life. Yet, he is unwavering and fixed on his faith, even when there seems to be no reason, no benefit to remaining committed to God. He seems to be determined to understand why doing all he can to live the life God wants him to live, God is now treating him as a sinner that deserves divine punishment. His friends were certainly no help in understanding what he had done. And God remained silent.

 

God is beyond my ability to understand what He does or what He allows to happen in the lives of Believers; what He does is beyond the human mind to comprehend because our ability to see what God does or has planned for tomorrow. Believers must realize that our faith is not based on what blessings God has given to us, or in our personal circumstances but in the knowledge of God desiring to be the center of our lives. Like Job, God sometimes allows Satan to test our faith with difficulty in order to purify our walk on the narrow way. As gold is refined by fire, the testing of our faith results in a walk of greater integrity and humility.

 

Perhaps the lesson we must take away from the reading of Job is that God is sovereign and in control of every situation we face. Satan was allowed to do all sorts of terrible things to Job; God, however, set the limits to what he could do. Such is the view Believers need to understand regarding evil in this world. That being said, there are godly purposes for the circumstances we face, the suffering we go through that has nothing to do with sin or punishment. Trust in God with a whole heart and do not lean on your own understanding when you are going through those difficult times we do not understand.