Job's Got it Right

As I read through Job now, I am encouraged.  His life had taken a major turn for the worse and chapter 29 records how he longed for the "months of old" when he was "in my prime".  He felt those were the days when "the Almighty was yet with me".  Everything he did had the blessing of God. But then, everything changed.  "You have turned cruel to me," he told God, and all was taken away.

How can that be an encouragement?  Well, it does help to know the parts of the story that Job didn't know at the time, that Satan challenged God telling him the only reason Job feared God was because he was completely surrounded by a "hedge of protection" and was blessed in all that he did and had. It also helps to know the end of the story, that all was restored to Job.  But, without knowing those parts of the story, I found it encouraging to hear a man of God struggle, to have questions, to feel like sometimes God just didn't hear his prayers as he cried out confused and in pain.

It is the experience of all men and women, perhaps to some extent more difficult for some than for others, but we all have a time when we just can't see the way.  We, like Job, feel like we go about our way "darkened".  Job checked himself and his heart to see if there was any area of his heart that challenged him, but he said, "my heart does not reproach me for any of my days".  He held fast to his "righteousness and will not let it go".

This tells me so much about testing.  It isn't just for the wicked and a punishment for them, but it is also for the righteous and is allowed by God for reasons they will not always understand.

I have never claimed 100% righteousness.  I actually wonder how that is possible with Job to make that claim.  In fact, if all of Job's friends were to come to my house and say the things they said to Job, I'd have to agree with all that they said to him, "Yup, I'm guilty of that, that and that.  I deserve everything that happens to me!"  Using their logic, I would have to look at any situation that I found myself in and assume it was because I was being judged for something I had done.

This is why the book of Job is so encouraging....Job gets tested even though he truly was righteous. He really didn't deserve anything that had happened to him, yet he was still tested.  Really, anything that happens to me, by Job's friends' standards, I deserve and I should get what's coming to me.

All testing is relative.  I realize my version of testing is hardly a test to some.  I know that I am not in the slightest way being tested the way Job was, but longing to be debt-free is a type of a test, especially when I don't know the end of the story, or if there ever will be an end.  It's a type of mental test and a test of faith more than anything.  As I read Job, I realize I just have to go through it.  I want to respond to any test God has in store for me and say like him, "But He knows the way that I take; when he has tried me, I shall come out as gold."

That is my prayer for today and for my future.  Perhaps this test is preparation for even bigger tests. Either way, Job's got it right.  God knows the way that we are taking.  Whatever the type of trial, may we come out as gold.