Encouragement
I read Job 9 early this morning, and so many thoughts have swirled through my mind since then.
For one thing, Job’s righteousness ( ie. a blameless and upright man, who fears God) really shines. Here he has just been slammed by Bildad, if not outright flayed. But does Job strike back? No!
Instead, Job utters a beautiful testimony of God:
God is wise in heart and mighty in strength. Who has hardened himself against Him and prospered?
These words but crack the dam about to gush forth Job’s perception of the majesty of God; they flow from the core of Job’s being.
Job’s imagery powerfully touches me, displaying the magnitude of the God who holds my day in His hand, the loving sovereignty of the Writer of my story. Job’s words make me see the LORD’s majesty in a manner that can’t help but move me to awe.
When He overturns them in His anger;
He shakes the earth out of its place,
And its pillars tremble;
He commands the sun, and it does not rise;
He seals off the stars;
He alone spreads out the heavens,
and treads on the waves of the sea.
How can my soul not shout “Glory!”
Then just like me, Job’s eyes slip back to his circumstances, and sight moves him to begin to question, begin to doubt the God he thought He knew.
Nevertheless, I believe it is then, because Job’s heart truly longed to walk with God, the Spirit of God moves Job to ask the pivotal question.
If it is not He, who else could it be?
Job believes in God’s sovereignty. However, like so many of us, Job begins to walk a pattern of believing unaware its foundation rests on a lack of understanding the fuller ways of God. He begins to suffer a sense of being God-forsaken because he doesn’t realize the stage* on which man lives. So often, I’m like Job. We both attribute to God actions belonging to another, belonging to our adversary, and become swallowed in voices of rejection and condemnation that aren’t God’s.
God’s sovereignty does not make Him the force behind every action taking place on the planet, or in my life. This was all Job knew. However, God has granted us insight, insight into the have you considered permissive filter of God’s loving sovereignty over our life. A sovereignty that, at times, draws back His hand just enough to allow a test, a strengthening opportunity of our faith.
God is light. In Him is no darkness at all. Yet in the world, tremendous darkness rules, and reigns, and unleashes its forces, catching every living thing within it. Sin lives. It breathes. It’s on the prowl; it’s taskmaster, Satan himself. Until the LORD returns, creating a new heaven and a new earth, our world will continue to reel under the weight of a darkness still trying to blot out the light.
But, it the midst of it all, light shines, reminding those that would listen, that this is but a season. A permissive season of heart-testing in which faith, clinging to Him despite the vistas of sight, glorifies God.
Job, even here with his clouded understanding and vision knows it, professes it.
He does great and things past finding out, Yes, wonders without number.
There remained a wonder Job did not yet know, an answer to His pea, “I would beg mercy of my judge … For He is not a man, as I am, that I may answer Him, and that we should go to court together. Nor is there a mediator between us, who may lay his hand on us both.”
A mediator reigneth … my Redeemer liveth … a Son of Man standing at the right hand of God having known a far more bitter landscape than Job could even dream. And He answers for me as I abide in Him, hidden forever within His love.
* Job 1:6-12; 2:1-6
© 16 March 2006
DeAnna L. Brooks
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DeAnna,thank you for your precious articles.You reveal God to us in a very special way.We love your writings so much.We always learn so much about God through you.Thank you for being God's faithful child.Jesus loves you! Love,Miriam.
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