God-life: Job's Suffering
God-life: Job and You
I am reading the book of Job again in light of all that is
happening over the world with the injustice of life and I am
realising again that "life isn't fair but God is good".
(Hebrews 11) Abel believed God and he died, Enoch believed God
and he did not die, Noah believed God and pretty much everybody
else died. The only thing that they had in common was that they
all believed God and it pleased Him. All that matters is if we
believe, because then we can supernaturally bear all of the
often overwhelming circumstances and situations of life by our
simple faith in God. His "yolk is easy and His burden is light"
The problem of suffering leads us to one of four conclusions, 1.
there is no God and life is a pathetic joke, 2. God is cruel and
arbitrary and cares nothing for mankind, 3. God is powerless, or
4. God is alive and at work in our lives but we do not always
completely understand what he is doing. Number 4 takes
incredible faith.
As Job put it,"Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him." The
book Of Job actually hit me very hard as I read what it says.
Job suffered terribly. His suffering would be on par with those
in Africa or Asia or with any third world nation like Mozambique
or Madagascar, where there is terrible demoralizing poverty.
Job had everything to lose at the beginning of the book and
actually did lose everything in a very short period of time. He
had friends who tried to give him counsel by reasoning with him
about why all of this was happening. In fact His friends
guidance was on par with any wisdom that man could give today.
Job is one of the earliest books ever written, and yet not much
has changed since then. There is nothing new under the sun.
Suffering has been a part of life ever since the fall and yet
God turns it around for our good. It is incredible that Satan
had to ask God's permission to terrorise Job, he doesn't seem to
have free reign, and also seems to be leashed, so that he can't
take Job's life ultimately.
I also found it interesting that Job never once blamed Satan for
his suffering, when that is what we do first and foremost. Is it
that Job did not have a concept of Satan? Every time Job
contemplates his suffering, he asks, "Why God?". Job saw the
centrality of God in the universe and his own life. If we could
focus on God and believe that He really does work all things out
for our good, it may just be easier to understand why bad things
happen to good people.
Maybe it's because bad things happen to all people, and if
anything, that is exactly what God has promised us as believers.
He will not give us more than we cna bear, but I think at times
it sure will come close! The importance of the matter is that we
believe and trust God in spite of it all. Jesus was all man and
all God, He was not part-man or part-god, He had to learn who He
was as a Son of God, being made perfect through His suffering!
How can Jesus who was perfect be made more perfect through His
suffering? The fact is that we move fro faith to faith in our
belief of God, our trust deepens as we recognise our need for
God and revelation from Him in all that we go through. Jesus had
to trust God in His life as well as His death, He had to trust
that He was the Son of God in spite of His creation rejecting
Him and He had to trust God through the suffering of the cross,
to know that His death would be worth it. Jesus had no guarantee
thatHis life would be happy, but He knew that His life would be
worth it.
Jesus saw through the cross to the life that it would give to
mankind. Jesus death is a place fo life and death, in fact it is
where they meet. In our suffering too, we have a joining of our
death, frailty and weakness with God's raighteousness, salvation
and eternity in us.
Job in the same way had to go through what He did before He
finally saw that the God He had only heard rumour of, he could
now see and know intimately. It is in our suffering that we are
most dependant on our life in Christ, for our life is hid with
Christ in God.
Suffering is not from God, but it does reveal to us where our
dependancy is and is a good test of character. It is also where
our faith is tested. Allow God's life to meet you at your point
of greatest suffering, it might be a relationship, a sickness, a
death or a situation, but in everything, greater is He that is
in you than anything that can come against you and ultimately,
just as in Jesus, your will be more than a conqueror.