Job's Response - by Bec Bonython
The bible character Job……such a hard one to reconcile, grasp and understand. The wealthiest man in the East, where the Lord describes him as “There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright a man who fears God and shuns evil.” (Job 1:8) The best theologians in the world have grappled with Job for centuries and I reckon it won’t be until we get to heaven till we fully understand the why’s and the how’s of Job.
So, for today I want to focus on Job’s response. It is his response that we can learn and apply to our lives. It is his response which is important and will affect us when we experience tough times in our lives.
In one day, Job lost all his livestock (his income, business and wealth) and his 10 children (his entire family except wife). And a little while later, sickness falls upon him.
In EVERYTHING that happened in Job’s life, he refused to allow the bad things around him to effect his love and worship of the Lord. He stood firm in his faith. How did he do this?
Job worshipped God alone for who He is, rather than for what God could do for him. (ie. healings and miracles, although a blessing, are not what we worship God for. His comfort and strength, although a blessing, is not what we worship.) When we worship God for what He does for us, we can head down a slippery slope to a works mentality and end up expecting God to bless (or conversely not allow us to experience bad) because we have been “good”.
Job shows us that we must worship God purely because He is God. When we acknowledge that God is holy, sovereign, all-knowing, the creator of the galaxies, the stars and the universe; we worship Him because HE IS GOD. This changes our perspective and by doing this, it exalts God and humbles us. We can see Job’s humility by his response: the Lord gives, the Lord takes away – blessed be the name of the Lord. (Job 1:21)
Job allowed his posture to be that of surrender regarding himself and everything he owned. Everything he owned was the Lords. Therefore he did not react negatively to the disaster that was going on around him. (His wife certainly did!). We are only custodians or guardians of everything we have - our jobs, our families, our possessions, our status, our wealth, our reputation, our education, our life! Everything we have is the Lords. When we give it all to the Lord – then whatever He chooses to do with it is ok with us. We will always react poorly to areas in our life that has not been surrendered.
Through the good times and the bad times, I pray that you continue to worship God for who He is, humble yourself and surrender all that you have to the Lord. In the end, it is not ours anyway, but everything we have, and who we are, is His - blessed be the name of the Lord.
Blessings,
Bec