Steadfast Faith

What would you do if after leaving your home this morning, and arriving at your destination, you received a series of phone calls that everything you owned, loved, and cherished, including the people nearest and dearest to your heart, were all destroyed? For most of us, it is something we've never thought about because not only is it hard to know just exactly how we would react, but the thought of such losses is simply unimaginable. Some of us would simply lose our minds, some would be in life-long therapy, for others, there would be nothing left worth living for. Proverbs 18:14 sums it up well, "The spirit of a man will sustain his infirmity; but a wounded spirit who can bear?"

The situation above speaks directly to the experiences of Job, of whom God said, "there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil" (Job 1:8). In some quarters, there would have been those who would have thought surely Job must have some sins in his life for all that tragedy to come upon him, yet that was definitely not the case. Bad things do happen to good people, but the challenge is in the response to the situation. Job's initial reaction wasn't to go running to his neighbours for support and sympathy, or to shake his fist in the face of God screaming "Why?", but he "arose, and rent his mantle, and shaved his head, and fell down upon the ground, and worshipped" (1:20). His personal world had fallen apart, but he worshipped! Instead of thinking horizontally, even in the midst of calamity he maintained his vertical thinking. He worshipped, saying, "Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither: the LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD" (v.21). What tremendous spiritual conviction! Unlike what some of us would do, he refused to blame God for the events, choosing instead to acknowledge God's Sovereignty over his life. God giveth, and He also had the power to take, but in all things, blessed be the name of the Lord. Despite his grief, we are told "in all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly" (v.22).

Just what exactly did Job lose? Ten children, seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen, five hundred she asses, and a very great household, "so that this man was the greatest of all the men of the east" (vv.2-3). Is your faith of such that you could worship God in the midst of such incalculable personal loss? Everything we own is simply on loan, and we would do well to hold on to them lightly. The benevolent God who gave them to us can just as quickly take them away. Of course, Job was not aware that this was a test, but he would later discover that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose (Romans 8:28).

Steadfast faith. How would yours hold up? I pray God that we will all be able to demonstrate it, when called upon.