If you’re thinking, “good idea, my career has stalled and I need to get back on track”, then back up.
I’m not talking about employment. I’m talking about Job, the Old Testament character who was “the greatest man among all the people of the East” (Job 1:3) - that is, until Satan was allowed to take away ALL his wealth and ALL his children. Oh yeah, and then Satan “afflicted Job with painful sores from the soles of his feet to the top of his head.” (Job 2:7)
Wait a minute -- why would I want that?! You can’t be serious!
Actually, yes, I am serious. But I get it. I mean, there’s a reason that "Job” is never in the Top 100 Baby Names. Who would want to be like Job, sitting in a pile of ashes, bereft of family and possessions, scraping his sores with a piece of broken pottery (Job 2:8)?
Well, thankfully, that is not the end of Job’s story. And his suffering highlights several qualities about him that you really do want for your own life:
1. Job was a righteous man.
“This man was blameless and upright; he feared God and shunned evil.” (Job 1:1) Job’s reputation for righteousness was so great that God Himself “brags” about Job to Satan, saying, “There is no one on earth like him: he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil.” (Job 1:8) God is pleased with this man!
Can you imagine if your reputation was that excellent, not only to man, but to God Himself? What a precious thing to be praised by the Lord for being upright!
In fact, it seems that God had so much confidence in Job’s blameless heart that He trusts Job to retain his integrity even in the face of Satan’s horrible attacks on him, his family and his possessions (see Job 1:6 - 2:10).
That’s the kind of heart I want too.
2. God loved Job enough to allow him to suffer.
Being chosen to suffer is being chosen to be loved. Sound strange? It’s really not - not when you consider what happened to God’s own beloved Son. And for us, God allows us to go into the crucible of suffering so we will grow in our faith and abide closer to His heart.
God confirmed this to me last week. As I lay on the floor in a heap of tears, God gently spoke these words to my heart: “There is greater evidence of My love when you are chosen for the refining fire than when you are chosen for a blessing.”
Why would He say that - aren’t blessings evidence of His love too? Yes. But so is suffering.
Suffering is a key vehicle that God uses to draw us deeper into His heart. Suffering is where we learn to cling to Jesus even if everything else is torn from our grasp. Suffering demands that we really mean it when we declare our surrender to God’s plan and our trust in Him no matter what. Suffering “produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.” (Romans 5:3) That’s why Paul declares that “we also rejoice in our sufferings” (Romans 5:3) -- and a guy like Paul, he would know.
God allows me to suffer so I can draw even nearer to Him than before. He allows me to suffer so He can give new revelations of His all-sufficiency despite my circumstances - a type of sufficiency that I would not have known if everything had gone as I’d planned. He allows me to suffer so my character can be conformed more to the image of His Son, which is a precious gift indeed.
3. Nothing could steal Job’s praise.
Job was a man of considerable wealth: “he owned seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen and five hundred donkeys, and had a large number of servants.” (Job 1:3)
He was also blessed with ten children and he loved them dearly. He had built a close-knit family. “His sons used to take turns holding feasts in their homes, and they would invite their three sisters to eat and drink with them.” (Job 1:4) Job regularly “sacrifice[d] a burnt offering for each of them” (Job 1:5) as a covering, just in case they had sinned. Job was no disconnected dad, but a true family man who cared about his children’s faith.
Then all of his children and all of his wealth was taken from him in one awful day (see Job 1:13-19).
Job’s faith response to the calamity of losing all of his children and all of his possessions is mind boggling: “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away: may the name of the Lord be praised.” (Job 1:20 ) It was as if Job was saying, “Satan, you may be able to steal my wealth, my family and my health - but you will never steal my praise!”
This is a man who understands that nothing he ever had was his to hold on to: everything had come from the Lord’s hand. It was not his responsibility to cling to these gifts, but to cling to the One who gave them.
4. Even as Job suffered, he declared unwavering trust in God.
By the end of the book of Job, Job has been completely restored: God blesses him with a new family and doubles what he previously possessed (Job 42:12-13). “The Lord blessed the latter part of Job’s life more than the first.” (Job 42:12)
But before God changed any of Job’s circumstances, Job declared, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him” (Job 13:15 KJV). What an amazing pronouncement of unshakable trust in God no matter what! Job’s suffering did not break his faith - it confirmed it.
Many of us want what Job had - a blameless heart, unstoppable praise and unwavering faith, but we don’t want to go through the suffering that produces these things. Understandable, because suffering is painful! Yet, when we lean into our suffering instead of running away from it, it will produce fruit even more precious than a comfortable life.
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