I woke up with a thought I just can’t shake: If God allowed Job to be tested to the point of wishing he were never born, while by God’s standard, he was a blameless and upright man, what will be the lot of those who reject Him, despise Him, mock Him, and trample the Son of God underfoot? It is a fearful thing to consider.
By his own admission, Job had played the what-if game in his
mind, and now his worst fears had come to life. Satan had been given leeway to
the point of touching everything in Job’s life, including his flesh, and he’d
gone about the task with the ferocity of a predator bent on destroying its
prey. His goal was to prove God wrong, and the only way he could accomplish
this was by putting enough pressure on Job so as to make him curse God, deem
Him unjust, or sin with his lips. All three would have been preferable, but had
he gotten Job to do just one of these things, Satan would have considered it a
win.
The enemy knows your weaknesses. He knows your pressure points
and the sensitive areas of your life that could be exploited and picked at. If
you say you have no weaknesses, you’re fooling yourself and making for easier
prey. Rather than play at hyper-spirituality, our time would be better spent
identifying those areas in our lives that need shoring up and proceeding to do
it diligently and without delay.
Satan knows what makes you tick. He knows your deepest fears
and preys upon them, hoping to fuel them and grow them beyond what the
situation reasonably calls for. He also knows the things your flesh gravitated
toward before you nailed it to the cross. You belonged to him before you
belonged to Jesus, and his memory of what had you shackled before you were
freed is fresh on his mind. When we underestimate the enemy’s cunning and
knowledge of us, we are not as watchful as we ought to be, thereby offering him
an opportunity to plant seeds of destruction anew.
Constant vigil is not a suggestion; it’s a command. Jesus
commanded us to be watchful and to pray that we might not fall into temptation.
This implies that the danger is real, and the constant onslaught of the enemy
is something we must be aware of. When we fail to obey the commands and edicts
of Christ, we do so at our peril. He told us what we must do to remain
steadfast and resolute. It is not one of many options; it is the only option.
Other than Job, there was one other who cursed the day he was
born in the entirety of the Bible, and that is Jeremiah, also known as the
weeping prophet. Elisha came close, wanting to die but never taking that extra
step and cursing the day he was born. Numerically speaking, it’s a small club
compared to how many men are highlighted throughout the pages of Scripture.
It’s not that Job and Jeremiah were weaker than Samuel, David, Joshua, Elijah,
or Daniel, but the level of their testing and depth of their pain was such that
they poured out their groaning in the form of a verbalized heart cry.
Some years ago, my
grandpa’s brother’s son, Ion, came to visit. That would make him a second
uncle, but I’m unsure about family lineages beyond the immediate family. At the
time, he pastored the church in our home village, and to the best of my
knowledge, he still does. Since it was getting late, I offered to take him to
dinner, and he graciously accepted. While waiting for our food to arrive, he
shared a story about one of his parishioners, which changed my outlook on how
much time I spent praying for others. Her name was Sister Aurica. She was well
into her eighties, arthritic, with the bowed back emblematic of anyone who’s
been working a field from the time they were old enough to hold a garden hoe.
Every time she came to
prayer, she carried her Bible and a notebook under her arm, in which she had
lists upon lists of names she would pray for every service. When Ion asked
about the notebook and what it was for, she said she was getting on in age and
didn’t want to risk forgetting any of the names on her list. When he inquired
why she never prayed for herself and always for others, she shrugged and said,
“Because I’m selfish, I guess. I’d rather be the one praying for others than be
in the position of needing others to pray for me.”
Being called upon to pray
for someone is neither a burden nor a chore. It is a grace. If you would have
others pray for you in your time of need or testing, then as a fellow brother
or sister in Christ, you must reciprocate the action.
As I’ve said, I don’t know what it’s like to be so beaten
down as to curse the day I was born, but I can sympathize. Taking the aggregate
of these men’s lives into consideration and the trials they went through, I
can’t bring myself to be so brazen or callous as to call them weak. Weakness is
when you give up. It’s when you waive the white flag of surrender and stop
fighting for what you know to be true and noble. Weakness is cowardice
masquerading as tolerance, and rebellion masquerading as inclusion.
Job was not weak, and neither was Jeremiah. They were
hurting, in pain, shattered, bruised, weary, and at the end of their tether,
but they pressed on, pressed in, and clung to their abiding faith. It’s easy to
judge from the outside looking in. Some among us relish the opportunity to do
so because it makes us feel superior somehow. We tell ourselves we’d never go
so far as to curse the day we were born, no matter what, having never had to
endure what Job did. You never know until you know.
Peter thought he was stronger than he was, insisting that
even if he had to die for Him, he would never deny Jesus, only to do it thrice
a handful of hours later. We can either beat our chests or bow our knees. We
can either pray for strength from above or trust in our own. What we come to
realize is that our strength is insufficient in such circumstances, while His
strength is more than enough.
The trials we could never hope to get through on our own are
navigable with God beside us. It doesn’t mean they will be easy or that we
won’t be hard-pressed, but by clinging to Him, we are able to make it to shore
while others who trusted in themselves never make it through. Friends, family,
acquaintances, or your next-door neighbor can only do so much; God can do all
things. Men can offer words; God offers peace. Family can be a shoulder to cry
on; God wipes away the tears. Make Him the refuge of your heart.
1 comment:
Thank you! This addressed something personal today.
Also - my daily reading was in 1 Peter 4 - verse18 - And “If the righteous is scarcely saved, what will become of the ungodly and the sinner?”
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