Job XLIII

 It’s human nature to accept good things with open arms. Whether it’s a compliment, a promotion, or finding out someone slipped an extra nugget in your six-piece value meal, it tends to make us feel warm and cozy, elevate our spirits, and more often than not, we find ourselves smiling for no other reason than that something good and unexpected just occurred.

Although we are not as jubilant about embracing adversity, it too has a purpose that is well-defined and readily identified, especially in hindsight. Hardship, adversity, trials, and testing mold character, and once we’ve gone through it and come out the other side victorious, we are stronger for it, with a deeper faith in the God we serve.

Even at his low point, Job had the wherewithal to acknowledge that both good things and adversity come from the hand of God and, as such, must be received with equal aplomb. But that just can’t be! We’re told day in and day out that our expectations of God should extend no further than good things, pressed down, shaken together, all the time, without fail, whether we’re awake or sleeping. Otherwise, we’re lacking in faith or failed to make a seed offering to our preferred televangelist.

While the modern-day church needlessly complicates some things, it also oversimplifies others, to the point that the entirety of our spiritual man’s succor is boiled down to a handful of overused clichés or morning affirmations we’ve taken to repeating in the mirror. We wouldn’t want to burden people with deeper discussions about faithfulness, obedience, or perseverance. They’re busy people with busy lives, and if we insist they take an extra second to consider deeper truths, they’re likely to go to the church across the street that has an hour of praise of worship followed by a five-minute sermon about karma.

The shepherds have failed the sheep, the church has failed God, and what was to be an army marching through the land with healing in their hand and everlasting joy and gladness in their hearts has been reduced to a bunch of man-babies who whine and stomp their feet until someone comes along to shove a pacifier in their mouth, and tell them it’s all going to be fine, and their breakthrough is just an offering away.

You get what we have when there is a systemic failure to preach the Gospel in any given generation by those whose sole purpose and duty was to do just that. The whole counsel of God means even those things your flesh is uncomfortable with, even those areas that call for the mortification thereof, and the undeniable reality that the testing of one’s faith, whichever way it may manifest, is not something outside the realm of possibility, or even a probability, but a certainty.

When an entire generation has been conditioned to believe that only good things will abound and overflow in their lives once they’ve made a half-hearted commitment to call themselves spiritual, their immediate reaction to any adversity is to arch their eyebrows and back away slowly because it’s neither what they signed up for, nor what they were promised by the guy in the three-piece suit and the Rolex on his wrist.

Job did not react in the flesh. He did not shake his fists at the heavens or insist he didn’t deserve to go through the adversity he was currently going through; he didn’t get bitter, angry, or vindictive because his focus was exclusively on God, and he trusted in His sovereignty, the way a child trusts their mother or father. He did not doubt God’s goodness and mercy, nor did he charge Him with wrong.

We can dwell on our current situation or circumstance, and the more we do, the bigger the problem seems to get, or we can fix our gaze upon God and worship Him, fully confident that He knows the end from the beginning and has made a way of escape for us.

1 Corinthians 10:13, “No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape that you may be able to bear it.”

Although when we think of temptation, we tend to associate it with a seduction of some kind, the broader definition of the word is the desire to do something wrong or unwise. Yes, wanting to eat that triple-layer chocolate cake in one sitting is a form of temptation, but so is the desire to question the authority of God. As far as the cake is concerned, it’s an easy fix: walk away. If you can’t walk away, throw it in the garbage. If it’s still tempting you while sitting in the garbage can, toss some wet coffee grounds on it, or if, perchance, you happen to have a child still in diapers, a dirty diaper draped across it should dissuade you from digging it out.

When it comes to resisting the temptation to grow bitter or resentful, it’s a bit more complicated because you can’t walk away from your feelings or what’s burdening your heart. The means of escape from such temptations requires deep, unyielding, and abiding faith in the God you serve because it’s your faith that will be the means of escape from spiraling into despondency and the nagging question of whether He is still with you or not.

Job knew that God was with him still, even as he sat on a heap of ashes, scratching at his boils with a potsherd. He knew the presence of God in the midst of his trial and was unshakeable in his resolve.

Avoiding the storm isn’t proof that God is with you. Knowing His abiding presence in the midst of the storm is. The storms of life are purposeful, whether to teach us dependence and reliance on Him or for the works of God to be revealed in them.

When Jesus noticed a man who had been blind from birth, his disciples wanted to know whether the man or his parents had sinned that he’d been born blind. Jesus answered, saying, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but that the works of God should be revealed in him.”

Not as simple as chanting, “Money cometh unto me now,” then again, few things in life are.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.