Job CCXXX

God’s purpose is what matters. More than our temporary pain, discomfort, embarrassment, humiliation, loss, or hardship, the ultimate goal of God’s purpose through all these is what we must focus on and draw strength from. What will I become once I traverse this valley? What will you be transformed into once you finish your climb? What attributes, virtues, and unquantifiable benefits will make themselves known once my faith has been tested and proven? How much greater will your faith be? How much will your trust in God deepen once He has shown His faithfulness?

There is no such thing as needless suffering when it comes to the children of God. The trials He allows in our lives are not from a position of cruelty, but rather from a place of love, correction, and the purpose of refining, strengthening, maturing, and growing our faith in Him.

The fiery furnace of affliction was never meant to be comfortable; by both definition and purpose, it cannot be. If we focus on the fire, on the affliction, on the hardship, or the heartache, we will always tend to pull back or shrink away. If, however, we focus on what the fire will produce once we’ve gone through it, we will continue planting one foot in front of the other, and walking boldly through it with the full assurance that God will make a way, and we will come out the other side the stronger for it.

Even at his lowest, Job had faith in God’s plan and purpose. He did not know what they were. There was no clear path before him, no silver lining in the storm. He could not see how they would reveal themselves, but he retained his faith in the God who had never failed him.

What do I do when the unexpected happens? Trust God. What do I do when nothing seems to be going right, and everything around me is crumbling? Trust God. What do I do when the thing I thought would be my safety net gets pulled out from under me? Trust God. That is the answer to every situation in which we are overwhelmed, or from which there seems to be no obvious escape. Trust God!

Psalm 56:3-4, “Whenever I am afraid, I will trust in You. In God (I will praise His word), In God I have put my trust; I will not fear. What can flesh do to me?”

No one expects you to be an emotionless robot, feeling nothing, plodding along, unaffected by anything, ever, no matter how difficult, no matter how protracted, or debilitating. It’s okay to cry, weep, mourn, and acknowledge pain; it makes you no less of a saint, a believer, or a Christian.

Throughout the Bible, men and women of God felt fear and acknowledged it, felt pain and acknowledged it, felt loss, disappointment, betrayal, privation and acknowledged them all, but through those moments of hurt they chose to focus on God, trusting Him implicitly, thereby concluding that as long as their trust was firmly rooted in God there was nothing to fear. There was nothing to fear, not because fear was unwarranted, but because the God they served was greater than their fear, greater than their circumstances, and greater than their trial.

God did not look down on Job or think less of him for honestly seeing himself and his situation as hopeless in the eyes of men. He didn’t rebuke Job and demand that he put on a brave face, scrub off the puss and maggots feasting on his rotting flesh, and go about his day as though nothing untoward was happening. God will never ask you to do the impossible. He asks you to trust Him to do the impossible. This is not a distinction without a difference, nor is it something arbitrary and inconsequential.

Whether I believe I can fix a problem on my own or fully trust that God can, makes all the difference in the world and affects everything from my attitude to my focus to my mood to the level of hope I possess and in whom I place that hope.

If I put my trust in myself, whenever I hit a brick wall or the path before me becomes impossible to traverse, I struggle harder, focusing more on the problem than on God, who can fix the problem. I tilt at windmills, thinking I can affect the change only God can, and when I fail repeatedly, I get more stubborn, determined to prove to myself and the rest of the world that I can do it when obviously I can’t.

If I put my trust in God, I am at peace knowing that it’s not within my ability to rectify the situation, but that it’s within His, and when He chooses to do so, all glory will be given to Him.

God or man. God or self. God or position. God or possessions. God or government. God or the socially awkward guy with the heavy accent in the white lab coat who graduated last in his class but is nevertheless a doctor. Every day, we choose whom to trust, and if you haven't noticed the pattern, God stands alone against everything and everyone we can place our trust in as human beings.

Perhaps the government might solve one problem, man another, position another still, but God can solve all of them with equal ability, competence, and aptitude.

Job’s was not a single issue needing to be remedied. There was a plethora of things that needed to be addressed, from his health to his wealth, to his family, to everything in between, and so, counting on an individual to solve one problem, even if they were able to do so, would leave all the other issues hanging over his head like the sword of Damocles. Salves and poultices may have relieved his pain momentarily, but that still left the problem of having nothing left to his name but a pile of ash. The generosity of his friends might have helped him scrape by and feed himself, but that still left his failing flesh and the loss of his children.

Only God can make all things new. Only God can restore, heal, and provide to the point that those who know of your situation will see it as a miracle. The one thing we struggle with is that God does these things His way, in His time, for His purposes, and sometimes His timing or the way He resolves an issue differs from what we imagined or hoped for.     

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.