One of my friends got me to really thinking today about
certain aspects about my relationship in Christ. She brought up an interesting
point that she needed prayer to help her deal and understand with knowing that
God never promised our walk through life after surrendering our lives to him
would be easy. So, I went home and had some time to think. I really wanted to
help but didn’t have an answer. I didn’t have my Bible next to me but I prayed
and while I was praying selfishly about some other things, pretty much feeling
sorry for myself, God seemed to really lay on my heart, “be thankful I do not
do to you what I did to my servant Job.” OUCH!!!
Many Christians today think when they ask Christ into their
lives it’s the end all to their problems and frustrations. We don’t have a full
comprehension of what our life really will be like. We think it’s going to be
pretty skies with rainbows and butterflies and all sorts of nice things. Not saying there won’t be sunshine sometimes
but that is not what Christ says our lives will be like. In fact just because
we are ‘devout Christians,’ doesn’t mean any sort of promises of a perfect
filled life. In fact Jesus pointed out
otherwise in Luke 9:23 ”whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves
and take up their cross daily and follow me.” Meaning we have a cross to carry and our life is not going to always be full of happy times.
Though Job was around way before Jesus was ever born he was
alive and considered to be a blameless and upright man, a man who feared God. A
synonym for the word blameless could also be guiltless, or innocent. So Job was
considered to be an innocent man who obviously was living in all the ways honoring
to God.
Now what is my point, the rest of Job’s story is the point.
It is written in the first chapter of Job a conversation between God and satan
and God literally gave Satan permission to destroy everything in his life only he
was not allowed to kill Job. God allowed this in order to test the strength of
his fear for God. Satan started by destroying all his crops and animals that he
had and even took all of his children from him. But Job was faithful when those
things were taken from him and worshiped God anyways.
Then Satan, being unpleased about this went back to God to
push further and received permission from God to harm Job’s physical being
where the man broke out into sores all over his body. And my favorite part is he says, “Shall we accept good from God, and not
trouble?” (Job2:10b) Even though this man went through a literal hell on earth
and he did not know God’s reasoning, he still continued to praise God.
So yes, the answer is yes, we may go through a lot of rough
things in this life. Being a Christian
doesn’t save you from pain on this earth, but it does give you someone to
constantly go through life with that you can hang on to.
I just pray that God
never gives permission to Satan to destroy my life in the way he allowed him to
destroy Jobs in order to prove that I will still be faithful to him no matter
what. But for now it's just a great reminder to be Joyful in all things no matter what my circumstances.
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