Job 1:9 NIV
Does Job fear God for nothing?” Satan replied. 10 “Have you not put a hedge around him and his household and everything he has? You have blessed the work of his hands, so that his flocks and herds are spread throughout the land. 11 But now stretch out your hand and strike everything he has, and he will surely curse you to your face.”
What is it that makes you pray..believe in God…do blessings precede faith or is it the other way.Answers may vary…but in this episode from the Bible clearly Satan believes in the former .He is sure that it is the abundance in life that God bestowed on Job,which made him the devout man he was.Many in Job’s time would have believed so.’Oh it’s so easy for him to believe ..he has everything ‘..must have been the whispers of his neighbours and even his friends.
Faith is a difficult thing.For many it comes as an heirloom passed on from generation to generation. It’s jus the natural course in life.For some it doesn’t occur that naturally even when our faith systems are handed down by our parents ,some go through it as a compulsion,some find their way out of this compulsion and yet others stumble ,fail and rise up through the path of faith to have their own experience of faith and come out of it as Believers.
Yes blessings bring more faith but Job’s story was different. Known and also envied perhaps for his abundance,Job must have been the talk of the town for a while.God had given him more good than he could count.
“He had seven sons and three daughters,3 and he owned seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen and five hundred donkeys, and had a large number of servants. He was the greatest man among all the people of the East.4 His sons used to hold feasts in their homes on their birthdays, and they would invite their three sisters to eat and drink with them.”
Yet with all this abundance he continued to be an upright and blameless man.Miffed at this,Satan challenges God that troubles is all it would take for him to curse God and walk out of his grace.
Satan’s challenge stays forever relevant.Isnt it a little bit trouble it takes us to deny God’s existence.A little shift in the course of the river of life …isnt it enough to make us drift from God?question him and blame him for our miseries?Absolutely yes…we have all been on that boat once in our life atleast.
Fundamental to this kind of thinking is the belief that God has sent us on this Earth to experience only the best.We tend to think that we deserve only the best.We are grateful as long as the music is sweet.But when terror strikes us..when we see the dark clouds of gloom hovering on the joyous garden of our life…what happens to us then.
The devil knows well that misery and cursing God go hand in hand.Or does it.Job was pushed beyond what he could take,all he had was taken,his household and all his possessions destroyed.He continued to praise God.Horrendous ailment befell him yet he did not turn unfaithful.
Even the premise of Job’s friends’ argument is that misfortune only follows from evil deeds. The interaction also shows the folly of trying to understand God’s ways. Job and his friends enter into a futile attempt at trying to explain the nature of God with the foggy lenses of human knowledge.Something that we all try to do in vain.When unpleasant things happen …we are mostly told that it maybe our wrong..but it doesn’t have to be.Bad things happen to good people often ..we know…we don’t know why..some may say it’s lack of faith some blame on it on fewer prayers…but God is bigger than we ,with our collective guesswork can ever comprehend.And if anything he is TRUE to those who believe him…not jus when the sun is shining but also in the darkest of days.
Job continued to be in faith despite all that he saw and faced…even when he had to see unprecedented agonies..even when he may not have understood why he had to suffer with no fault of his,even when people may have looked down upon him..he stood in faith.
How does God respond….well he does so in ways human mind would have not predicted.He blesses him and gives him back all that was taken away…
Job 42:12 The Lord blessed the latter part of Job’s life more than the former part. After this, Job lived a hundred and forty years; he saw his children and their children to the fourth generation. 17 And so Job died, an old man and full of years.
He is able to see good days again.This is the everlasting promise for those who live in faith.Not the faith that comes only with good things but the faith that is built up through the most difficult of times in life.A faith that reminds you of His promise that “ I will never leave you nor forsake you”.Everytime you pass through deep waters know well that the one who walked on water is standing at the other end to take you to a brighter ,higher ground…all u must do is believe.
Chronicles for my boy Noah
1 thought on “Take away all he has and he will curse you.”
It’s always a joy reading your thoughts Neethu.
No winter lasts for ever and no spring skips its turn. I truly believe God is good all the time. Probably we only have perceived that it will always be spring.