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From the Book of Job in the Old Testament, we can learn tremendous principles and great divine truths. The drama of Job’s record begins in Chapter 1, and there we learn that Job lived in the land of Uz. God’s Word also tells us that Job was perfect, a man of solid integrity. Job had great reverence and respect for God, and he steered clear of evil. Now, we must remember that the span of Job’s lifetime was a couple of thousand years before the birth of Christ, so the new birth was not a part of his reality. Therefore, when we read that Job was perfect, it means that he satisfied the requirement of the law regarding the sacrifices and atonement God required for that time. In other words, Job’s heart was in the right place when it came to his relationship with God. So, you and I quite naturally are puzzled why, when he seemingly did all the right things, did his life get so bad.
Throughout the years, I’ve heard countless folks say that Job never complained. They say he took the brunt of all he endured and never said a mumbling, complaining word about it. I’m like what?!!! To complain is to express your dissatisfaction or discontent about a condition or situation you’re dealing with. While the Bible tells us that it is true Job didn’t curse God for the condition of his misery, but it doesn’t say that he didn’t complain. In Job 3:3-7(NLT), he said “Let the day of my birth be erased, and the night I was conceived. 4 Let that day be turned to darkness. Let it be lost even to God on high, and let no light shine on it. 5 Let the darkness and utter gloom claim that day for its own. Let a black cloud overshadow it, and let the darkness terrify it. 6 Let that night be blotted off the calendar, never again to be counted among the days of the year, never again to appear among the months. 7 Let that night be childless. Let it have no joy.” Now I don’t know about you, but this sure sounds like complaining to me, so much so that he wanted his entire existence to be wiped from the chronicles of time.
If we’re being honest, the thing that concerns some and scares others is the reality that Job was a good person by all accounts, and some bad stuff happened to him. How bad is bad? Really bad! He lost almost everything that was important to him, including his children and his health. His friends were ‘miserable comforters’, which means no comfort at all, and his wife wasn’t exactly the pillar of encouragement. So, considering Job’s predicament, by sheer deduction we gotta figure, “well if it happened to someone that was near perfect as humans go, imagine what will happen to me.”
A lot of us have either had a ‘Job’ experience or we’re having one today. We feel a little bit like he did when he told Heavenly Father, “Excuse me, Father, I think You’ve picked the wrong person. This can’t happen to me, because I love You! I’m doing all the things You said we humans should do. I’m wondering if I can have a sit-down conversation with You real soon, so we can clear this all up!” Job didn’t quite understand how dastardly evil the devil could be. He didn’t know the devil had brought a case against him in the Courts of Heaven and had found a legal reason to wage a serious attack.
What was this case against Job? Well, we may not know all the details, but God’s Word tells us enough to surmise that fear played a major role in it. Job said in Job 3:25(KJV), “For the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me, and that which I was afraid of is come unto me.” There are two incredibly important details about fear that many of us neglect to remember. The first is that fear can lead a person to do sinful things they never dreamed they would do. The second is that fear will cause us to lose everything, because it puts everything we own in the devil’s territory.
Most of us grossly underestimate the degree to which the enemy can tear our lives apart when fear lives in our hearts. In Job 1:7, when the Lord asked satan what he was up to, he responded by telling Heavenly Father that he was going up and down, to and fro, checking out everything that was happening in the earth. Now surely we know that our God knows everything. He knew exactly what satan was up to, and God knew that satan had been investigating Job. Just as he does with us, satan was spying out Job’s vulnerabilities, so he could plot an attack against him.
God was so stupendously good to us to place this record of Job in His Word, because He allows us to know so much about His Kingdom and about how His Permissive Will works. Our Heavenly Father is a Righteous Judge, and His Word is a legal standard that the devil cannot break. If the devil could violate God’s law, he would not have had to swindle Adam and Eve out of their authority and dominion; he could have simply taken it. But that’s not how it went down. The enemy had to trick Adam and Eve by getting them to doubt God’s Word. They then acted on their doubt and this is what cost them everything.
Planting fear in our hearts is the devil’s motive and getting us to act on this fear gives him legal access into our lives. Fear belongs to him. It’s part of the kingdom of darkness. If we enter satan’s territory through fear, he has a legal right to plot against us by trying to steal, kill, and destroy. 2Timothy 1:7(NLT) tells us that God hasn’t given us a spirit of fear. It didn’t come from Him. He’s given us a spirit of power, love, and of a sound mind. Fear is deadly to our destinies, and God wants it out of our hearts and out of our lives.
We can do all the things we think we’re supposed to do, but if we have fear in the place where we should be totally trusting God, the darts are going to fly. When they do, the very first thing we ought to do is seek the guidance of God through the Holy Spirit. Instead of complaining and cursing, we must renew our minds to God’s Word and allow Him to help us build a greater faith in Him. We cannot engage spiritual warfare without a spiritual weapon. The devil is called the ‘acuser’ for a reason; he brings cases against God’s people in the Courts of Heaven. But glory be to God, we have a mediator. We have a lawyer in the courtroom through the person of Jesus Christ. We must be committed to trusting him at a greater level. This trust will be tested, but like he did for Job, God will restore and bless us even more bountifully.■
Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
“How Bad is Bad? Really Bad!”, written by Reverend Fran Mack, edited by Kim Times for Sundie Morning Sistas ©2019. All rights reserved. All done to the glory of God through Jesus Christ, our Lord! SMS is dedicated to inspiring and encouraging Christian Women through the Word of God.
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