It's December today and 2019 is slowly beginning to draw to a close. As I reflect back on this year of my 60th birthday, my thoughts are drawn to "life lessons" that I've learned during those sixty years - particularly during my five decades of knowing the Lord and my four decades of working as an overseas missionary.
Then, in my quiet time this morning, I began reading in the Old Testament book of Job, and there I was reminded of a lesson that has become kind of a "life message" for me - something that I've preached about and talked about throughout most of my lifetime. It's an insight that I first grasped when I was in my mid twenties and I realised this morning how it has hugely impacted my life over the past 35 years. I am so thankful that I was equipped with this understanding when I entered some of the hardest and most painful seasons of my sixty years here on earth.
If you're familiar with the book of Job, you'll know that it tells the story of a godly man who faced an incredible amount of suffering and injustice. Much of the book is given to dialogue between Job and his friends, as they grapple with the question of, "Why do bad things happen to good people?"
I won't go into the details of the story at this point. (Perhaps that will come in later blog posts over the coming month.) In the first two chapters, that I read this morning, I'm particularly struck by two WRONG pictures of God that Job holds.
- Job 1: 21 - he believes that God arbitrarily takes away the good things that He has given us.
- Job 2: 10 - he believes that God sometimes sends bad things into our lives, and not only good.
It's ironic that some Christians, even today, use these arguments to explain the mystery of suffering. They're based on a belief in the sovereignty of God (and it's true that He is sovereign) but these two opinions are completely contrary to the picture of God that we see in the rest of the scriptures. For example:
- Romans 11: 29 tells us that God's gifts, and His call, can never be withdrawn. Even when we sin, God doesn't "take away" what He had given us.
- James 1: 13 - 17 tells us that every good thing comes from God and that nothing evil - like temptation, for example - can have its source in Him.
So those two ideas - "He gives and takes away" and "He has the right to send us bad things as well as good" - are there in the Bible, but that doesn't make them true. They are simply a true account of someone's wrong belief system.
The rather amazing thing in these chapters is that, even though Job has this wrong understanding, he doesn't sin by blaming or cursing God. While this is commendable on the one hand (demonstrating unconditional allegiance to God), it's dangerous on the other hand, as it borders on an Islamic kind of fatalism, where we become passive, believing that everything is "God's will," and so we never do anything to alleviate suffering or to combat evil in the world.
A correct response to suffering and injustice is to recognise that God is not responsible and that He might actually want us to do something about it.
Its source might be our own sin that we need to deal with, or other people's sin that we need to forgive. Or, as clearly shown in these two chapters of Job, its source might lie in our enemy, Satan, and we need to do spiritual warfare against that.
So, what was my life lesson from these first two chapters of Job? What is the mind-blowing insight that has impacted my life for these past 35 years? It's the understanding that Satan's attacks are not so much about hurting me (I'm relatively insignificant in his eyes) but are aimed at hurting God - by distorting my picture of His character, and therefore robbing Him of the trust and worship that He deserves.
I'm eternally thankful for a three-step strategy that has guided my life over the past few decades:
- Ask
- Choose
- Worship
When bad things happen, I ask myself, "What aspect of God's character is being called into question by these events?" Then I choose to believe in that aspect of God's character, anyway, and to worship Him by proclaiming Bible verses that tell the truth about who He is in that aspect of His character. This response has seen me through some of the most challenging times in my life and has left me knowing and believing beyond a doubt that God is good.
What aspect of God's character has been under attack in your life this year?
