#DailyDevotion What Is Your Rock In The Day or Life of Distress?
February 9th
Read Job 6:1–13
Job 6:8-10 “Oh that I might have my request, and that God would fulfill my hope, (9) that it would please God to crush me, that he would let loose his hand and cut me off! (10) This would be my comfort; I would even exult in pain unsparing, for I have not denied the words of the Holy One.
What trouble that Job is experiencing! It is not bad enough to lose all one’s material goods and one’s children or that he had lost his health but now he has his friends who try to comfort him but are no comfort at all. Job in the midst of his suffering has a hope. It is a hope that many who are undergoing pain and suffering have. That hope is that God would loose his grip on him and let him die.
Certainly many people wish they were dead sometimes. Plenty of people who are in hospice who are having much pain from their diseases look forward to death. Job is in such a space he wishes God would just pour it all out on him at once in one great big suffering if only he’d be relieved of the trial he was undergoing. Yet the timing of God’s release of us from this life is in His hands not ours.
Job wonders about the purpose of his suffering. What is the end game for which all this is happening? Job, as far as we know, never finds out. Indeed, much of the time we are left wondering, why am I going through this? What is the point? Is God really going to use this for good?
We may never know. Job says, “I have not denied the words of the Holy One.” We don’t know what words Job is talking about. But in our suffering, as Christians, we do have a word from the Lord that we can take hold of to give us strength and patience. Luk 9:23-24 “And he said to all, ‘If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. (24) For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.’” If we remain faithful to Christ in our daily sufferings our lives and follow Him, we will be saved. The time of our suffering is momentary. The promise of glory is eternal. While it may be hard to imagine what God has prepared for those who look to Christ and remain faithful in the world to come, he promises it surpasses all our imagination. It is this word of the Holy One that is our strength, our rock, our resource to sustain us in the darkness of our life. We simply must be faithful to it.
Heavenly Father, we have power of our own or resources within to withstand the day and life of trouble, yet you promise eternal life and your presence in the world to come if we remain faithful. Give us faith to trust in your promises so in the day of trouble we do not forsake you or your son Jesus Christ. In Jesus’ name. Amen.