What’s At Stake In Your Suffering

Job stood up and tore his robe in grief. Then he shaved his head and fell to the ground to worship.   Job 1:20

When tragedy came to Job and his family, it produced two entirely different responses. Job’s wife said to him, “Are you still trying to maintain your integrity? Curse God and die” (Job 2:9). That was exactly what the devil had figured she would say. Suffering did to Job’s wife exactly what Job feared wine might do to his children: it lowered her inhibitions and exposed what she thought.

But when Job worshiped, Satan was confounded. The worship of one man in the middle of his suffering vindicates the name of God. I like to think about Satan shrinking back in silence, dumbfounded by the power of God’s grace in this ordinary man’s life.

Your response to God in times of trouble will be one of the most revealing things about you. For Job’s wife, integrity was a means to an end. It was God’s responsibility to fill her life with good things, keep the family healthy, and keep the business prospering. As long as that continued, she “loved” God.

But when suffering came to this couple, their different responses were telling: Job loved God for who he is; his wife loved God for what he gave. One loved God as a means to an end; the other loved God as an end in himself. One proved that the devil is sometimes right; the other gave evidence that the devil is ultimately wrong. It is possible for a person to love God, not simply as a means to an end, but for who he is.

Job never knew what was at stake in his suffering. After he died and went into the presence of God, the angels may well have said to him, “When we heard Satan slander the name of God, we trembled, and we held our breath as we watched to see what you would do. God placed his name and reputation on the line, and when you worshiped, Job, we can’t tell you the shouts of joy and triumph that went up as we watched the enemy shrink away in defeat and humiliation!”

For further reading, see 1 Peter 1