Thoughts for another day

Oct. 1, 2012.

Today's verse: Job 1:8. And the LORD said unto satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil? (KJV)

(Pls. read the above before you read further. Thanks)

Job is considered by many as a Book on suffering and how to get patience to bear it.  In the many dimensions it displays, the most important in my opinion, is the contest between God and satan, where God poses a challenge to him in the Word of Scripture above. Based on this challenge stands, the 'faith' of God in man!  And that's what usually remains unseen and unheeded by Christians and Jews in the Book.  I wonder why we don't see the Book from God's point of view though it becomes apparent in chapter one itself in the way the LORD poses the challenge to satan.  Why do we rather dwell on the sufferings of Job, which're heaped on him by satan as soon as he is permitted to strike Job, except take life from him?  Is it because we're so enamored of suffering that we immediately ponder on it rather than see the juice of blessing derived from suffering that God sends us?

Many also think: why did God do what He did for by it, God put Job through much struggle.  But then can't He as the Sovereign God of all, do as He pleases?  Doesn't He say in Jer. 18:6, 'O house of Israel, cannot I do with you as this potter?  Saith the LORD, Behold, as the clay is in the potter's hand, so are ye in mine hand, O house of Israel.'   Truly, I ask myself, can't He not do as He pleases, with me; He who has given me life and sustains me day by day?  God can and He does it. 

What did God do with Jesus, the Innocent Sufferer, the Servant of God (Acts 3:26)?  He was crushed and destroyed:  For what may I ask?  Though He had no sin, He was laden with sin for our sakes.  And God the Omniscient God, who knows from the beginning to the end, also had faith in Christ by which He redeemed the world!  So also God tests us similarly and blessed is the man whom God chooses to test, for in him is God's faith and remember, there's great joy in heaven over the faith of a man who subjects himself to the furnace of God's wrath.  And although he doesn't understand the reason for the rigors of his pain, he keeps faith in the awareness that he will be drawn up and raised aloft as God's honorable servant; to which I'd like to add what Peter says in 1 Pet. 4:12, 'But rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed.'