January 20 Devotion

It is interesting when reading the book of Job that his friends often have profound advice that if given under normal circumstances would probably be wonderful and biblical. But, there are situations in life when we simply cannot relate to the problems an individual is going through, times when saying anything only makes them feel worse, times when the wise thing is to say as little as possible because we simply may not have great answers to the questions we’ve been asked. There may be times when we simply have to tell people we don’t know why things happen the way they do. Moses reminds the people of Israel, “There are secret things that belong to the Lord our God, but the revealed things belong to us and our descendants forever, so that we may obey these words of the law” (Deuteronomy 29:29). In other words, what God wants us to know, God has revealed to us. But, there are some things we simply don’t need to know in this life and we can speculate and draw conclusions all we want, to no avail. Faith is sometimes simply trusting God that He is at work and He knows what He is doing, even if we don’t understand (Isaiah 55:8&9; Romans 8:28). Eliphaz makes an astute observation, “people are born for trouble as predictably as sparks fly upward from a fire” (Job 5:7). As long as we live in a fallen world in which people do evil things, and as long as Satan continues to roam throughout the world looking for ways to, “steal, kill, and destroy” (John 10:10), we are going to experience evil and tough times. Jesus assured us, “here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows” (John 16:33). Faith in God does not exempt us from the hardships that anyone else on earth experiences. The fact is, sunlight falls on evil people as surely as it does on righteous people. And the rain falls on good people as surely as it does on bad people (Matthew 5:45). What Christians have that non-believers do not have, is the assurance from the Lord that he will walk through our trials with us (Matthew 28:20; Hebrews 13:5; Daniel 3:19-30). And with Christ’s presence, we will have a peace in the midst of our trials that people of the world simply cannot have, because we have a hope, a strength, and a promise they don’t.