Why Job Is Encouraging

Here's why the Book of Job continues to bless me . . .

Greetings, my friends.

This is the first newsletter I’m sending as part of the Moments That Make Us series. My goal is to send along encouragement from some of the moments that God has been using to make me, in hopes that it may spur on change in your own life.

I was recently on Moody Radio talking about the Book of Job. Our discussion was in reference to an article I wrote, “Job and the Deadly Spiritual Equation.” Check both of those resources out if you haven’t. Below is a condensed form of that encouragement.

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I’m encouraged by Job for many reasons, but here are the top few. Maybe they’ll be a blessing to you. Maybe they’ll even resonant with moments that have made you, moments that have defined who you are and told you where you’re going.

1. Job loses everything, and he’s still okay. Imagine the worst. Job had that. He lost his wealth, his family, and his health. Then he was verbally degraded by the few friends who remained. Job’s life went from a skyscraper to ground zero in one day. And yet, that’s the beginning of his story, not the end. Loss introduces the story; it doesn’t end it. In fact, Job’s losses prompted his greatest questions, his deepest yearnings, his heaviest frustrations. His losses prompted his raw dialogue with God. And it was only after that raw dialogue that Job emerged with a more wondrous knowledge of the truth, of who God is and how much he cares for him. Job loses everything, and he’s still okay. In fact, he’s better than okay. He’s elevated and blessed. That doesn’t diminish his losses; it just shows how God used them to take him somewhere else, somewhere his soul needed to go.

2. The Book of Job has a place for Satan. I know that’s a weird thing to label as encouraging, but so many of us don’t have a place for Satan in our lives, and Satan loves that. That allows him to work undetected. In Job’s story, we’re given an inside look at what’s causing all the pain and turmoil. It’s not Job’s sin; in fact, it’s his righteousness! God, remember, is the one who singled Job out for Satan because of his uprightness. Satan was behind the attacks on Job, not God (even though God was providentially in control of every detail). And Satan is behind the attacks on our own lives. That doesn’t downplay the ugliness of our own sin; it just reminds us that someone is after us, and not because we need to be punished. Someone may very well be after us because we’re godly, not because we’re godless. I’m encouraged by that because it’s a reminder that I’m on the right side, that suffering isn’t an unfair experience. It can be confirmation that I really am a son of God in Jesus Christ. I like being reminded who I am.

3. Job’s suffering shows that there’s something better than comfort, pleasure, and wealth. If God is wholly good, then he must have good plans for Job. And having Job lose his comfort, pleasure, and wealth was a part of those good plans. We spend our salaries, our attention spans, and our relationships on the acquisition of things that aren’t in our best spiritual interest. Job reminds me that I’m often short-sighted. I think a bump in my paycheck could be the best thing coming. But hitting a hard wall of suffering may actually be the thing that leads me to something far better than bonds or assets.

In the end, Job goes through a world of suffering and emerges on the other side closer to God, fully submissive to his sovereignty. Satan loses. And isn’t that the gospel, that even the Son of man can lose everything and yet still emerge with more, as Satan bleeds on the sidelines? I look at the book of Job, and I see Christ. I see my Lord. I see the one who walked through suffering and was raised in glory.

I include this as the first newsletter in the Moments That Make Us series because one of the moments that made me was a Job moment: watching my father die of cancer right in front of me on a June evening in 2004. That moment felt like losing everything. It felt like walking into a black staircase of hellish uncertainty. And yet, nearly 18 years later, I’ve emerged with more. I’ve renewed and strengthened my faith, gone to seminary, written books about anxiety and suffering, and am caring for my own family now. I have more. But, like Job, there was a moment when I was convinced I would only ever be a loser, a spiritual beggar.

Thank God for all of moments that make us, especially the ones that tear us down to the depths, our Job moments. It’s our hard things that lead to heavenly things. Without them, where might we be?