Job. Yes, Job. We love Job. But we shutter at his story. Permission from God Most High was granted to Satan to bring great trouble to Job. It’s disheartening to read, but also encourages the weariest of hearts. Perhaps one of the most moving is Job’s initial response to his devastation. It was worship. It was an acceptance of the lot he had been given and he did not charge God with wrong (Job 1:22).
It seems like Job may have had some moments of wavering though. He’s faced with a choice: What he knows to be true, and what he’s being told by his friends. In our lives, the whisper of the enemy to believe His unending lies can mess with us in the deepest of ways, especially in the midst of a difficulty.
As things come to a crossroads in Job’s story, Job 38:1 says that God answered Job out of the whirlwind. This was a storm of fierce magnitude, a tempest that shook everything Job had, what he knew and who he was. Isn’t it beautiful that God answers Job out of the whirlwind? Right there in the midst of the terrible winds, the darkest nights, the deepest grief, God’s voice thunders. God’s whisper had been with Job through the entirety of his trial (Job 26:14), but now God speaks loud and clear.
Job, where were you when I laid the foundation of the world? Job’s first answer to God is to realize that in spite of all of his previous answers to his friends, he now needs to lay his hand over his mouth (Job 40:4). God continues to declare His omnipotence, which leads Job to his final declaration.
“I know that You can do everything,
And that no purpose of Yours can be withheld from You.
You asked, ‘Who is this who hides counsel without knowledge?’
Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand,
Things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.
Listen, please, and let me speak;
You said, ‘I will question you, and you shall answer Me.’
“I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear,
But now my eye sees You.
Therefore I abhor myself,
And repent in dust and ashes.” Job 42:2-6
Ah, Job. Now you see! Before you didn’t – you couldn’t. But now, in the midst of the tempest God has been successful in allowing you to see HIM. There You are… now my eyes see… they see YOU.
Falling to his knees at the end of his devastation was perhaps much different than the place of worship in which he began. This was more than acceptance, it was surrender. It was repentance. It was beauty. All that I am, for all that YOU ARE. God, now I see You.
