Come In Close

“Though You slay me, yet I will trust You”

“Trust in the Lord with all of Your heart, lean not on your own understanding, in al of your ways acknowledge Him”

One of the stories of Scripture that has long been the most unsettling and yet faith stirring for me is the story of Job. The book opens with the very first verse describing Job as a blameless and upright man who turned away from evil. Almost immediately after this description, the story takes a gut wrenching turn when Job’s life begins to unravel and spiral into unfathomable suffering and grief. In the course of just one day, Job receives 4 different reports bearing the news that his livestock, his servants, and children had all died suddenly due to predatory invaders and natural catastrophes.

Just when you would have thought that he had reached the amount of suffering that any person could possibly endure, Job himself is afflicted with sickness which causes sores to break out on every inch of his body. With just about everything stripped away from him but the breath in lungs, Job is faced with a choice. To trust unwaveringly in the God of His faith or succumb to despair and curse the God who sovereignly gives and takes away.

Heroically, with his faith tested to the brink and his back up against the wall, the confession that rises from Job’s heart in the midst of such severe suffering was “though You slay me, YET I will trust You”. In other words, Job acknowledged that the trustworthiness of God was not contingent upon the circumstances of life playing out the way that we think they should.

Most of us can’t relate to the degree of devastation that Job endured but all of us can identity with the temptation to turn our backs on God when we assume that He has turned His back on us. We know all too well the temptation to lose sight of who God is and what He has promised when the circumstances of life wound us. When God Himself “wounds” us for our good and for His glory.

Trust is a vital element in any authentic and healthy relationship. This is especially true of our relationship with God. Our ability to live a life of faith hangs entirely on whether or not we truly trust Him. Whether or not we trust His character, His promises, His Word, and His heart for us as His children. I believe that our trust in God is never going to exceed our knowledge and reception of what His Word tells us to be true about Him.

Once we begin digging into His Word to inform our hearts perspective, we learn that God is trustworthy. He is trustworthy because He is in control and there is no movement of your life that is hidden from the sight of the One who set the world in motion and upholds it with His very own power (Psalm 8:3-4, Psalm 139:1-12, Act 17:25,28). He is trustworthy because He keeps His promises. Every single of one them culminating and finding their “amen” in the sacrificial death and resurrection of Christ, securing your freedom and eternal hope (2 Pet. 3:18, 2 Cor. 1:20). There is a consummate day when our faith will become sight and with our very own eyes, we will see the fulfillment of every word He has ever spoken. He is trustworthy because He is with you! He abides with and in you through His Spirit as an ever present help in times of need. In times of wounding, in times of lack, in times of fiery trial and relentless agony He is closer than the air that you breath. Present to help, comfort, strengthen, uphold and renew (Psalm 46, Isaiah 41:10, John 14:16).

These are just 3 in an infinite ocean of reasons why God is worthy of our trust in the face of whatever circumstance in which we find ourselves, but they barely scratch the surface. Whether we are rejoicing in the highest of highs or weeping in the darkest of nights, just like Job, when given the choice of where we will be place our trust, I pray that our hearts however broken and battered would rise with the confession “Yet I will trust You”. Talk about life knocking the wind out of a person! And things pretty much go downhill from there. Life probably hasn’t brought you the kind of devastation that even comes close to Job’s but im sure you relate to walking through circumstances that attempt you to doubt His goodness. They tempt you to doubt that He is ever present with you.

Job was given the opportunity to walk by faith and not by sight.

It’s easy to trust God when the circumstances of life or working out in your favor but what about when your story moves in a direction that brings heartache, loss, sickness...

“Trust in the Lord with all of Your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all of your ways acknowledge Him, and he will make straight your paths” (Proverbs 3:5-6)