Day 4 – Humility In The Waiting

“My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,” says the LORD. “And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine. For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:8-9, NLT)

“And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them.” (Romans 8:28, NLT)

“So be truly glad. There is wonderful joy ahead, even though you must endure many trials for a little while. These trials will show that your faith is genuine. It is being tested as fire tests and purifies gold—though your faith is far more precious than mere gold. So when your faith remains strong through many trials, it will bring you much praise and glory and honor on the day when Jesus Christ is revealed to the whole world.” (1 Peter 1:6-7, NLT)

Can I confess something? Sometimes I think I’m entitled to judge how God does or does not respond in a particular situation and determine whether His actions (or lack thereof) are just. Of course, I don’t *actually* believe I have any authority to judge God’s actions. But if I’m being honest, sometimes I operate as if this is exactly what I believe.

Maybe, just maybe, you can relate?

Both of these ideas are faulty theology: that if we do good, we deserve good, and that if we do bad, we deserve bad. That’s not how God works. Sometimes things do or don’t happen for reasons God has not granted us to know, but we do know that in all things He is manifesting His glory.

About halfway through the Bible, we find the book of Job. It’s about a man named Job who was wealthy and had lots of kids. But God allowed everything to be taken from him in the blink of an eye. As Job grappled with all this, God used one man named Elihu to challenge the idea that because Job was a righteous man, he deserved only good from God. Elihu also challenged the idea, presented by Job’s friends, that Job’s suffering must be the result of sin (see Job 34–35).

Unbeknownst to Job, Elihu, or any of his friends, Job’s circumstances on earth were brought about by a conversation between God and Satan. Satan knew that God had blessed Job’s life immensely, and Satan wanted to see if Job would still love and worship God even if everything was taken from him. God allowed the test, and that’s when all the bad stuff in Job’s life went down (see Job 1–2). While Job was trying to figure out why things were happening in his life, God had a bigger purpose in all of it. God had made the actual why answer unknowable to Job. And this is precisely the point of the book of Job: We can’t always know the reason God allows certain things to happen, and His goodness isn’t dependent on Him offering one (see Job 38–39).

Through his wrestling with God, Job was brought to the end of himself, and he was humbled. God often uses waiting seasons to accomplish the same end in us.

The story of Job shows us that it’s okay to ask God questions about why things are (or aren’t) happening in our lives. But it also warns that we might not get an answer—or even be able to understand it if we do. God doesn’t owe us an answer . . . but He does invite us to trust His character even when we can’t see His hand.