Job 11:13-20, “If you
would prepare your heart, and stretch out your hands toward Him; If iniquity
were in your hand, and you put it far away, and would not let wickedness dwell
in your tents; then surely you could lift up your face without spot; yes, you
could be steadfast, and not fear; because you would forget your misery, and
remember it as waters that have passed away, and your life would be brighter
than noonday. Though you were dark, you would be like the morning. And you
would be secure because there is hope; yes, you would dig around you, and take
rest in your safety; You would also lie down, and no one would make you afraid;
yes, many would court your favor. But the eyes of the wicked will fail, and
they shall not escape, and their hope – loss of life!”
When someone insists on telling you what you should have done
in a given situation without having full knowledge of what you already did,
their counsel, even if well intentioned, will always fall short.
If your car won’t start, and someone insist you should press
on the brake pedal to get your engine to turn, it’s sound advice for anyone
who’s never started a car, but you’ve been doing just that for the past five
years, did the same thing that morning, and not even a whimper from your
powerful four cylinder Kia.
When you inform the person offering advice that you are not a
dullard, and this isn’t your first time behind the wheel, those with a modicum
of self-awareness will shrug their shoulders and give up, admitting they don’t
have a clue, but others will insist that you’re not pressing the brake pedal
hard enough, and that’s why your engine won’t turn. They don’t even bother to
ask if any of the lights come on or if you hear the melodic ding when you put
your key into the ignition because, to them, the reason is already a foregone
conclusion.
It’s not that the battery is dead; it’s that you did it
wrong, and if you did it the way they told you to, as if by some medieval
alchemy, your car would start.
This was Zophar’s approach on the matter, layering assumption
upon assumption regarding what Job had done and what he had failed to do, even
though Job had repeatedly insisted that he had searched his heart and that he
had cried out to God to show him if there was error in him. Whether Zophar
didn’t believe Job outright or assumed that he hadn’t dug deep enough into his
own past to see where he had erred remains unclear, but either way, his
conclusion is still the same.
If you’d done it differently, perhaps you would have the
wherewithal to lift up your face without spot and be steadfast and not fear. If
you’d do as I instruct, you’d forget your misery, Zophar insisted, even though
it’s nigh impossible to forget something as ever present as being caked with
worms and open sores throughout your body.
I think it’s the lack of compassion and empathy from Job’s
friends that rubs most people the wrong way. Even strangers would likely show
more empathy toward someone lying in the dust of the earth, watching their
strength wane and their condition worsen, but not so with his friends.
Their primary concern wasn’t for their friend or his welfare
but trying to find an explanation for why he was suffering so, and the only
thing that all three of them could agree on was that he had sinned. Some of
their remarks were more forceful than others, with Zophar taking top prize for
callousness, but all three had come to the same conclusion, likely feeding off
each other’s assumptions and working themselves up into a lather.
One of the greatest dangers of having a friend, a spouse, a
family member, or an acquaintance whispering doubt and discouragement in your
ear while you're going through a trial is that your faith runs the risk of decreasing
in strength just as your physical body is. Faith is both a shield and an
impenetrable wall to the spiritual man, and if it becomes weakened or grows
dull due to repeated attacks, it becomes easier for the enemy to sow doubt and
bitterness in one’s heart.
It matters not what my outer man is experiencing, as long as
my inner man is cocooned in faith, because while the outer man suffers for a
season, it is during that season that the spiritual man grows and expands in
his faith and trust in God.
The entire purpose of the enemy’s attacks isn’t to make you
feel bloated, feel pain, or in extreme cases, such as Job’s, become a
worm-covered human husk that knows only pain and torment in perpetuity. The
purpose of physical attacks is to weaken the spiritual man, to chip away at one’s
faith, and untether him from the source of life, which is God. That’s the end
game. That’s the goal, and the prize isn’t your physical discomfort, as far as
the enemy sees it, but the abdication of your once strong and immovable faith
in God.
Satan understands the futility of the flesh. He knows that
sooner or later, it will return to the dust from whence it came. His goal and
purpose are to use the flesh in order to blindside the spiritual man, and if
the spiritual man is not watchful or fully reliant upon God, cause him to rebel
or sin against God somehow.
It may sound counterintuitive, but when you are going through
physical suffering of any kind, your focus should be on keeping up the strength
of your spiritual man. Rather than bemoan your frailty or hardship, it’s in the
midst of physical suffering that you should endeavor to spend more time in God’s
presence, in His word, and draw ever closer to Him.
Having the benefit of the aggregate experiences of those who
came before us, we can more readily defend against the enemy’s devices, thereby
keeping strong in the faith and enduring joyfully. It’s one thing to be able to
look back on Job's life and understand the purpose of his suffering, and it’s
another to be Job himself, wherein he was in complete darkness regarding the
reason he was suffering the things he was. It’s one thing to cut your way
through a forest; it’s another to walk a path others have tread before you. Out
of sheer stubbornness, some refuse to walk the well-trodden path and set out to
cut their own through the brush and the thistle, only to discover that it’s not
as easy as they thought it would be, and at best, it’s wasted effort.
Be humble enough to acknowledge that simple as they may seem, the tried and true ways of remaining steadfast in God during trials work. Pray, fast, seek His face, and read His word, receiving His strength in your weakness and growing in the knowledge of Him. Simple, straightforward, and effective. Uncomplicated to the utmost, but for some, it’s deemed too easy to produce the same kinds of results it produced in others.
With love in Christ,
Michael Boldea, Jr.
Posted on 10 March 2025 | 11:25 am
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