When God changes your story

Poor Job.  That is typically the first thought we have when we think of Old Testament Job.

Even those most ignorant of the Bible have most likely heard of Job somewhere along the way.  They say things like, "She has the patience of Job."

When we say patience, we think that we are waiting a long time for something.

Patience actually means long-suffering.  And Job, above all, is the poster child for suffering.

But if you know the whole story, you know that patience and suffering are not Job's entire story.

And neither is suffering the whole picture for you, for me.

No matter what we have been through or are going through, suffering does not have the final word.  

Like Job, God can restore anything and anyone to us at His command.  God can change our story for the better.  How?  Because He is God.

There was nothing Job could do to stop the calamities and tragedies that came upon him. He was helpless in that regard.

Yet he continued to praise God.  That is what the takeaway should be when we read the book of Job!  Not how much or how long he suffered, or the ignorance of his friends when it came to knowing how to comfort him, or anything else but this: Job was given a priceless gift - to get to know God better, see Him as He truly is.  

And if your experience has been anything like mine, you have learned the same - in our suffering, we grow closer to God and see Him more for Himself than we do in the "good" times.

But we have to be willing to "go there" with God.  Job's wife wasn't willing.  Job was.  Which will you be?

When we let God increase our trust in Him, it pretty much doesn't matter what's going on in or around us.  Why?  Because we have Him.  And more importantly, He has us.

Even when Job's fortune and family were restored to him, as wonderful as that was, I have a feeling that Job had grown so much in his suffering that, in a sense, it wouldn't have mattered if God ever restored to him anything - because he was found in God.  He knew that God loved him.  He trusted God completely.  Therein lay his most treasured possession.  And no one could ever take that away from him.

So when God steps in and changes our story for the better, it will be because He knows that we can handle it.  He knows that, in a sense, it will be as nothing to us because we our roots have grown so deeply in Him that the rest is just icing on the cake, really.

I feel that we celebrate the "icing" a wee bit much in our lives.  Blessings come and blessings go.  But there is One who sticks closer than a brother.  Christ Jesus our Lord.

Is Jesus your Savior?  Awesome!  Is He also your Lord?  Better still!

If you're alive, you have suffered.  That's just life this side of heaven.

Is this being overly morbid?  Nope.  Just honest.  

And that is what being in relationship with your Creator is all about.  You don't need to post only your "happy" pix on your "profile" for him.  Can you imagine Job's FB page were he alive today?!  I would hope that he wouldn't post only his restoration, but how God brought him there.  Because we would be missing the best part of his story - the part where He grew closer to God in his suffering.  That is the true gold in any of our lives.

Dear Lord.  Because you are love and always want our best, even when You allow suffering, we know that it is for our best.  Help us to remember this, Lord, when we can't see the forest for the trees.  For knowing You is truly our greatest treasure and possession.  For apart from You, we are and have nothing.  Thank You that we can know you at all, sweet Lord!  Thank You for knowing when - or even if - to change our story for the better and help us embrace every chapter of our story.  In Jesus' Name.  Amen.