“My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you. Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.”-Job 42:5-6
A friend of mine answered the call to go and serve as a missionary in Africa. After years of making little progress in evangelizing his village, both he and his wife started having health issues. Then his daughter had physical problems. When his world started closing in around him, he found himself asking God why bad things were happening to a man who gave his life and the life of his family for missions. Where was God?
It’s hard to think of my friend’s story and not think of another guy who watched life go from good to bad.
Job lost everything. His world didn’t just close in around him. It crumbled. He, too, wanted to know where God was in his time of need. When God showed up, Job soon realized that in spite of his immense suffering, the most profound part of his experience was that he had seen God.
When life puts you at the end of a branch, so to speak, it is at that point that our only hope of enduring or surviving is God. Years after his work in Africa my missionary friend summed up his experience this way:
“You will never know God is all you need until God is all you have.”
Our prayer for you:
We pray that as you encounter life’s trials, you would encounter God’s presence. And that God’s presence would be sufficient for your perseverance.
