Have you ever studied for a test and then been surprised by an unfair question that you weren’t even taught? Maybe after the test you even looked in your notes and your textbook and realized the question wasn’t there. Teachers aren’t perfect (and neither are students), but it seems unfair to be given a random test that doesn’t actually measure the right stuff.
Sadly, that’s about how we treat God sometimes. It can go something like this:
- Make a “fake test” for God by assuming He has to immediately give us good things if we do right.
- Blame God for every bad thing in our lives.
- Walk away from God if He fails our made-up test.
Job 8:5-6 says, “If thou wouldest seek unto God betimes, and make thy supplication to the Almighty; 6 If thou wert pure and upright; surely now he would awake for thee, and make the habitation of thy righteousness prosperous.”
Job’s friends seemed to think that a person living for God would enjoy nothing but prosperity and a person rejecting God and going their own way would get nothing but immediate bad. But God’s ways are higher. He is eternal, and this life is not all there is.
The truth remains: God is always good and always perfectly just.
When we can’t understand what God is doing, let’s trust Him based on all the good we’ve already seen Him do.
If Job could have seen what was going on behind the scenes, he would have had no trouble trusting God. If his friends had known what God knew, they could have gotten a much better (and more accurate) view of God.
All of them had the chance, the choice, to trust God based on His perfect record. And so do we.