Like many of us, Job struggles with his thoughts about God while in the middle of his suffering. He dumps these deep thoughts onto God. He says, “I cry to you for help and you do not answer me; I stand, and you only look at me. You have turned cruel to me;
with the might of your hand you persecute me.” From Job’s perspective, God has turned against him. All the greatness of God that had preserved him in good times has now been turned to destroy him. He says, “But when I hoped for good, evil came, and when I waited for light, darkness came.” Job had fallen into the trap of the Adversary, who delighted in his suffering and took joy in his defeatist attitude.

Micah was in a similar state of mind. But he spoke out to his enemy. He said, “Rejoice not over me, O my enemy; when I fall, I shall rise; when I sit in darkness, the Lord will be a light to me.” John Piper writes, “That is what we must learn to do in our darkness—even the darkness we have brought on ourselves because of our sin. Yes, I am under the gloom of failure. Yes, God has put me here in his displeasure. But no, I am not abandoned, and God is not against me. He is for me. Even in the darkness that he imposes, he will sustain me. He will not let me go. Though he slay me, he will save me. We must learn to preach to ourselves like this in our fight for joy.”

Paul gives us a great verse as a sword to yield against the evil that rises up. It’s Roman’s 8:31-32. Paul reassures us that no matter how dark things look and no matter how deeply we’re hurt, we must remember that God in never “Against us.” Quite the opposite: “What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?”

One of my favorite sayings is “God has my best interest foremost in mind regardless of my circumstance. I can trust Him.”

Chuck
“You guided my conception and formed me in the womb. You clothed me with skin and flesh, and you knit my bones and sinews together.” (Job 10:10-11)