The Book of Job tells the story of a man named Job who lived in the land of Uz – not to be confused with the mythical land of Oz. He was the richest person living in that area at the time (Job 1:3). Wealth wasn’t his only hallmark, he was also well-respected, generous and honorable (Job 29:7-13). A man of integrity. His reputation even ascended to heaven. Then the unthinkable happens. He loses his wealth, his kids, his business and eventually his health. Everything he’s worked hard to accumulate is tragically lost.
One of the benefits of reading is that when the story gets intense, you can skip ahead and read how it ends. And skipping ahead, we find God restores everything Job had lost. We know how Job’s story ends. We know although he’s suffering now, his problems won’t last forever. This makes even the hard parts of his story easier to read. But our story isn’t finished, we don’t know how long the different seasons of our lives will last. It’s especially difficult when it’s an unending rough season plagued with one setback after another. Pressing forward when there’s no change in our circumstances is hard. But did you know difficult times are a litmus test of where we’ve placed our trust? Is it in God or our circumstances?
It’s easy to misplace trust and take comfort in our circumstances. It’s natural to feel contentment and peace when life is going well. There’s comfort in knowing we have money in the bank, food in the pantry, a roof over our heads and just about every modern convenience nearby. There’s security and peace in that knowledge.
The danger arises when we place our trust in these things instead of God. When peace comes from the balance in our bank account, our job, our home or even our identity (or image) it means our trust has been misplaced. Misplaced not in the sense we lost it but in the sense we put it in something undeserved.
Trust is easily and subtly misplaced all the time. The only way to know if we’ve inadvertently misplaced trust is by imagining what would happen if we woke up tomorrow and lost everything. Would our security and peace remain or would it disappear?
Job lost everything in one day. All the wealth he accumulated, his business and his legacy. He was ruined, financially and personally. It was devastating, yet he was able to say: “The Lord gave me what I had, and the Lord has taken it away, Praise the name of the LORD! (Job 1:21b)” Even though Job lost everything, his trust was never misplaced. His hope was always in God.