Thought For The Week

Job 14:1 puts the matter plainly: “Man that is born of a woman is of few days, and full of trouble.” Jacob, standing before Pharaoh at 130 years old, did not dress it up either. “The days of the years of my pilgrimage are an hundred and thirty years: few and evil have the days of the years of my life been, and have not attained unto the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their pilgrimage” (Genesis 47:9). Jacob had covenant promises. He had seen the work of God. He still called his days few and evil. If he called it that, what chance do we have? The back finally eases and two days later the knee goes, and that is not the end of the list.

Scripture does not flatter us about life in this world. Moses, in the only psalm attributed to him, writes that the days of our years are threescore years and ten, and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labor and sorrow, for it is soon cut off and we fly away (Psalm 90:10). Labor and sorrow is not a footnote. It is a normal description of life. Ecclesiastes says the same thing from another angle. Man does not know his time. As the fishes that are taken in an evil net, and as the birds that are caught in the snare, so are the sons of men snared in an evil time when it falls suddenly upon them (Ecclesiastes 9:12). The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, for time and chance happen to them all (Ecclesiastes 9:11).

Careful people still meet trouble they did not schedule. Faithful people still bury people they love. Honest workers still watch a simple job turn hard. Aging people watch a list of what hurts get longer, not shorter. This is especially plain in a congregation that has lived a while. You treat one condition and the doctor names another. The spouse declines. Money that was finally under control gets hit by something you did not have planned. None of that means God has forgotten the church. It means we are still living in the world Job and Jacob described.

Jesus did not promise His disciples a clear calendar. He told them the opposite: “In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). Mark that order. Tribulation is promised. Cheer is commanded. The ground of the cheer is not that the tribulation leaves. The ground of the cheer is the One who has already overcome the world from which the tribulation comes.

Peter wrote to brethren who were already under pressure: “Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you” (1 Peter 4:12). The trial feels strange when it lands. Peter says do not treat it as strange. It is part of the path, not proof that you left the path.

Some of the trouble is simply the fallen world. Bodies break, wood rots, water turns, economies shift, and people sin against each other. Genesis 3 is still in force. The ground brings forth thorns, and so does a good bit of ordinary life. You can do the work carefully and still meet something underneath that you did not know was there.

Some of the trouble is the devil. If the devil cannot keep a man from Christ, he will spend what God permits trying to wear him down after that. He cannot stop us from becoming a Christian, but he can make it as difficult as possible. He can irritate us and do whatever God permits him to do. Job is the clearest picture we have of that. God set a limit, and inside that limit Satan took the oxen, the servants, the sheep, the camels, the children, and finally Job’s health. Job’s friends then made it worse by explaining his suffering back to him as they understood the counsel of heaven. They did not understand, and most of the time neither do we. Do not do their work for them. A hard week is not a verdict you are qualified to pronounce on yourself or on the brother next to you. If you see somebody struggling, do not be like Job’s friends.

Paul knew a version of this that would not leave. To keep him from becoming conceited because of the surpassingly great revelations, there was given to him a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment him. Three times he pleaded with the Lord to take it away (2 Corinthians 12:7-8). He calls it a messenger of Satan. He also says it was given, and the purpose he names is that he not be exalted above measure. Both of those things can be true at once. The enemy strikes. God governs the blow and uses it.

Everybody has a plan until they get hit. The Christian life is no different. You can have the week mapped, the budget set, the project scoped, and the health feeling steady, and the punch lands. The question is not whether the punch is coming. The question is what you do once you are on the ground.

Paul asked three times for the thorn to depart. The answer he received was not the answer he asked for: “My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me” (2 Corinthians 12:9). That is one of the hardest sentences in the New Testament to actually believe while the thorn is still in. We want departure. God often gives sufficiency instead. Some things leave when we pray. Some things stay. And the staying becomes a place where His strength is proved. Paul did not pretend the thorn felt good. He did not call the weakness pleasant. He did decide that if the power of Christ rested on him inside the weakness, he would rather have that than a smooth life that left him trusting in himself.

This is also why some of the troubles are permitted in the first place. A life with no thorn, no bill, no limitation, and no recurring grief can quietly train a man to live as if he did not need the Lord. Trouble interrupts that. It does not feel like mercy while it is happening. It feels like interference. But more than a few of us would not be in Christ if life had stayed smooth. The frustration that drives you to pray is not wasted, even when the frustration itself does not leave on your schedule.

James says, “Count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations; knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience” (James 1:2-3). He does not say the trial feels like joy. He says count it joy because of what the trial is producing in a faith that stays put. Romans 5 says tribulation works patience, and patience experience, and experience hope, and hope makes not ashamed, because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us. A chain only works if we do not quit in the middle of it. Patience is not produced by a trouble that ends before it has done its work.

So what do you do when there is always something? Tom offered five practical responses.