[God] knows the way that I take; when he has tested me, I will come forth as gold. ~ Job 23:10
God knows. He knows the challenges you are facing. He knows how the economy in your sector or region is weighing on your mind. He knows how a strained relationship is heavy on your heart. He knows the difficult decisions that are in front of you. He knows the past decisions that are haunting you. God knows.
“Then why doesn’t he do something?!” the longing soul cries out. “Why doesn’t he lift my burden? Why doesn’t he ease my pain? Why does God do what he does and allow what he allows? I want to know. I want to understand…”
In the verses that precede our passage, Job confesses that there are things about God that he cannot know or understand. Job confesses that there is no way he can find God or search him out. God’s work and ways, God’s strength and wisdom are beyond human knowing and understanding.
Though it is impossible for us to completely know and understand God, God completely knows and understands us. In his infinite power and incomprehensible wisdom God knows us—our paths, our challenges, our hearts, our longings, our dreams, our everything. And he acts accordingly, bringing his boundless love to bear in whatever situations we find ourselves or in whatever challenges we face.
Like Job, we cannot completely know and understand God. But we do know what he has revealed to us and enabled us to grasp: his love, his grace in Christ Jesus, and his promise to make all things work for the good of his people. Together with Job, our knowledge of God leads to the confidence that what he brings or allows in life, he will use for our good. We will come out stronger. Indeed, a stronger, purer life, comes through a stronger, more focused reliance on God.
Your gracious God wants you to remember this truth today: “He knows the way that I take; when he has tested me, I will come forth as gold.”
Lord, bless me with an ever greater reliance on you. Enable me to honor and serve you—in difficulty and in ease, in the complicated and in the simple, in the heavy and in the light, in reflection on the past and in hope for the future. Amen.
Living Hope Church 