“Is not your fear of God your confidence, and the integrity of your ways your hope? ” Job 4:6 RSV
Job 4 is a conversation between Job and his friends. Job is wrestling with the question: can mortal man be right before God? His friends are trying to convince him that there must be something wrong with him and he must repent. But Job is deeply convinced that what is happening is not as a result of some hidden sin in his life but has been allowed by God, who is above his circumstances.
What amazes me about the story of Job is how Satan is looking for someone to test. He asks God if he can test Job to get him to walk away from his faith. He takes everything he loves and cares about in his life, everything he has worked for and trusted, in order to get him to curse God. God has complete confidence in Job and says: “I know my son Job; he is faithful and upright and he knows that his faith is not as a result of the favour and blessing that he has in his life.” Could we say that? Are we faithful to God because he has blessed us or only when things are good? Or are we faithful because God is faithful no matter what our circumstances are? God is faithful regardless of our circumstances.
Job has confidence that God is with him and that God is still faithful. In verse 6, Job is being questioned about his fear of the Lord and his integrity. His confidence has always been in a revelation of the fear of the Lord and the integrity of his life is his hope. This now will sustain him through this tragic season of testing.
When there are small cracks in our integrity, I hesitate to even use the word small, because a crack is a crack; and a crack is dangerous and destructive no matter how small it is. We can fool ourselves into thinking that small things don’t matter but they matter to God and they actually undermine our confidence in God and our faithfulness to God. Lack of integrity makes us a vulnerable prey to lies from the enemy reminding us both that God is not faithful and that somehow, He is holding out on us or harming us.
When we take shortcuts, are hypocritical, judgmental, are in scarcity or lack in any way, focused on ourselves, complain and have a lack of gratitude speak or imply something unkind about someone else, operate in any way opposite to the way of love, choose death over life in any thought, word, action or attitude; in all these ways we put cracks in our complete confidence in the Lord. These cracks bring death into our lives such as anger, frustration, gossip, backbiting, unforgiveness, addictions, numbing, entitlement, selfishness and selfish ambition, fear, doubt, shame and pride. Separation from God ensues and then we are fooled into believing that somehow God has abandoned us; that God has not been faithful to us, which only leads to even more brokenness.
When we are walking a life of hope in complete integrity and obedience in the fear of the Lord we can have rock-solid confidence that God is with us and we are with Him. Confidence that no matter what comes our way that God will use it for His ultimate glory and for our good. God fully restored everything Job lost in an even greater measure. Yes, there will be suffering in this world but we have great hope in the life and future that is being prepared for us.
Lord, I pray that I would be one in whom you have complete confidence in my faithfulness in you. My salvation is the only gift I will ever need. Even if I was cold, hungry, beaten, lost, alone, sick, broke or rejected and persecuted, may I never deny your unfailing love and faithfulness to me. Lord, I desire above all things to truly understand the reverence, awe and awesome fear of you. May my confidence lie in my unwavering walk of integrity and obedience in the fear of the Lord. Lord forgive me for even the small ways in which I am hindering your full release on my life. I repent for every time I choose a lesser way and for how that skews my view of who you are. Lord instead, I want to walk in the complete provision of the better way of love each and every day and be confident in the fear of the Lord and in my integrity to walk in it. In Jesus’ Name, I pray, Amen.
Hope Daniels
We all need to be reminded of this. Often we try to putty our own cracks; it’s nice to be reminded that God has steps we need to follow – our own are insufficient. Beautiful writing.