“He drew a circular horizon on the face of the waters, at the boundary of light and darkness. The pillars of heaven tremble and are astonished at His rebuke. He stirs up the sea with His power, and by His understanding He breaks up the storm. By His Spirit He adorned the heavens; His hand pierced the fleeing serpent. Indeed, these are the mere edges of His ways, and how small a whisper we hear of Him! But the thunder of His power who can understand?" (Job 26:13-14).
As Job’s three friends, Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar finish us their vain efforts to convince Job he was being chastened by God for some wrong he had done, Bildad implies Job just doesn’t understand God and His power. Bildad says, “How then can man be righteous before God? Or how can he be pure who is born of a woman? If even the moon does not shine, and the stars are not pure in His sight, how much less man, who is a maggot, and a son of man, who is a worm?" (Job 25:4-6).
Just as his friends had been wrong thinking Job was being chastened by God for some sin he had committed, so now they were also wrong in thinking Job did not understand God and His power. Job understood God’s supremacy very well. Job stated, “Sheol is naked before Him, and Destruction has no covering. He stretches out the north over empty space; He hangs the earth on nothing. He binds up the water in His thick clouds, yet the clouds are not broken under it” (Job 26:6-8). Job was well aware of not only God’s power, but also of God’s presence and His ability to see all things. As the opening verses above indicate, Job realizes God’s awesome power is seen throughout His creation, but these are the “mere edges of His ways”. Observing such displays in God’s Creation is simply a “small whisper” of what could be heard of God’s great might. One would have a difficult time in comprehending the true “thunder” of God’s power (Job 26:13-14).
I would suggest that part of what sustained Job through his adversity was his understanding of God’s great power. He had faith in God’s great might and believed God was fully aware of everything by which Job was being afflicted. Nothing was hidden from God’s eyes. However, what Job struggled to comprehend was, since God was aware of everything that was happening to Job and had the power to help Job, why wasn’t God helping him?
In fact, Job felt like God was using His power against Job: “But He is unique, and who can make Him change? And whatever His soul desires, that He does. For He performs what is appointed for me, and many such things are with Him. Therefore, I am terrified at His presence; when I consider this, I am afraid of Him. For God made my heart weak, and the Almighty terrifies me” (Job 23:13-16). Because Job could not understand how God was using His power, Job assumed God was using His power against Job and not for Job. Job increased his misery by making this false assumption!
Today, I will appreciate that my God is an Awesome God who has great power. Even though I do not always see how He is using His power to help me; nonetheless, I will trust in His power to sustain me. I will not fall into Satan’s trap to think God’s is using His Might to harm me but will remember God’s purposes are to help me to remain faithful to Him and He will use His might to help me do this!
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved” (Ephesians 1:3-6).