Job 1:8: the LORD said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil?”

God takes a top dude and allows Satan to put him to the test! WHY!? Because he knew Job’s faith would allow him handle it! God trusts the heart he’s shaped in Job to now. And because Job likely still lacks perfection.

Was Job excellent? For sure. Righteous? Yes.

Job 1:1 - There was a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job, and that man was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil.

Was he perfect? Probably not yet. “Still one thing you lack,” God might have said of Job. And God arranges for its supply.

What Job will face at the hands of Satan is not punishment but reward. Endure for a season and reap a harvest.

We all go through hard seasons. Some face particularly brutal days.

In certain Christian circles, it’s fashionable to tell people their suffering is a result of sin. That’s not the only reason people suffer. One lesson of Job is that suffering is sometimes purification to know God better. Suffering puts faith to the test.

An entry from Streams in the Desert, quoting Jesus and Charles Spurgeon:

Luke 22:31-32 - “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail.”

SPURGEON: “Our faith is the center of the target at which God doth shoot when He tries us… There is no way of piercing faith to its very marrow like the sticking of the arrow of desertion into it; this finds it out whether it be of the immortals or no. Strip it of its armor of conscious enjoyment, and suffer the terrors of the Lord to set themselves in array against it; and that is faith indeed which can escape unhurt from the midst of the attack. Faith must be tried, and seeming desertion is the furnace, heated seven times, into which it might be thrust. Blest the man who can endure the ordeal!”

May God take us past the normalcy of this world. May he give us a faith that perseveres against all. May he help us see and know him even more - as he did for Job.