Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him.
Job 13:15
In the October 31st entry of My Utmost for His Highest, Oswald Chambers says of this verse, “this is the most sublime utterance of faith in the whole of the Bible.”
Hebrews 11:1 says “now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see,” and our confidence and assurance can be high when things are well. If our health is good, our family is safe, and our resources are secure, it is not difficult to be hopeful for more and trust what is unseen.
It is a different story when health, family, and resources have been destroyed, as Job experienced. When life becomes strained, we lack the energy to hope; we have just enough strength to survive… hopefully. Job was in an impossible place: not only had he lost all but his life, his friends were convinced it was his fault, though he knew he had not sinned.
Think about it: all his life he trusted in and served a God who then not only allowed tragedy to befall him, but gave no answer to why. Had Job been wrong about God? Was he not loving? None of it made sense, all of it threw his theology into question.
Faith is a confidence and assurance, not in what makes sense, but in something that does not yet exist and which we can’t see at the moment we need it. Faith is, by definition, foolish, because if you are wrong, it could be catastrophic. You are holding out for the possibility that your logic and senses are wrong, and God is right.
Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him. This too is foolish. Job’s resolve to honor God is so strong that he would allow God to take his very life — the only thing he has left — and will still hope in him. God could do the worst, and he would still praise Him.
We struggle to hope in God when we have a bad day. We refuse to praise Him when our bank account is not as high as we’d like. If we struggle to have a faith like Job’s in the little things, how could we ever stand firm in the hard?
Our hope is not in ourselves:
I look up to the mountains;
does my strength come from mountains?
No, my strength comes from God,
who made heaven, and earth, and mountains.
Psalm 121:1-2 (MSG)
Job was not able to hope in God because he was a super-believer; he chose to believe in God regardless of his logic and circumstances, and in that resolve discovered the strength of God.
If you are navigating a hardship and struggling to have faith, know that the God of Job is the same God today and forever. Confidence and assurance in something we can’t explain and hold is only foolish if we live for this life alone: “If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.” (1 Corinthians 15:19) If God is real — if our life is in eternity, not this world — than that type of confidence and assurance is not foolish, but the wisest thing we can do.
