How do you know if you love the gift more than the Gift Giver? Check your heart response when you start losing the gift! When the sky is blue, the clouds are fleecy, and the sun is shining brightly, it’s easy to love the Lord. But what about those times in life when the storm winds blow and waves of challenge crash over you?
Satan told God that Job loved the gift more than the Gift Giver; God knew that Job loved the Gift Giver more than the gift. Satan threw down the gauntlet of challenge, and the Lord God took it up. What followed in Job’s life was catastrophic. In a matter of mere moments, Job received reports that he had lost all of his wealth and all of his children. This was his response:
At this, Job got up and tore his robe and shaved his head. Then he fell to the ground in worship and said, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised.” In all this, Job did not sin by charging God with wrongdoing. (Job 1:20-22)
Did Job love his children? Of course! Was he grateful to have wealth? I’m sure he was. But he did not love either more than he loved his God. Satan believed that Job’s obedience and love for God was rooted in his self love — that Job loved God because God had showered so many blessings on him. “Remove the blessings,” the devil reasoned, “and You will remove his love for You.” God knew better.
Later in the biblical account, Job wrestled with God and asked some very penetrating questions. But Job never did sin by charging God with wrongdoing, and God blessed Job with even greater blessings than those he had before. Job knew that everything he had was simply a gift he had received from God. And as much as he loved the gifts God had given, not one of those gifts ever sat upon the throne of his life. God was always Job’s first priority in life.
Would you or I be able to say along with Job, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart” after having suffered such unimaginable loss? To lose his wealth and later his health was one thing. But to lose all ten of his children in one cataclysmic instant seems like a loss too great for anyone to bear. And it certainly would have been if Job loved the good gifts God had given him more than he loved the Gift Giver Himself.
So how do we arrive at the place Job was? Surely it will only be by the grace of God. But in that grace, we need to see the gracious Hand that provides everything we enjoy in this life. When you and I read the book of Job, we understand the whole story. But Job, who was living it out at the time, did not. He had no knowledge of all that was going on behind the scenes, and that demonstrates with dazzling clarity that Job really did love God more than any of the gifts he had received from His hand.
Job’s friends were convinced that his suffering was a result of some sin in Job’s life. They believed his trials were a punitive and corrective action from God. They were wrong. What all God had in mind we cannot know, but one thing we do know is that part of the purpose of Job’s suffering was to deepen His relationship with God.
Elisabeth Elliot, wife of murdered missionary Jim Elliot, penned these profound words that will close, far better than I ever could, this word of encouragement to love the Gift Giver more than His gifts:
God is God. If He is God, He is worthy of my worship and my service. I will find rest nowhere but in His will, and that will is infinitely, immeasurably, unspeakably beyond my largest notions of what He is up to.
This is the Gospel. This is grace for your race. NEVER FORGET THAT . . . AMEN!
Grace for the Race 