Job 9:21-22 says,"I am guiltless; I do not take notice of myself; I despise my life. It is all one; therefore I say, He destroys the guiltless and the wicked."
I want to tell each and everyone of you that I full heartily believe in something called the Prosperity Gospel. Now before you exit out and make the rash decision never to read another post from this blog again, please, hear what I have to say.
Job is in a pickle. For those of you who know his story, you probably know why. However, most of his upset spirit comes from not knowing why everything was taken away from him. His sons, daughters, servants, cattle, sheep, everything was taken away from him and he still praised The Lord because he knew that God was always deserving of praise, no matter what. When he was struck with boils, he still was determined to not rebuke God even when his wife told him to.
Job's close friends came by and decided to comfort Job. These men did some of the best counseling in the world when they just sat with Job and were there physically for him. These men knew God and followed hard after Him. They understood theology and the ways in which God would work. That's why when they finally opened their mouths, they began to tell Job that he should just repent of whatever sin he had committed and everything would end.
This is where we find Job; not having done anything deserving of this pain and affliction but enduring it anyways. He starts to accuse God of being unfair in His judgement because he has no other explanation of why things are happening this way. However, God has Job exactly where He wants him. We know that Job was a righteous man and that His communion with God had to be so strong and intimate. Part of the reason that Job didn't curse God when he was afflicted was because He knew God. When someone has an understanding of God, it doesn't make sense to ever go against Him or to turn away from His presence.
God was using this pain and loss to show Job that He really was worthy of all praise. At the end of the book, God comes to Job and tells Him just how powerful He is. I get chills when my pastor tells me about the bigness of God and His character, but imagine getting a talk about the character and power of God from God Himself... Yeah... I'd buy tickets for the both of us!
One off the major points of this book is that God can't be put into a box and when He think He is doing something for some reason, we can be wrong. He puts His most beloved children under some of the most intense oppression. It reminds me of one of my favorite passages in John 10 when it says that God prunes those who bear fruit so they may bear more fruit. He puts those He loves under hard friction so they may come out sharper.
Some people look at this account and use it to attack the idea of a Prosperity Gospel, however, I don't think this passage could be anymore affirming of the idea.
Prosperity in the dictionary means to be well of wealthy. How can the riches of this world be compared to the riches of Heaven? The Joel Osteen Prosperity Gospel states that when we trust God and follow after Him, then we will see riches here on earth. Good think Job didn't believe that, because as soon as he loss everything, he would have had every right in the world to curse God. However, Job knew that even though he had lost everything, he did not lose his faith in Christ. He understood the riches of heaven. Even though he lost sight of it, they were his ultimate goal.
So yes, I believe that if you trust in The Lord and follow after His will that you will be the richest person in the entire world because you have endless riches waiting for you in heaven that can't even be understood or expressed in a blog, book, or series. I remember seeing the room of treasure that Bilbo Baggins finds himself in under the Lonely Mountain in Tolkien's The Hobbit and thinking, "Man, that's a lot of gold!" I can't wait to be in heaven and completely forget about even remembering such a thought.
All of this is to say that even in suffering, understand that you have joy that you can hold on to and that it will some day be perfected and you will have endless riches. The beauty about being under submission to Christ is the fact that it's a win win with Christ. We will never die, we'll rule forever, we'll always be in the presence of the Author of life, and we'll never grow thirsty or hungry ever again... Sounds like a sweet deal.
Chase after Christ and you'll learn what it means to be overflowing with riches. - Forsake All
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