’Tis the set of the sails, And not the gales, That determines the way we go.” —Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Job had passed the test. “In all this Job did not sin nor charge God with wrong” (Job 1:22). How could one consider an even more daunting trial of his faith than that, especially because all ten of his children lay dead under the rubble? Yet it was so. Satan predicted to God that, if Job lost all his possessions, “he will surely curse You” (1:11). Instead, “he fell to the ground and worshiped” (v 20). He graduated with top marks, summa cum laude. But the diabolical fiend wasn’t satisfied. He never is. So he returned to God for further permission. Do you see, painful though it was, how Job both exalted the Lord and humbled Satan? The first is obvious with his worship. But remember that Satan wasn’t after Job; he was after God— “he will curse You,” he said. In his heart, Satan had once said, “I will raise my throne above the stars of God.…I will make myself like the Most High” (Isa 14:13-14, NIV). Now Job made him come crawling back to ask further permission from God for an even more rigorous exam. From where had Satan come? “From going to and fro on the earth,” he said (2:2). We don’t have to guess what he was doing, “because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour” (1 Pet 5:8). What permission does he want this time? “Touch his bone and his flesh, and he will surely curse You to Your face!” (v 5). Once again, it was granted. Satan had not yet met that heroic breed of whom it would be written, “they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and they did not love their lives to the death” (Rev 12:11). Job was in that company. Could we pray for those around the world who are adding, with their own life-blood, their names to that honor roll?