Job 19:25-27 “I know that my redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand on the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God; I myself will see him with my own eyes – I, and not another. How my heart yearns within me!”
We know how Job was stripped of everything – loved ones, wealth and health – and yet he was somehow still able to declare the above hope-filled statement, despite the utterly bleak circumstances he found himself in.
Our faith in Christ involves a constant wrestling between assurance and doubt, confidence and questioning, certainty and uncertainty, and these not only conflict with but also sometimes complement each other. Oswald Chambers observed: “The nature of the spiritual life is that we are certain in our uncertainties, consequently we do not make our nests anywhere. Certainty is the mark of the common-sense life; gracious uncertainty is the mark of the spiritual life. To be certain of God means that we are uncertain in all our ways, and we do not know what a day will bring forth. This is generally said with a sigh of sadness; it should rather be an expression of breathless expectation.”
I like that. Most of us are naturally wired to want all our ducks in a row, to keep everything under our control, to master the unpredictable. But the fact is, we cannot control all circumstances. Life is unpredictable. But what we can be confident of, is that God is over all. He ultimately calls the shots. I’d rather he did than I! And so I’m going to choose a sense of breathless expectation over a sigh of sadness any day. And in faith I’ll join the apostle Paul as he writes to the Philippians that he is “confident in this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus” (1:6).
You know what lies ahead of me today, Lord. I choose to live certain in my uncertainties. Amen!
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