Yes, There IS Someone on My Side

Now hear Job’s descent into the misery of the very bottom of the pit of abandonment.

Listen, says Job to his “friends”, you may think that you’re the ones responsible for taking me down. But it’s not you; it’s God (vv 5-6). It is God who has stripped and broken me. It is God who has caused friends and family - even my wife and little children! - to despise and loathe me (vv 13-19). It is God who has pursued me to this bitter end, and all I can do is cry for pity (v 21).

Can there be a greater despair? To be pursued by God’s anger? To be devastated and abandoned by the Almighty God himself?

Or, can there be a greater hope? A tectonic shift. For if God is at the causative centre of these terrifying events, is there not the possibility of purpose and meaning and, yes, even eventually, salvation and rescue?

The absolute marvel of the Christian faith is that it can turn a person from the greater despair to the greater hope. For the same God who destroys is also the one who saves, who rebuilds, who remakes. Ironically, Job’s longing for his words to be written down has come true - for we are reading them now, aren’t we?

Wonderfully, Job’s absolute and unshakable conviction that he has a Redeemer, a Vindicator, an Advocate, is the prefigurement of the Christ who is to come, the Christ who will indeed one day "stand upon the earth," whom Job will one day see as the divine being who is “on his side!”

Respond in Prayer

Oh God, there are times when we absolutely despair. When we are sick and lonely, when our friends and family have abandoned us, when we think it is you yourself who has reduced us to nothingness. Oh God, help us; help us to make that unbelievably miraculous shift of thought, movement of heart, that takes us, like Job, to the place of faith. That we too may know our Redeemer lives! And he is the Lord Jesus Christ.

Michael Pountney

Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version® (NIV®).