Perspective

​God did not design the world as a place of pain and misery, though He can use suffering for good.  Suffering divulges that the world is broken and is sinful (Genesis 3). The Christian desires the future time when God will wipe away all tears (Revelation 21:4).  While we sojourn here upon the earth; tears are an inescapable portion of our lives.  Setting up the argument to trust God when going through pain and suffering, in his brilliant volume, titled, Our Loving God, Our Sun and Shield, Thomas B. Warren observed the depth of loss Job experienced and how he still maintained his trust in God:
 
When one loses his possessions, he can usually gain strength and assurance from his children, his wife, his friends.  If he still has his good health and his sense of his place and worth as an individual, he can gain strength and comfort from them and launch out anew.  If one also loses (in addition to his wealth), his health, and his children, he can still grasp the hand of his wife, and the two may give strength to one another.  But when Job lost his wealth, his children, and his health, his wife also failed him.  If, after his wife had failed him, he had retained his good health, he might have gone on alone.  A healthy body gives one a vitality of outlook which is difficult to attain when one is in ill health.  But even after Job had lost everything upon which many human beings depend, he retained his faith in the one true living God (National Christian Press, Inc., Colleyville, 2003), 96. 
 
Job lost his family, wealth, health, and his social status.  “And he said, Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” In all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrong” (Job 1:21-22). “Then his wife said to him, “Do you still hold fast your integrity? Curse God and die.” But he said to her, “You speak as one of the foolish women would speak. Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?” In all this Job did not sin with his lips (Job 2:9-10). Through all of this, Job never received the knowledge of why all this had happened to him; causing him to conclude:  “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him” (Job 13:15 NKJV).  Job's faith withstood, even though unsupported by:  any reason from God, man, from within himself, or by any hope of reward for enduring the terrible pain and suffering.  Job’s demonstration of his response concludes that when confronting the vast burden of actual loss, God should be praised rather than criticized for the suffering that is present in our lives. God never reveals the purposes behind Job’s sufferings and the Bible records that, “the Lord blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning” (Job 42:12).  Job’s endurance was rewarded by God. 
     Trusting God in times of suffering is the only avenue that will support our peace of mind and patient perseverance (Proverbs 3:5-6; Psalm 9:10; Jeremiah 17:7-8; Philippians 4:6-7). 
 
Steve Miller