Last summer, my wife Connor was pregnant, and her due date was coming quickly. We knew we’d need greater financial provision to pay for childcare, but I lacked the margin in my schedule to look for a better job. Right before my scheduled paid paternity leave, I got laid off. Then our sewer line broke, potentially costing us $15,000. Right after our daughter Ada was born, a large tree fell on our house, requiring us to move out. This all happened within the same month. Among other trials that followed in the last year, my wife served as one of the on-site doctors during the mass shooting at the Kansas City Chiefs’ Superbowl parade. She worked a stone’s throw away from the shooters and personally cared for many who were shot.
The book of Job has been a refuge of healing for me during these trials. The Bible describes Job as a mature man who feared God. Job was obsessed with seeing God’s blessings in the lives of his children. He rose continually every morning to make offerings to God for each of his children because he had a selfless and merciful heart. Job was incredibly blessed, and he used those blessings for good. Many of us would look at a man like Job and wonder: “Did this man lack anything?” But God had even greater blessings in store for Job that would only be possible if he suffered.
And suffer he did. Job lost wealth and possessions, the lives of his children, and eventually, the health of his own flesh. After that, he was left with a few friends, his wife, and the Lord. But Job’s friends were convinced that Job must have done something wrong for God to have allowed what He did, and they accused him of evil. Job’s wife told him to curse God and die. And to top it all off, the relationship that Job had with the Lord became one of pain and confusion. Job felt far from God and endlessly, hopelessly chastised.
But Job’s suffering was not in vain. Job pictures Jesus as the righteous, suffering servant; the false accusations of Job’s friends picture the condemnation of Christ by his people; Job’s closest confidant, his wife, telling him to curse God and die pictures Jesus’ disciples denying and abandoning him during his death and crucifixion; and Job’s feeling of being far from God can be likened to Jesus crying out on the cross, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”
Just as we periodically sit in remembrance of Jesus’s death during the Lord’s Supper, it is right that we would, like Job’s friends, sit with Job in his misery for a season when considering his story. But baptism pictures the totality of the matter: we are baptized into Christ’s death so that we can walk with Christ in his resurrection. In the same manner, we must ultimately rise beyond considering the suffering of Job to appreciate the glory in God’s restoration of Job.
The story of Job ends in what seems like a sudden footnote: “So the LORD blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning.... and [Job] saw his sons, and his sons’ sons, even four generations” (Job 42:12). I can’t help but read that and think of the “four generations” of disciples that Paul described to Timothy: “And the things that thou hast heard of [1.] me among many witnesses, the same commit [2.] thou to [3.] faithful men, who shall be able to teach [4.] others also” (2 Timothy 2:2).
When we think about Job solely as a story of suffering, we fail to see the bigger picture: this whole life and ministry thing isn’t about us. God wants to do something bigger and better in and through us by the refining fires we endure. When Jesus was faced with the greatest suffering any man has been or ever will be faced with, after great travail and fervent prayer, his conclusion was “nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.” Jesus’ obedience to the sufferings he endured made him an elder brother to countless souls. Who will be the souls we one day call “little brother” or “little sister” because we counted Christ worthy during times of sufferings?
The final word on Job in scripture is this: “Behold, we count them happy which endure. Ye have heard of the patience of Job, and have seen the end of the Lord; that the Lord is very pitiful, and of tender mercy” (James 5:11).
My suffering never reached that of the Hall of Faith, the Apostle Paul, Job, or even many reading this article. But through it, I have grown in my capacity to weep with those that weep, rely on Christ in humility, and comfort the afflicted. Perhaps greatest of all, God used the trials that I endured to bring an invaluable soul into my life. When I got laid off and our sewer line broke, it gave me the availability to preach the gospel to the sewer crew, and I met Tyrese. Tyrese has been faithfully attending my Bible study for almost a year now. He has a passion for sharing the gospel with others. He invited someone to church this year who gave their life to Christ.
We need to make space for remembrance of such gracious gifts as these during the times we are tempted to complain. God graciously grants Ebenezer stones that we can look back to and remember that, just as Christ did not die in vain, he does not allow us to endure trials in vain. I am so thankful—dare I say happy—that God allowed us to endure the things He did. Without them, I would not know my brother and friend Tyrese.
Just as we will never fully understand the “why” behind each season of suffering in this life, we lack the capacity to see the extent of God’s impact on others through us in this life. Who can say how many lives will have been impacted for eternal good because of the short season of suffering my family endured? The little shifts in perspective and character that God shapes in us along the way are the corns of wheat that fell into the ground, died, and sprang forth into exponentially life-giving decisions for Christ. One day, when we’re received up into glory, all that God accomplished through our trials will be revealed, and we will be in even greater awe of His glory and goodness.
“But as for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive” (Genesis 50:20).
David Muolo serves as a Bible study leader and worship team leader at Midtown Baptist Temple in Kansas City, MO.
