“Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him, . . .” (Job
13:15)
“The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name
of the Lord be praised.” (Job 1:21)
I tell ya, life can be brutal, heart-breaking, disappointing. Yet, there is something incredibly sweet – bittersweet – about learning that you can praise God anyway in the midst of heart-ache and pain and trials.
It’s one thing to be joyful because you finally got what you wanted. But it’s another thing to not get what you want and to find joy in the Lord anyway. It’s a much deeper, tender kind of joy. One not based on circumstances, but on God’s presence and goodness and love.
And this can only be learned – you can only get to this point – when your heart aches, dreams get shattered, prayers go “unanswered,” you lose all hope in yourself and your abilities, the future looks dark and scary . . . and yet you still bow down before the Lord and say, “It’s okay! I will still trust You and praise You, whether You give or take away. You are good!”
To discover the joy that is not found in any gift but that is found in God alone (deep, true, lasting joy, not “happiness”) is an incredible treasure. One that can’t be taken away from you. And once you find it, no earthly pleasure or treasure can compare. And you will redefine all the trials that got you to that point as “blessings.”
And it disarms and defeats Satan.
We might “fail” in many things and many things might go wrong, but we can still win the spiritual battle. Because it’s not about what happens in life but about our response to it. You see, if we let the disappointments get to us, discourage us, and make us bitter then Satan wins. But if we can praise God regardless of what life throws at us then God wins. Every time. And we win the spiritual battle and disarm Satan, thwarting his attacks on our faith.
Turn Satan’s attacks into victories by praising God anyway, even for the trials. Whereas Satan intended to draw us away from God in bitterness, we can defeat his attack by drawing closer to God in trust and thankfulness.
I am learning the incomprehensible joy that comes with praising God for His goodness – of saying “I trust You and love You anyway!” – even when things don’t go the way I want them to go. It’s a joy that Satan can’t steal because it’s not based on anything that Satan can destroy or take away. It is so refreshing to my soul to have found this hidden well of joy in a desert of discouragement. And to be able to say, “This is enough for me!”
