Yet the righteous holds to his way, and he who has clean hands grows stronger and stronger.
– Job 17:9
Wow, what a statement. Job in the middle of all he is experiencing, in the middle of suffering and tragedy and hurt and pain says “yet the righteous holds to his way and he who has clean hands grows stronger and stronger.”
Job 17:9 reminds us about temptation amidst suffering.
Just think about how when we walk through suffering, how much temptation there is to not hold to your way or better put to God’s way, to God’s Word. How easy it is to go off track, to begin to doubt the goodness of God and the greatness of God and the things that you know to be true and that are true, but the righteous holds to his way and he has clean hands. Just think about all the temptations there are to sin amidst suffering, to charge God with wrong in ways that Job was not doing, or even just to act toward others in ways that are not holy, clean, pure before God and others.
Oh, the Adversary wants to have a field day amidst our suffering to pull us away from God, and Job 17:9 says, “yet the righteous holds to his way and he who has clean hands grow stronger and stronger.” I just want to pray these verses, especially over those of you who are walking through hard days in any way and over all of us when it comes to preparing our hearts for hard days.
Job 17:9 challenges us to hold fast to the Word of God.
Let’s pray. God, help us to hold to our way, to your way to your word in the middle of hard, dark, difficult days. We pray that you would help us to hold fast to your word, to not lose sight or loosen our grasp in any way on your promises, on your truth, to what we know about who you are and how you are always working. For our good God, we pray that you’d help us to have clean hands.
Help us to grow in holiness amidst hard days. Help us to grow stronger and stronger when we are weak. We pray for your strength, the strength that comes from your Spirit, your Holy Spirit in us. God, I pray this over all of us. Help us to hold to your word… To grow in holiness amidst whatever happens to us around us in this world.
Prayer for the Dawei People
God, we praise you for your promises, for your Word that we can hold fast to. We pray for those who don’t even have it. Lord, for the people of Myanmar, almost half a million of them. Most of them have never heard your promises… Never heard about your love, heard about the hope that’s found in Jesus. God, we pray that the Dawei people would be reached with the gospel, that they would come to know you.
God, please draw the Dawei people to you… That they might be counted among the righteous and those with clean hands… Not by their own merit, but by your mercy, by your grace in Jesus. They might have the hope that we have in you no matter what. This world brings a hope that transcends this world. God, we pray that over the Dawei… Even as we praise you for Word to hold onto in hard days, and we praise you, Jesus… For clean hands and clean hearts that you make possible for us by your blood. We pray all this in your name according to your Word in Job 17:9. Amen.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
