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
Pay attention close to that last sentence in Job 10. “In all of this,” in all that Job did in response to trial after trial, to tragedy after tragedy in his life, in Job too now in his own health, “In all of this, Job did not sin with his lips.” He did not say anything that impugned or blasphemed or dishonored the character of God.
Job 2:9–10 reminds us to guard our speech when we experience trials.
I want you to think about the miracle this is when you experience tragedy and trial. There are so many temptations to sin. So many temptations with our thoughts and emotions, even our physical bodies, as we see here in Job, just weary and worn out. There are so many temptations to begin to say things that are not true about God. And Job was on guard. His lips protected this entire time from sin.
Based on this passage, specifically this sentence, I want to lead us to pray for this kind of integrity in our lives, to not curse God, to not speak that which is not true of God, but to honor God with our lips, even when we don’t understand what’s happening, even when we have questions, that we can ask before God, but to ask them in faith with recognition of God and his holiness and his goodness and his mercy and his justice.
Job 2:9–10 encourages us to guard our lips from sin.
So we pray, God, help us not to sin with our lips ever. God, we don’t want to say anything that is not pleasing to you, honoring to you, a reflection of your goodness, and especially, O God, when we walk through trials, please guard our lips. God, help us to think before we speak and to think specifically according to your Word before we speak. We would not say things about you that are not true.
O God, help us to hold fast to our integrity in trial. We just think about all the ways that Satan wants to use trials in our lives to pull us away from you, to lead us to say or do things in the flesh, even to think things in the flesh. God, help us to hold fast to our integrity, to be holy in the middle of trials. We need your grace to do this. And Jesus, we praise you for your example to us of this and your Spirit in us as we walk through trials.
Prayer for the Druze People
We pray that you would help us to reflect your character and, God, to point people to your goodness, to point people to the truth about who you are as we walk through trials. God, help us to honor you with our lips and help us to tell others the truth about who you are, especially when we go through trials. God, we pray that you would help us to do that at all times. Help us to share the gospel, point people to your goodness throughout our lives today.
We pray for the spread of the gospel to the Druze of Lebanon and Israel and Syria. For the million Druze, men and women and children, God, we pray that people would with their lips speak the gospel to Druze people in Lebanon, Israel, Syria, wherever they’re scattered in the world, that they might be reached with the gospel through the lips of your people. We pray all of this according to your Word in Job 2:9–10. In Jesus’ name, 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.
