I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you. Therefore, I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.
– Job 42:5–6
This is the conclusion of the Book of Job. Well, not the ultimate conclusion. After this, God restores Job’s health and blesses him with, well, in just so many different ways. But this is the climax, in a sense, of the book because Job, at the end of all he has suffered, says, “Now I see you.” He had struggled all throughout the book to see God and in the end, that is where the whole book lands with Job seeing God, and not just seeing God, but savoring God and being satisfied in God in a way he never could have imagined. In a way he repents, he turns from himself and all his tendencies to not trust in God.
Job 42:5–6 challenges us to walk humbly through suffering.
I read this and I think about when I have walked through challenging days, through suffering and not anywhere near the extent that Job had, but I get maybe to the end of one of those seasons and God brings me through it, and I look back and I regret the times, when I look back and I see, that I didn’t trust God, that I thought I knew better than God, that maybe even I didn’t press in and pray or my thoughts were just not right about God.
I find myself doing what Job is doing here to repent, and I find myself praying, God when I walk through suffering and the days to come, help me to trust in you, help my thoughts about you, to be right, pure, and holy. Help me to walk humbly through suffering. And I just want to pray that over all of us, some of you who are walking through suffering right now, and others who maybe not are in a season of challenge, suffering, and sorrow, but knowing that those seasons are coming for us to pray.
Job 42:5–6 encourages us to trust God in our hardest days.
God help us to honor you in our suffering, to trust you in hard days, in such a way that when you bring us through and we know you will bring us through, ultimately you’ll bring us through to where we see you clearly and fully, that one day we’re going to be free from all sin, and sorrow, and suffering. We’re going to see your face. Revelation 22, you’re going to wipe every tear for our eyes. Come Lord Jesus, come quickly. Bring that about. We know that day is coming when we will see you in a greater way than Job could have imagined, even here. God, we don’t want to get to that day or any day, and look back and see times where we didn’t trust in you, where we weren’t walking humbly with you in our suffering, where we thought we knew better than you.
God, we repent of those things, those times, and we pray that you’d help us to live with humble trust in you and to walk through suffering with humble trust in you, with humble, not just trust, but confidence, oh God, that you will bring us through, that we will see you more clearly than we ever have, that we will savor you more deeply than we ever have, that we’ll be ultimately and eternally satisfied in you. You are our hope, oh God, you’re our hope. So help us to live every day, and especially when we walk through suffering, clinging to you as our hope, trusting you as our hope, and even delighting in you as our hope. God, we pray for this. Only you can do this kind of work in our hearts and our minds when everything is falling apart around us, crashing down around us.
Prayer for the Bosniak People
Help us, God, to trust in you, and to see you for who you are, and ultimately to be satisfied in you, no matter what this world may bring. We pray, this for all kinds of people in the world who are suffering without the hope that’s found in you… Without knowledge of you, without a relationship with you through Jesus. God, please help us to spread the gospel to all the nations of the earth… All the people groups of the world, use our lives however you want toward that end.
For the Bosniak people, over 3 million of them, including those in Bosnia, Herzegovina. God, we pray for the spread of your grace, of your hope, of your peace… That transcends sin, and sorrow, and suffering, in death, in Jesus. God, we pray that the Bosniak people would be reached with the good news of Jesus that we have… That all the peoples of the world would be reached with the good news of Jesus that we enjoy… And cling to in our suffering. We pray this, according to your word in Job 43:5–6, 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.
