But He knows

"Look, I go forward, but He is not there, And backward, but I cannot perceive Him; When He works on the left hand, I cannot behold Him; When He turns to the right hand, I cannot see Him. But He knows the way that I take; When He has tested me, I shall come forth as gold. – Job 23v8-10

Two Bible writers had two different views of God, but they came to the same conclusion about Him.

In Psalm 139 the psalmist wrote – ‘O LORD, You have searched me and known me. You know my sitting down and my rising up; You understand my thought afar off. You comprehend my path and my lying down, And are acquainted with all my ways. For there is not a word on my tongue, But behold, O LORD, You know it altogether. You have hedged me behind and before, And laid Your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; It is high, I cannot attain it.’

Compare that to what Job wrote in the passage above. Look, I go forward, but He is not there, And backward, but I cannot perceive Him; When He works on the left hand, I cannot behold Him; When He turns to the right hand, I cannot see Him. But He knows the way that I take.

The psalmist saw God everywhere. Job saw Him nowhere. Yet both of them had a firm confidence that God knew what was going on. Both had the faith to know that God was always there for them.

I see here the importance of what I once heard called raw faith. There are times in our lives when we sense God’s presence all around us. We see Him in everything. The day seems bright, there is a song in our hearts, and we can almost sense God like He was right there in the room with us.

Then there are times when it seems like we just can’t see Him. We don’t understand why things go the way they go. It can even seem like God might have forgotten about us and our little corner of the world.

Seeing God and knowing that He knows is easy in the first case. It is not so easy in the second.

It is those difficult times that are the real test of our faith. Do we have the raw faith to say, ‘God knows the way that I take’ when the way we take is difficult?

God knows when things are going well. God knows when things seem to be going badly.

Do we have the raw faith to trust Him in both situations?