So much of the believer’s comfort comes from consideration of the life to come. We must often assure ourselves concerning our future blessings. Any comforts we receive now are only in part, and we cannot give ourselves to them as if they were sufficient to satisfy the soul. Our comforts in this life take the form of pledges of the real blessings that we wait for once we have put off this mortal body. We have the earnest of the Spirit as a pledge of the resurrection of the body. God nowhere requires us to be satisfied with a reward in this life. But to be sure of this future reward we must know that we are reconciled to God. It is essential therefore that we remember what God has done in our lives and that we hold on to the unchanging nature of his promise to receive us as his children. We must walk by faith, even in the darkest times, and not judge him by his frowning providence.
Is Job mistaken in treating the Lord as responsible for what he is going through? In all that he says, he does not mention Satan. The reader has been told what Job does not know at this point: that all this has come about through Satan’s malice. As far as Job is concerned it is only God he is dealing with, but Job has lost nothing by seeing it this way. Certainly he cannot be blamed for not knowing about what has taken place between the Lord and Satan. But does this disadvantage prevent him from praying correctly? No, he is right to address the Lord about what is happening to him. He does not need to know about Satan’s attack to pray correctly. God is sovereign over all the affairs of the believer’s life, and though Satan may indeed be out to bring us down, the fact that the Lord allows it means that we can come to him for help in it. In allowing trials the Lord has a very different purpose to the devil. The devil wants us to fall into sin and deny the Lord, but the Lord allows the same trial in order to train us and strengthen us. For this very reason we may go to the Lord in the hardest of trials and still expect to find him sympathetic towards us. Satan is out to hurt us, but the Lord, who permits Satan to act against us, continues to watch over us with great attentiveness and affection. So while we have a great enemy, we have an even greater friend in heaven.
Satan may interfere in our lives in the most complex manner. While keeping well out of sight, he may try to disturb our relationship with God, and cause us blame God for what in fact the devil is responsible for. It is right in all this is that we should look to God, for none of these things can come on us without his will, but we must not conclude that because he allows trials, he is against us. He has an entirely different agenda to Satan, and in turning our trials to good effect, he always outsmarts the devil. We are warned that our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. When they attack us, God does not abandon us and his greater wisdom blunts the edge of Satan’s attack. Job could effectively pray to the Lord about his situation even though he did not have whole picture, but he needed to suppress all troubling questions about why God was allowing this and, to continue to believing in his unfailing goodness. It seems that James has this book in mind when he speaks of trials and their origin in the first chapter of his epistle. Certainly he uses Job as an example of patience in suffering. What we should hold on to most firmly is what Satan attacks most strongly – our view of God and of his being as ‘very pitiful and of tender mercy’ (James 5:11). Since James refers to this, it seems that this is the Holy Spirit’s summary of greatest temptation that Job faced in all that he went through.