As modern people, we may feel immune to idolatry. Deuteronomy 4:19 says: “And when you look up to the sky and see the sun, the moon and the stars—all the heavenly array—do not be enticed into bowing down to them and worshiping things the LORD your God has apportioned to all the nations under heaven.”

I’m happy to report that I’ve never been enticed to bow down and worship the sun, moon, and stars.

But that does not mean that I don’t struggle with idol-worship. I’m pretty sure we all do, because an idol is anything that takes the place of God in our hearts. The first commandment is, “You shall have no other gods before me.” The last commandment is, “You shall not covet” (Exodus 20:17). Together, they tell us to put God first and not grasp the things of this world, which do not last. In fact, Colossians 3:2,5 says, “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth . . . Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desires, and covetousness, which is idolatry.” (Italics added.)

Covetousness is idolatry.

When I was about ten years old, I really wanted some trendy and expensive pants, but my parents never bought them for me. Instead, I got a knockoff pair, which I loved, judging from how often they appeared in photos. But they were clearly not The Pants.

During the Era of The Pants, I traveled with my aunt to visit a relative who must have been close to a hundred years old. She lived in a tiny house far from any neighbors, with no indoor plumbing and a grass roof. We spent the night there and although the woman was very nice and hospitable, I couldn’t wait to leave. I had never seen anyone so old, and everything just felt old. Black-and-white portraits of long-dead, unsmiling relatives hung on the walls, and a grandfather clock ticked and tocked the passage of time.

Then the next morning her twenty-something great-granddaughter showed up for breakfast, and she was wearing—cue the Hallelujah Chorus—The Pants! All of a sudden that cottage brimmed with new life.

The Pants were an idol that cast a powerful spell. To me, they represented vitality, beauty, and fitting in, while the cottage represented death, drabness, and isolation.

Now I know that we can’t all relate to a preteen girl coming face to face with an aspirational lifestyle influencer in the least likely place, but we all have our idols. We look to them for fulfillment of basic human longings, and advertisers capitalize on this. It’s not the product that we want, it’s the idea of the product. The object itself loses its magic shortly after we get it. It’s the allure of joy, well-being, and great relationships, as we see a crowd of attractive people in a beautiful setting laughing and having fun, with the product in the foreground or at their elbow—perfectly color-coordinated to the surroundings, of course.

This is obviously not rational; we may not even recognize what is happening. But if we’re that easily manipulated, we’re not so different from the idol worshippers in the Old Testament.

In a strange story in Genesis 31, Jacob was getting his household ready to leave his oppressive father-in-law, Laban, but meanwhile Jacob’s wife Rachel decided to steal her father’s household gods.

Why? Was Rachel some kind of thrill-seeking kleptomaniac? The text doesn’t tell us why she did it. All it tells us is that when Laban caught up to them, he said that someone had stolen the gods. Jacob had no idea who, so he encouraged his father-in-law to search everyone, and whoever had the gods would die. But Rachel’s ingenuity saved her. She hid the gods under a camel saddle and sat on it, explaining to her father that it was that time of the month: “Let not my lord be angry that I cannot rise before you, for the way of women is upon me” (Genesis 31:35). (I had to switch from the NIV to the ESV translation here, because who could resist that comic gold?)

That’s all we know, but we can speculate on why she did it. Rachel was getting ready to leave her childhood home permanently. Was she afraid? Did these idols represent something to her that she couldn’t leave behind? She had struggled with infertility, and even after Joseph was born she wanted another child. How could she part with those gods, in case the God of Israel didn’t come through this time?

Do we hold onto our idols for many of the same reasons?

Idols promise what only God can deliver, what God longs to give us. Only He can give abundant life.

That’s why He tells us to put to death what is earthly in us. He is not telling us that we can’t have nice things or have any fun; He’s telling us not to be deceived into thinking that the things of this world will satisfy our deepest longings.

God does not want us to waste our lives chasing what doesn’t last. Those pants I so much wanted are now in the dustbin of Norwegian fashion history. I can’t even find a picture of them anywhere on the internet. But if I could, they would represent the passage of time to me every bit as much as the grandfather clock and the black-and-white portraits in the tiny cottage.

Their power did not last.

It has been said that the book of Job has a fairytale ending—“And then they lived happily ever after.” But I would say that it has a Micah 6:8 ending:

“He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”

It ends with justice for Job’s daughters, mercy for his friends, and a more humble walk with God for Job.

Justice for Job’s Daughters

How could Job’s daughters have received justice, you might ask, since they died? That’s true, and it’s where the book of Job doesn’t give answers: Why did the sons and daughters have to die?

This is one of those mysteries that probably won’t be revealed this side of eternity. And we all have our own whys that fall into that category.

I’m talking about the other set of daughters. Notice how the text describes Job’s family at the beginning versus the end. In the beginning, we learn that the seven sons often invite their three sisters to feast with them in their homes. The implication is that the daughters did not have their own homes.

At the end, Job has another seven sons and three daughters, but this time the narrator names the daughters and mentions that Job gave them inheritances along with their brothers.

I had never noticed this until recently, and frankly it never struck me as unfair that the first set of daughters didn’t have their own homes. Given the ancient Near Eastern setting, I just thought it was nice that they were invited to the parties.

But at the end of the story, that was not enough for Job. He himself had experienced the injustice of falling to the bottom of the social totem pole for reasons outside of his control. Could this be one reason why he made the countercultural decision to give his daughters, and not just his sons, an inheritance? Or maybe a closer walk with God had given him a higher sense of justice.

He acted justly.

Mercy for Job’s Friends

Job had a lot to forgive. When he went through the toughest period of his life, his three closest friends insisted that he was being punished for some hidden sin. Not only were they cruel, but they were dead wrong and they incurred God’s wrath.

But God told Job to pray for them. Instead of just forgiving them, he participated in their restoration through his prayers. This is an extreme act of mercy. Job didn’t cut them off—he stayed and showed them God’s love.

Without mercy there is no hope for any of us, and Job might have realized that. Just as his friends accused him of wrongdoing, Job pointedly questioned God’s justice. Job’s words about God were so harsh that Elihu rebuked him. And yet God forgave Job and blessed the end of his life more than the beginning.

He loved mercy.

A More Humble Walk With God for Job

When Job came face to face with God, he said,

“My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you. Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42:5-6).

Job realized that he had spoken about things he didn’t understand. He had successfully poked holes in his friends’ argument that hardship is always deserved, but in the process he had held himself up as more just than God. He seemed to have accepted his friends’ premise that if this world is not just, then God is not just.

The book of Job makes it clear that this world is indeed not just, but God is, and someday He will set everything right. He will redeem this fallen world, and His justice and mercy will govern.

Even in the midst of his suffering, Job had a glimpse of the coming Redeemer and the Kingdom of God:

“I know that my redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand on the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God; I myself will see him with my own eyes—I, and not another. How my heart yearns within me!” (Job 19:25-27).

Job learned that his own right hand could not save him, but God’s victorious right hand could.

He walked humbly with God.

Beauty for Ashes

The book of Job tells us that Job’s three daughters were the most beautiful women in the land. Is there a theological significance to that? Is it tied to the promise in Isaiah 61:3?

“[God will] provide for those who grieve in Zion—to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the LORD for the display of his splendor.”

Job sat on a literal ash heap, and God blessed him in a way that anticipates the promises in Isaiah 61.

Or maybe God made them beautiful for the same reason that He lavishes beauty on tiny iridescent jellyfish floating in the darkest part of the ocean. So why shouldn’t He give Job’s daughters beauty as well?

It’s a reminder that no matter what we’re going through, “He has made everything beautiful in its time” (Ecclesiastes 3:11).

During the “New Atheist” era, I spent about three years debating atheists on the blogosphere. The last blogpost where I opened comments was “Thoughts on Apologetics.” Although I loved the discussions and learned a lot, I was burned out, and I realized once again that what people really care about is experiencing the presence of God, not arguments.

One atheist, who seemed to be genuinely seeking, told me point blank that arguments would not persuade him. He changed his bio to “I am an atheist” right after that blogpost went live—I guess confirming that he was no longer seeking.

I remember at the time thinking facetiously, “Does that mean he doesn’t care about evidence? I have to use arguments to present it. What does he want me to do, post a video of myself miming the fine-tuning argument?”

But I understood what he meant—as long as God seemed silent to him, he couldn’t believe.

In that blogpost I wrote:

On his blog, Atheist Central, Ray Comfort once wrote a couple of posts about a Canadian Christian talk show host who was experiencing a crisis of faith. The main reason for his crisis was that he had never experienced God's presence in his life, so for him God may as well be non-existent. How much would it help him if I said, "Just look at this evidence and these arguments. Can't you see that Christianity is true?" No, he probably wouldn't be able to see it because his own immediate experience would speak to him more powerfully than anything I could say. As hard as it is to change a worldview, it may be easier than maintaining a radical disconnect between experience and belief, at least for some people. He would need prayer more than argument.

The book of Job follows this same trajectory: argument back and forth for most of the book, followed by God’s presence.

That is what satisfies Job.

I’m not saying that intellectual questions don’t matter. To me they matter a lot, and finding that the Bible could withstand the most intense scrutiny really strengthened my faith.

I have also argued here and here that the book of Job actually does address the problem of evil and suffering.

But it’s like having an accurate map. It’s no substitute for taking the journey.

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Job Gets an Audience with God

I started this series by saying that during the Alpha course the first question is always, “If it turned out that there is a God, and you could ask one question, what would it be?” And in my experience the most common question by participants is some variant of “Why suffering?”

Job actually gets that audience with God. But when he does, he has no question. Job says, “My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you.” (Job 42:5).

Job was a godly man, but he says here that much of his knowledge of God was secondhand, what he had learned about God, and his eyes were opened to a richer, more intimate relationship with Him. He no longer just knew of God—he had encountered God. And that made all the difference.

God used Job’s suffering to draw him into a deeper walk with Him.

Job wanted relief and trusted God enough to believe that He could give it. In his suffering, Job needed God and sought Him with all his heart.

As Elihu says in 36:16:

“But those who suffer he delivers in their suffering; he speaks to them in their affliction. He is wooing you from the jaws of distress to a spacious place free from restriction, to the comfort of your table laden with choice food.”

The Bible often uses this kind of feasting imagery to describe a close relationship with God. Psalm 36:8-9 says:

“They feast on the abundance of your house; you give them drink from your river of delights. For with you is the fountain of life; in your light we see light.”

God is a gracious host who enters into our suffering and invites us to His table. He offers the abundance of His presence. And maybe we’re more open to accepting it when life is difficult.

Jesus Stands at the Door and Knocks

In Revelation 3:17, Jesus says to the church of Laodicea, “You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked.”

To the church of Smyrna, He says, “I know your afflictions and your poverty—yet you are rich!” (Revelation 2:9).

Jesus is saying something important: In the Kingdom of God, things are not as they appear. The rich, self-sufficient church of Laodicea is actually “wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked.” Ouch!

The poor and afflicted church, on the other hand, is rich. This is reality from a Kingdom vantage point, not because the Bible glorifies poverty, but because we are much more likely to reach out to God if we’re lacking in some way.

Jesus gives the church of Laodicea the cure for their condition in Revelation 3:20:

“Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.”

He tells the Laodiceans exactly what to do: Open the door of their hearts to Jesus when He knocks.

This verse is often used to describe the initial conversion experience, and that certainly works, but the Laodiceans were already Christian. Jesus called them to open the door moment by moment, and stop being self-sufficient.

We are all invited to do the same and enjoy the feast of God’s presence.

Alpha talks about Revelation 3:20 and shows a painting that depicts Jesus at the door—“Light of the World.” One scientifically oriented agnostic told me that he was much more interested in that discussion than any scientific evidence for God.

Job never stopped crying out to God for relief, and God answered with His presence first. Then He started rebuilding Job’s life on the ruins, which we’ll discuss next week in the last Job essay.

One of the most controversial figures in the Bible is the young man Elihu, who shows up to speak after Job has rejected the arguments of his three friends, and right before God appears in a whirlwind.

Who is he? Is he saying anything different from the three friends? Is he more than just a young man who seems overly infatuated with his own gravitas?

He definitely comes across insufferable, which is why a peacock seemed like an appropriate picture. He shows up to instruct these older men, declaring, “One who is perfect in knowledge is with you” (Job 36:4). He even tells Job that he doesn’t need to be afraid of him.

Get over yourself, Elihu! They’re not intimidated by you.

Having conceded those points made by the anti-Elihu crowd, I will say that I think he is a very significant figure in this story. His words appear consistent with God’s, and God does not rebuke him.

But first, who is he? And what role does he play?

He is the son of Barakel the Buzite, of the family of Ram. Apparently he was just quietly listening to all the speeches, possibly taking notes.

But some scholars think that he may also be a forerunner of God, like Elijah or John the Baptist.

There are reasons to think he is God’s mouthpiece. He says that it is the breath of the Almighty that gives a person understanding (Job 32:8), and that the Spirit within him compels him to speak, like bottled up wine in wineskins ready to burst (Job 32:18-19).

Prophets and apostles often felt this compulsion to speak God’s word.

His name means “My God is He,” and Elijah means “My God is Yahweh,” so the names have a similar meaning. He zealously prepares Job’s heart before God speaks, and Elijah and John also prepare hearts, often not pulling punches. God appears out of the whirlwind after Elihu finishes speaking, and Elijah goes to heaven in a whirlwind.

How is Elihu Different from the Three Friends?

Elihu may seem like he’s doing exactly the same thing as the three friends—criticizing Job and defending God—but there are significant differences in how he does it.

First, he does criticize Job, and if we’re just talking about the right way to treat a suffering person, he may not be much better than the three friends. I’m not defending his bedside manner. (Nor do I think that John’s “You brood of vipers!” is the most seeker-friendly opening line.)

But if we look at the book of Job from within an apologetics or courtroom framework, he’s very different from the three friends.

Elihu focuses on the actual evidence rather than making unfair and false assumptions about Job.

Elihu summarizes what Job has said and addresses his arguments. He doesn’t go beyond the actual evidence, unlike Job’s friends, who assume facts that contradict what the text says.

And Elihu encourages the others to examine his words, rather than focusing on age or status: “Hear my words, you wise men; listen to me, you men of learning. For the ear tests words as the tongue tests food. Let us discern for ourselves what is right; let us learn together what is good” (Job 34:2-4).

He acknowledges their wisdom and learning, but he asks them to honestly evaluate his arguments. This is sound logic. Arguments should be evaluated without regard to age, gender, or status. In spite of his age, Elihu wants a chance to be heard and taken seriously.

Elihu also invites Job to speak and refute him if he disagrees. He says, “The Spirit of God has made me; the breath of the Almighty gives me life. Answer me then, if you can; stand up and argue your case before me” (Job 33:4-5). He doesn’t just speak at Job—he invites Job to answer him, even though he has just said that God’s Spirit compels him to speak.

This may also explain why Elihu tells Job not to be afraid of him: Elihu is saying that even though God’s Spirit is working through him, “I am the same as you in God’s sight; I too am a piece of clay” (Job 33:6). This is not just gracious—it is also good theology that would not necessarily have been obvious to Job and his friends.

Elihu does something interesting—he claims divine inspiration while also inviting scrutiny and emphasizing his own humanity.

So Elihu uses the right methodology for a debate, and in many ways the book of Job is a series of debates on the problem of evil.

Elihu Presents a Different Theological Framework

But the reason why Elihu wants to be heard is not just because he likes the sound of his own voice—he is actually saying something different.

The three friends defend the Just World Hypothesis, or retribution theology, which says that people get what they deserve. And since Job was suffering, he must have done something to deserve it. It is all about rewards and punishment, or karma.

Elihu makes a different argument: Although God is perfectly just, He uses suffering for our good, to draw us to Himself.

It resembles a point C. S. Lewis makes in The Problem of Pain:

“God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”

Elihu says that God is always speaking to us, although we may not be paying attention. “Why do you complain to him that he responds to no one’s words? For God does speak—now one way, now another—though no one perceives it” (Job 33:14).

It’s not about karma—it’s about education and discipline to draw us closer to God. He acknowledges that some people will just become more distant from God through suffering. “The godless in heart harbor resentment; even when [God] fetters them, they do not cry for help” (Job 36:13).

You may have heard the expression, “The same sun that melts the wax hardens the clay.” That is essentially what Elihu is saying here.

This is God’s desire for us when He allows suffering:

“But those who suffer he delivers in their suffering; he speaks to them in their affliction. He is wooing you from the jaws of distress to a spacious place free from restriction, to the comfort of your table laden with choice foods” (Job 36:15-16).

This language echoes Psalm 23. God spreads a table for us in the presence of our enemies. He uses suffering to open our eyes to the spiritual feast he offers.

The Bible never says that suffering is good in and of itself. The shortest verse in the Bible is “Jesus wept” and it comes right after Jesus heard that his friend Lazarus had died (John 11:35). Jesus doesn’t say that this is actually good because He is about to raise Lazarus from the dead.

Jesus wept. Full stop.

However, in our suffering God is wooing us from the jaws of distress to a deeper sense of His presence. He often uses our pain to motivate us to seek Him for relief, just as the pain of a hot stove motivates us to pull our hand away.

And that’s what we’re going to talk about more next week.

One of the most infamous parts of the book of Job is the beginning, where Satan presents himself to God and claims that Job is only righteous because it benefits him. If God takes away everything, Job will curse Him to His face.

So God permits Satan to take away everything.

Many people in Bible study and Alpha groups I’ve facilitated have struggled with this. Why would God do such a thing? Is the backdrop to everything Job has to endure just a bet between God and Satan?

What does this tell us about God?

First, as discussed here, the book of Job indicates that Satan is involved in evil and suffering. Although God is sovereign, the rest of Scripture shows that the interplay between God’s sovereignty and creaturely choices is complex. The story in the beginning doesn’t reveal all the nuance.

And if we look at the rest of the book, we see that the beginning sets up a central theme: transactional relationships versus true agape love.

Satan bets that Job is righteous because it benefits him. He fears God for His gifts.

But after Job loses everything, he says, "Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised” (Job 1:21).

Satan loses Round One decisively. Job recognizes that everything he has comes from God and that He is deserving of praise whether He gives or takes away.

But things become more complicated as Job is afflicted with sores and as time goes by. His righteous declaration is tested.

Job doesn’t curse God, but he curses the day of his birth. He wishes he had been stillborn. And he says something interesting: “May those who curse days curse that day, those who are ready to rouse Leviathan” (Job 3:8).

Job is the one who brings up Leviathan and connects it with cursing. When he refers to “those who curse days and are ready to rouse Leviathan,” does he have in mind sorcerers or those who engage in dark arts? He doesn’t seem to be talking about a sea animal. This may shed some light on how he understood God’s lengthy explanation about Leviathan in Job 41, as we discuss here.

Transactional Relationships

Job’s wife says to him: “Are you still maintaining your integrity? Curse God and die!” (Job 2:9).

Job doesn’t curse God, but neither does he piously accept what is happening to him after he has been inflicted with sores. He demands an answer from God, and he says that God has wronged him. Job becomes more and more confrontational throughout the story.

But he doesn't walk away. Even when his relationship with God gets messy, Job holds onto it. He keeps pursuing God. And he maintains his integrity throughout the story. He is authentically himself, directing his pain, anger, and confusion toward God.

Satan turns out to be wrong about Job, but the story reveals something about the people around him: They relate to him in a transactional way.

When Job loses everything, he also loses the love and respect of his friends and family.

Job says, “My breath is offensive to my wife; I am loathsome to my own family. Even the little boys scorn me; when I appear, they ridicule me. All my intimate friends detest me; those I love have turned against me” (Job 19:17-19).

He no longer feels that his wife, his family, and his closest friends love him, and his suffering puts him at the bottom of the social totem pole.

This is how he describes his life before the crisis: “When I went to the gate of the city and took my seat in the public square, the young men saw me and stepped aside and the old men rose to their feet; the chief men refrained from speaking and covered their mouths with their hands” (Job 29:7-9).

Then things really changed: “But now they mock me, men younger than I, whose fathers I would have disdained to put with my sheep dogs. Of what use was the strength of their hands to me, since their vigor had gone from them?” (Job 30:1-2).

Satan was saying something very real about human nature. Is true, unselfish, unconditional love even possible? Or are we always looking for something in return?

Even in Job’s description of his own righteousness he reveals his own transactional attitude toward the fathers of the young men who mocked him: Of what use were they to me? Oops!

An Encounter with Agape Love

We’re going to talk more about Job’s encounter with God in a later post, but for now I want to focus on something striking about the end of the book: Job not only forgives his friends, but he participates in their restoration by praying for them.

You could call their betrayal unforgivable. Job’s friends hit him while he was down in the most painful and unfair way. They falsely accused him of gross sin.

And yet God told Job to pray for them.

Job’s deeper encounter with God left him changed. He had met God in a way that transcends retributive justice.

Everything is pure grace. For Job. For his friends. For all of us.

“But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).

God is self-giving love straight through. His love is not conditional. It is not transactional.

And He commands Job to live out this same kind of love by praying for his friends who acted like enemies.

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:43-45).

Can I Love When There’s Nothing in It For Me?

It is often said that you can tell something about people in how they treat waiters and other service providers. How do we act toward people when there’s nothing in it for us? Do we give and serve just to spread joy, and not for recognition?

Can we love those who give us nothing in return and are difficult to be around? Job’s family, friends, and acquaintances couldn’t—at least not when it went on too long.

But God can, and in His Kingdom that’s true love.

Conventional wisdom says that God never answers Job’s complaints, that God just silences Job with his presence and power. But is that really true?

One thing I’ve noticed is that the really weird passages in the Bible are often the most significant. We just need to do some detective work through the rest of the Scriptures to look for interpretative keys.

Job 41 definitely qualifies as weird. Why does God spend the entire chapter describing the sea monster Leviathan in detail, letting us know how powerful it is, and yet it is no equal to him? Is God just flexing? Why does Job seem satisfied after Job 41, as if God has answered his questions?

Leviathan is often considered symbolic of chaos and hostile cosmic powers. And if we look to other parts of Scripture, we see echoes of Satan.

Isaiah 27:1 says:

“In that day, the LORD will punish with his sword his fierce, great and powerful sword Leviathan the gliding serpent, Leviathan the coiling serpent; he will slay the monster of the sea.”

Here we see Leviathan described as a serpent that God will destroy with his sword “in that day.” Satan is a serpent in Genesis 3, and God will destroy evil “in that day.”

Psalm 74:13-14 tells us:

“It was you who split open the sea by your power; you broke the heads of the monster in the waters. It was you who crushed the heads of Leviathan and gave it as food to the creatures of the desert.”

Again we’re reminded of Genesis 3:15, where God promises that the woman’s offspring will crush the head of the serpent.

And just as Revelation 12:9 characterizes Satan as the great dragon, Job 41:19 says about Leviathan, “Flames stream from its mouth, sparks of fire shoot out.” That sounds a lot like a dragon.

All of this symbolism together suggests a connection between Leviathan and Satan.

God’s Power Over Leviathan

In Job 41, God questions Job about Leviathan, asking him if he can pierce its jaw or make a pet of it like a bird. Will it beg Job for mercy?

God describes its power in great detail and makes it clear that he is sovereign over Leviathan. He can do all those things that Job cannot. Everything under heaven belongs to him, including Leviathan.

After God ends his response with a description of Leviathan, Job responds by saying, “Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know” (Job 42:3).

Did Job mean that he now had a deeper understanding of what God was doing, or was he just willing to trust him after having experienced his presence?

Maybe a little of both.

Job may have recognized that there are forces of evil and chaos in this world that he cannot understand or defeat, but God can.

God acknowledges the reality of evil in the world, while making it clear that he is still sovereign.

And the rest of Scripture reveals the victory over evil that Job 41 points toward.

What Does This Mean for Us?

Psalm 74:14 and Isaiah 27:1 say something significant about Leviathan: God will crush its head and punish it with his sword.

Why those exact words? Genesis 3:15 says,

“And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.”

This points toward Jesus and his death and resurrection. God in the flesh crushed the serpent’s head and defeated sin, death, and the forces of evil.

Evil and suffering will still exist until God creates a new heaven and a new earth, but the Kingdom of God is in our midst and we can live in his victory here and now.

God will punish Leviathan with his sword. This brings to mind the sword of the Spirit, which Ephesians 6:17 says is the Word of God.

When Jesus was tempted by the devil in the wilderness, he resisted temptation by wielding the sword of the Spirit effectively.

We can use the Scriptures in the same way.

Ephesians 6:10-17 tells us that we face a battle against spiritual forces of evil, but we can put on the full armor of God and resist it.

“Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God” (Ephesians 6:14-17).

And we can “pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people” (Ephesians 6:18).

All occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. Even though we live in a battlefield, we are not left defenseless. We can ask for help in any situation. As Corrie Ten Boom said, “There is nothing too great for God’s power. There is nothing too small for His love.”

The Victorious Power of God’s Right Hand

When God replies to Job, he is not on the defensive—he puts Job on the witness stand and starts cross-examining him. Can you, Job, do what God does to keep the universe running? Can you crush and humble the wicked?

“Then I myself will admit to you that your own right hand can save you” (Job 40:14).

Can Job fight evil on his own? Is his own right hand powerful enough to defeat hostile spiritual and cosmic powers?

The answer is no for Job—and for all of us.

Psalm 20:6-7 says:

“Now this I know: The LORD gives victory to his anointed. He answers him from his heavenly sanctuary with the victorious power of his right hand. Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the LORD our God.”

God is not flexing. He is answering Job’s questions by also questioning him.

Job’s right hand cannot save him, but the victorious power of God’s right hand can.

God does not explain everything. Why did Job’s children have to die? And how can new children ever replace them? Many specific whys will remain a mystery for us as well.

But his Word does tell us that he has defeated evil on the cross, and that even in the current battlefield, the Kingdom of God is in our midst.

1 John 5:4 says, “This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith.”

Someday evil and suffering will be a thing of the past, but for now God has given us his full armor to fight and overcome.

Back when I used to debate atheists in the blogosphere, there was one thing they considered the Unforgivable Sin: intellectual dishonesty, or Christians acting like lawyers, just trying to win their case rather than engaging honestly with the evidence and logic.

Many of these atheists were former Christians, and they reported that when they first started asking hard questions they got pre-packaged answers that neither lined up with Scripture nor with evidence and logic.

I noticed that some Christians did twist Scripture or ignore clear evidence while debating the atheists. They were acting like trial lawyers who didn’t have good facts on their side. They clearly meant well—after all, they were defending their faith using every tool at their disposal.

While I understand the desire to have answers, how do you maintain your own faith if you know that your arguments are built on deception? That kind of faith would be like an elaborate sandcastle awaiting the tide.

Job 13:6-10 directly addresses this issue, and Job doesn’t mince words:

“Hear now my argument; listen to the pleas of my lips. Will you speak wickedly on God’s behalf? Will you speak deceitfully for him? Will you show him partiality? Will you argue the case for God? Would it turn out well if he examined you? Could you deceive him as you might deceive a mortal? He would surely call you to account if you secretly showed partiality.”

Job warned his friends that God would rebuke them if they defended him in a dishonest way.

And sure enough, God said to Eliphaz:

“I am angry with you and your two friends, because you have not spoken the truth about me, as my servant Job has,” (Job 42:7).

They had defended God the entire time, and yet he was angry because they had not spoken the truth about him.

Impartiality and just scales matter to God.

I want to clarify that the atheists weren’t always intellectually honest either. The man who objected the most loudly to apologists acting like lawyers was himself a lawyer and acted like one. When the evidence was on his side, he was very good at drawing attention to it, but when it was not, he used persuasive rhetoric to appeal to people’s emotions and mislead. He wanted to win.

This is human nature. Romans 1:18 says that we “suppress the truth in unrighteousness.”

But as Christians we have nothing to fear from the truth. God does not need a dishonest legal defense team. He does not want us to speak deceitfully for him, even if our intentions are good.

His Spirit leads us into all truth, and his Word is truth.

Why Did God Defend Job?

The sharp rebuke of Job’s friends comes right after God gives Job an extended schooling, as we’ll discuss in a later post, so why did he say that Job had spoken the truth about him?

Job gives speech after speech complaining to God and demanding that he appear for trial. He’s sarcastic, he’s cursing the day of his birth, and he’s even implying that God is unjust by keeping evildoers safe.

God is clearly not saying that Job has all the answers or conceding his accusations. He addresses him by saying that he speaks without knowledge (Job 38:2).

But Job has integrity. He is authentically himself throughout the story. He doesn’t come into God’s presence wearing a pious mask.

Job does not ignore reality, unlike his friends. He’s pursuing truth, expecting to hear from God.

1 Corinthians 5:8 says:

“Let us keep the Festival, not with the old bread leavened with malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.”

God wants sincerity and truth from us. Job was authentic, unlike his friends who used grand rhetoric about God, seemingly determined to win their case.

Who are we really? That’s the person God wants to talk to. Not the person who pretends to have all the answers or speaks fluent Christianese. When we come to God as we are, he can work with us and shape us like a potter with a lump of clay.

Spiritual Formation and Intellectual Dishonesty

Even though God rebukes Job’s friends sharply, the story makes it clear that he has their best interests in mind.

Job’s friends had every reason to believe that Job was a good man because they knew him well, but they suppressed that truth in defense of God. We discuss here how they gradually went from being supportive friends to becoming abusive as they defended a false doctrine. It had a negative impact on their spiritual formation.

But the act of suppressing the truth would also have had a negative impact on them.

The more we reject clear evidence, the more natural it becomes to do so. Every act of deception makes the next one easier. Romans 6:17-18 says that we become slaves to our choices, whether to sin or righteousness. Our choices shape the people we become. This is spiritual formation in a nutshell.

While Job was becoming more and more a person of integrity, his friends were heading in the opposite direction, undermining their own faith and ability to discern truth.

God loved Job’s friends just as much as he loved Job, and he didn’t want them defending him in an intellectually dishonest way. It didn’t do them or anyone else any good.

Methodology Matters

Our legal system is designed to uncover the truth. It’s not perfect by any means, but it takes into account human bias and seeks to counteract it. Lawyers have to follow strict legal procedure.

They can’t lie in a courtroom, but they can use rhetoric to obscure the truth to create reasonable doubt. Criminal defendants have a constitutional right to effective legal representation.

Although lawyers have an ethical duty to their clients—even guilty ones—the system itself is built on evidence and the power of cross-examination to ferret out the truth and promote justice.

Proverbs 18:17 recognizes this power: “In a lawsuit the first to speak seems right, until someone comes forward and cross-examines.”

But as Christians we represent God, not a guilty criminal defendant, so there is never any reason to deny reality and use logical fallacies.

“The wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere,” (James 3:17).

And let’s not forget that “I don’t know” is a perfectly acceptable answer when that is the truth. One of the central points of the book of Job is the limits of human knowledge.

The summer I was pregnant with Ingrid I attended a church service where the pastor said that if you haven’t experienced hardship yet, you will.

I didn’t like that message at all.

The most hardship I had ever experienced was coming to the U.S. from Norway as a child and not speaking much English. And it really wasn’t that bad.

I remember thinking that I could avoid suffering by just being a good enough Christian, praying enough, etc. In other words, I was in control.

The first crack in that illusion came almost immediately after I stepped out of the church service. Our cat disappeared. We looked for her every day that summer we lived in Grand Rapids, but we never found her.

The following summer it completely shattered, when five-month-old Ingrid started having uncontrollable seizures, as I recount here. It was by far the hardest time in our lives, and I went through a crisis of faith as a result.

How could it be fair for a beautiful, innocent baby to have to endure what was to come?

The Just World Hypothesis

During most of the book of Job, his three friends try to prove that life is fair and people get what they deserve. This is a very human tendency called the Just World Hypothesis. We cling to it because it gives us a sense of control, and we feel that there must be justice or karma in the world. Otherwise, how could God be just?

Job’s friends doubled down on the Just World Hypothesis.

Their logic went like this:

• God is just.

• Therefore, he rewards the righteous and punishes the evildoers.

• Job is suffering.

• Therefore, Job is an evildoer.

This is a very neat syllogism. You can even string together Bible verses to support it, especially from wisdom literature like the book of Proverbs. Wise, good actions often lead to a better life. Actions have consequences.

But reality is far more complicated, and the book of Job adds nuance to complex questions. Why is there evil and suffering in the world? Why do the innocent suffer and evildoers prosper?

We know that the Just World Hypothesis is unbiblical because the book of Job starts out by saying that Job was righteous, and it ends with God telling Job’s friends that they were wrong.

Jesus also sets the record straight in John 9:1-3. The disciples saw a man blind from birth and asked Jesus “who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”

Jesus answered by saying that neither the man nor his parents sinned, but it happened so that God’s works would be displayed.

Likewise, in Luke 13:1-5, Jesus makes it clear that those who suffer are no greater sinners than those who do not, “but unless you repent, you too will all perish.”

He echoes the book of Job: The Just World Hypothesis is false.

However, Jesus is making a connection between sin and suffering in that we have all sinned and sin leads to decay and death. Therefore, we need to repent and put our faith in him.

But that is different from saying that those who suffer are greater sinners than those who do not. Jesus and the book of Job clearly refute that.

But How Could They Know?

When we think of Job’s friends we think of the worst possible “comforters” during hard times. They were rebuked by both Job and God himself.

But if they were not privy to the beginning and end of the book of Job and they hadn’t heard the teachings of Jesus, who could blame them for believing the Just World Hypothesis? Weren’t their hearts in the right place when they defended God?

Absolutely not, and the state of their hearts was exactly the problem. Even though they sincerely believed a false doctrine they were blameworthy because it led them to treat a suffering friend in an incredibly cruel way. They didn’t listen to Job. They blamed him for his suffering. They made up lies about him.

They quashed their moral compass in defense of their theological framework. Yes, they didn’t know, but then they should have said, “I don’t know,” or “I could be wrong.” Instead, they gave speech after speech trying to prove their point. The problem wasn’t their ignorance—it was their certainty, and how it shaped their character over the course of the story.

In the beginning, Job’s friends were very supportive. They were exemplary, in fact. They came from far away to see Job. They sat with him in silence and grieved with him for a week.

Then Job opened his mouth and started cursing the day of his birth.

And Eliphaz couldn’t resist giving an eloquent speech rebuking Job. He took for granted that God was disciplining Job, who then challenged Eliphaz to show him where he had been wrong.

This went back and forth with the friends taking turns grandstanding and getting progressively harsher, to the point where they started hurling lies at him. In Job 22, Eliphaz says, “Is not your wickedness great, and your iniquity without end?” And then he made a series of false accusations. We know they’re false because the beginning of the book describes Job as a righteous man.

All in defense of a false doctrine.

A major theme in the book of Job is epistemological humility, or the willingness to accept that there are limits to our knowledge. There are many places in the Bible where you can say that two things are true at the same time, and we have to make space for nuance. We can’t know everything, and that’s okay.

What is not okay is the spiritual deformation that took place in Job’s friends as they rebuked him in such a harsh way. They went from being very good friends to hurting Job deeply.

Ephesians 4:15 says to speak the truth in love. Job’s friends certainly didn’t speak with love, and as we’ll explore next week, they also didn’t speak the truth. They were intellectually dishonest.

Is the Book of Job Our Earliest Example of “Church Hurt”?

Church hurt can take many different forms. Sometimes it’s just people hurting other people or abuse of power.

But there is one way that religious people have a unique power to deeply hurt, and it’s exactly what Job’s friends did. They weaponized a false doctrine against someone, making it seem like they spoke from God. This wasn’t intentional cruelty—they probably believed what they said.

Their determination to defend this doctrine at all costs brought out the worst in good men.

If we look at the Babylonian Theodicy again, the friend is not nearly as harsh to the sufferer as Job’s friends were to Job. Yes, he calls him an imbecile, but he doesn’t double down on his perspective and become harsher and harsher.

He was just a philosopher who didn’t have a doctrine that was under attack and needed to be defended.

Please don’t misunderstand me here—I’m not saying that doctrine doesn’t matter and that we should hold the teachings of the Bible loosely. I’m saying the opposite: Doctrine matters. And it especially matters when it impacts our behavior.

But there is probably some daylight between God’s truth and our understanding of it. God’s ways are infinitely higher than ours, which means that he’s infinitely more loving, wise, and just.

No wonder God came down so hard on the three friends. They misrepresented him, making him seem harsh and unjust.

Job had the faith and integrity to stand his ground, but representing God in this way can put major stumbling blocks in the way of nonbelievers and those whose faith is fragile.

If Job’s three friends had been willing to humble themselves in the face of evidence that contradicted their presuppositions, they could have grown in their faith like Job did. So next week we are going to talk about how the book of Job addresses the issue of intellectual honesty.

The Alpha Course always starts the first session with this icebreaker question: “If it turned out that there is a God, and you could ask one question, what would it be?”

When I hosted Alpha groups, most of the responses had something to do with the problem of evil and suffering. If a good, omnipotent God exists, why do innocent people suffer? That question is at the core of apologetics because it’s not just intellectual—it goes to the heart and to our lived experience. Why does God often seem silent in the face of injustice?

The book of Job is not the first to grapple with these questions. The Babylonian Theodicy was written around 1000 BC, centuries before Job, and it’s very similar in many ways. So I’m going to use it to compare and contrast Job in the coming weeks.

The Babylonian Theodicy is structured as a dialogue between a suffering person and a friend who is defending the gods. The sufferer complains that the wicked prosper and the righteous—including himself—suffer.

The friend rebukes him and defends the gods, saying that they are inscrutable and human nature is flawed, but the sufferer should still continue to worship the gods. The sufferer eventually agrees with the friend.

The gods never speak.

How is the Book of Job Different?

You can see that there are many similarities between these two ancient texts, but the differences are significant. First, the Babylonian Theodicy primarily defends the gods in the face of suffering and evil. Job goes much deeper than that.

In this series I will explore the book of Job from within an apologetics framework. During the “New Atheism” era, I spent three years engaging with atheists on my blog and elsewhere online. Some of what I learned comes up in the book of Job.

Here are some of the reasons why I love the book of Job, and we will explore them in greater detail in this series:

First, it refutes the “Just World Hypothesis,” or the idea that people who suffer must deserve it in some way. The book of Job makes it clear that this is false. Although Job’s friends are very compassionate in the beginning, over time they seem to really struggle with the idea that an innocent person could suffer the way Job did, so they invent sins for Job in order to preserve their theological framework.

They cannot bring themselves to say three simple words: “I don’t know.” They are too certain of their own interpretation of God’s ways.

Job’s friends defend God without showing love to Job. The more Job’s words threaten their beliefs, the harsher their rhetoric becomes.

Second, God ends up defending Job, his honest challenger, and he rebukes his dishonest defenders. Intellectual honesty is a central concept in the book of Job, and I found it to be the most important thing to the skeptics I engaged with, many of whom were former Christians.

Third, God invites lament and honest questioning because they lead to a deeper connection with him. Unlike the Babylonian gods, he is not a detached deity that requires transactional worship. He responds to Job’s authenticity by giving him greater insight and a sense of God’s presence.

I learned through the discussions with atheists and Alpha participants that most people seem to desire a sense of God’s presence more than they want answers to all their questions.

Fourth, I believe that God actually does address the intellectual problem of evil and suffering. When he answers Job out of the storm, he acknowledges evil and chaos using imagery that appears throughout Scripture, but he assures Job that he is still sovereign. He points to the order in creation to reveal something about his character. He is not capricious, but his ways are infinitely higher than our ways.

Fifth, the mysterious young man Elihu is often overlooked, but he plays a significant role. He does apologetics right by addressing evidence (what Job has actually said), rather than assuming that Job must have committed great sins because of his suffering. Who is he and why does God not rebuke him along with Job’s three friends?

Through Doubt to Deeper Faith

When I read the book of Job, I hear some echoes of the skeptics I used to talk with. Job repeatedly pokes holes in his friends’ weak defense of God. For example, he says in Job 21:19, “It is said, ‘God stores up the punishment of the wicked for their children.’ Let him repay the wicked, so that they themselves will experience it!”

He is challenging conventional wisdom at the time, something that Scripture would later reject.1 He is simply speaking out of his innate sense of justice, refusing to quash his moral compass in a misguided defense of God.

He holds onto his integrity and he holds onto God. And as a result, he comes through his ordeal with a deeper and more robust faith.

The book of Job demonstrates that God, the Creator of the universe, is gracious enough to answer the summons and appear for trial. He wants to hear the pain and the questions, and he answers to the extent that we are capable of understanding.

He doesn’t remain silent and inscrutable like the Babylonian gods.

In C. S. Lewis’s novel Till We Have Faces, he reimagines the myth of Cupid and Psyche from the perspective of Orual, Psyche’s older sister. Throughout the book Orual is preparing an argument against the gods because of the suffering she has endured.

But in the end she realizes that she had not brought her true self before the gods. Lewis asks, “How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?”

Job, on the other hand, is authentically himself. He has integrity throughout.

But like Job, Orual comes to realize that God’s presence is ultimately what matters. She says, “I ended my first book with the words, ‘no answer.’ I know now, Lord, why you utter no answer. You are yourself the answer. Before your face questions die away. What other answer would suffice? Only words, words; to be led to battle against other words.”

God is the answer. The book of Job contains “words, words; to be led to battle against other words,” but in the end God’s presence is the answer.

Still, unlike the Babylonian gods and the Greek gods, God also answers. And we will explore those answers in the coming weeks.

My third pregnancy ended at twenty weeks, when my doctor no longer detected a heartbeat. Matthew was born with the umbilical cord tightly wrapped around his arm, cutting off everything he needed to live and grow.

Just like that, it was over and the maternity clothes went into storage.

“Matthew” was the name we had chosen for a boy, and it means “gift of God.” How could this have been a gift? It wasn’t until years later that I saw it.

Although Matthew never took a single breath, his life preached a sermon about prayer that I’ve never forgotten.

Prayer as the Lifeline

The umbilical cord is the baby’s lifeline, carrying oxygen and nutrients from the mother that sustain life and promote growth. Prayer is the lifeline from God to us and from us to other people through intercession. It means opening our hearts to allow the life-giving blood of Jesus to flow to and through us, building up and blessing other people.

In Galatians 4:19, Paul says:

“My dear children, for whom I am again in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in you.”

He illustrated his work for the Gospel with a pregnancy and childbirth analogy.

The Power to Create

After Eve gave birth to Cain, she exclaimed, “With the help of the LORD I have brought forth a man” (Genesis 4:1). She had made an actual person. Pause for a moment and think about what a miracle that actually is. The fact that it happens all the time—life begets more life—doesn’t make it any less of a miracle.

But the man that Eve had produced went on to murder his brother, so the miracle took a dark turn. We all need more than just biological life. We need redemption.

The Hebrew word for “brought forth” does a lot of work. Qanah also means to “purchase,” and it echoes the language used for God’s redemption of humanity. He has purchased us by his blood.

Just as Eve brought forth a baby through her cooperation with God and her umbilical cord, we participate in God’s work of redemption through our prayers.

Prayer is our lifeline through which God builds his Kingdom in the world. We pray and God works, just as a pregnant woman eats, drinks, breathes, and lives, while the baby grows.

As I explore here, the New Testament often uses two words for “life.” Bios is biological life, the kind that transmits through an umbilical cord. Zoe is spiritual life that is eternal.

Practicing God’s presence through prayer connects us to God’s zoe life. And through intercessory prayer we help connect other people to God, so they receive zoe and grow into God’s blueprint for them.

But what does that look like?

Building God’s Kingdom on Earth as in Heaven

You may have noticed that I’m mixing metaphors here. I was talking about growth and life, and suddenly I’m using words like “blueprint” and “building.” The Bible mixes those two metaphors all the time, sometimes in the same sentence.

Ephesians 2:21-22 says that we are to grow into a holy temple in the Lord, being built together with other believers into a dwelling place for the Lord. Colossians 2:7 says, “Let your roots grow down into him, and let your lives be built on him.” 1 Corinthians 3:9 expresses the same general idea: “You are God’s field, God’s building.”

This is clearly intentional. These two analogies together help us understand the mystery of the Kingdom of God in our midst. Our role is some combination of staying planted and building, with the understanding that the Holy Spirit is actually doing the building through us.

The same principle is at work in pregnancy. We participate, but God is actually building the baby, according to a blueprint—the DNA.

So when we pray, “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10), we are building up the Kingdom of God according to his heavenly blueprint.

This is why praying the promises in the Bible is so powerful. They represent God’s perfect will—to make us what God always intended us to be.

Charles Spurgeon says, “Prayer irrigates the fields of life with the waters which are stored up in the reservoirs of promise.”

This is a beautiful picture of what prayer does. It doesn’t change God’s mind—it lays hold of what he has already purchased for us.

It makes you more fully yourself. If you are a palm tree, it doesn’t turn you into an oak, but it makes you into the healthiest and best possible palm tree you can be. If you are an acorn, it will turn you into an oak tree because that’s what God always intended for an acorn to become.

And when we pray for other people, we irrigate their lives with the same living water, participating with God in helping them to grow into their true identities.

Complete in Christ

At twenty weeks, Matthew’s body was only half formed. His source of bios life was cut off before he could breathe and eat on his own. His formation ended halfway through the pregnancy.

In our own nature we are all incomplete, even though we go on living. We fall short of the glory of God in many ways.

But we are complete in Christ, through his finished work on the cross. His zoe life is available through a cord that can’t be severed, and it builds us up into God’s perfect will for us.

This can be a slow journey, because we naturally gravitate to bios, unless our source runs dry. That’s when God can use our hardship to help us tap into his infinite reservoirs.

“Keep Praying and Don’t Give Up”

Prayer is very powerful. How can it not be, when it connects us to a miracle-working God and aligns us with his will to build up his Kingdom?

But it’s also hard, because just as a seedling grows underground and may not be visible for some time, prayer often doesn’t yield immediate results. It is a central spiritual discipline that requires persistence.

Jesus makes this point with a striking parable about a widow who is so persistent in her request for justice that the unjust judge fears she may give him a black eye (Luke 18:5). (Yes, that’s what the original Greek says.)

And then we have the man who wakes up his neighbor in the middle of the night asking for bread for a visitor and refusing to take no for an answer. Who does that? Thankfully not my neighbors!

The point Jesus is making is clear: Don’t be timid. You won’t offend God by bringing the same request to him over and over again. Instead he warns us about giving up too easily. Does the Bible promise it? Well, then it’s not presumptuous to expect God to be faithful to his word.

Building, planting, irrigating . . . these are words that imply persistence. This is not magic. Creation and everyday life instruct us on how prayer connects us to the Kingdom of God.

All of creation tells us that God is faithful, even when we can’t see it. The sun rises every morning and sets every evening. Gravity works every time we drop something.

God is not capricious.

Still, we have all experienced unanswered prayer, but God will meet us there and build his Kingdom on the ruins.

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What are your thoughts on the topic of prayer? I would love to hear from you in the comments!

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One story in particular stuck with me. The witch, Madam Mim, has stolen Tinkerbell’s fairy dust, and she’s flying away with it. A character expresses concern, and Tinkerbell says, “Don’t worry about it. She has to think good thoughts or she won’t get very far.”

Sure enough, the next frame shows Madam Mim on the ground with stars swirling around her head. The fairy dust had already lost its effectiveness.

This story has echoes of the Kingdom of God. What does fairy dust in a Disney comic have in common with the Kingdom of God? Both have built-in constraints on our power. In God’s Kingdom, authority is given for a specific purpose: to build up and not tear down.

In 2 Corinthians 10:8, Paul says:

“So even if I boast somewhat freely about the authority the Lord gave us for building you up rather than tearing you down, I will not be ashamed of it.”

The context here is the hierarchical Roman society, where power was paramount. The Apostle Paul, the man who wrote most of the letters in the New Testament and one of the most quoted authors in history, had limited authority.

He did not have authority to dominate, intimidate, bully, or exclude.

This has always been countercultural, even in churches. In the Kingdom of God, authority does not come from our place in a hierarchy. It comes from God, and it’s conditional.

If we are tearing down other people, our authority is illusory from a Kingdom perspective. There are no power-grabs or ego trips in the Kingdom of God. That’s worldliness even when spoken in Christianese.

We are called to speak life. To build up.

Speaking Life and Blessing

What is the Kingdom of God in our midst? Andrew Murray says:

“What is the Kingdom of God? It is that spiritual state in which the life of God and of heaven is made accessible to men, and they enter into its enjoyment here on earth.”

This definition incorporates the many ways the Bible illustrates the Kingdom of God: it is empowered by the Holy Spirit and it flows like a river of life that brings growth and flourishing. The Kingdom of God is also where God’s will is done “on earth is it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10).

So what does that mean for our words? First, our words have tremendous power. Proverbs 18:21 says, “The tongue has the power of life and death, and those who love it will eat its fruit.”

What we say is a matter of life and death. It can change the trajectory of a life for better or for worse.

Our words can be like seeds we sow that germinate and eventually produce good fruit. Or they can be like poison that slowly kills.

James 3:9 says, “With [the tongue] we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God.”

The word “bless” here is eulogeo, which is the Greek version of the Hebrew word barak. As you can probably tell, that’s where we get the word “eulogy.” To bless God is to praise and glorify him, and to bless other people is to build them up and not tear them down with our words.

We don’t have to wait until someone is dead to “eulogize” them in this way.

But what exactly does it mean? Should we just go through life telling pretty lies about people? Every time someone dies, we’re told they lit up every room. (So you probably shouldn’t go around lighting up rooms. Seems risky.)

Neither Jesus nor the apostles engaged in empty flattery, so that’s not what it means to bless people. Ephesians 4:29 says:

“Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.”

Again we see that true Kingdom authority is to build other people up. But here it adds something else: “according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.”

Did Jesus build anyone up when he called the religious leaders of his time hypocrites? Yes he did. He spoke truth to power for the benefit of his listeners. His words were honest and direct, but not destructive.

And he clearly established for his followers that the Kingdom of God is governed by love and humility, not the control and judgment of the religious leaders.

His words benefited those who listened and took them to heart.

But what does it mean for us? Should we emulate Jesus in this way? I wouldn’t quickly assume that. Proverbs 12:18 says, “The words of the reckless pierce like swords, but the tongue of the wise brings healing.” Jesus knew what was in every heart and how to use his words to bring healing. His sharp words were intended to be like surgery. Unless we are trained surgeons, we probably shouldn’t be wielding knives around people.

How do we know what someone needs to hear—how to bring healing? After a lengthy discussion about the power of the tongue to destroy, James concludes: “No human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison” (James 3:8). So what do we do then? Just keep our lips zipped shut to keep the foot out of the space it doesn’t belong?

The key words are “no human being.” Only God can tame the tongue.

The ability to speak life comes from the same place all Kingdom life flows from: the Holy Spirit. Only the Holy Spirit can build up the Kingdom, and he does it by working through us.

Colossians 4:6 says, “Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.”

The Greek word translated as “grace” in this passage is charis, and it means delight, sweetness, charm, and loveliness. Unsurprisingly, this is the root word of “charisma.”

I love the fact that charis is the same word used to describe what we receive from God, because how do we always know how to answer everyone? We may want to bless, but sometimes our clumsy words are misconstrued by the other person.

The answer is that we don’t know how to answer everyone unless God gives us his grace. We don’t know exactly what the other person needs.

We can cultivate a habit of committing every text and every seemingly low-stakes conversation to God, asking him to use us to build the other person up. That’s what it means to speak charis—to let his grace and life flow through our words to others.

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Have you ever wondered why there are so many infertile women in the Bible?

Sarah. Rebekah. Rachel. Hannah. Elizabeth.

The list goes on.

If the Bible were a novel, an editor might recommend giving some of these heroines different challenges—you know, mix things up a bit. But it’s nonfiction, and the stories have a point.

Barrenness is a significant theme in the Bible. Not just barrenness of the womb, but also the land. The Bible is set in the Middle East, amidst vast stretches of desert.

It’s the perfect evocative backdrop for what God came to give:

“Behold, I am about to do something new; even now it is coming. Do you not see it? Indeed, I will make a way in the wilderness and streams in the desert (Isaiah 43:19).

Streams in the desert mean life.

But let’s go back to these barren women again. In their ancient Near Eastern culture, barrenness was deeply shameful since a woman’s primary role was to bear children, especially sons. Fruit of the land and fruit of the womb were considered evidence of God’s favor.

Genesis 1:28 says,

“God blessed [humans] and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it.’”

If a woman couldn’t reproduce, God appeared to have withheld his blessing.

But God chose these barren women to demonstrate a new kind of life.

Bios and Zoe Life

The New Testament often uses two Greek words for life: bios and zoe. Bios is the natural life that we are all born with that makes reproduction possible, and that slowly depletes throughout our lives, leading to death.

Zoe, on the other hand, is divine, eternal life. It is the life of the Spirit of God, and it is infinite. This is the kind of life Jesus came to give us:

“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have [zoe] and have it abundantly” (John 10:10).

Jesus came to give abundant life.

Bios and zoe are not either/or. In the stories of these barren women bios fell short. The natural blessings that everyone else took for granted were elusive for them, and they and their husbands cried out to God, who responded by bringing life into their barrenness.

The zoe life completed their bios life.

Blessing Others With Zoe

When these women eventually conceived, they gave birth to sons who would bless many. Sarah and Rebekah were ancestors of the Messiah. Rachel had Joseph, who saved many lives during a time of famine. Hannah had Samuel, who became a prophet and one of the greatest judges in Israel. And Elizabeth had John the Baptist, another prophet and the forerunner of Jesus. They were all part of God’s redemptive history.

So the blessing extended outwards in powerful ways.

But not everyone will have biological children, and God speaks to the barren woman in Isaiah 54:1:

“‘Sing, barren woman, you who never bore a child; burst into song, shout for joy, you who were never in labor; because more are the children of the desolate woman than of her who has a husband,’ says the LORD.”

This is a profoundly beautiful verse. The Hebrew word translated “desolate woman” is shamem, and it’s the same word used to describe King David’s daughter Tamar, who was raped by her half-brother Amnon. After the rape, “Tamar lived in her brother Absalom’s house, a desolate woman” (2 Samuel 13:20). That seems to be the end of Tamar’s story.

She never received justice in any meaningful way. David became “very angry” but did nothing. Absalom told Tamar to remain silent about what happened and then had Amnon killed a couple of years later. Meanwhile, nothing changed for Tamar.

Shamem means utter ruin.

But God says to Tamar, the beautiful princess turned shamem, “Burst into song, shout for joy!” When her father, the king, has seemingly disappeared from the picture, the true King sees her.

And this verse goes way beyond childlessness. It pertains to every single place of barrenness, loss, and ruin.

Zoe life is infinite. It’s Kingdom life.

God consistently chooses the shamem as the entry point for Kingdom life. Where bios falls short, zoe begins.

This is why Jesus says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:3).

The Kingdom of God belongs to those who know they need God, who are like the thirsty ground that takes in the rain. Have you noticed how easily spiritual complacency sets in when everything is going well? If we think our own resources are sufficient, we will not seek the zoe life that Jesus gives.

The command to be fruitful and multiply was never just about biology. If bios has fallen short—and even if it hasn’t—we can have far more children spiritually than physically. As Isaiah 54:1 says, “More are the children of the desolate woman than of her who has a husband.”

In C. S. Lewis’s allegorical book The Great Divorce, he imagines what Isaiah 54:1 might look like in Heaven. Sarah Smith of Golders Green is one of the most luminous spirits there, although she was unknown during her lifetime. She is celebrated in a procession of countless people who are described as her sons and daughters, but she had no biological children.

She is the embodiment of Isaiah 54:1, someone with zoe fruitfulness because her love overflowed toward everyone around her.

Eternal Fruitfulness

The stories about the barren women in the Bible were never just about infertility. They point to a deeper reality: God brings life where there is no life. He makes a way in the wilderness and streams in the desert.

They were about how zoe life completes bios life, and how spiritual fruitfulness matters far more in eternity than physical reproduction.

I always wondered what happened to Tamar after her story ended with the words “desolate woman.” Will we meet her again someday in Heaven, looking like Sarah Smith of Golders Green? I’d like to think that we will.

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What does the word “bless” really mean? Is it more than just a humblebrag on social media, as in “Here I am in my yacht on the Mediterranean! #Blessed”?

Spoiler alert: It means more, but the Bible doesn’t actually define the word.

The Hebrew word for “to bless” is barak, and the word for “blessed” is ashrei. The concordance definitions of these words don’t help us much. Barak means to kneel or bless. Ashrei means happiness or blessedness. But this doesn’t tell us what the word “bless” really means, so it feels circular. Bless means barak/ashrei, which means bless.

And how does bless mean kneel? Does God kneel to his creatures?

Often the Old Testament doesn’t actually define words—it just illustrates, which is one way the Scriptures interpret themselves. So we can look at the various times the words appear and try to find a pattern. Is there a meaning that fits when the words appear?

Yes, there is. The words very often appear in connection with receiving or giving life, either natural or spiritual.

The first time we find the word barak in the Bible is Genesis 1:22 where God blesses the sea and sky animals he has created: “God blessed them and said, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth.’”

He has given them life and the ability to reproduce and create more life.

And in Deuteronomy 30:19, Moses says to the Israelites:

“This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live.”

The parallel structure of “life and death” and “blessings and curses” seems to align life with blessing and death with curses, without actually defining the terms. Blessing is life and cursing is death.

The Kneeling Camels

Although God did not kneel before the sea and sky creatures of Genesis 1:22, the “kneel” definition of barak comes from another animal: the camel.

This takes us back to the story of Isaac and Rebekah that we discussed last week, but this time from the point of view of the ten camels, some time before they appear over the desert horizon to a waiting Isaac.

In Genesis 24:11-20, the camels have just arrived near a well outside a town, laden with gifts. Abraham’s servant has them kneel down, while he prays that God will grant him success in finding a wife for Isaac. The word for kneel here is barak.

Rebekah soon appears and waters all the camels.

So what is the connection here with blessing and life? This is a very rich moment that foreshadows and symbolizes the covenantal blessing. The camels are kneeling before a well. Rebekah gives them life-sustaining water.

But while the kneeling camels receive physical water from Rebekah, we receive living water from her offspring, Jesus.

When Jesus speaks to the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4, he says:

“Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

And in John 10:10, he says:

“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”

Jesus is the fulfillment of the promised blessing—the offspring of Abraham—and he has come to give us life to the full. In him we have life and blessings, not death and curses. He gives us living water so that we will no longer thirst.

But it’s important to note that the camels didn’t arrive at this moment empty-handed—they came laden with gifts to Rebekah. And we find echoes of this scene in other parts of the Scriptures, like in Matthew 2, where the wise men bring myrrh, frankincense, and gold to baby Jesus, and Isaiah 60:6, which prophesies camels coming to a glorified Zion, and people from Sheba “bearing gold and incense and proclaiming the praise of the Lord.”

This is not to say that we can earn eternal life in any way, but that blessing flows in both directions: from God to us and back again to God—by proclaiming his praise, praying, and giving our lives to him. We are called to live our lives before God in an inner posture of kneeling.

And blessing also flows outward from us to other people, which we will discuss next week.

The Tree in Psalm 1

While the camels illustrate barak, the tree planted by streams of water represents ashrei. Psalm 1:1-3 says:

“Blessed [ashrei] is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers, but whose delight is in the law of the LORD, and who meditates on his law day and night. That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yield its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither—whatever they do prospers.”

The blessed person is like a tree planted by streams of water. What kind of a tree is this? It doesn’t say, nor does it matter. What matters is that the tree is flourishing. It’s doing a very good job being the kind of tree it is, and God’s blessing helps us excel at being who he created us to be.

The tree flourishes because it is planted by streams of water. Likewise, we bear good fruit when we are planted by living water. That’s what leads to flourishing and abundant life.

Psalm 92:12-14 says:

“The righteous will flourish like a palm tree, they will grow like a cedar of Lebanon; planted in the house of the LORD, they will flourish in the courts of our God. They will still bear fruit in old age, they will stay fresh and green.”

Here we see the direct connection between a flourishing tree and what ashrei looks like. Who doesn’t want to “still bear fruit in old age” and “stay fresh and green”? That sounds like the ultimate fountain of youth—a well of eternal life.

Ashrei in the Beatitudes

But what do we do with the words “whatever they do prospers” in Psalm 1? Does that mean that the yacht may signify the blessed life after all?

Not at all, because we find the Greek word for ashrei in the Beatitudes: makarios. That’s the word the Septuagint, the Greek version of the Old Testament, uses in Psalm 1. So when Jesus says “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven,” he is using the same biblical idea captured by the Hebrew word ashrei.

In the Kingdom of God, the poor in spirit—those who know that they need God—are blessed. They are like the camels kneeling to receive water from the well and the tree that stays planted by streams of water.

They know their source of life.

This, my friend, and not a yacht on the Mediterranean, is the blessed life.

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It wouldn’t be graduation season without the perennial favorite Dr. Seuss gift book, Oh, the Places You’ll Go! It’s full of encouragement, absurd humor, and realism—like its description of the Waiting Place:

The picture says it all: People (and cats) are slumped over waiting for a fish to bite, a kettle to boil, rain to start, and for a clock to turn . . . something.

“Everyone’s just waiting.”

A most useless place, indeed. Nobody loves the Waiting Place, whether we’re waiting on the tarmac for mechanics to fix a plane or in a line that snakes around two corners, waiting for a restroom.

And we especially don’t love to be in that waiting place where we’re bringing the same prayer to God again and again and getting silence in response. Maybe it’s been years. Does he even see us?

The Waiting Place in the Desert

Isaac knew something about the Waiting Place. After his father’s servant had left to find a wife for him, he waited for . . . who knows how long. And he waited in the Negev Desert, a dry, rocky place.

But he didn’t just wander around in the desert like the Israelites did for forty years, he waited by a well called Beer-lahai-roi, which means “Well of the Living One who sees me” (Genesis 24:62).

This is a very significant well. After a pregnant Hagar had run away, God met her there, and she said, “You are the God who sees me.” That’s why the well was called Beer-lahai-roi (Genesis 16:7-14).

He is the God who sees us in the Waiting Place—that dark place where nothing seems to change. And not only does he see us, he sees the Kingdom growth taking place, like a seed sprouting in the darkness of the soil.

When we wait by the “Well of the Living One who sees me,” the waiting is not in vain. God’s promises unfold there.

Isaac had come from Beer-lahai-roi, and while he was out in the field praying and reflecting, he looked up and saw a ten-camel caravan appear over the desert horizon. It carried not only his bride but the covenantal promise of God.

Our Beer-lahai-roi

How many times had Isaac looked up over the horizon and seen nothing? But God saw him. He also sees us. The Waiting Place feels like a desert, but the well of the Living One who sees us is in the midst of it.

Going back to Hagar, she had another encounter with God at a well many years later. Sarah had thrown her and her son Ishmael out, and they were on the verge of dying of thirst. God met her again and opened her eyes to see a well. She and Ishmael drank from it, and it saved them (Genesis 21:14-19).

The well was always there, but God had to open her eyes to see it, in the same way that the Kingdom of God is always in our midst, but we need our spiritual eyes opened to live in it. We need to keep coming back to the well and drinking from it, knowing that growth and change are happening even when we can’t see it.

When our Waiting Place is the well of the Living One who sees us, it is not “a most useless place.”

To all graduates and families of graduates: Congratulations!

Oh, the places you’ll go!

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“How did you go bankrupt?”

“Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.”

While Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises is describing ruin, the Kingdom of God works in the opposite direction—with restoration. But throughout Scripture, restoration often unfolds the same way: gradually, then suddenly.

The followers of Jesus had spent ten days in an upper room praying when “Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting” (Acts 2:2).

All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit as Jesus predicted in John 7:38:

“‘Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.’ By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified.”

John tells us explicitly that water symbolizes the Holy Spirit. What Scripture is Jesus talking about here? He doesn’t make that clear, but it sounds a lot like Ezekiel 47:1-12, which is a beautiful picture of restoration and healing that happens gradually, then suddenly.

Ezekiel is a highly symbolic book—kind of like the book of Revelation. One of the many strange things about it is that in his vision the prophet Ezekiel meets a man who is constantly measuring things.

The man showed Ezekiel a trickle of water emerging from beneath the threshold of the temple. Then he took out his measuring line and started measuring “a thousand cubits.”

At each thousand cubits the water got a little deeper: ankle deep, knee deep, waist deep—then suddenly it became a river that could not be crossed.

The measuring stopped at that point.

The man brought Ezekiel to the bank of the river and he saw a great number of trees on each side of the river. The man said:

“This water flows toward the eastern region and goes down into the Arabah, where it enters the Dead Sea. When it empties into the sea, the salty water there becomes fresh. Swarms of living creatures will live wherever the river flows . . . where the river flows everything will live.”

In Ezekiel’s vision, the Dead Sea becomes like the Mediterranean Sea—a flourishing, beautiful place teeming with life. He uses the same imagery found in the book of Revelation about the New Jerusalem:

“Fruit trees of all kinds will grow on both banks of the river. Their leaves will not wither, nor will their fruit fail. Every month they will bear fruit, because the water from the sanctuary flows to them. Their fruit will serve for food and their leaves for healing.”

As the man measures out cubits and the water deepens, there’s a growing sense of abundance. Suddenly the measuring stops and the water feels infinite.

John 3:34 says that through Jesus, God gives the Spirit without measure.

This imagery points toward Pentecost, where the Holy Spirit was poured out, birthing and growing the church. It is the Kingdom of God in our midst, bringing healing, restoration, and life to dead places.

What does this mean for us? It means that the river is ever flowing, pulsating with life. Now—not just someday. In the New Testament, believers together are the new temple, and the river is the Holy Spirit.

The river always flows, but the problem is that the church doesn’t always live very close to it. And by “the church,” of course I mean you and me. The church consists of individuals.

God gives the Spirit without measure. Are we standing on the bank or settling for just a trickle? Are we ankle deep, knee deep, waist deep, or carried along in an infinitely deep and wide river, bringing life to dead places?

Where are we in the “gradually, then suddenly”?

During the forty days between Easter and the Ascension Jesus spoke to his bewildered disciples about the Kingdom of God and offered proof that he was alive. Then his followers spent the ten days before Pentecost together in prayer.

Waiting in Jerusalem

Before he ascended to heaven, Jesus told the disciples to stay in Jerusalem and wait for the gift of the Holy Spirit. How did they wait? This was not just idle passing of time: “They all joined together constantly in prayer” (Acts 1:14). That’s what the waiting looked like.

If we step back in time to around 586 BC we again find God’s people waiting in Jerusalem for him to fulfill his promises. But this scene lacks the hopeful anticipation of Acts.

Jerusalem is in ruins. It has been captured and destroyed by the Babylonians. The city that was once like a queen is now like a widow or a slave, and she bitterly weeps at night (Lamentations 1:1-2).

But in the middle of these series of dirges are some of the most encouraging words in all of Scripture: Lamentations 3:22-23:

“Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.”

It continues:

“I say to myself, ‘The Lord is my portion; therefore I will wait for him.’ The Lord is good to those whose hope is in him, to the one who seeks him” (Lamentations 3:24-25).

Around six hundred years before God fulfilled his promise to give his people a new, eternal Jerusalem he told them to wait for him and seek him.

God steps into the ruin and futility of “The sun also rises, and the sun goes down” and “There is nothing new under the sun,” with the promise that his compassions are new every morning. Each morning can be a new beginning.

Great is his faithfulness.

He just asks us to keep looking to him and seeking him in prayer. “Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus” (1 Thessalonians 5:18).

We are invited to “wait in Jerusalem”—the New Jerusalem. That’s his presence, where the river flows into the Dead Sea, bringing life, healing, and new beginnings.

His faithfulness never fails, whether we are surrounded by the rubble of Lamentations or on the verge of the “Suddenly” of Acts, or somewhere in between.

One of the most shocking stories in the Bible is God telling Abraham to take his son Isaac up Mount Moriah and sacrifice him. Yes, it is shocking—we can admit it even though we’ve heard the story so many times that it has become part of our theological furniture. There it sits in a dark corner of our living rooms among other difficult Old Testament passages.

But here, as elsewhere, context is key. To modern readers living in societies shaped by Christian principles of human rights, God comes across as a primitive deity—but the central message is the opposite.

God wasn’t testing Abraham to see if he was willing to sacrifice his son in obedience, he was testing his faith. By that time, Abraham knew that God would be true to his promise and spare Isaac. Hebrews 11:19 says, “Abraham reasoned that God could even raise the dead, and so in a manner of speaking he did received Isaac back from death.”

And Isaac must have climbed onto that altar voluntarily, because he was a young man and his father was well over a hundred years old. In a scuffle between the two of them, my money’s on Isaac!

There’s much to explore in this passage, including the foreshadowing of the cross, but our focus will be on the ripening of Abraham’s faith while he walked with God over time. In the ancient Canaanite world where child sacrifice was a normal part of transactional worship, Abraham had befriended a God of love. James 2:23 says that he was called God’s friend. And Abraham learned that his friend was trustworthy.

But Abraham didn’t always fully trust God. When God first told him to leave his home and go to Canaan, promising that he would make him into a great nation, Abraham acted in faith and left. But it might have been faith like a mustard seed that had to grow and be tested over time, because we know from the record that Abraham occasionally felt the need to “help” God fulfill his promise.

Most notably, we have the Hagar incident. Sarah must have decided that God was taking too long, and who could really blame her for her impatience? Ten years after they arrived in Canaan, there were still no signs of pregnancy, and she just kept growing older and older. She was probably getting tired of Abraham waxing poetic about a night sky and God telling him that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars.

It was time for decisive action. So she concocted a scheme to do as the culture around her did and “take” her slave Hagar and “give” her to Abraham, so Sarah could build a family through her.

Unfortunately for Sarah, she found out that people were not chess pieces that she could put where she wanted them, and they would act and feel exactly according to her plan. She failed to foresee that the power dynamic between the two women would flip, and Hagar would start strutting around with her pregnant belly, looking down on her still-barren mistress.

Sarah was furious—with Abraham. And honestly, he did agree way too quickly to this offer. I see no hint of hesitation whatsoever in the text.

They both learned a hard lesson: God doesn’t need our help fulfilling his promises. He does need us to act in faith—which is something Abraham usually did—but when he failed he still learned something about God. Like a toddler dropping a sippy cup again and again and learning about gravity, Abraham’s faith grew deeper as he experienced through cause and effect the faithfulness of God’s ways.

But what does it mean to act in faith? And how is it different from putting God to the test? When the devil tempted Jesus to throw himself down from the Temple and let angels catch him, Jesus replied, “It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test’” (Matthew 4:7).

On the face of it, the story of Abraham taking Isaac up Mount Moriah to sacrifice him seems at least as reckless as Jesus throwing himself from the Temple. How can we know that we’re walking in faith and not behaving recklessly?

The first thing to note is that God spoke to Abraham and Satan spoke to Jesus. The suggestions came from very different places, and both Abraham and Jesus recognized the source. In both cases, the consequences of being wrong would have been devastating, but Abraham’s faith had ripened to the point where he knew that he was hearing God correctly.

When God asks us to act in faith, it usually means doing the right thing regardless of consequences. It doesn’t mean acting recklessly and hoping that God will suspend gravity and catch us. Obedience to God’s Word is an act of faith. It means that we actually trust that God’s ways are best. And as we continue in relationship with him, we will learn to discern his voice in specific situations where the Bible doesn’t give clear guidance.

And even if we do make a foolish choice and have to suffer the consequences, God will meet us there, and like a parent with a child, guide us and help us learn from our mistakes.

Twenty-five years passed between God giving Abraham the promise and its fulfillment with Isaac’s conception. That’s an entire generation. And yet during that time, Abraham’s faith grew as he walked with God through the waiting, the failures, and the testing.

“Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations, just as it had been said to him, ‘So shall your offspring be’” (Romans 4:18). God watched over his Word to fulfill it.

Jeremiah 1:11-12 says, “The word of the LORD came to me: ‘What do you see, Jeremiah?’ ‘I see the branch of an almond tree,’ I replied. The LORD said to me, ‘You have seen correctly, for I am watching to see that my word is fulfilled.’”

The word for “almond” is shaqed, and the word for “watching” is shaqad, so there is a play on words there. The almond tree is the first to bloom in Israel but it doesn’t produce almonds until the end of the summer, in August or September. In the same way, God watched over his promise to Abraham to fulfill it, even though it took a very long time.

After Abraham passed the test on Mount Moriah, God gave him a stunning promise: “Through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me” (Genesis 22:18).

The offspring is Jesus (Galatians 3:16), and now, about four thousand years after Abraham received his promise, there are Christians in every nation on earth.1 That is an amazing, and completely verifiable, fulfillment of a prophecy to one Bronze Age man on a mountain.

Just as the almond tree blooms in Israel while winter still lingers, signifying hope, but doesn’t bear fruit until the end of summer, God faithfully watches over his promises to fulfill them.

Even if we’re still in February.

When Rick and I were dating in college, we had a discussion about miracles. Rick said that he had a hard time accepting the idea that God would break his own laws. I countered that God was omnipotent and could do whatever he wanted. Rick then conceded that God could break his own laws but it didn’t make sense that he would want to make laws only to break them.

I remember finding this whole discussion kind of frustrating. But if you want to know how Rick got away with the audacity of telling God how to run the universe, just look at the picture below.

Well, a couple of decades later, I came to the conclusion that Rick was partially right. But it was a hollow victory for him because by that time he had completely forgotten about the argument, and he had no problem with the idea of miracles.

He was right that God does not break his own laws, but we were both wrong in how we defined a miracle. The definition of a miracle as a violation of the laws of nature came from the Enlightenment era philosopher David Hume—a man nicknamed “the Great Infidel”—and not from the Bible.

Rick and I took for granted that a miracle is a violation of the laws of nature. Dead people stay dead and the blind don’t suddenly see without medical intervention. But the Bible doesn’t actually say that miracles violate any natural laws. It refers to them as signs, great works, or acts of power, but it never says “violations of laws of nature” or words to that effect.

Not only does the Bible not define miracles the way Hume does, neither does the Merriam-Webster dictionary, which says: “An extraordinary event manifesting divine intervention in human affairs.” That’s consistent with how the Bible describes miracles.

Matthew 19:26 says that “all things are possible with God”—it doesn’t say that God can do the impossible. If it did, it would imply that God sometimes overrides the laws of the universe he has created. But as worded, it does not.

In fact, quantum physics tells us that we don’t live in the closed, deterministic universe that Hume assumed—one where miracles would be impossible by definition.

I am no physicist, and I’m not claiming that quantum mechanics explains miracles. I’m making a far more basic argument by saying that modern science no longer supports Hume’s philosophical point.1

Werner Heisenberg, one of the founding fathers of quantum physics has said,

“The atoms or elementary particles themselves are not real; they form a world of potentialities or possibilities rather than one of things or facts.”

In other words, at the most fundamental level of physical reality, outcomes are not determined in advance. The universe operates by probability rather than fixed outcomes, so miracles may be very low probability events in a universe God designed to be open to them. But there could be no miracles without divine intervention.

This is consistent with Matthew 19:26: “All things are possible with God.” Jesus could raise Lazarus from the dead without God having to scramble and change the laws he has set in place.

And I think that was Rick’s original point, that if God, who is omniscient, had foreseen that he would be doing miracles, he would have created a universe in which they were possible. Because Rick (and I) had unknowingly internalized Hume’s definition, miracles would mean God trespassing on his own creation and tinkering with its laws, as if he hadn’t thought things through properly.

Why am I dissecting a discussion between two college kids (who honestly probably should have been studying instead of having these long conversations)? Because my experience praying for Ingrid and others had led me to conclude that the Kingdom of God operates according to laws that echo those of nature. I discuss this in “The Kingdom of God is Like . . .”

And it matters because even if we believe in miracles in theory, many of us feel embarrassed about praying for one. We may have internalized Hume’s definition of miracles as violations of the laws of nature, so if we pray for one, we feel naive or uneducated. Deep inside, we don’t believe that’s how the world works. Even if we truly need a miracle, it may seem more respectable just to pray for wisdom for the doctors or peace and strength. (And of course we should pray for those things as well.)

But we can say that with God all things are possible—even if they are for all practical purposes impossible apart from God—and it’s consistent with modern science. This means that the words and deeds of Jesus do not seem like magic. He is telling us what is possible in the world he has created.

And he is telling us that union with God in prayer makes anything possible. But the most compelling evidence is not philosophical—it’s the pervasive biblical pattern of where and when miracles actually occur.

The miracles in the Bible are not random events. Jesus says, “All things are possible to the one who believes”—meaning the one who receives what God is able to do. He tells us to keep praying and not give up. A woman touches Jesus’s robe and is healed. The followers of Jesus pray continually during the ten days before Pentecost.

Miracles happen in the presence of God.

A story in the Old Testament illustrates this. In Numbers 16 and 17, a large group of Israelites had rebelled against Moses and Aaron. God told Moses to get twelve staffs, one from the head of each tribe of Israel and put them in front of the ark of the covenant.

The ark of the covenant was the place of God’s presence.

The next day, Aaron’s staff had not only sprouted, but budded, blossomed, and produced almonds. From Aaron’s dead staff God brought forth life. Life out of non-life does not happen in nature, so that’s a miracle—symbolizing the resurrection miracle itself.

And the transformation of the staff happened really fast—another miracle. In nature, it takes several years for an almond tree to start producing almonds. Aaron’s staff, on the other hand, went through the whole process of sprouting, budding, blooming, and producing almonds overnight.

And where did all this happen? In the presence of God.

The Bible testifies to this point in many different ways, from Genesis to Revelation.

With God—in his presence—all things are possible.

Have you ever felt embarrassed about praying for a miracle? It might help to know that a common definition of a miracle comes from “the Great Infidel,” and that he used it to prove that belief in miracles is irrational.

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From the days when we sat in high chairs dropping sippy cups and discovering that gravity works every time, we’ve been learning how this world works. But the eternal realm seems shrouded in mystery.

“God works in mysterious ways.” This quote is not from the Bible, but it certainly expresses how things look from Planet Earth. Things happen and they make no sense. Following the rabbit trail of “why” can easily shipwreck our faith. That’s not to say that we shouldn’t ask why. The Bible actually answers a lot of our questions, and it encourages us to keep asking them.

I said in “Come to Me All” that I realized that God’s presence was the answer to all my “whys” and “hows”—but as soon as I wrote that I wondered if I should delete it. It reminded me of a nightshirt I wore as a teenager with the Ziggy character and the words, “Love is the answer . . . regardless of the question.” I guess it struck me as kind of profound when I saw it at Target or TJ Maxx, but is love really the answer to every question? Like, “What time does the plane depart?”

Still, I decided to leave it as is, because I believe that every spiritual discipline is about seeking God’s presence and every promise in the Bible is fulfilled in God’s presence. God’s presence is the Kingdom of God in our midst.

The “whys” are complicated and nuanced, but if we keep seeking God, we may see the pieces of the puzzle start to fall into place. In the presence of God, we are like a child resting in the embrace of a parent—and that is where true understanding begins.

It’s the best vantage point for understanding what the Bible says about the Kingdom of God. Jesus is always saying, “The Kingdom of God is like. . .” and then pointing to something in this world that mirrors it.

For example, Luke 13:18-19 compares the Kingdom of God to a mustard seed that a man planted in his garden, and it grew and became a tree. So a key Kingdom principle is growth, something we understand very well.

In fact, that may be why Jesus says that faith as small as a mustard seed—and not a grain of sand—can move mountains. Mustard seeds grow and so does true faith, no matter how small.

But even when Jesus doesn’t use the words “The Kingdom of God is like,” he is illustrating it. In John 15:1, he says, “I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener.” He is saying that God is a Father, so we can have a close intimate relationship with him, but he is also the “true vine,” so we can understand him through his creation. This is key, because sometimes it doesn’t make sense that a good father would allow something to happen to his child. As parents, we would do anything to protect our children.

But we also understand that the world works in certain ways and we try to teach our children that. Likewise, through the illustration of a vine and branches, God teaches us about how his Kingdom works.

God is a Person, but the Bible also compares him to forces of nature and biological processes, like water, fire, and agriculture. It’s not either/or. It’s both/and.

The vine and the branches analogy is central to understanding the Kingdom of God in our midst because it explains how we receive God’s eternal kind of life flowing through us. The branch doesn’t produce fruit by trying harder or by mental gymnastics—it just stays connected. And when we stay connected to God, he can work in and through us.

Romans 1:20 says that God reveals himself through his creation, and the Bible is always drawing attention to the natural order to help us understand the Kingdom of God. We can understand God in terms of human relationships and the natural world. Although he is a Person, he is unlike us in that he is completely faithful—and creation reflects that faithfulness in its order and patterns, even though we live in a broken world.

Isaiah 55:10-11 compares God’s ways to another familiar natural process:

“As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.”

When we pray God’s Word back to him, it works like the water cycle. Rain comes down from clouds and waters the earth, making it bud and flourish, and then it returns to the clouds. God’s Word comes to us from God, and when we pray his promises back to him it will accomplish what he desires.

But that analogy also tells us that often we have to pray again and again. Those of us who live in California know that it can take a lot of rain to get out of a drought. I remember when we would have rainstorm after rainstorm and the reservoirs were still not full—meaning that we continued to be in a drought.

Persistent prayer works the same way, and we may not see immediate answers to our prayers. Like the natural world, God often works in ways that unfold and grow over time. Isaiah 61:3 says, “They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the LORD for the display of his splendor,” not “weeds of righteousness.” Oaks grow slowly.

We see this pattern in the Old Testament stories. God gave Abraham a promise, and it took twenty-five years for it to be fulfilled. Much drama ensued in the meantime. Joseph went from banishment by his brothers to unjust imprisonment by Potiphar before the dream he received as a teenager came true. Hannah did not receive a promise from God, but she prayed for years for children, and she eventually conceived Samuel, who became arguably the greatest judge who ever led Israel.

Still, we can believe that God is far more faithful than the natural laws he has established and still be confused when our heartfelt prayers seem denied. Some of our questions have no answers this side of eternity, like why did a loved one die when we prayed so much?

But we can be sure that our prayers were not wasted. Psalm 56:8 says,

“You keep track of all my sorrows. You have collected all my tears in your bottle. You have recorded each one in your book” (NLT).

God may seem silent at times, but he hears every prayer and is at work in our lives even when nothing seems to be changing.

The Kingdom of God is mysterious, but it’s not chaotic. Jesus keeps pointing us to the world around us to help us understand how God works. We may not understand the outcome of every prayer or every hardship. But like a child resting with a parent, we can rest in the presence of our sovereign Father and surrender what we can’t control.

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Rick and I got caught in a sun shower while walking our dog, Niko, the other day. You can’t tell from the picture, but the rain is falling hard, and it reminded me of Isaiah 55 and God’s promises. The Word goes out and it does not return empty.

When our daughter Ingrid was in the hospital in the Twin Cities in 1993—as I shared in “Come to Me All”—we stayed with my parents. My dad worked for a technology company when the internet was very new, and one day I walked by Rick and our toddler daughter Chelsea as they were looking at cartoonish drawings on the computer. One was of a tiny man sitting on an enormous hand and breaking into a sweat trying to move the thumb.

That was me.

I was exhausted from praying all summer long and just getting more and more bad news. As time went on, Ingrid truly needed a miracle. God’s hand was not budging, no matter how hard I tried to move it. And in addition to praying, I was doing Olympic-level mental gymnastics to prove that I had faith.

Mark Twain has said, “Faith is believing what you know ain’t so.”

Not to brag, but if that were the true definition of faith, I would have earned a gold medal.

And to be clear, the specific thing that deep inside I knew “ain’t so” was that God would do a miracle within the timeframe I had set in my own mind. But biblical faith is not mental gymnastics that forces God’s hand. He is not telling us, “If you can make yourself believe X, I will give you Y.”

This is not to say that what we intellectually believe doesn’t matter. Hebrews 11:6 says, “And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.” The previous verse honors Enoch—a man whose biography in Genesis is, “He walked with God.” He is listed in the “Hall of Faith” of Hebrews 11.

So if we look at Hebrews 11:6 in context we see that what really matters is whether we come to God. The relationship is what counts. Believing that God exists is just a logical necessity for coming to him. And unless we believe that seeking God is worth it, we won’t do it.

When we drove across Wisconsin back to Chicago at the end of the summer, I was no longer even sure if God existed, and I certainly didn’t believe that he rewarded those who sought him. I didn’t even meet those basic requirements of Hebrews 11:6.

But I still sought God with all my heart because of the panic attacks, and that turned out to be what counted. That’s how I experienced the power of God.

Faith is demonstrated in the illustration of the vine and the branches. It means staying connected to Jesus, like a branch on a vine, and bearing good fruit as a result. John 15:7 goes so far as to say, “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.”

That’s an astonishing promise, and it was probably at the heart of my crisis of faith. It’s what the Bible says, but it wasn’t at all what I believed in my heart. And when I really needed it to be true, God seemed silent.

But he wasn’t silent. He was speaking to me in many different ways, teaching me about the Kingdom of God in our midst. I was just too busy with my mental acrobatics to listen.

It wasn’t until the panic attacks started that I realized something was deeply wrong. What I had been calling “faith” was, in fact, psychologically unhealthy.

At that point, God had my full attention. As I describe in “Come to Me All,” I started abiding in Christ throughout the day. And God healed my panic attacks without medication, replacing them with his peace and joy. The Kingdom of God broke through my darkness.

The question is often asked, “What would you tell your younger self if you could?” But for me, the better question is, “What is she telling me?”

And the answer is that she’s reminding me of many things that are easy to forget when life goes back to normal and clinging to God doesn’t feel like a necessity.

I remember the following Christmas Eve, sitting in the choir balcony. The sermon was about how Mary kept these things and pondered them in her heart. I was practicing God’s presence, and I felt so much pure joy that I didn’t want to open presents later. The Kingdom of God filled my heart, and I knew that opening them would turn that moment into an ordinary Christmas. I wanted to hold onto it as long as possible.

But it wasn’t one of those, “And then I realized . . . And after that I never . . .” situations. (Do they exist?) It was one step on the journey.

Faith is a journey. And it’s also simply abiding in God’s presence. But we tend to get distracted and wander off. We see this in the many spiritual journeys in the Bible. Still, the core message that runs throughout is “Abide in me.”

God said to Abraham, the father of faith, in Genesis 17:1-2: “I am God Almighty; walk before me faithfully and be blameless. Then I will make my covenant between me and you and will greatly increase your numbers.” (Italics added.) He told Abraham to walk before him—to practice his presence—and as a result he would bear good fruit, or be blameless.

That is the essence of faith.

But Abraham’s faith grew over a long period of time, and he made mistakes along the way. We will discuss his journey of faith in a later post.

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So even though I write from the perspective of years of confirmation of what I experienced in 1993, I can learn a lot from my younger self about the faithfulness of God when we simply abide in him—even in desperation, even in doubt.

At some point during my third year of law school, I found an Almond Roca wrapped in a piece of paper in my campus mailbox. It read: “Life is fragile, handle with prayer.” I never found out who put it there, but I did find out that following spring—May 12, 1993, to be exact—just how fragile life could be.

I had completed all my exams and was relaxing in bed with our five-month-old daughter Ingrid, awaiting graduation in a few days. My husband Rick and almost-two-year-old daughter Chelsea played in the living room of the small student apartment at the University of Notre Dame.

Then Ingrid suddenly stopped breathing. Her tiny body tensed up and started to convulse. As the seconds ticked away, her face turned blue. I jumped out of bed, screamed for Rick, and grabbed the phone, yanking the cord out of the wall with my shaking hands.

The seizures continued all summer long, as doctors tried every available treatment. Ingrid spent three months in and out of various hospitals, but the seizures only increased in frequency. Although she had been developing normally at five months, Ingrid stopped cooing, smiling, and crying, and her right hand became fisted and unusable. Instead of developing new skills, she lost the skills she had.

I prayed constantly, pleading with God to stop the seizures and heal Ingrid. I tried to conjure up faith for a miracle, and I didn’t let myself grieve. No part of me could accept what was happening.

I forced myself to believe that God would do a miracle. One after the other, every treatment failed, and she was not a good candidate for surgery. In my mind I envisioned Ingrid being dramatically healed as the remedies ran out. Wouldn’t God want to glorify himself in a situation like this?

On August 29, Ingrid was discharged from one of the premiere epilepsy care centers in the Midwest, even though the seizures were nowhere near controlled. As we waited for the discharge papers, she had over twenty seizures. Then the powerful sedative she had been receiving daily took effect and she fell into a deep sleep.

Tears ran freely at that point, as the wave of doubt I had held back crashed down on me. Of course that crazy miracle didn’t happen! The world doesn’t work that way.

We drove home from Minnesota to Chicago with Ingrid in a drug-induced sleep in the back seat. The eleventh hour had come and gone. I couldn’t pray. In my darkest moment, I started to wonder if God even existed. How could such a thing happen to an innocent baby? Every time she had a seizure I felt as if wild dogs tore her apart, and I could only stand by, traumatized and helpless. Ingrid’s medical report described her as “this unfortunate child.” Maybe there was no God, no meaning to any of this, and we were just really unfortunate.

We were playing Handel’s Messiah in the car, and the words from the book of Job played over the speakers, as if to answer my question about whether God could still exist and be good in the midst of crushing pain and disappointment: “I know that my Redeemer liveth.” Job had found that the answer was yes. I reflected on that, but it didn’t stop the sense that my worldview was collapsing. Too many things no longer made sense. Why would God make promises in his Word that he seemed to have no intention of keeping? Why make the promises at all when they were so at odds with reality?

Darkness hung like heavy curtains around me. A few days later I started to have panic attacks, and they became progressively worse. In my alarm, I reached out to the God whose existence was starting to seem dubious, and I remembered the statue of Jesus on Notre Dame campus that I always walked past on my way home from classes. The plaque said Venite Ad Me Omnes— “Come to Me All.”

God cut through the darkness with those familiar words of Matthew 11:28: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”

The message was clear: Come and rest in my presence. Relinquish control. Don’t ask for anything—just surrender.

I found The Practice of the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence at a Barnes and Noble bookstore, and it became a lifeline for me. Brother Lawrence talks about praying without ceasing, moment by moment. I clung to God like never before. My first thought every morning and my last thought at night was a prayer, and I invited him into my heart throughout the day.

A couple of weeks after I started practicing God’s presence, the panic attacks gave way to a peace I had never experienced before, and glimmers of actual joy broke through. God filled me with himself, moment by moment, and I experienced rest in his presence. The panic attacks never came back.

But Ingrid continued to have constant seizures, and we had to give her the sedative every morning to stop them, putting her into a deep sleep for the rest of the day. Then it stopped working, as the doctors had said it would. It was not intended to be a long-term solution. So we rushed Ingrid to the local emergency room, and she was admitted to the ICU, where they could not slow down the seizures that were again coming every few minutes. The doctor consulted with the specialists at the hospital in the Twin Cities, and they decided to switch out one of the two medications but keep her on the other.

It worked. The seizures went from every few minutes to none for several weeks. Then Ingrid settled into a pattern of a few seizures every other day. The crisis had turned into a new normal of raising a child—now an adult—with special needs.

The summer of 1993 changed me forever. I learned that faith did not mean denying my psychological need to grieve. I could hold a sense of loss in one hand and joy and hope in the other. But most significantly, when God opened up the floodgates of heaven and poured his living water into me, I knew that his presence was the answer to all my “whys” and “hows.”

That fall, Rick and I would often sit in a screened-in porch lit by a hurricane lamp after the girls went to sleep, and one night during a thunderstorm Rick remarked that the veil was thin. The veil between heaven and earth seemed translucent in that moment.

Life was still hard, but God was near.

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When Ingrid wasn’t miraculously healed, the thought that rushed to mind was: The world doesn’t work that way.

It wasn’t a statement about reality. Instead it was a realization that I didn’t really believe what I had been trying to believe.

But how does the world work?

How do we make sense of the promises in the Bible and the claim that the kingdom of God is in our midst?

We’ll begin to explore those questions next week.