Pick Your Crisis: Tornado or Illness?

If Satan wanted to destroy your faith, what would he do first?

He knew that Job was faithful and devoted to God, and thought it was because God had blessed him, so first he took away his belongings with an attack.  Then a tornado decimated property and killed all his children.  Job’s faith in God did not waiver.

Then, Satan was convinced that illness would cause Job to crumble.  And it worked.  Job never lost his faith in God, but his strength and resiliency faded to complete brokenness and utter grief. Job wasn’t trying to rebuild.  He sat in numbness and shock for a weak, doing nothing but grieving by tearing his clothes, rubbing ashes on his head, and ripping his injured skin with shards to relieve his physical misery.

What if Satan had started with illness before the other devastating actions?  Was it the illness that crumbled him or just the compounding effect of multiple traumatic events?  What would Satan choose to do to crush me with misery and despair? My imagination can concoct all kinds of possibilities.  Job must’ve done that too, because he says that everything he had feared and dreaded in the good times had finally happened to him (Job 3:25).

Whatever the answer, God is still in control.  He keeps Satan on a leash.  We have a choice to make – whether we will allow ourselves to be crushed by the uncontrollable dozer of destruction, or if we will climb onto it triumphantly knowing that God will use it for good and not waste it. 

We don’t get to choose.  And it is a waste of energy to contemplate it or imagine all the unthinkable that could happen.  Just know and prepare to not give in to despair.  Prepare to choose to trust.  God will carry us and teach us through the dark hours as we journey out of this world that is not our true home.