the Fourth Week after Easter
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Daily Devotionals
Day by Day Devotional - Year 3 of 5
Job 1:13-22
Until this moment, the LORD had surrounded His servant, Job, with a protective hedge (v. 10). In the same way, an invisible barrier protects believers at one and the same time against attacks from outside and against their own tendency to leave the place of blessing. Christian children, for example, are guarded by the watchful authority of their parents and restrained by the teaching they hear in the meetings. May they never deliberately break down this hedge (Ecclesiastes 10:8)!
Satan has obtained permission to act (cf. Luke 22:31). He chooses a favourable day and, with an eagerness which emphasizes his hatred, he strikes poor Job four times in quick succession. In one moment, our patriarch, without so much as being able to draw breath (Job 9:18), finds himself stripped of all his prosperity and deprived of his ten children. Standing in the midst of this ruin, he is not shaken by it, showing that his confidence did not rest in the good things he had received but in Him who had given them. "Doth Job fear God for nought?", the devil had insinuated (v. 9). Through grace, Job proves him wrong; even when he has nothing left, he continues to fear God. Satan had declared, "He will curse thee to thy face" (v. 11).
"Blessed be the name of the LORD!" cries Job when everything has been taken away from him (v. 21).
