Job 23:8-17

“If I go forward, he is not there;
    or backward, I cannot perceive him;
on the left he hides, and I cannot behold him;
    I turn to the right, but I cannot see him.
But he knows the way that I take;
    when he has tested me, I shall come out like gold.
My foot has held fast to his steps;
    I have kept his way and have not turned aside.
I have not departed from the commandment of his lips;
    I have treasured in my bosom the words of his mouth.
But he stands alone and who can dissuade him?
    What he desires, that he does.
For he will complete what he appoints for me;
    and many such things are in his mind.
Therefore I am terrified at his presence;
    when I consider, I am in dread of him.
God has made my heart faint;
    the Almighty has terrified me;
If only I could vanish in darkness,
    and thick darkness would cover my face!

I'm going to say something that isn't especially uplifting or popular.

If your faith has never been challenged, or if you've never felt that dark night of the soul, or questioned your faith or changed in your faith...

Or even lost your faith...

Expect it to happen.

Even hope for it to happen.

Job certainly has his faith challenged in the Book of Job. God seems to completely abandon him and leave him lost.

Yet Job is not lost. Not forever. Not completely.

And his faith, tested and stretched, will survive that.

The first time I really felt my faith tested as an adult was right after college. I was far from home, in a bad relationship, and in a job I was unsure about and unhappy with. I missed my friends, my parents, my home.

Someone recommended that I read the book The Road Less Travelled by M. Scott Peck. It's a famous book, that starts with a famous line: "Life is Difficult."

True that!

One of Peck's great offerings in that book for me was on his own spiritual growth. In essence he believed that he could not have grown in his faith had he not had a period of "atheism." He had to un-believe what he had previously believed before his faith could really blossom.

In later books he demonstrated this as four stages of faith development: "chaotic, antisocial;" "formal, institutional;" "skeptic, individual," and "mystic, communal." You can look those up for more information here: Scott Peck Spiritual Development.

Maybe this was something Job learned millennia earlier.

Maybe the learning we can get from Job isn't one of fear of our faith being tested, but instead hoping that it is. Hoping for that place of growth and movement.

Deconstructing our faith before God can reconstruct it again.

If you are there now, there is hope.

If you aren't there yet, there is hope.

And if you've made it already though that phase, maybe there is someone that you can give that hope to.

Lord, Life is difficult. But you are there always. Help me not to be afraid of the tests that come my way, but to be strengthened by them. Amen.