By Do you still love Jesus? Is your love for God still fully intact through the fear and suffering spreading over the world? Do you know God well enough that when affliction comes you do not doubt His goodness and love? Are you aware of God’s true character and dealings with mankind that you are not left confused or fearful when calamity strikes?
When Job felt the most intense loss of everything he held dear, he responded to the fatalistic attitude of others (Job 2:9) with a firm belief in God’s ‘Godness’ with te words, “Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?” (Job 2:21). That day of his life ended with this commentary: In all this Job did not sin with his lips (Job 2:22).
Even the Pharaoh in the time of the Exodus, though not a believer in God, couldn’t deny God’s ‘right-ness’ when afflicted by a series of plagues, and affirmed “This time I have sinned; the LORD is in the right, and I and my people are in the wrong” (Ex 9:27).
When King David was faced with the punishment for his sin, he choose a a plague from the hand of God Himself rather than a war from the hands of mankind, for he knew that, unlike man, God is great in mercy (2 Sam 24:14).
The Apostle Paul, when contemplating the ups and downs on his own experience of earthly life (Phil 4:11-12), testified to Christ’s enabling grace through it all with the famous words, “I can do all things through him who strengthens me” (Phil 4:13).
Many more stories can be told of men who knew God well enough that when disaster came, they could affirm that God is still God, that all He does is right, that He is great in mercy, and that He strengthens us in all our circumstances.