Job worshipped. That is how he responded when he lost everything. I find this to be one of the most stunning and profound moments recorded in the whole Bible. Job lost everything but he would not lose God. He refused to live without God. This singleheartedness is the foundation of wisdom. And that is what this book is about: the attainment of wisdom. Wisdom is not just a matter of knowing about things. It involves a deep spiritual alignment with reality. And the reality is that we need God in the most fundamental sense. To feel this need is, therefore, to be spiritually aligned with reality; and that is true wisdom. We see a similar singleheartedness expressed by David, in a similarly low point in his life, in Psalm 27:4: “One thing I ask, one thing I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life” (Psalm 27:4). The Psalmist, Asaph, also declared, in the midst of his suffering: “Whom have I in heaven but you, and the earth has nothing I desire apart from you” (Psalm 73:25). These men discovered what Job knew in this moment: God is all we need. There are many things we may want and many people that we love, but God is the only one we need. With God we have everything; without him we have nothing. Sit still for a while and let every thought be taken captive to this one simple truth: you need God. Let no other desire or thought enter your mind, for without God everything you might otherwise think about is futile.
Be still and desire God above all.
Read Psalm 27 and Psalm 73 in the light of Job 1
