I’ve lived long enough to learn that people fear losing and failing almost more than anything; even to the point of being willing to fail in the very act of avoiding failing. It sounds weird, doesn’t it? But that’s real life.
Add God to the equation. People tell you that if you love God and accept Jesus into your heart, He will bless your life with an unbroken string of successes. You’ll succeed at everything; marriage, life, business. You’ll have all the money you’ll ever need. Life will go up and to the right. You’ll never lose, like other people.
Then we come to a story like Job, who lost everything he had in the span of an afternoon, except of course his own life, and his nagging wife. Stories like these fly in the face of these surface, cosmetic promises that we hear people make.
The truth is, God never promised that you wouldn’t lose, just that nothing of significance would ever be lost.
As you go through life you’ll learn a bittersweet truth: everything comes to pass; nothing comes to stay, in this life. That’s the amazing thing about Jesus, The Christ, The Anointed One. He came to redeem, restore, and reconcile so that ultimately we’d go back to God’s original idea; a world in which we would make of our lives something beautiful and creative, and it would last for eternity in beauty, truth, and amazing grace.
On this planet, if you haven’t learned yet, you will, that you’re going to lose. You’re going to lose your hair, your good looks, even your physical strength. You may lose your marriage either by divorce, separation, or death. You most definitely will lose a couple of jobs along the way. Your teams will lose, your stocks will go down, this will happen. But the promise from God abides; that though we win, we lose, we gain, and we give back, nothing of true significance will ever be lost. The people we love, our soul, the things we give away in sacrificial love: these things will abide forever.
Even Jesus said to lay up our treasures in heaven where rust, moths, and taxes can’t chip away at true wealth.
If you’re mad and upset because someone promised you that if you love God and be obedient and go to church, serve, give, and sacrifice, that God would reward you by never allowing you to lose, or at least not lose much, jettison that lie for the truth. God promised that though you’ll lose, nothing of significance will ever be lost.