6 February

When she was a little girl, Corrie Ten Boom (a Dutch Christian who helped Jews escape from the Nazis during the Second World War) went to her father and said, ‘“Daddy, I am afraid that I will never be strong enough… for Jesus Christ.” “Tell me,” said her father, “when you take a train trip to Amsterdam, when do I give you the money for the ticket? Three weeks before?” “No, Daddy, you give me the money for the ticket just before we get on the train.” “That is right,” her father said, “and so it is with God’s strength. Our Father in heaven knows when you will need the strength... He will supply all you need just in time.”’

• What we don’t know
  Like David, what you don’t know is which battles lie ahead. However, for most of us, it would probably be very unhelpful to know exactly what the battles will be.

• What we do know
  As the saying goes, ‘We don’t know what the future holds, but we know who holds the future.’ What David knew was that since God had ‘armed [him] with strength’ (v.39) in the past, he would do so in the future. You can know that God will supply you with the strength you need when you need it.

However, underneath this love for God and love for others is the key component of what it means to be ready for Jesus’ return. In the parable of the ten virgins, the bridegroom says to those virgins who have been asleep and are not ready, ‘I don’t know you’ (25:12). We see here that the key lies in a different type of ‘knowing’. It is not intellectual knowledge but personal knowledge.

Ultimately, it is not about what you know, but about whom you know. It is about having a personal relationship with the bridegroom. In the end, this is what matters more than anything else – knowing Jesus. Jesus said, ‘Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent’ (John 17:3).

The book of Job is not so much about why God allows suffering as it is about how we should respond to suffering.

You can know that God is ultimately in control and therefore you can live at peace and confidently trust that, in everything, God will work for the good of those who love him (Romans 8:28).