So the Lord blessed the last part of Job’s life more than the first. ~Job 42:12a
What’s that noise? you wonder. I don’t remember hearing that before.
Speeding down your favorite interstate, a sound begins to sneak from under the hood of your trusty car. It’s like nothing you’ve heard before. You turn the radio off to get a bearing on where it’s coming from. You push the accelerator to the floor. Carbon buildup in the cylinders, you think. As the speedometer returns to your previous, nearly legal level, the sound returns. You roll your window down to see if you can hear it more clearly. All you get is wind noise, so you put your window back up.
Maybe it’ll go away, you muse. What a foolish thought.
One of the most powerful advertisements ever conceived by the minds of Madison Avenue agents was the one they created for Fram Oil Filters. Maybe you remember it. The story this television commercial told was of a situation exactly like the imaginary one above. The point of the ad was summarized in the penetrating words spoken by the guy at the end, displaying a nine-dollar oil filter in his hand: “You can pay me now, or you can pay me later.”
The message was crystal clear. Car problems don’t go away. The sooner you deal with them, the better you’ll be.
Life’s difficult problems don’t go away either. We can mask them or deny them, but unless we deal with them honestly, they’ll turn that nine-dollar oil filter into a three-thousand-dollar engine rebuild!
Perhaps the most important lesson to be learned from Job’s life is this: the sooner we deal with who God really is and who we are in contrast to Him, the wiser and more satisfied we’ll be. If we want to confess this early in life, then the remainder of our lives will be rewarded—prosperous in God’s almighty economy. If we wait until we’re old men to make this discovery, we’ll waste decades of potential usefulness and peace.
The second half of Job’s life was more blessed than the first. The roll call of his family and list of his possessions fill today’s verses. But my suspicion is that if we were able to interview Job today, he would say that the greatest difference between the first half and the second half of his life was his personal experience with a holy God. In fact, he would probably admonish us to diligently pursue our heavenly Father as soon as we can, loving Him, serving Him, and worshiping Him with everything we have.
Waiting—procrastinating—to find answers to our nagging questions or waiting to fix our aching hearts will only cause our lives to break down, as Job would strongly attest. It’s not worth delaying.