Broken Praise
There are seasons when life feels full, steady, and blessed—and then there are moments when everything changes without warning. The story of Job holds both.
As Randy and Rozanne Frazee lead us through his journey in an excerpt from their latest Bible study, Encountering God's Love from Genesis to Revelation: A 52-Week Bible Study, we are invited to see what Job could not: the tension between our Lower Story of pain and God’s Upper Story of purpose. Job lost everything, yet he chose to offer God something rare and beautiful—broken praise.
Not because he understood, but because he trusted. As you step into this story, consider this gentle question: when life doesn’t make sense, will you still trust the heart of God? Job’s story reminds us that even in the ashes, God is still at work—writing a greater story than we can see.
Job’s life at the opening of the book that bears his name is a perfect picture of human flourishing. Job’s spiritual, financial, relational, physical, emotional and vocational life is fully intact.
Then, in a single day he lost everything. Two separate groups of people, the Sabeans and the Chaldeans, attacked and killed all the workers and ran off with five hundred oxen and five hundred donkeys, and three thousand camels. Fire killed all seven thousand sheep and the shepherds who oversaw them. If that weren’t enough, on the same day a mighty wind came and collapsed his house on all ten of his children died.
Then, a few days later, Job was inflicted with painful soars from “the soles of his feet to the crown of his head.” Job took a piece of broken pottery and scraped himself with it as he sat among the ashes.” (Job 2:8)
What are we to make of all of this from the Lower Story?
Well Job’s wife felt this all came from the hand of God. God is responsible for all this calamity. She offered up this advice to her husband –
“Are you still maintaining your integrity? Curse God and die!” (Job 2:9)
Job’s three friends paid him a visit. With the initial goal to sympathize and comfort Job, they sat with him in the ashes, and no one said a word. At the end of the seven days Job speaks and pours out his heart to his friends. Out of his extreme pain, he wishes he were never born.
Then Job’s friends speak up one at a time. They felt all this calamity came from the hand of Job. He had sinned and God was punishing him. The four of them go through three cycles of speeches always with the same conclusion – “it’s your fault, Job.”
When everyone was done talking Job maintained his devotion to God. He questioned God but never cursed him. Here is what he said –
“The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised.” (Job 1:21)
Job offered his broken praise to God.
While Job never knew what happened to cause all this in his life, we do.
One day Satan visits God and suggests that Job only follows him because he surrounds Job with protection. If God were to remove the protection, Job would curse God. God disagrees and allows Satan to do anything he wants short of touching Job himself. This led to the complete loss of his business and his ten children. We are given this summary, “In all this, Job did not sin by charging God with wrongdoing.” (Job 1:22)
Satan comes for a second visit and seeks permission to afflict Job physically. God allows it and hence the painful boils all over his body. In all this Job maintained his devotion to God, even though he had no idea why this was all happening to him. Again –
He questioned God, but did not curse God.
When we come to chapter 38 God speaks. God now questions Job and invites him to answer back. For four chapters, God puts Job in his place by giving him a glimpse of God’s eternal power, and purpose. Sort of with tongue in cheek God says,
19 “What is the way to the abode of light?
And where does darkness reside?
20 Can you take them to their places?
Do you know the paths to their dwellings?
21 Surely you know, for you were already born!
You have lived so many years! (Job 38:19-21)
When God is done speaking, it is time for Job to answer. Recognizing that God can do all things, and his plans cannot be thwarted Job responds –
You asked, ‘Who is this that obscures my plans without knowledge?’
Surely I spoke of things I did not understand,
things too wonderful for me to know. (Job 42:3)
Job got it –
“There is a God and I’m not him.”
God has a bigger plan that can’t be stopped. His plan is good, and we must trust him even when we don’t have all the answers.
Once the test was complete and Job showed Satan a thing or two about following God during extreme adversity, God blessed the later years of his life and restored all that Job lost 100X.
God knew one other thing that Job didn’t know at the time. That you would be reading his story four thousand years later to gain perspective on living successfully in the Lower Story by offering God our broken praise even during times of trouble and suffering.
God’s Story…My Story
Read Job 1:9-10. Have you or someone you know blamed God for a tragedy and decided to curse him? What do you think of Job’s response?
Read Job 22-23. Have you ever thought that the troubles you are experiencing are a result of God punishing you? Do you think this is always the cause of adversity in our lives?
Read Job 38-41. What are your top three favorite responses of God to Job? How does this cause you to look at God differently?
Read Job 42:1-6. What do you learn from Job’s response back to God?
Read Job 42:12-16; James 5:11. How would you feel if God used you for such an assignment?