Will We Still Love God When He Takes Back What He Gave?

“The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.” Job 1:21

Some loves last only while life is beautiful.

And there are loves that remain when everything beautiful has been taken away.

We are deeply moved by the husband who remains beside his wife when illness has changed her completely. By the wife who cares for her husband when an accident has taken away the life they once knew. By two people who promised to love each other for a lifetime—and discover, when that promise becomes terribly costly, that they meant it.

It is easy to say, I love you, when love gives us happiness.

But what happens when love begins to cost us?

Job’s story asks an even more frightening question:

Do we love God because He is God—or because of what He gives us?

Satan believed he knew the answer.

Does Job Love God for Nothing?

Job had everything a man of his time could desire.

He was enormously wealthy.

He had seven sons and three daughters.

He was respected.

His household prospered.

And above all, Job feared God.

God Himself described him as blameless and upright, a man who feared God and turned away from evil.

But Satan looked at Job’s devotion and questioned its motive.

“Does Job fear God for nothing?”

You have protected him.

You have blessed him.

You have prospered everything he touches.

Of course Job worships You.

Take it away.

Then You will discover what he really loves.

Satan did not dispute what Job did.

He disputed why Job did it.

His accusation was devastatingly simple:

Job does not love You for who You are.
Job loves You for what You give.

As long as the gifts remain, who can tell the difference?

Prosperity can conceal the difference between love and self-interest.

Loss reveals it.

So the gifts began to disappear.

The LORD Gave

The first messenger came.

The oxen and donkeys were taken.

The servants were killed.

Before he finished speaking, another arrived.

The sheep and more servants were gone.

Before he finished, another came.

The camels were gone.

Then came the last messenger.

Job’s sons and daughters had been eating together in the eldest brother’s house.

A great wind struck it.

The house collapsed.

All ten children died.

There are losses that can be counted.

And there are losses after which numbers become meaningless.

Job stood.

He tore his robe.

He shaved his head.

Then he fell to the ground.

And worshipped.

“The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.”

Those words are easy to read when the people we love are safely beside us.

They are terrifying when we remember where Job was standing when he said them.

He did not say his children did not matter.

His torn robe tells us they mattered.

His shaved head tells us they mattered.

His grief tells us they mattered.

Job’s faith did not keep his heart from breaking.

It kept his broken heart from leaving God.

“The LORD gave.”

Before Job could say,

“The LORD has taken away,”

he acknowledged something we easily forget:

everything he loved had first been given.

His children were gifts.

His wealth was a gift.

His health was a gift.

His life was a gift.

Job’s hands had been filled by God.

Now those hands were being emptied.

And Satan was watching to see whether Job’s heart would empty with them.

It did not.

The gifts were gone.
The worship remained.

Skin for Skin

But Satan was not finished.

Perhaps Job could lose everything around him and still worship.

But what if suffering entered his own flesh?

“Skin for skin!” Satan answered.

“A man will give all he has for his own life.”

Satan believed that beneath Job’s religion, beneath his integrity, beneath his worship, there remained one love stronger than his love for God:

himself.

Touch his body.

Make faithfulness painful.

Bring suffering so close that Job cannot escape it.

Then he will curse You.

God permitted Satan to strike Job, but commanded him to spare Job’s life.

Painful sores covered Job from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head.

The man who once possessed so much now sat among ashes, scraping his wounds with broken pottery.

Then his wife spoke.

She had lost the same children.

She had watched the same world collapse.

She was not a stranger mocking his faith.

She was the grieving mother of his children.

“Do you still retain your integrity?”

Then came the words:

“Curse God and die.”

What Satan predicted, the person closest to Job now proposed.

Job refused.

“Shall we indeed accept good from God, and shall we not accept adversity?”

And Scripture records:

“In all this Job did not sin with his lips.”

Satan had predicted Job would curse God.

Job would not.

But that did not mean Job remained calm.

Far from it.

Where Are You?

The Job who worshipped in chapter one eventually became the Job who cursed the day he was born.

He wished his birth could be erased from history.

He cried.

He complained.

He questioned.

He became angry.

He demanded answers.

At times, he spoke beyond what he understood. God would eventually correct him.

But through all his anger, Job kept looking for God.

“If only I knew where to find Him, so that I could go to His seat.”

Think about what had happened.

Satan had taken almost everything God had given Job.

And now Job was desperately searching for—

God.

Satan’s accusation had been:

Take away the gifts and Job will reject the Giver.

The gifts disappeared.

Job went looking for the Giver.

He wanted answers.

He wanted to argue his case.

He wanted God to speak.

He could not reconcile the God he knew with the life he was living.

Yet he would not cut God out of his life.

There is something almost childlike about it.

A wounded child may be furious with his father.

He may cry.

He may protest.

He may demand to know why.

Yet while he is crying, he is still reaching for the very father with whom he is angry.

I am angry with You.

I do not understand You.

I want answers from You.

But where are You?

Job was furious with the One he refused to live without.

Satan wanted Job to curse God and walk away.

Job argued with God because he would not walk away.

You do not desperately search for someone you have truly cut out of your life.

Job could not let God go.

Love Does Not Always Look Peaceful

We sometimes imagine that deep faith must always look serene.

If we trust God, we will never question Him.

If we love God, we will never become angry.

If we believe God is good, suffering should not shake us.

Job destroys that illusion.

Job was shaken.

Terribly.

His emotions moved.

His understanding moved.

His confidence moved.

His words sometimes went too far.

But beneath all that movement, something remained.

The direction of his heart.

He kept turning toward God.

He staggered.

But he staggered toward God.

Love is not proved by the absence of protest.

Love is revealed by whom we still seek when everything within us is protesting.

Sometimes love does not whisper beautiful words.

Sometimes love cries:

“Where are You?”

Sometimes love sits among ashes unable to understand the One it still refuses to abandon.

There is a difference between being angry with someone and being finished with them.

Job was never finished with God.

He still wanted Him.

And perhaps that is what makes his story so beautiful.

What Must God Keep Giving Us?

Now Job turns toward us.

We say we love God.

But how do we know?

What must God continue giving us in order for us to continue loving Him?

Must He protect the people we love?

Must He preserve our health?

Must He provide security?

Must He answer our prayers?

Must He give us the future we imagined?

Must He explain Himself when He does not?

What have we silently written after the words:

“I will love You as long as…”

As long as You bless me.

As long as You protect me.

As long as You answer me.

As long as You heal me.

As long as You do not touch this one thing.

Then Satan’s ancient question reaches across the centuries:

“Does Job fear God for nothing?”

Do we?

A faith that survives only while prayers are answered may be faith in answered prayer, not yet faith in God.

If God’s goodness must always arrive in the form we desire before we will call Him good, perhaps it is the blessing we trust.

Job forces us deeper.

What if God’s hand no longer seemed full toward us?

Take away the prosperity.

Do I still want You?

Take away the security.

Do I still want You?

Take away the health.

Do I still want You?

Let the prayer remain unanswered.

Do I still want You?

And then we reach the things we can barely bear even to imagine losing.

The people we love.

Our own lives.

Do I still want You?

This is not a question about whether those things matter.

They mattered to Job.

That is precisely why his love is so extraordinary.

His hands had been emptied of almost everything God had placed into them.

Yet his heart still reached for the Giver.

Perhaps the benchmark Job leaves us is not:

Could I suffer as much as Job?

But:

How much of my love for God depends upon what I am receiving from Him?

When God Answered

For chapter after chapter, Job searched for God.

Then God answered from the whirlwind.

But God did not give Job the explanation he had demanded.

Job had wanted to understand what God was doing.

Instead, he encountered God Himself.

And Job said:

“My ears had heard of You, but now my eyes have seen You.”

Job began the story surrounded by the gifts of God.

Then the gifts were stripped away.

Job grieved.

Job protested.

Job questioned.

Job searched desperately for the Giver.

And in the end—

God answered.

Job asked for an explanation.

God gave him an encounter.

The man who had lost almost everything discovered that beyond everything God could give him stood God Himself.

Satan thought that once the gifts disappeared, Job would have no reason left to stay.

But Satan had misunderstood Job’s love.

Job did not merely want what came from God’s hand.

He wanted God.

Do I Love Him Like That?

There is something beautiful about a love that survives a lifetime.

A love that remains through youth and old age.

Through health and sickness.

Through abundance and poverty.

Through laughter and tears.

We are moved because everything around that love can change—

yet the love remains.

Job’s love was brought into a furnace few of us can imagine.

His world collapsed.

His heart broke.

His understanding failed.

His prayers seemed unanswered.

The God he loved seemed impossibly far away.

And still Job kept reaching for Him.

The gifts were taken from Job.
Job’s heart was not taken from God.

Perhaps Job’s story brings us face to face with the greatest commandment:

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.”

It is easy to read those words.

Job shows us what they can cost.

Do I love God with all my heart when everything else my heart loves is being taken away?

That is a very different question from:

Do I believe in God?

Do I go to church?

Do I pray?

Do I obey when obedience benefits me?

Job brings us somewhere far deeper.

Do I love Him for Him?

Not because heaven gives.

Not because prayers are answered.

Not because tomorrow looks safe.

Not because life makes sense.

But because He is God.

Then perhaps our prayer becomes very simple:

If my hands must be emptied, let my heart remain Yours.

If I cannot understand You, let me still seek You.

If I am angry, let me cry before You rather than walk away from You.

And if I have to lose the whole world—

I still do not want to lose You.

That is the love Job leaves before us.

The question is no longer whether Job loved God.

The question is whether we love Him like Job did.

If God were all God gave us—

would God be enough?

Only the heart that loves Him completely is willing to obey Him, both in life and through death.

Related Ideas

The Gifts Can Leave While the Heart Remains — Job shows that loss can empty the hands without taking the heart from God. His grief, anger, questions, and confusion were real, yet beneath them all he continued seeking the Giver.

Faith Sometimes Means Refusing to Turn Back — Job’s faith did not remove grief, confusion, or protest; it kept the direction of his heart turned toward God when everything invited him to abandon Him.

Faithfulness Before Success — Job’s worship exposes the difference between loving God for His gifts and loving God for Himself.

Surrender — Job’s empty hands become a severe test of whether the heart still belongs to God when what it treasured has been taken away.

Connected Ideas

Job · Worship · Loss · Suffering · Love of God · Faith · Lament · Perseverance · Surrender · Unanswered Prayer · God’s Presence · The Giver and the Gifts