Writing actual, physical checks is becoming a thing of the past for many people as digital payments become the standard. But some things can’t be paid for with cash, a check or a card! Some very important things!
I’ll tell you what they are in a moment, but first let me welcome you to “Mornings with Bishop Robert” — thanks for joining me. My goal is to introduce people to the Jesus they never knew, and help them get to know Him and His word personally – and better ! If our time together today speaks to your heart, then let me invite you to like, subscribe and share it with a friend! Hey, why not join our email list to get Mornings with Bishop Robert sent directly to your inbox each morning, and lots of other great benefits. Click the link in the description.
Writing a check is becoming so uncommon that one third of the people in GenZ, people born during the late 1990s and early 2000s, have never written one. Lots more people are actually forgetting how to do it, and Google searches on how to write a check have been on a steady increase for the last decade. Year after year those searches peak in late August and early September — when kids are returning to college. Students living off-campus for the first time are likely facing the daunting task of writing their first check, most likely for rent.
The process has always been a fundamentally strange act. The requirement of writing out the amount in words and drawing that squiggly line across the remainder of the space, supposedly in an effort to prevent someone from tampering with individual digits, is quaint by today’s standards of financial security. Then there’s the questionable wisdom of handing a complete stranger a document with your bank account and routing number printed plainly across it, which is uncomfortably close to giving them the keys to your bank account, and trusting that they won’t help themselves to what’s inside.
But a blank check – signed and ready to use – now THAT’s almost unheard of. Or is it?
Today’s verse comes to us from the Book of Job and says THOUGH HE SLAY ME, YET WILL I TRUST HIM.
Even if you’re not overly familiar with the bible, you’ve likely heard about Job. People often know something about the difficult challenges he faced for a short period of his life, losing family and fortune in a single day and then developing serious health issues. References to Job woes are abundant. But you may not have heard that Job received double for all of his losses after he had passed the test set out before him. But what increased beyond measure for him was the one thing he never lost — his faith.
In the midst of the worst time in his life, three of Job’s friends come to sit with him. Though they are there supposedly to comfort him, it doesn’t take long for the questions (and even accusations) to start. “You must have done SOMETHING to deserve this” develops as the common theme. Yet all the while Job maintains his innocence. Job, as it happens, is innocent; and passing the test that has been put before him with flying colors.
Though Job tells his three friends that he doesn’t have any idea why the Lord has allowed this calamity to come upon him, and even says he’d love the opportunity to ask God face to face why all this is going on, there’s one thing Job never does. He never abandons his faith, or his determination to give God his very best. He never stops trusting God, even when his situational understanding is zero. He decides to stand in faith, and trust that the one who knows all things and loves him so deeply has a reason for allowing this — even if Job can’t comprehend it. The crowning answer to the challenges of his wife and friends comes in the verse I’ve quoted today — THOUGH HE SLAY ME, YET WILL I TRUST HIM.
Job is basically saying, “This isn’t about me. It never was and it never will be. My life, my family and my wealth are all in His hands to do with as He pleases. He is the LORD, and I am the vassal servant. I live to serve Him. Everything I have is already His.”
I’ve often used the illustration that someone entering the armed services of their nation is basically signing a blank check payable to their country for an amount up to and including their very lives. That decision is already made when they take the oath of enlistment. A foregone conclusion. Because some things can’t be paid for with a pile of cash or even an actual check. They can only be paid for with a life.
Our sin is one of those things. It will absolutely cost someone’s life, and Jesus says that you get to choose whose life will pay that massive price. Your own — or His.
