Job 11:18

You will lie confident, knowing there is hope,

   You entrench yourself, resting in safety.

I am working on another legal case, and the thing that jumps out at me is the slow working of the legal system. As with the impression I have of a FEMA flood claim, it is so slow that you are better off not relying on it. I have heard there are private alternatives, but my agent has not switched me over that I know of. Since I am not sure it is possible for my house to flood from rising water, it probably does not matter (short of a biblical flood that is).

‘Confident’ was also ‘secure’ or ‘trusting’ or ‘lie down’. ‘Lie’ was ‘live’ or ‘be’. I combined the two ideas into what I thought the verse meant. Most had ‘because there is hope’, but I much preferred the knowing.

‘You entrench yourself’ was ‘entrenched’, ‘ you will be protected’, ‘you will look about you’, ‘you will dig around you’, ‘you will dig your burrow’, ‘you will search’, and ‘you will make your couch’. It just seemed the message was that you will bother to really dig in and make your place you own because you will feel safe. ‘Safety’ was also ‘secure’.

The overriding sense for me in this verse is that our hope is in Jesus and our safety is in being headed to heaven when we die. We do not have hope of great things here on earth, not in the sense that we know it will happen and we can be confident it will happen. We also are not safe here on earth. We might get hurt physically or emotionally or die at any moment either of normal evil actions of others, it just being our time, or suffering and dying on account of our faith in Christ.

I am confident that God will get me through anything or take me home to be with Him. I am willing to work hard on things here that take a while knowing that it will either turn out the way it needs to, or I will be taken safely to heaven. In the end I really like this verse, but I do not see it as a prosperity gospel for worldly pleasure, but as a spiritual promise that I can take on more because it is God who is doing the work and I am being carried along by Him.

Our spiritual condition and our pouring into the lives of others should come from a sense of hope and a sense of confidence and a sense of security and a sense of sticking with it that can come only from the power of God. I am not good enough, but He was and is.