Keeping Our Eyes on God’s Greatness

Former astronaut Charlie Duke once spoke about what it was like being in a tiny space capsule 28,000 miles from Earth, racing toward the moon. As the crew turned the craft to its side, someone exclaimed, “What an incredible sight!” They all looked and saw the planet Earth, hanging wondrously in black space — a huge, bright ball, supported by nothing at all. The whole crew was overwhelmed at the sight; they knew only an incredible Creator could have wrought that.

God beautifully used the reference to his creation when he was bringing Job out of his sufferings. “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? … To what were its foundations fastened?” (Job 38:4, 6). He was asking, “What holds the earth up in space?” And he goes further, “Who shut up the sea in its borders? Who tells the mighty ocean, ‘Come to this point but no farther’? What keeps the waves from overwhelming the land? And where is the spring from which the seas flow?

“How is the light parted from the darkness? How is the wind divided and scattered? How is rain born? Can man produce lightning, thunder, clouds? Who put wildness and tameness in the nature of beasts? Who do you think set all these forces of nature in place, Job?”

God literally took Job through a “power course,” revealing his past creation. Through it all, Job was being told, “You accuse me of neglect and you doubt my power to deliver you, yet I have shown you how I care for all my vast creation” (read this in Job 38 and 39).

Job was totally overwhelmed and when he looked at his problems again, he said, “I’ve been so foolish. I’ve had my eyes on the wrong things. I was concentrating on my pain when I should have been looking at you and your greatness. I know you can do everything and I also know that no thought can be withheld from you” (see 42:2).

If you keep your eyes on God and his greatness, fear and doubt cannot get a stranglehold on your heart.