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Stop Blaming God for What the Enemy Did

One of the most misquoted, misapplied passages in all of scripture has caused more confusion about God’s character than almost anything else I know. And if you are a high achiever who is trying to move forward, pursue your Calling, and build something meaningful, while quietly wondering why God allowed certain painful things to happen to you, this conversation is long overdue.

Let us talk about Job.

Job was not just a good man. He was an exceptional man. Scripture describes him as a person of complete integrity who feared God and stayed away from evil. He had seven sons and three daughters. He owned seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred teams of oxen, and five hundred female donkeys. Add land, property, and servants to that list, and you begin to understand the scope of his life. Job was the wealthiest man in the entire region. By every standard that existed, Job had built an extraordinary life and was living as close to perfect as a human being could get.

Then everything collapsed.

After a direct conversation with God, Satan was given permission to test Job. The terms were simple: Satan could alter Job’s livelihood and possessions in any way he chose, as long as he did not physically harm Job. Taking full advantage of that permission, Satan completely stripped Job of everything he had built and took the lives of all his children in the process.

After learning that everything was gone, Job made the statement that has been repeated in churches, funeral services, and grief conversations for generations: “I came naked from my mother’s womb, and I will be naked when I leave. The Lord gave me what I had, and the Lord has taken it away.”

Here is where we need to stop. Right here. Because this is where the misunderstanding begins, and this is where it does the most damage.

God did not take those things from Job. Satan did.

Go back to the text. God gave Satan permission to do whatever he wanted with everything Job possessed, as long as he did not physically harm him. That is the scripture. So while God permitted the test, the one who executed the destruction was Satan, not God. The two are not the same. Permitting something and causing something are entirely different acts, and we must stop collapsing that distinction.

But there is another layer here that most people never examine, and it may be the most important part of the entire story.

Job opened the door himself.

In chapter 3, verse 25, Job makes a confession that stops me every time I read it. He says, “What I always feared has happened to me. What I dreaded has come true.” Job was not a fearless man who was blindsided by an outside attack. He was a man who had been carrying deep, persistent fear for a long time. And fear, when it is left unchecked and fed over time, lowers your hedge of protection. It creates access points that were never supposed to exist. Job’s own words reveal that his fear was a contributing factor to what ultimately came through the door.

This is not about blaming Job. It is about understanding how the spiritual operates in the natural so that we do not keep repeating the same patterns while wondering why the same results keep showing up.

Now let us bring this closer to home, because this is not just a theological discussion. This is about how you see God, and how you see yourself in relationship to Him. And if that picture is distorted, it will directly affect your willingness to step into your Calling.

I have a friend who tore her Achilles tendon playing volleyball. The injury was serious. It left her immobile for several weeks and caused her a significant amount of pain. During one of our conversations, she told me that she believed God had torn her Achilles tendon to force her to slow down. She explained that she had been spreading herself too thin, running at an unsustainable pace, and since the injury had forced her to rest, she concluded that God must have been behind it.

I understood completely where she was coming from. That kind of reasoning feels spiritually mature on the surface. It feels like surrender and acceptance. But I had to be honest with her, because I strongly disagreed with the conclusion that God tore her Achilles tendon.

I asked her a simple question. If your child was running recklessly through the house and you were a loving mother who was genuinely worried he was going to hurt himself, what would you do? Would you run up behind him, grab him, and slam his head into a wall to make him stop? Then, on the way to the emergency room, tell him that you only did it because you love him and wanted him to slow down?

She laughed. Of course not.

No parent in their right mind operates that way. A good parent warns the child. Redirects the child. Sets up guardrails. Raises their voice if necessary. And sometimes, even after every warning has been given, the child keeps running, makes the choice to ignore every signal, and falls on their own. The parent grieves it. The parent rushes to help. But the parent did not cause it.

Our heavenly Father operates the same way. He is not designing your pain to punish you or teach you a lesson through suffering. He is a Father who provides, protects, guides, and restores. Psalm 23 captures His nature better than any other passage I know. He lets you rest in green meadows. He leads you beside peaceful streams. He renews your strength. He guides you along right paths. Even in the darkest valleys, He walks beside you. He prepares a table for you in the presence of your enemies. His goodness and His unfailing love pursue you all the days of your life.

That is who God is. That is His character. Hold on to that.

So why does this conversation matter so much in the context of your Calling?

Because a distorted image of God is one of the greatest hidden barriers to forward movement that I encounter in high achievers. People are sitting in misalignment, hesitating to pursue what they feel called to do, carrying a quiet suspicion that God may have been the one who caused their biggest setbacks. They are afraid to trust Him fully because somewhere along the way, someone handed them a theology that painted God as the source of their pain rather than the source of their redemption.

When you believe God caused your losses, you build a subconscious wall between yourself and the very One who has the power to restore what was taken and open the doors that need to be opened. You move cautiously. You hold back. You stay stuck.

Here is the truth you need to carry into every conversation about purpose, Calling, and alignment. The setbacks you have experienced, the losses, the painful seasons, the things that were stripped away, those were not God punishing you, putting you on pause, or writing a new chapter of suffering into your story to make you stronger. God is not the author of your suffering. He is the author of your comeback. He does not send the storm. But He absolutely will walk you through it, and He will use what the enemy meant for destruction to build something in you that could not have been built any other way.

Stop blaming God for what the enemy did. Stop letting a misquoted scripture keep you carrying weight that was never supposed to be yours. And stop allowing that misattribution to quietly talk you out of the Calling that God placed inside you before you were ever born.

The story of Job does not end with the losses. It ends with full restoration. Everything that was taken was returned, and then multiplied. That is the God we serve. That is the God who is walking with you right now, not as the cause of your struggle, but as the source of your strength to move through it and build what your Calling demands.

Your Calling is still in front of you. The path is still open. And the God who is described as your shepherd, your provider, your healer, and your restorer is fully in your corner.

It is time to stop being stuck. It is time to move.

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
~ John 3:16 KJV