I have a dear friend who was struggling with a life situation and it makes me think about what God does and how he works. I know this person was thinking about what God was doing in her life because she had expressed her pain to me and she is such a good friend that it made me hurt also. I think that I related to her struggle a little bit as, unfortunately, all of us probably can. In my life, I usually trace any issues that I have back to how my walk with the Lord is going. When I am close to God I can handle what life and this world throw my way and when I am not it seems that circumstances get more of the attention than they should. The thing that bothered me about my friend’s situation is that this person is such a truly Godly person and along with her husband genuinely follow the Lord in a way that I envy in an inspiring way. Many times, I hear about a situation or someone expresses their pain to me and states something along that line of “I don’t understand God” or “I don’t know why this is happening to me” and I think that I can trace what is going on back and their is a legitimate anticedent to what is happening. In this case, I struggled to find one and as this person stated to me their disappointment as they legitimately professed that they had done everyhing that God has wanted them to do and truly followed Him with all their heart and then to have what apppears to be a clear incongruence with what should be happening, I didn’t get it.
As I prayed for my friend, God put on my heart the story of Job. What always sticks out to me about this saga is that God clearly states that Job was the best He had to offer and all this bad stuff happened to him. This scares me because where does that leave me. And, in the end, the only explanation that God gives for what happened to Job was that He was God and He could. The major message of Job is that God is sovereign and I get that. I also get the distinction that God’s sovereignty is perfect and He is just and everything that He does is for the greater good, but it doesn’t mean I have to like it.
While Job was following God with all his heart, he was not perfect and when we enter into a relationship with the living God and the closer we get to Him the one thing that we communicate to Him is that we want His input. And then we grow and we get even closer and the miracle of sanctification moves forward. Then He can use us as He did with Job. What did God use Job for? I am not sure, but that is the message of the book. God is in control and knows exactly what he is doing and we don’t always know the reason for what is happening.
To me, there are two major things I take from this discussion. One, to get to the place where we can become a Job we have to be totally sold out for God and He has to have permission from us to use us as He pleases. Again, looking at Job’s story I can only be scared, right? Maybe a little, but what’s the alternative? I have tried that already and no thank you. Give me peace and give me joy and that’s what God promises if we follow Him. Job understood this. Despite his circumstances Job came to the conclusion that he would not curse God and die. The second thing that I get is that I trust Him. It all worked out for Job and he was blessed more after than he was before. That’s what God does. My friend learned this and so have I, again.
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