So Satan left the Lord’s presence, and he struck Job with terrible boils
from head to foot. Job scraped his skin
with a piece of broken pottery as he sat among the ashes. His
wife said to him, “Are you still trying to maintain your integrity? Curse God and die.” But Job replied, “You talk like a foolish
woman. Should we accept only good things
from the hand of God and never anything bad?” So in all this, Job said nothing wrong. Job
2:7-10 (NLT)
LESSON #1 - DON'T SPEAK FOR GOD
Mrs. Job had decided that
God had forgotten the Job's address. Her
husband had messed-up somewhere, and it was so bad nothing could ever fix
it! The only choice left was suicide.
Human beings seldom know
God's reasoning for why things happen. (At
least He never asks me before He does stuff!) We run afoul of common sense when we attempt
to interpret for others what God intends; He is God, and able to speak for
Himself. Eventually, Job did complain
about God's program, and demanded an answer.
At the end of the story[1]
Job is humbled by God's answers.
It is wrong to ALWAYS
judge tragedy, sickness, and loss as a mark of God's disapproval; God's ways
are indeed higher than ours.
Job's friends thought they
had it all figured out. They did a
friendly thing in coming to sit with Job for three days. But when they started opening their mouths,
trying to speak for God, they stuck their collective feet in them. With their judgments on what was wrong in
Job's life they offered their own version of Mrs. Job's "curse God and
die."
Be careful not to speak for
God...you don't have the credentials.
God may be using tragedy in your life, or the life of someone you know
to bring about some very holy things.
Remember the prodigal son? He was
a lot closer to success when he was learning in the pigpen, than when he'd
first arrived as a rich kid, with all the trimmings.
Despite the wrong-headed
thinking (and speaking) of Job’s band of friends and Job’s wife, Job needed
them all. Somehow their foolishness
helped frame God’s real answer to Job in a way that eventually turned on the
light bulb of reason.
For You, Today…
When you’re up
against it, don’t despise the community around you, even when they suggest
goofy solutions, or make really exasperating statements about why you’re on
God’s hit list. (Remember, you’re part
of that community and have probably been on the other side of somebody’s pain).
Sit in the ashes
when life makes no sense, and the walls have caved-in; loss like that calls for
grieving!
But don’t speak
for God, and don’t leave God or your community as a knee-jerk reaction to the
unfairness of it all. Or for a bit of
band aide relief, like drugs or alcohol.
The last thing you need for real problems is temporary solutions that
create more problems.
Sit still and
wait for God to speak.
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