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| Downtown Houston - Gathering of 3 Generations of Believers |
My Lessons and Applications From Today's Readings
Comfort or Torment? - Job 5 and 6 - Job's 3 friends have come to comfort and grieve with him, but instead they grieve and torment him. For the first 7 days and nights, not one said a word. They simply sat in mourning and sorrow together. Eliphaz continues his diatribe - that "a spirit" came to him in a night vision and revealed all of Job's predicament to him. This first friend begins with compliments of Job in Chapter 4 and ends with devastating and false accusations against this man that even God calls, "My servant Job, that there is none like him on earth, a blameless and upright man, one who fears God and shuns evil". Yet in this Eliphaz does speak of seeking God and committing his cause to God, which Job has done "The LORD gives, and the LORD takes; blessed be the name of the LORD.
Lessons and Applications To 3 Generations of Believers
1) Not all spirits are good. "The spirit" that comes to Eliphaz reminds me of "the spirit" that God allowed to go into the lying false prophets of Ahab. (2 Chron. 18: 21-22) 2) As believers we know that as Job said, we must accept the blessings and the adversity that come through God, but that acceptance can be soul-wrenching - even for the believer. 3) It is also an acceptance, a commitment to God that will likely have to be revisited and renewed over and over until we see God's answer. For me, this is done by refocusing my perspective - the world's perspective that keeps drawing me in - to the Biblical perspective - asking God to give me spiritual eyes to see and act according to His will - remembering that the war is spiritual rather than earthly, that God must be the one to deal with vengeance in this, that I must lay the burden at His feet, that I must stay in His Word, in prayer and communion with Him. The panic, the anger, the hopelessness come when I take my eyes off of Jesus and put them on the world. A great comfort to me in tragedy is to bring myself back to meditation on Jesus' experiences as He walked earth, "for consider Him who endured such hostility from sinners against Himself, lest you become weary and discouraged in your souls. (Hebrews 12:3) 4) When I begin the self-flagellation of my possible role in the tragedy, I remember the earthly lives of Job, Joseph, Daniel, Paul and Jesus and so many of the prophets and other disciples. Their earthly lives were filled with horrors and tragedies coming against them - without reason or cause. Then I ask God to use even this - this horror and my life - to His glory, to comfort and encourage His people. How can I give back to God my blessings, my talents, even the tragedy and horror in my life to honor and glorify Him, to love Him more, to trust Him even in this, when all His promises seem to have turned to ashes? Am I maintaining the eternal perspective? Do I remember that "when the wicked spring up like grass, and when all the workers of iniquity flourish, it is that they may be destroyed forever?" Psalm 92:7
Paul's Lessons and Applications - Job's Tragedy and Ours Through the Eyes of Faith- Romans 8 - Even the earth and all of creation groans, waits in eager anticipation for the revealing of the Sons of God. "We, the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan within ourselves eagerly awaiting the redemption of our bodies." We are commanded to persevere until we have received the hope given to us through Jesus Christ. The Spirit within us helps us to pray as we should and "makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. Now He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He makes intercession...for the saints...according to the will of God. And we know that...all things...work together... for good...to those who love God...to those who are the called...according to His purpose...whom He foreknew... whom He predestined...whom He called...whom He justified...whom He also glorified...to be conformed to the image of His Son. What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son...but delivered Him up for us all...how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things? Who shall bring a charge against God's elect? Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or the sword? As it is written, For Your sake we are killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Yet...in all these things...we are more than conquerors...through Him...who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."
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