Wednesday, June 2, 2010
June 2 ... Job 5 - 7 "Suffering Without Explanation"
Job 5:7-8 “Don't blame fate when things go wrong…if I were in your shoes, I’d go straight to God.” Eliphaz, Job’s friend, assumes that Job isn’t going to God. He delivers a soliloquy that isn’t very encouraging. Do we do the same kind of thing when people hit hard times? Give them the best advice. Why can’t we just sit with people and listen to their hearts? Why do we have to remind them of what they need to know? Job calls it “pious bluster.” At the end of Chapter 6, Job says: “You pretend to tell me what's wrong with my life, but treat my words of anguish as so much hot air.” Do I miss people’s anguish for my own agenda of wanting to say the right things that will change their world. Job hates his life right now. So what would pull out of him the man God intended for him to be? “Suffering without explanation creates the opportunity for faith in Me, the kind of faith that sees My Heart. Suffering with explanation allows you to maintain the false hope of control.” Those words touch something deep in me. So many people want to explain God in the midst of their suffering---like, I’m suffering so that many people will come to know God. “It’s the road of trusting Me in darkness so dark that all reason for trust is obscured.” 66 LL. Kierkegaard wrote: “As long as there are many springs from which to draw water, anxiety about possible water failure does not arise…anxiety arises when there is only One Source.” 66 LL. Can God be trusted with the mess I am in? Will He give me what I want---what I think is good?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I've been each of Job's friends and I've been Job. Just yesterday, I was trying to make sense of someone else's glorious mess through the lens of my own experience and talking with her about it like I understood. I look at my ignorance and cringe. You know everything Eliphaz said is true, and yet it rings so hollow in his lack of understanding. He doesn't get it. And neither do I.
ReplyDeleteThe one thing that troubles me about Job is he is truly suffering but he is not corrected by God for his bitter complaints. The only thing I can see different between him and Moses and the Israelites, is that Job took his complaints to God and ask Him to do something about it. Even though he asked him to squash him like a bug! He still knew the Source that could do something about it and gave it to Him.
Bev, the 66 LL quote about suffering without explanation and with explanation spoke to me, too. Suffering with explanation leaves room for the false security of believing we can control our situations. Trusting in God requires more blind faith than knowing the answer to everything and following our own logic. God is bigger. And I don't have to "get it." I have so much defiance in me, in wanting to understand. I also love that it's bigger than me. It's a mixed bag of blessing-like the blessing of being corrected by God, I guess.
The quote from 66 LL about suffering with explanation and suffering without it, jumped right out at me. Spoke volumes...screamed to me...so much better to have faith and not know why whatever is happening to you is happening than to "think" you have a reason for the suffering and cling to the false hope that "everything is going to be fine" instead of clinging to our only true Hope...Jesus Christ. I've seen the false hope playing out in someone's life and it's breaking my heart for she won't turn to her only true Hope because she's clinging to that false hope. Blessings on your day Bev...don't forget to tell us what the report from the doctor says...love you.
ReplyDeleteAs I go through some hard times, I have some people in my life that
ReplyDelete1. ignore it,
2. some that let me talk and they listen,
3. some that tell me what to do,
4. some who "befriend" me without offering anything except an oasis from the pain.
5. some who pray
I can't say that any of them are wrong in how they react. Even the ones who ignore it speak to my heart because I think they are the ones who feel my pain the most intensely...words are a loss to them.
I've felt like Job.
In fact, I feel like Job. Right now.
I think the most important thing a friend can do for someone who is hurting is to let them talk. It releases the hurt for some reason. Advice needs to be carefully given through the Holy Spirit working in your relationship. Sometimes we do need to be jerked by the hair and set back on course. Sometimes we just need a simple encouragement that things will not always be as they are right now.
And reaching out to be a person who will call or visit someone going through something hard is very important.
Maybe it's just me, but I've found that when things get really hard, people look away. Even pastors.
Of course, Christ alone is the one who sticks closer than a brother.
I've heard Beth Moore teach that when she went through something really hard that her response to people was, "He must have missed me." The truth about suffering is it draws us into the lap of Jesus and we are so hungry for His communion.
Or, we do the opposite. We put distance between us and God.
I keep telling myself that the Bible says to rejoice. And I've found that that is the most powerful response we can have. What the enemy means to harm us, God uses for our good.
Could we please jump to Hebrews?
Please, pretty please?
I don't know if I can take my own drama and also Job's.
:)
Deborah, you were so on my heart tonight and I wanted to call you but I am out of minutes til Saturday. So I thought about you tonight as I drove across town to the P.O. (took 3 hours---long story) and prayed for you! Then I came home and read your comment that you feel like Job right now. Oh my goodness. That is overwhelming pain and I'm holding your face in my heart as you wrestle so beautifully with the One Who holds your hand.
ReplyDeleteWhat a beautiful response to your friends who are missing you. All you see is a friend whom you love and accept right where they are. And that's God in you. Your love covers any slight wrong, any injustice of missing you out of their own needs.
You will wrestle well through this because HE walks with you! 2 Thes 3:16. You have become such a dear friend to me. Love and prayers going up for you.