Month: January 2005

Job’s Wife

Job’s wife has gotten a lot of bad press.

In Job chapters 1 and 2 we see that Job’s wealth, family, and health have been destroyed. The only things spared are Job’s life and his wife.

It has been said that Job’s wife “loses what faith she might have had”. Additionally, it has been joked (by myself included) that satan took everything but left a nagging wife behind to further torture Job.

After rereading the book, considering it as a whole, and particularly considering the latter chapters, I would like to offer another possibility.

I’ve seen that even though Job’s actions and speech appear to be upright and without sin early in the story, deep down in Job’s heart he is actually self-righteous.

Early on, Job mouths lots of very good sounding words. However, when we get down to the core, we find him saying what he really thinks in his heart. Both Elihu and God rebuke Job because he is righteous in his own site.

In light of this, consider that in Job 2:8, Job is off sitting in a corner having a pity party and feeling sorry for himself.

Consider also that Job’s wife probably knows more about Job than any other human in the story.

Frustrated with Job’s self-pity, I can imagine Job’s wife saying in 2:9 something to the effect of: “If all your going to do is sit there and feel sorry for yourself, why not get it over with and curse God and die.”

STRANGER WITHIN

Every once in a while, I get one of those emails that circulate about the net that are actually worth keeping.

STRANGER WITHIN (Author Unknown)

A few months before I was born, my Dad met a stranger who was new to our small Tennessee town. From the beginning, Dad was fascinated with this enchanting newcomer and soon invited him to live with our family.

The stranger was quickly accepted and was around to welcome me into the world a few months later. As I grew up, I never questioned his place in my family. In my young mind, he had a special niche. My parents were complementary instructors: Mom taught me the word of God, and Dad taught me to obey it.

But the stranger?; He was our storyteller. He would keep us spellbound for hours on end with adventures, mysteries and comedies. If I wanted to know anything about politics, history or science, he always knew the answers about the past, understood the present and even seemed able to predict the future! He took my family to the first major league ball game. He made me laugh, and he made me cry. The stranger never stopped talking, but Dad didn’t seem to mind.

Sometimes Mom would get up quietly while the rest of us were shushing each other to listen to what he had to say, and she would go to her room and read her books. (I wonder now if she ever prayed for the stranger to leave.)

Dad ruled our household with certain moral convictions, but the stranger never felt obligated to honor them. Profanity, for example, was not allowed in our home … not from us, our friends or any visitors. Our longtime visitor, however, got away with four-letter words that burned my ears and made my dad squirm and my mother blush.

My Dad was a teetotaler who didn’t permit alcohol in the home, not even for cooking. But the stranger encouraged us to try it on a regular basis. He made cigarettes look cool, cigars manly and pipes distinguished. He talked freely (much too freely!) about sex. His comments were sometimes blatant, sometimes suggestive, and generally embarrassing. I now know that my early concepts about relationships were influenced strongly by the stranger.

Time after time, he opposed the values of my parents, yet he was seldom rebuked … and NEVER asked to leave.

More than fifty years have passed since the stranger moved in with our family. He has blended right in and is not nearly as fascinating as he was at first. Still, if you were to walk into my parents’ den today you would still find him sitting over in his corner, waiting for someone to listen to him talk and watch him draw his pictures.

His name?

We just call him TV.

Seek and You Will Find

There is nothing wrong with questions. There is nothing wrong with wanting to be sure of the truth. You need to not be afraid to ask questions. You need to verify things for yourself.

Where we get into trouble is when we stop at the question.

We are admonished to “Seek and You Will Find” and to “Knock and It Will be Answered”. When we have questions we need to do something about getting an answer.

Don’t stop at the question. Notice that in order to find the answer, you need to seek it out.

For your faith to work, you must be absolutely sure beyond a doubt.

Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.

There is no such thing as “blind faith”. Faith is based on knowledge — but not just any kind of knowledge, knowledge of God’s Word.

The next step is to believe and act on your faith. This is knowing that God’s Word is true no matter what your senses tell you about your circumstances. Let God be true and every man a liar.

What can hold you back? Doubt and unbelief. Any doubt in your heart can hinder or nullify your faith.

If you have questions, you need to do something to get them resolved one way or another. Let not any who is double-minded expect anything of God.

If you don’t have time and need an immediate miracle, then in the meantime get others to agree with you in prayer.

Do whatever you need to do to be certain. This process will be different for every person, but the first step for everyone is to open yourself up and ask the Holy Spirit to guide you into the truth — whatever that truth may be, even if it flies in the face of some of your favorite pet theories. The next step is to get into the Word and read in the bible what God has to say about the subject. Dwell on it, think about it, meditate on it. To supplement your personal study, find good bible-based books/tapes that teach on the subject.

It is not wrong to question as long as you do something about getting your questions answered and resolved.

Dwell in the Secret Place

Do you know how to meditate? Many are surprised to hear that everyone is born knowing how to meditate effectively.

We all know how to worry. Well, basically worry is just meditating on fear, doubt, and unbelief. Early in life we become expert at this.

It is not so much that you need to learn how to meditate, you just need to change what you meditate on.

Get Stirred Up

The devil wants us to be complacent. It supports his plan for us to be depressed, sick, and/or impoverished. As long as we live in a defeated state, we are a poor witness of the love, power, and grace of God.

The best witnesses for satan are defeated christians.

We have doctors, counselors, chat show hosts, tv shows, and magazines all advising us that we should just “accept” our situation and let it run its course. If we don’t do this, they look down their nose at us and say we are “just in denial”. The world says to just give in when all natural remedies fail.

The thing is, we do not have to accept defeat.

God on the other hand provides a way, even when in the natural there does not seem to be any way. All we need to do is just receive what He has already done for us.

Instead of just “learning to accept” how we percieve our condition to be, we need to get stirred up about what God has to say about our condition. Get indignant about it. How dare sickness attack your body when Jesus already bore the sickness for you. How dare the devourer rob you of the riches God has for you, when Jesus was made poor so that you could be made rich.

The best witnesses for God are victorious christians.

Where the Heart Lies

One thing that never fails to rub me the wrong way is to listen to people whine and go on about “Why doesn’t God bless me?”, or “Why does ‘so-and-so’ get blessed and not me?”.

These are the same people that spend between one hour a day or one hour a week going to church or reading the bible, if that…

They then turn around and spend 4 to 12 hours a day filling themselves with doubt and unbelief by watching whatever garbage happens to be on the TV, radio, in some magazine, the latest gossip, or the like.

Then they have the audacity to wonder why their faith is not working?

You see, God has already done everything He’s going to do about solving your problem. He knew about your need long before you ever knew you had a need. Like any loving parent, He is more interested in seeing you prosper than you are.

God has provided a solution to your problem by His Grace.

All that is left to do is receive His Grace.

To receive what God has already given you, you must do so in faith.

First you need to know that God has already provided for you, and there is nothing you can do to earn it. This is how you get faith, it comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God.

Once you have the faith, the last thing that stands between you and the answer is doubt and unbelief.

The key is in overcoming doubt and unbelief. The best (and to my knowledge, only) way to do this is to:

1) Starve it out. Starve it out doubt by not feeding it. Eliminate avenues of doubt and unbelief into your life.

2) Drown it out. Keep God’s Word continually before your eyes, in your ears, and coming out of your mouth. Replace the unbelief with the surety that God is faithful to perform His word.

Reflecting on Relationships

What will you be thinking of on your death bed?

Think about it…

Will you be thinking “I sure wish I would have watched more television”?

Will you be thinking “I should have bought another house”, “worn more designer clothes”, “I should have worked more overtime”, or “gone shopping just one more time”?

Or will you be thinking about the relationships in your life?

Will you regret the hours you were too busy to spend with your children? Your wife? Loved ones, friends?

Now, ask the question: “What is most important in my life?”

Watch and Be Calm

Remember without ceasing your work of faith, and labour of love, and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ, in the sight of God and our Father;

Knowing, brethren beloved, your election of God.

You are all the sons of light and the sons of the day.

We are not of the night, or of darkness.

Therefore let us not sleep as the rest do, but let us watch and be calm.

For those sleeping sleep in the night, and those being drunken are drunken in the night.

But let us, who are of the day, be calm, having put on the breastplate of faith and love and the hope of salvation for a helmet.

For God has not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, so that whether we watch or sleep we should live together with Him.

1Th 1:3-4, 5:5-10