Job
Despises His Birth
At the end of
yesterday’s chapter, Job’s friends had come to comfort him and mourn with him.
When they saw the desperate state he was in they couldn’t even recognize him.
The friend they had known maybe all their lives was now reduced to a wretched
looking heap of sickness and death sitting in a pile of ashes. Can you imagine
their response when they encountered him? They had to be shocked to see such a
strong man of God, wealthy in every way reduced to this pile of darkness and
despair. Surely they had never encountered such a thing in all their days! They
sat down with their friend and for seven days they sat there without saying a
word. What could a person say in a situation like this anyway? Many times when
we go to comfort someone we think we have to say something. But we cannot know
the pain they are experiencing beyond what our eyes can behold. Most of the
time the best solution in a case like this is to just be there with them. We
can cry with them and hold them. What else can we do?
In chapter 3 Job
has now opened his mouth to speak after the seven days were passed. He has gone
from a state of praising God to a state of deep, dark despair. He was
exceedingly sorrowful. He despised ever having been born. Friends, that is
about as low as a human can go. That is a spirit of depression that will
overtake a person if they do not fight it. The devil was right there and he was
certainly encouraging Job to think negatively about his situation. You see the
devil hoped that if he was patient, sooner or later Job would go beyond the
stage of worshiping and praising God into the deep sadness that would surely
come after experiencing so much loss. The devil is a persistent cuss. He can
wait for us to go through all that praising God for a short period when trouble
comes. Once a little time has elapsed and we calm down and get a little more quiet
then the enemy can start bringing all the negative thoughts.
Saints, once this
happens, we are given over to the devils tactics and that is where we begin to
lose the battle in our storms. It is when we get quiet and stop praising God
that the enemy can make us feel like the storm is over taking us. And the more
we think that way the worse it gets. Why? Because now we have left the realm of
faith and entered into the sense realm where the devil operates. And once we go
there we are already defeated. But this is what Jesus said to the storms He
encountered…
Mark 4:36-41
Now when they had left
the multitude, they took Him along in the boat as He was. And other little
boats were also with Him. and a great windstorm arose, and the waves beat
into the boat, so that it was already filling. But He was in the stern,
asleep on a pillow. And they awoke Him and said to Him, “Teacher, do You not
care that we are perishing?”
Then He arose and
rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Peace, be still!” And the
wind ceased and there was a great calm. But He said to
them, “Why are you so fearful? How is it that you have no faith?” And they feared exceedingly,
and said to one another, “Who can this be, that even the wind and the sea obey
Him!”
Can you see this saints? When the storm came up all they had to do
was speak to the storm, just like the Master had done and it would have calmed
right down. But what was their first response? Panic and fear. I knew of a lady
at church who was one of the loudest ones to yell “Amen!” during our services.
She seemed so passionate about the Lord and His word. Even the car she drove
was loaded with scripture verses. I thought, “Wow, this lady must be really
strong in her faith!”
One day as we were walking out of church we had an opportunity to
talk with her and formally meet her. She pointed to her car and said that she
was having trouble with it. What she said next really surprised me. Out of her
own mouth she said with a grimace of despair in her face, “I just don’t know
what I am going to do!” What could we say except that the Lord would provide,
and she had heartily agreed. But did she really? Or was she just agreeing with
us because it was the easy thing to do at the moment? Did she really believe
that the Lord could help her in her trial with her car? We will never fully
know. She has since gone home to be with Him so her car troubles are over for
good! Hallelujah!
I don’t think there
is a single person that is reading this study who has not experienced some
severe trials in their lives. And some more than others for sure. When one
despairs even of life, there just isn’t anything to look forward to when a
person wakes up in the morning. The depression can overtake us like a flood and
even performing the daily tasks of life like bathing and eating become a
cumbersome and unpleasant task. How do I know this? My friends, I have been
there.
As a young girl I
had lots of family issues going on. They were not good. But most of the time I
seemed to maintain my inner joy – it had to be the Lord! As much as we went
through I was still able to dance around the house and sing. I liked to sing
and was trying to learn to play the guitar. I enjoyed dancing and cheer leading and baseball. Actually everything from ice skating to climbing trees and riding
horses, you name it. I was in for anything fun and active. I enjoyed life even
in the midst of some very difficult family times.
At age 13 I had my
first taste of depression when I was forced to break up with my first love. It
devastated me. I was overwhelmed with grief. One night I woke in the middle of
the night and I literally saw Jesus in my door which was closed. It looked like
He blended in with the door. I could hear Him say to me, “Everything is going
to be alright.” After that I never gave it much more thought. We were not
church goers and life just went on. Little did I know when He spoke those words
to me how much grief and sorrow I would become all too familiar with in life
before I would truly surrender my life to Him.
That visit was at
age 13. When I was 47 I stepped into the storm of the century when I left my
husband of 22 years for another man. What I thought would fix the problems in
my current marriage turned out to be the curse that almost took my life. The
new husband turned out to be a prescription drug addict and I was clueless
about what I was getting into. The devil had stepped right into the middle of
my life to bring destruction, and I was totally unaware of his tactics at that
point.
The new marriage
went from bad to worse and I ended up broke. I lost everything except for a few
personal belongings like some clothing and a few family photos, etc. Over time I
just kept losing things. I lost the daughters I had spent the previous 18 years
raising and loved so much. I lost my dog and my cat. I lost my reputation in
the family, in the neighborhood and at work. My friends all turned their backs
on me. And the ones who tried to talk sense into me I would not hear. I had
reverted back to teenage behavior because I had never grown beyond it in all
those years. I had only suppressed a lifetime of pain and now it was surfacing
with a vengeance and I was spiraling out of control. In just a few short months
I was down to driving my daughter’s car and had no place to live. We had to
stay with friends or his relatives to survive.
In just one year of
being with that man I had come to what I felt was the very bottom of the barrel.
I sank into a heavy depression such as I had never known before. It was an
effort just to be awake. I cried a lot and sat staring out the window into the
dreary winter woods. When I would fall asleep at night I would wish that this
had all been a really bad nightmare and that when I woke in the morning I would
be back in the house with my former husband and daughters. How many know that
we don’t always appreciate what we have until it is gone? By then it was too
late.
The reality was
that I had made a very poor choice and now I was living out the consequences.
So in that way my situation was not at all like Job’s. He wasn’t doing anything
wrong, as far as we know at this point. He was living a godly life and lived to
please the Lord. I was not living such a godly life though I was calling myself
a Christian at the time that all this happened. Though I couldn’t relate to
Job’s circumstances that brought the trial in his life, I can relate to his
sorrow and despair. The deep anguish of the soul that comes with a terrible
storm.
My storm had
started in March of 2003. By April of 2004 things had become so unbearable that
I despaired, like Job, even of life. I wanted to die. I began to contemplate my
suicide. I even sent an email to one of my friends from the church where I had
raised my daughters to find out if suicide was considered the unpardonable sin.
I knew that if I killed myself I wanted to be with Jesus so I did not want
anything to get in the way of that. Of course my friend did not know why I was
asking her this and she answered my question saying, “No, suicide is not the
unpardonable sin.”
Little did she know
I was seriously planning to take my own life by a drug overdose. “It will be
easy,” I thought. I will take several of the strong pain killers that my new
husband is addicted to and just lay down and go to sleep, never to wake in this
life again. I wanted to go be with the Lord. I really felt that death was my
only escape. Again, like Job, who, by now not only despised the day he was
born, but now he despised even being alive and wanted to find his grave and
find the rest that he felt only death could bring. After a few weeks of
planning this suicide the evening came where the devil thought, “Yes, I finally
got her! She’s a goner!”
We had been
drinking and came home from a bar late in the night. I had no food on my
stomach and a belly full of wine. I knew in my heart I was at the breaking
point. My husband made some not so good remarks. He always seemed to turn into
a different person when he was drinking and it was not a nice person. It seemed
he was demon possessed – really it did. I would hear strange voices coming from
him in bed at night and it really scared me at the time. After I heard what he
said I snapped. I said, “That’s it!”
While he lay in the
bedroom spouting off nasty comments, I walked over to my purse in the living
room and pulled out a fresh bottle of Percocet 750 mg. tablets and I said this
to the Lord, “Lord, forgive me for this. I can’t take any more in this life. I
have ruined everything. I am coming to be with You.” After that I began
swallowing as many of the pills as I could get down. Then I walked into the
bathroom and locked the door behind me. My husband asked me what I was doing
and I replied, “Never mind! It won’t matter in a few minutes anyway.” Next I
found a bottle of Tylenol PM in the cabinet and started swallowing those until I
began to vomit but nothing came up but water – the pills were staying down.
I stood there and
looked at myself in the mirror with tears streaming down my cheeks. I was
living in a nightmare and the only way out was certainly death. Suddenly the
door popped open. He had used a driver’s license to open the door. I turned and
staggered past him and turned the corner to head for the bed. That was the last
thing I remembered. I woke up 18 hours later on a ventilator in the critical
care unit of the hospital. When my eyes began to open and I saw the lights and
the nurse’s station at the end of my bed I began to choke on the ventilator. As
they ran to my side to pull it out so I could breathe, I became very angry. I
realized that I had not left the earth and I was extremely upset. I looked up
toward heaven and said, “God, why am I still here? What good am I? I have
messed everything up.” I would not understand the answer to that question for a
couple more years.
After that, I began
trying to pick up the many broken pieces of my life. I had declared bankruptcy
after having had perfect credit. The state had to pay my enormous hospital bill
from being on life support and in hospitalized for three days. I had to find a
job. The husband and I would break up and get back together several times
before I finally knew I had to get away from him permanently at the Lord’s
direction. By the next summer I ended up in the church where I heard the Ten
Commandments and went home and fell to my knees beside my bed. I cried out, “Oh
God, I’m a mess. Will You fix me?”
From that moment on
everything changed. I had the Holy Spirit alive in me and my entire outlook on
life was changing drastically. Though I was still in the storm and experiencing
multiple negative consequences for my bad choices, I started learning to praise
God right there in the middle of it. I would take walks around the neighborhood
and praise God and talk to Him and cry and praise Him and thank him some more.
This has been a habit of mine ever since.
Step by painful
step I walked out of the storm. Over the next two years I would go from broke
and homeless to prospering here in Florida. When I crossed the Florida state
line because God had told me to come here it was as if the Florida sunshine was
reflecting the Son’s shine in my life in ways I had never known. Doors began to
fly open for me. The Lord gave me back my career in insurance - the career He
had miraculously given me in my early twenties. My pay was restored. My car was
paid off. My debts, one by one were paid off until finally I had no more debt. My
credit score bounced back little by little.
I began sowing
after tithing faithfully and I was seeing the Lord work in mighty ways. I was
awestruck, and I still am! What a mighty God we serve. I saw Him bring me
friendships and clothing and help and comfort when I needed it. He brought me
people to teach me and help me grow up in my faith walk with Him. When He had
taken me through one level for what He felt was long enough, He would escalate
me to another level. Things just kept getting better and better and better. My
relationship with my Lord was growing by leaps and bounds and He was and is
everything to me. Not long after I came to Florida the Lord had given me this
promise in His word…
Ezekiel 36:11
I will multiply upon you man and beast; and they shall
increase and bear young; I will make you inhabited as in former times, and do better for
you than at your
beginnings. Then you shall know that I am the Lord.
From that day on I
waited and stood on it for 6 years. By the time the six years were ended, the
Lord had given me my daughters back, plus grandchildren, a new godly husband, a
new puppy and a brand new life in Him! Hallelujah! Give Him a shout of praise!
He is good, so good and so faithful to His promises. Here’s the thing. We are
all going to go through trials in this life. Some will be our own fault, others
will not. It is sin in the world that brings them, but it is faith in God that
dispels them.
What if I had
allowed myself to stay down in that pity party and keep saying, “Woe is me.” Would
I be here today talking to you and telling you about all the great things the
Lord has done for me? Hardly! No, in fact I shudder to think where I would be
if I had chosen to stay in that pit. I may have been dead and buried in no time
if I had not decided to trust in Him during the worst of it once I got a hold
of what faith in God and His word can do for a person. Hallelujah! That is and
always will be shoutin’ ground saints.
Oh, by the way, I
definitely know now why the Lord did not let me die that day in April of 2004
even though I was within seconds of breathing my last breath. It is so I can
bring Him glory in the earth by being used of Him to touch other lives. I don’t
claim to have experienced everything everyone else has – certainly not! But I
have been through a lot so I can talk about what not to do and how doing the
right thing with God will bring the right results! I praise God through my Lord
Jesus Christ that I am alive today. My life is so sweet now and I stay excited
all the time.
I can barely wait
to unwrap each new day because He always has exciting things ready for us – hallelujah!
It is a joy to carry out His work in the earth, even if it means denying our
flesh some temporary pleasures. This life will be over so fast and we will look
back and say, “Oh….that was really no big deal, was it?” And we will think of
how foolish it was to worry and fret when we had this great big God all along
who could help us and make our lives rich with meaning, purpose and fruit if we
would put all our faith and trust in Him alone. Now I have a new song in my
heart and it aint the blues my brothers and sisters! Hallelujah!
Psalm 40:1-3
I waited patiently for the Lord; and He inclined to me, and heard my cry.
He also brought me up out of a horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my steps. He has put a new song in my mouth—Praise to our God; many will see it and fear, and will trust in the Lord.
He also brought me up out of a horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my steps. He has put a new song in my mouth—Praise to our God; many will see it and fear, and will trust in the Lord.
Saints
this is why we are alive. This verse right here. It sums it all up so
beautifully, doesn’t it? Job had gone from praising to despairing. I understand
what that is like – been there and done that as they say. But what we need to
look at here brings a deeper meaning about why this attack happened in the
first place. Do you remember yesterday when we did not understand why all this
had come upon this wonderful man of God? Well today we can see in verse 25 what
the ‘door opener’ was for satan. We know that in order for the devil to be able
to get into our lives the door has to be open. Well, look at what Job said in
this verse again…
Job
3:25
For the thing I greatly feared has come upon me,
and what I dreaded has happened to me.
We
lived off of sandwiches and boxed foods and canned soups. Bean soup and peanut
butter and jelly sandwiches were among my favorites. Sometimes my mom would
tell us she didn’t know how she was going to pay the rent or other bills that
were due. That is a pretty heavy thing to lay on a child. So we carried the
burden with her though we were much too young and immature to be able to handle
it.
Why
do I bring this up? Because my fear of lack that began to grow in me as a young
child is the very thing that came upon me in my crises back in 2004-2006. I
lost most everything. In addition to this I had developed an eating disorder in
my thirties that continued to spiral out of control as the years went by. I
went from being a normal eater to a person who ate too much. All of that was a
means trying to comfort myself.
It
wasn’t until recently that the Lord was able to show me that it had all started
from a fear of lack. All addictions are based on fear of something. And all
this fear brought a great deal of sickness to my life. Was this God’s plan for
me? Absolutely not! But my fear – aka, lack of faith is what let the sickness
in. And so it is with Job in our chapter today. What he feared had come upon
him. Here is what the Bible says about fear…
1
John 4:18
There is no fear in
love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment.
But he who fears has not been made perfect in
love.
Living
in fear not only opens the door for the devil to bring destruction into our
lives, but it also brings torment. Living in fear is a terrible thing. Fear is sin.
Jesus told us not to fear, over and over again in His word.
Isaiah
41:10
Fear not, for I am with
you; be not dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you, Yes,
I will help you, I will uphold you with My righteous right hand.’
You can look up the
verses on your own – there’s plenty of verses from the beginning to the end of
the Bible that command us not to fear. So what is it when we disobey that
command? It is sin, plain and simple. And here is what Jesus tells us we are to
do…
John 14:1, 27
“Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in
God, believe also in Me.
Peace I leave with
you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not
your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.
Saints,
when the Lord tells us to do something in His word, these are not just friendly
suggestions. For the true believer and disciple of Jesus, these are
commandments. It is what He expects us to do, and why? Because He knows we can
do it. In Him we can do all things that He asks us to do. But a life of trust
is a life of faith. Faith doesn’t look at the circumstances. Faith doesn’t
listen to feelings. Faith doesn’t listen to opposing people. Faith listens to
God and responds by believing what cannot yet be seen in the natural realm.
Hebrews
11:1
Now faith is the substance of things hoped for,
the evidence of things not seen.
We can know in our
heads all the cute sayings in Christianity about fear and faith but if we don’t
act upon our faith it is useless. The proof is in the pudding saints! Job would
have a thing or two to learn about being fearful wouldn’t he? Sadly he was learning
his lesson on this the hard way. Isn’t that a lot like us friends? But we can
make up our minds right here and right now that we are going to squelch all
fear in our lives and learn to really trust God like we so often say we do –
amen?!
Questions:
What was Job doing
as we opened our chapter today?
What was the key
that opened the door to the devil to bring all that destruction to Job’s life?
What have you been fearing in your life? What are you going to do
about it?
Proverbs 3:5-6
Trust in the Lord with
all your heart,
And lean not on your own understanding;
In all your ways acknowledge Him,
And He shall direct your paths.
There
are three main points to consider from today’s study…
We must maintain an attitude of praise in our trial
We cannot allow fear in our lives for even a moment
Trusting God is the only way out of any storm
Let’s pray…
Heavenly Father,
Thank You for the
day You formed me in my mother’s womb. Thank You Lord for creating me in Christ
Jesus to do good works that You prepared in advance for me to do. Lord I ask
You to show me if there is any fear in my heart at this time. If so I will
repent and make a decision to trust You at all times. Thank You for the
assurance in Your word that You will bring me peace and I do not have to let my
heart be troubled, ever. I can trust in You, my Rock, my Fortress and my
Strength. You are good and Your word never fails as You always watch over Your
word to perform it. Bring glory to Yourself by using me to do the work You
planned for me. In Jesus name! Amen!
Will you stop fearing and really
trust Him now?
And God Said… You fill in the blanks.
Haggai
1:1-5
In
the seventh month, on
the twenty-first of the month, the word of the Lord came by Haggai the prophet, saying: “Speak
now to Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua the
son of Jehozadak, the high priest, and to the remnant of the people,
saying: ‘Who is left among you who saw this temple in its former
glory? And how do you see it now? In comparison with it, is this not in your eyes as
nothing? Yet now be strong, Zerubbabel,’ says the Lord; ‘and be strong, Joshua, son of
Jehozadak, the high priest; and be strong, all you people of the land,’ says
the Lord, ‘and work; for
I am with you,’ says
the Lord of hosts. ‘According to the word that I
covenanted with you when you came out of Egypt, so My Spirit remains among you;
do not fear!’
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