Boundaries
& Seeking God
I can just imagine what you
must have thought as you read the first 19 verses of this chapter! If you are
anything like me, you began to see that it was long past the visit limit for
comforting a friend. In fact, the time had come and gone. Before it ever got to
this point, Job’s well-meaning friends should have saddled up their donkey’s
and headed for home. It was time for Job to appeal to God on his own – without
the intervention of well-meaning onlookers, amen?!
There is a proper time to come
alongside someone in a sudden trial like Job’s case. But we are many months
down the road and the words of these friends are now becoming biting words that
are doing more harm than good. Can anyone relate? There is a great book out on
the market called ‘Boundaries’ and I highly recommend everyone read it. Why?
Because as people we need to know when to say something and when not to.
We need to understand when we
should be offering help and when to hold our tongues. We need to understand
that if what we are offering is not requested or well received, we have no
business being there. And we need to come to the realization that when someone
is in a major struggle, they have to go to God on their own without using
others as a crutch.
There comes a time in all of
our lives when we have to separate ourselves from people and get alone with God
to deal with the issues we are facing. He is a personal God. Unlike some
religions that teach people that you have to go through a pastor, priest or
other lay person to get to God, we must realize that if we have accepted Jesus
as our Savior, we may come boldly to the throne of grace and approach the Lord
on our own. We have to stop asking others to pray for us all the time. We need
to talk to God for ourselves like a grown up and we need to listen like a grown
up to what He wants to say to us. The Lord wants to deal with each of us on an
individual level. When we leave this life, we will not have anybody’s hand to
hold when we go before His throne. It will be me, myself and I when I see Jesus
face to face. None of my friends can be there to hold my hand.
We can see that Job was quite
fed up with the stance his friends had taken. He thinks they are siding with
God and not even reverent of who He is – stating lies and acting like a Dr.
with no cure – ouch! Would we want to hang around in someone’ else’s trial that
long? Where instead of comfort they find our presence to be an absolute annoyance?
I think not! Job was ready for them to ‘clam up’ so he could approach the
Almighty God for himself and state his case.
That would have been a good
time for Bildad, Zophar and Eliphaz to pack it up and say, “So long for now,
pal. May the Lord bless you as you seek Him for your answers.” Then they needed
to scat. Saints, we can come to a person’s aid in a storm, but we must not wear
out our welcome, acting in a state of codependency, thinking it is our job to
help make things right for a person with God. That is off limits. Many go far
beyond the boundary line and feel like they can play the role of Holy Spirit in
another person’s life. This is simply not true. By this time, Job needed to be
left alone to work it out with the Lord he had known for so long.
As we arrive at verse 20, we
get to the heart of the matter. Job wants to approach God. It looks like he is
ready to face whatever he needs to. He is ready to do business with the Lord in
getting to the bottom of all this pain and turmoil. That’s good news. How many
know that being willing to approach the Lord in a state of reverence, awe and
humility is the best starting gate we can come through? In 12 step programs
they do teach a valuable tool with the first step being that we must admit that
we have a problem. Until we get there we can’t get any further in finding the
solutions. How many know that a person has to get sick and tired of being sick
and tired and living in a pit. For some it takes longer than others. And still
others never seem to have enough get up and go to even want to leave their miry
pit, they become comfortable with the misery they have known so well for far
too long - how SADD-U-CEE!
Job begins to cry out to God.
He is being honest and asking the Lord to let up on the afflictions and he is
asking God to communicate with him. By now Job is willing to listen to God, or
if the Lord desires, Job will state his case before Him to get some answers. He
just wants to deal with it – hallelujah! I remember when I was in my ‘storm of
the century’. While it is shocking to me now, it literally took me from March
of 2003 until October of 2005 – a total of 31 long and devastatingly painful
months before I threw myself down on my knees and cried out to God to fix me,
acknowledging to Him that my life was a complete mess.
After that, He began to speak
to me in various ways through people and through the Bible. My spiritual ears
stared to become unblocked. My spiritual eyes which had been so dull for so
long began to see things more clearly. My heart became more tender, humble and
receptive. I was starting to see how strong willed I really had been. I saw how
much I had depended on my own efforts to survive and that it just was not
working, nor would it ever! We all have to come to a place in our trials where
we acknowledge that there is only one way out of the mess. It is doing things
the Lord’s way. Let’s look at some scripture…
Psalm 38
O Lord, do not rebuke me in Your wrath, nor chasten me in Your
hot displeasure! For Your arrows pierce me deeply, and Your hand presses me
down. There is no
soundness in my flesh because of Your anger, nor any health in my bones because of my sin. For my iniquities
have gone over my head; like a heavy burden they are too heavy for me. My
wounds are foul and festering
because of my foolishness. I am troubled,
I am bowed down greatly; I go
mourning all the day long. For my loins are full of inflammation, and there is no soundness in my
flesh. I am feeble and severely broken; I groan because of the turmoil of my
heart.
Lord, all my desire is before You; and my sighing is
not hidden from You. My heart pants, my strength fails me; as for the light of
my eyes, it also has gone from me.
My loved ones and my friends stand
aloof from my plague, and my relatives stand afar off. Those also who seek my
life lay snares for me; those
who seek my hurt speak of destruction, and plan deception all the day long.
But I, like a deaf man, do not hear; and I am like a mute who does not open his mouth. Thus
I am like a man who does not hear, and in whose mouth is no response.
For in You, O Lord, I hope; You will hear, O Lord my
God. For I said, “Hear me, lest
they rejoice over me, lest, when my foot slips, they exalt themselves against me.”
For I am ready to fall, and my sorrow is continually before me. For I
will declare my iniquity; I will be in anguish over my sin. But my
enemies are vigorous, and they are strong; and those
who hate me wrongfully have multiplied. Those also who render evil for good, they
are my adversaries, because I follow what is good.
Do not forsake me, O Lord; O my God, be not far from me! Make
haste to help me, O Lord, my salvation!
Can’t
you just hear the distress in these words and feel them as though they were
your own? It seems as if the psalmist were in conversation with Job when these
words were penned, doesn’t it? The anguish, the distance from friends and
family and the longing in his soul as one desperate to survive. He feels
helpless. But in all this desperation, he cries out to God. In verse 23 we can
see that Job is finally asking God what his sin had been. Isn’t that great? He
finally gets to the point where he is ready to acknowledge that maybe, just
maybe, he had not been 100% right in all this. Though he felt he would be
justified in it, he was now ready to approach the Lord humbly and ask if in
fact he had sinned. Now let’s look at Psalm 39. I feel confident that you will
continue to see Job in this as well…
Psalm
39
I said, “I will guard my ways, lest
I sin with my tongue; I will restrain my mouth with a muzzle, while the wicked
are before me.” I was mute with silence, I held my peace even from good; and my sorrow
was stirred up.
My heart was hot within me; while I was musing, the fire burned. Then I spoke with my tongue:
My heart was hot within me; while I was musing, the fire burned. Then I spoke with my tongue:
“Lord,
make me to know my end, and what is the
measure of my days, that I
may know how frail I am.
Indeed, You have made my days as handbreadths, and my age is as nothing before You; certainly every man at his best state is but vapor. Selah Surely every man walks about like a shadow; surely they busy themselves in vain; He heaps up riches, and does not know who will gather them.
Indeed, You have made my days as handbreadths, and my age is as nothing before You; certainly every man at his best state is but vapor. Selah Surely every man walks about like a shadow; surely they busy themselves in vain; He heaps up riches, and does not know who will gather them.
“And now, Lord, what do I wait for? My
hope is in You. Deliver
me from all my transgressions; do not make me the reproach of the foolish. I
was mute, I did not open my mouth, because it was You who did it. Remove Your plague from me; I am
consumed by the blow of Your hand. When with rebukes
You correct man for iniquity, You make his beauty melt away like a moth; surely
every man is vapor. Selah
“Hear my prayer, O Lord, and give ear to my cry; do not be
silent at my tears; for I am a
stranger with You,
a sojourner, as all my fathers were. Remove Your gaze from me, that I may regain strength, before I go away and am no more.”
a sojourner, as all my fathers were. Remove Your gaze from me, that I may regain strength, before I go away and am no more.”
Isn’t
it amazing, (yet not surprising) how the Lord ties all the words together in
the Bible? We can really see the cry of Job’s heart in this passage too, can’t
we? And maybe this has been the cry of your heart lately. Maybe you are facing
something so big and overwhelming that you feel like you are just going under.
While I may never be able to understand what you are going through specifically
like only God and you can, I know that feeling of hopeless desperation and
anguish of the soul. It seemed like the carpet of life rolled up on me, leaving
me barren and helpless.
There
was no friend I could turn to. There was no drug, no bottle of wine and
certainly no amount of food to comfort me. I couldn’t stand to even wake up
each day in the same rotten pit I was in. And after the 31 months of misery
before I finally surrendered to the Lord, I had another year and a half to walk
out before things started to really turn around in a way that I could see the
light at the end of the tunnel and not see it as a train ready to run me over! I
learned what ‘hard’ really is. I came to understand things the Lord never
wanted me to know about depression and deep pain in my soul.
Then
the hard part was learning that I could depend on no man to help me clean up my
mess. I had to pick myself up each day and do the next right thing to climb out
of that slimy pit I had thrown myself into. It was not easy at all! But it was
worth it. It seemed the more I was willing to do, the greater God showed His
mercy toward me. And the more He showed me His mercy and love, the more I
responded and wanted to better. It was a ‘blessing wheel’ you could say. Back
and forth we went. I would obey the Lord and seek His will and He would turn
right around and bless me so much that it would encourage me to want to do even
better. It continues to this day. Praise the Lord!
Just
today the Lord showed me something about the eating issues I have struggled so
hard with. He recently said that it was never a big thing – I had made a
mountain out of a molehill. And then today He showed me that though I never
knew I was going to battle something that was going to seem so much bigger than
me and impossible to handle, through Him it will be my greatest triumph and for
this very purpose…
Romans
9:14-21
What shall we say
then? Is there unrighteousness
with God? Certainly not! For He says to Moses, “I will
have mercy on whomever I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on
whomever I will have compassion.” So then it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God
who shows mercy. For the Scripture says to the
Pharaoh, “For this
very purpose I have raised you up, that I may show My power in you, and that My
name may be declared in all the earth.” Therefore He has mercy on whom
He wills, and whom He wills He hardens.
You will say to me then,
“Why does He still find fault? For who has resisted His will?” But indeed,
O man, who are you to reply against God? Will the thing formed say to him who
formed it, “Why have you
made me like this?” Does not the potter have power over the clay, from the
same lump to make one vessel for honor and another for dishonor?
Friends, everyone in this life on earth is going to face
something in their life that is far bigger than they are. We all have to ‘face
the giants’ as we head into our promised lands. None can escape this fact. This
is what the Lord showed me in Isaiah…
Isaiah 30:12-25 ERV (Read it first in the version you
normally use, then look at the ERV)
The Holy One of Israel
says, “You people have refused to accept this message from me. You depend on
fighting and lies to help you. You are guilty of these things. So you are
like a tall wall with cracks in it. That wall will fall and break into small
pieces. You will be like a large clay jar that breaks into many small,
useless pieces. You cannot use them to get a hot coal from the fire or to get
water from a pool in the ground.”
The Lord God, the Holy One of Israel, says, “If you come back to me you will
be saved. Only by remaining calm and trusting in me can you be strong.”
But you don’t want to do
that. You say, “No, we need fast horses for battle.” That is true—you will
need fast horses, but only to run away because your enemy will be faster than
your horses. One enemy soldier will make threats, and a thousand of your
men will run away. And when five of them make threats, all of you will run
away. The only thing that will be left of your army will be a flagpole on a
hill.
So the Lord is waiting to show his mercy
to you. He wants to rise and comfort you. The Lord is the God who does the right thing, so he will
bless everyone who waits for his help.
You people who live in
Jerusalem on Mount Zion will not continue crying. The Lord will hear your
crying, and he will comfort you. When he hears you, he will help you.
The Lord might give you
sorrow and pain like the bread and water you eat every day. But God is your
teacher, and he will not continue to hide from you. You will see your teacher
with your own eyes.
If you wander from the
right path, either to the right or to the left, you will hear a voice behind
you saying, “You should go this way. Here is the right way.”
Then you will take your
idols covered with gold and silver and make them unfit to be used again. You
will throw them away like filthy rags and say, “Go away!”
At that time the Lord
will send you rain. You will plant seeds, and the ground will grow food for
you. You will have a very large harvest. You will have plenty of food in the
fields for your animals. There will be large fields for your sheep. Your cattle
and donkeys will have all the food they need. There will be much food.
You will have to use
shovels and pitchforks to spread all the food for your animals to
eat. Every mountain and hill will have streams filled with water. These things
will happen after many people are killed and the enemy’s towers are pulled
down.
When we try to do things our own way, it’s useless. When we
turn to other things rather than God, it renders us helpless. God knows it and
reminds His people here that they will get to the point where they will detest
their idols (the things they have been relying on to get them by) and finally
turn to Him. And when they do, He will be right there, ready to be gracious to
us and have mercy on us. Then to top it off He will bless us beyond our greatest
imaginations and cause blessings to overtake us. How’s that for grace? Glory to
God!!!
Saints, it doesn’t get any better than this anywhere else.
Only God can comfort us. Only He can provide the things we need. Only He can
cleanse us from our sins and make our broken lives whole once again. No friend
or lover will ever be a match for the Lord. No food, drink or drug; nothing
will ever be able to satisfy us like our God – hallelujah! The sooner we figure
that out the better. Don’t you think Job was finally coming to this realization
in our chapter today? But is he unlike any of us? Or are we so much like him
that we almost cringe as we read?
When we finally get good and ready (on our own – no help from
anybody) to throw down our idols and look to the Lord, He will comfort us – He
will teach us, and He will bless everything we put our hands to when we seek to
please Him and live His way. Glory to His name forever! Job asked God to show
him his sins while feeling like a helpless leaf tossed to and fro in the winds
of life. He wasn’t sure what charge God had against him, but he knew it was
something. Now he was getting to the point where he would want to get to the
bottom of all this because enough was enough! Amen!
How about you?
Questions:
What did Job think
about his friend’s advice at this point?
What would be the
right thing for Job’s friends to do at this stage of Job’s trial?
Why are boundaries so important with when dealing with people?
What did Job finally ask of God in his situation?
In what way might you need to approach God directly for help in a
current situation you are dealing with?
They show that in their hearts they know what is
right and wrong, the same as the law commands, and their consciences agree.
Sometimes their thoughts tell them that they have done wrong, and this makes
them guilty. And sometimes their thoughts tell them that they have done right,
and this makes them not guilty.
There
are three main points to consider from today’s study…
Boundaries are critical when dealing with people
We must seek God for wisdom in every trial we face
God is gracious and merciful when we turn to Him
Heavenly
Father,
Thank
You for Your gracious love and mercy toward the sons of men! Lord, I am so
grateful that through Jesus I can come to You for help in every situation I
face in this life. I don’t have to go to a priest, a pastor or a friend. I can
come boldly to You in the name of Your Son Jesus to find mercy in my time of
need. Lord, help me to see anything that has gotten in between us. Show me if
there is sin in my life that must be dealt with. Show me the way out through
Holy Spirit and Your word. I will purpose to make things right and do things
Your way. In Jesus name I ask – amen!
What do you need to
approach the Lord about right now?
And God Said… You fill in the blanks.
“Come to me all of
you who are tired from the heavy burden you have been forced to carry. I will
give you rest. Accept my teaching. Learn from me. I am gentle
and humble in spirit. And you will be able to get some rest. Yes,
the teaching that I ask you to accept is easy. The load I give you to carry is
light.
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