Longing For
Love
Our journey with Job continues
with the desperate need of a desperate man. He is completely unaware of why all
this happened to him. Since the beginning of the book of Job we have looked at
this man and his trials, why they happened and what had opened the door for the
enemy attack. We have seen his friends be used of God to try to speak sense to
him. We learned about how important it is to seek God in a trial and how
important it is to maintain a heart of praise through it all. Bitterness had
set in and there are many spiritual roots to bitterness – we have to be careful
to get to the bottom of things and get them out ASAP!
In this study the Lord has
shown us the importance of being quick to hear, slow to speak and slow to
anger. We see God’s greatness compared to the futility of man - made of the
dust of the earth. We have also learned about what strongholds are and how to
deal with them. The correction that came through Job’s friends had become
difficult for him to accept because of the obvious lack of encouragement combined
with the accusing lashes of their tongues against a man and a situation they
knew practically nothing about.
We have also learned that God
does not control everything. We have a choice to make each and every day. The
importance of boundaries when dealing with others is critical. If we overstep
those lines we can cause a great deal of trouble. God has shown us in this book
that He wants us to live an abundant life and there are numerous scriptures
that prove it in His word. Last week we ended our study in chapter 15 by
learning that we really do have to watch the things that we allow to come out
of our mouths. What we say really does matter. And if ever there was a book in
the Bible that can show us about the damage caused by a lot of words, this is
certainly it.
Today, as we step into chapter
16, we find this broken down man getting downright fed up with his ‘not so
comforting friends’. He called them miserable comforters in verse 2. How would
you feel if you had been hanging around a troubled friend long enough to hear
them say that to you? Would it make you turn and run in the other direction? Or
would you change your tune, ask for forgiveness and try to find the right
things to say or do as you were led by Holy Spirit? This is a big question for
all of us, isn’t it? How long do we stick around when someone is going through
a trial?
At what point do we stop trying
to give our advice (most of which we don’t even take ourselves and that is why
we are so busy trying to give it away J) and start to just love the person through it?
Doesn’t there come a time when
someone is facing a giant mountain or storm in their lives when no human words
will do any further good? We have looked at that too.
There is a time and a season to
be there to offer advice, and a time to pull back. Does that mean we stop
loving our friend or loved one while they are still in the middle of a mess?
Certainly not! Job said that if the circumstances were reversed he would have
comforted them with his words, and not acted as they had toward him. He thought
their words were about as tolerable as an endless wind, didn’t he? Or like
razor blades in an already wounded and bleeding heart. It looked like there
should be nothing further for Eliphaz, Bildad or Zophar to say, didn’t’ it? So
why should they stay? Job was obviously in a bad situation and it didn’t look
like it was coming to an end any time soon. Even though it is said that this
trial may have lasted about a year or so, a year like that can seem like an
eternity to a person, can’t it?
Job is thinking that all of
heaven and all of hell is against him while he sees himself as having no blood
on his hands. He cries until he can’t even cry anymore. His appearance makes it
obvious that his life is a complete mess. He isn’t feeling any love from
anybody at this point, is he? How would you feel if you thought God was against
you and the devil was on your tail every minute? And to top that off, your
closest friends, maybe people you have known all your life who have loved and
respected you for years now speak to you like you were nothing more than a
dirty rag? I bet many of you can relate to this in one way or another at some
time in your life.
I can share a testimony with
you once again on this very subject. As we journeyed through this book of the
Bible, the Lord has led me to take you on a journey with me personally as we
have looked at my ‘storm of the century’ that began back in 2003. When my life
fell apart, even my longtime friend since 5th grade said she didn’t
want anything more to do with me. Talk about pain! I had loved her and her
family as if they were my own. Because of my troubled family, I had found great
solace when I spent time at their house. They had been fun to be around. When I
was with her and her family, I felt like I was part of a normal family. I even
wished that they would adopt me and get me out of the hell I was living in at
home. But that would never be.
Instead, we moved when my
eighth grade year had ended and I was devastated! My mother had made a choice
to move a little closer to Detroit, staying in the suburbs but reducing her
drive time to work greatly from where we had been living. I viewed that as just
another blow in my already highly disappointing young life. It seemed like one
tragedy after another, and it didn’t ever seem to let up. Now mom was taking me
away from the only people I had known as friends for the past four years, the
longest record of living anywhere since I had been born.
I would be put in high school
around a bunch of strangers. But that didn’t last. After a few short months in
9th grade I met a girl who was selling drugs in the bathroom and we
started experimenting and skipping school. I ended up missing the rest of the
school year.
The really sad thing was that
nobody came looking for me – no truant officer, nobody. The next summer we
moved yet again and would be in a different school district. I spent the summer
staying at my boyfriend’s house without any adult supervision. You already know
where this is going I am sure. By the
time 10th grade was ready to start, I found myself to be pregnant at
the tender age of 15. When school began I had a rough time going to class and
staying there because I was vomiting violently. I couldn’t keep a thing down.
So here I was - in another mess. This time it would be more than I could
handle. Because I didn’t agree with my mother to get an abortion she promptly
kicked me out of the house. I had no money and only a few items of clothing. I
was tossed out like a dirty rag by my own mother.
Now the one girl I had known as
a ‘best friend for the past 4 years was off to high school having a ball while
I was suffering in my own little pit. My dad was long gone having divorced my
mom 6 years prior. He was off living in Germany somewhere in the military,
remarried and raising her children. I had been a daddy’s girl when I was little
so my heart was broken that he was not around. I had no one I could turn to. I
was frightened beyond description as you can imagine. Fifteen year old girls
should have their nose in the books and maybe do some cheerleading (which I
really liked doing) - not living on the street wondering where their next meal
was coming from with a baby growing in their womb that they would know nothing
about how to properly care for the innocent child.
What I needed then was some
serious love. I needed the right people to show me the right kind of love.
Because of my family situation I was looking for love in the wrong places with
the wrong people which landed me in that mess to begin with. But there was only
a sprinkling of people here and there that would be used by God to help me. A
friend’s mom let me stay with her a while until my boyfriend and I got married
in front of a Judge and moved to a motel and later to an apartment. I had no
money, no car, and no driver’s license. I was completely at the mercy of
others. I had to take whatever was thrown my way. I remember just sitting alone
and crying, while my new young husband went off to school to finish his high
school senior year.
And things, as bad as they were
at that time only got worse. I had the baby, but after nine months my mom
suggested that she be given up for adoption. That was the single most difficult
thing I had ever faced in my young 16 years of life so far. I knew that things
between me and my husband were not good. I knew nothing about raising kids
because I certainly had not learned anything about proper parenting at home. My
mom was pretty disengaged with my life, but she did show up one day at just the
right moment when the baby was crying and I had been up all night with the gal
next door trying out drugs with her. My mom said something that I know now had
to be God talking. She said, “Hanny, love means doing something that is better
for the other person than for yourself.”
Her comment shocked me because
she had not been the kind of mother that talked like that with me. Now all of a
sudden she was standing there saying these words that made absolute sense. To
keep that child with me at that point would have been to subject to her to
things that could have only damaged her. I was heading down a bad path, and to
take her with me on that path would have been totally selfish and absolutely to
her detriment. So after leaving her in foster care for a month while I thought
things over, I decided to proceed with the adoption.
The agency kept calling me and
pressuring me for a decision. They had another family that was ready to take
her. She would be well cared for. I went to a small court room and her dad and
I signed all the papers to release her from our care. I had to speak into a
microphone in front of a bunch of strangers and admit that I was an unfit
mother and that I agreed to release her and never know anything further
concerning her whereabouts. That was in January of 1973 – she was 9 months old
at the time. They gave me a couple of pictures of her from the foster home, and
that was it. It would be all over but the crying.
After that day, I really had
nobody but the husband who was busy running around with other girls to
graduation parties while I sat in our tiny apartment in an old run down house
in the heart of town - supported by the state of Michigan because I had no
license or any way to get a job. Eventually, after a big blowout with him, we
separated for good. I moved in with a gal I had met and started working in a
nursing home as a nurse’s aide. When I turned 18 I went to the department of
motor vehicles and got a license. Not long after that I left Michigan and began
what would be a two year journey of drugs, partying, hitchhiking all over the
country, being homeless and staying with people I didn’t even know. It was wild
and got wilder by the day.
My drug use became so frequent
and intense I eventually turned to shooting up with needles. Heroin, cocaine,
anything that someone would give me. The guys liked to have a girl by their
side to party with so I was able to get drugs without much effort financially.
It cost me so much more in many other ways. I ended up in Topeka, Kansas, and
that is where the drug use became so intense I ended up in the hospital. After
my release I met a gal at a party one night. She suggested that I go and apply
for a job with Blue Cross Blue Shield.
As you follow this testimony,
you will see a girl who wandered aimlessly through each day longing for love.
But for me, it was still nowhere to be found. I had lost any so called friends
a long time back. The only people that I had in my life were the party and drug
buddies. They only cared about sex, drugs and rock-n-roll. The longer I
journeyed through life without love, the less I cared about myself, my future
or any purpose to my life. I felt a lot like Job, I can say that for certain. I
guess I figured that if others didn’t seem to think I mattered or was
important, than I must not be. My parents hadn’t and I had no real lasting
friends.
Life had dealt me some severe
blows and I didn’t know why. I had always been a pretty compliant kid. I was
fun loving and outgoing, while having a bit of a quiet side. I liked doing so
many things. I enjoyed the outdoors greatly.
I liked riding bikes, mini
bikes, horses, climbing trees, cheerleading, track and field, tennis, and
especially baseball, you name it – I would go for it. Ok, I was a bit of a tom
boy. But the neat thing was I enjoyed dancing and being a girl and I really
liked being able to do things the boys get to enjoy too. I liked cars and water
skiing and things that went fast. I thought it is certainly a better deal to be
a girl because we can do it all. But boys can’t dress up and wear high heels.
At least they shouldn’t be.
This is when God really stepped
in to start directing a path for me. A testimony involves a test, and boy I had
gone through some. I never thought I passed the first one. I later discovered
it was the Lord using that woman at the party that night to direct me to Blue
Cross and Blue Shield. I went and applied for the sake of doing it – not really
believing anything would come of it. But in God’s master plan for my life, He
would show me a way to get the education I had missed by missing out on all of
my high school years except those first three months of 9th grade.
Insurance – health insurance and employee benefits would be become my career
and my passion. One that would be a 20 year career with a 12 year break after 8
½ years to raise my daughters and stay home with them.
God says in His word He is a
Father to the fatherless. That was me. I had been left high and dry by both
parents, so He knew I needed help. He knew He had a great plan for me; one that
I would not even begin to discover until after turning 51 years old! I not only
got the job, but broke up with the boyfriend I had at the time, bought a car,
and went to class for three months to learn the computer coding I would need to
perform my new job as a Subscriber Accounting Auditor. After 2 years in that
position I was promoted to a sales rep for the company and given a brand new
company car that I was able to pick all the options for. I was at that for 6
months and became one of the top three reps in the state.
Soon I became homesick for Michigan.
I had been gone a long time I desired to be around people, anybody that I had
known before. I was tired of living out in the middle of the USA among a bunch
of strangers. Holidays had been especially difficult and lonely. I would wonder
what it would be like to be around a loving family and enjoy the holidays with
love and laughter, family and friends. Such things I had never really known but
my heart longed for that more than all the money in the world.
I can really see how God had
protected me during those wild partying years. All those times I stood beside a
long and lonely highway with my young thumb out looking for a ride to nowhere.
I didn’t even know if God were real at that point. I had been through so much
but had never been taught the things of God. While I did get baptized and ask
Jesus to be my Savior at 9 years old, I never had any teaching after that. I
was clueless about how big and how good God really is. I never knew that He had
his eye on me like He did, stepping in to be the only Father I would ever
really have…
A father of the fatherless, a defender of widows,
is God in His holy habitation. God sets the solitary in families; He brings out those
who are bound into prosperity; but the rebellious dwell in a dry land.
In the end, I never felt like I
really had a friend who would stick by me through the good times and bad. My
friend that I had known and loved since 5th grade was busy living a
life I could never understand. She had married right out of high school and had
her family – she was having a ball. She didn’t even know where I was or what I
was going through. I had lost touch with everyone while I was away. The drug
life was trying to swallow me whole, but thankfully God had a better plan.
My insurance work had prospered
well in Kansas. When I returned to Michigan I went to work for the Michigan
Blue Cross Blue Shield in downtown Detroit. I gained a great deal of experience
and knowledge in my six years there before quitting to raise my two precious
daughters. They became the joy of my life. During my time at home as a mother,
the Lord taught me many things about life in general. He taught me how to sew
and cook and clean and pay the bills and raise those precious girls. He got me
involved in a church and a place where I could raise the girls that would teach
them something about Jesus, even though it was mostly religion rather than
relationship.
As I look back now, I can see
that the only real friend I ever had was Jesus! He was there loving me when I
didn’t have the first clue about friendship and love. He carried me through
some of the most dangerous places and circumstances – things I don’t care to
relive or even think about.
I could have died so many
times, and I came so close a number of times, yet He was there. When I was
desperately hungry, He made sure I was fed. When I needed a place to sleep – He
provided that too. It wouldn’t be until after that terrible storm that began in
2003 that I would learn how much He wanted to comfort me, talk to me and heal
all the brokenness in my life. When I really discovered Jesus (Glory to God!) I
finally found the only true friend that I would ever have in this life. I found
someone who would never leave me or turn on me…
Hebrews 13:5b
“I will never leave you nor forsake you.”
Because I had lived
in a mode of trying to survive for so long I developed ways to comfort myself
as best I could – but all my best efforts only failed miserably to accomplish
my desired goal. It had been easy to walk away from the drugs and alcohol. They
really make a person feel awful in the end. The high is so brief and the pain
is so lasting. Then it became food, especially sugar. That was the thing I
couldn’t drop on my own. It got a hold of me bad! I was drowning in that. Then
it was my daughters. They had become my entire world – a role that only God can
fill.
After I surrendered
to the Lord in 2005 I began to learn that He is the great “I Am”, everything to
me. And to you. To all of us. Only He can comfort us and satisfy us. Only He
can provide the lasting things we will need for this life and the next. Only He
can give us love that will never fail.
And that friend of
mine from childhood? Well, I found her and spent time with her and her husband
here and there in our adult years. When I went through my trial and she told me
that she never wanted anything to do with me again, it broke my heart. I knew
we hadn’t been the closest friends during all our adult life – not like I had
hoped it would be. I wanted to say I had at least one lasting best friend in
this crazy life, but there would prove to be none – not in the human form
anyway. It would only be Jesus. There is a song that says a lot about this.
Maybe that will be our song for this lesson. That’s why I call Him Jesus – He
called me friend when nobody would even give me a prayer. Have you ever felt
like that? Then you know how painful it is, don’t you?
My friend and I
were reunited by the Lord about three years ago. I saw her last summer in
Michigan for the first time since 2003. We talked and hugged and laughed and
cried. The Lord has restored our friendship. Now I look to Him to bring her
into the family of God. And I know He will. Then we will not only be friends,
but we will be sisters in the Lord – hallelujah! The Lord is the God of
restoration. He is a God of pure love - love that is real - love that lasts love
that covers sins and dries up all our tears. It’s true! I have seen Him do it
for me and for so many others. He restores lost relationships. He brings new
relationships of greater quality. Now I have Jesus as my number one friend and
He gave me a godly husband who is in spot #2. He is the most faithful person I
have ever met since I have lived on this earth – glory to God!
Job felt pretty
hopeless in today’s chapter. He needed some real love and encouragement this
time – not accusing blows from the one’s he had known as his closest friends.
He is feeling like God is against him, the devil is all over him and his pals
are totally against him. He feels that he has not knowingly done any evil and
wants someone in the earth, somehow, to plead his case before the Almighty so
that justice will prevail. Even though many of us reading today have read the
end of the book of Job, let’s keep reading as if we had not.
I can tell you that
through all the trials I have faced so far in 60 years on this earth, I have seen
the Light of day – the Bright Morning Star shine on me such as I had never
imagined. I found a real friend in Jesus. He tells me like it is. He corrects
me when I need it. He teaches me – He comforts me and He makes me laugh and
sing and dance all over the house! He is wonderful! He is the perfect picture
of real and true love. No person can ever be that for anyone like Jesus can.
Our Father in
heaven loves us beyond human description – Jesus is the living proof. And He
sends people into our lives to show us His love. He sends us real and lasting
friends – like my husband. He is a friend that I truly believe will never let
me down. But even if he did, I would forgive him and move on because I do not
expect him to be perfect yet – he, like all of us, on his way to Christ-like
perfection.
Until he makes it,
I will choose to love him along the way. And true friends, like our brothers
and sisters in the body can do that too. They can love us even when they don’t
know what else to say. And we can do the same for them.
We don’t have to
have all the answers for someone’s troubles – we can’t. But we can love them.
We can stick it out with them. We can check on them, send them a card, and pray
for them. Let them know that no matter what they are going through we are there
for them. In doing that we can love them with the love of Jesus coming right
through us. But we have to receive that love first. Once we do, then we can
give it away. We keep filling up on God’s love and we keep giving it away.
Isn’t it a wonderful thing saints?
Questions:
What did Job think
of his friends at this point in his trial?
What did Job need
the most at this time?
Who is the best friend you have ever had? Why did you consider
them to be such a good friend?
Have you discovered that Jesus has been and always will be your
number one best friend in this life and the life to come?
In what ways have you been a faithful friend to others, especially
in a time of trial? How can you improve on that??
We love Him because He first loved us.
There
are three main points to consider from today’s study…
Sometimes we just need to be available for a troubled friend
True love will stand by a friend no matter what
The best friend we could ever have is Jesus
Heavenly
Father,
Thank
You for being by my side through the good and the bad. Thank You for never
leaving me. Lord, even when I didn’t know You were there and I didn’t know You
very well, I know that You were right there by my side. Thank You for sending
Your angels to protect me when I put myself in harm’s way. Thank You for
bringing new and faithful friends into my life. But Lord, no matter who is in
my life I know I will never have a friend like I have in Jesus. Thank You for
being my very best number one friend for all eternity! Father, I ask You to
show me how to be a faithful friend to those You place in my life. If I have
not been a good friend to someone, I ask You to show me how to make things
right. Help me to be a reflection of You in other’s lives. In Jesus name. Amen!
Who do you know right now that needs a faithful
friend?
And God Said… You fill in the blanks.
1 Corinthians 13:4-8a
Love suffers
long and is kind;
love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does
not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no
evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures
all things.
Love never fails.
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