Yesterday Eliphaz was telling Job to repent after all his not so nice accusations. Today we see a new side to Job. He is more interested in just meeting with his Maker and discussing his case before the Almighty Judge of the universe! There is some exciting information coming to us today so I hope you will take the journey with me. We serve and awesome God who is so good! Hallelujah! Let’s pray…
Heavenly Father,
Thank You Lord for who You are! No matter how beautiful heaven is or how stunning the New Jerusalem will be, You are the most beautiful One our eyes could ever behold! Father, everything You do is just and right. There is no darkness in You. Lord, I ask You today to reveal to us what You want us to see. Show us things we didn’t see before – things in our lives that were hidden in darkness. Shine Your healing light on our hearts and bring us forth shining as gold as we study and bask in Your presence and wash in the water of Your word. Give me the utterance I need to get Your word out unhindered and unchecked by any outside force or my flesh. Thank You in advance for all You have for us today Father in Jesus name! And all God’s people said – “Amen!”
We open the chapter with Job longing to speak with his God. That’s a good place to start, isn’t it? The first step to getting any issue resolved is the desire to hear what God has to say about it. Taking our cares before the Lord is the best and only place to start to be delivered. No other person, place or thing can do what God can do in our darkest hours! Glory to His name forever! In the first 7 verses, Job feels confident that if he could just present his case before the Lord – the Judge of all things, then he would be delivered. One of the names of God is Deliverer. Another is Judge. God is our Deliverer and He is our righteous Judge. Job feels confident even at this stage in his trials that God would hear him out. He feels like he just can’t find the Lord; he can’t seem to make a connection.
With all the fussing and carrying on that has been going on between these four guys, how could a person find God? One needs to get away from noise to be alone with Him to be able to hear His voice and receive what He has to say. He cannot speak to us in the midst of chaos and confusion. He speaks in a very still, small voice. Being alone with the Lord is where we need to be. And the worse the trial is, the more alone time we need with Him. How do I know this?
Just look back at the testimonies I have been giving in the previous chapters and you will see that I too had to get alone with God to even begin to hear His voice and receive what He wanted to reveal to me. I spent countless hours alone with God. I would talk with Him, I would read my Bible and other books about Him. I would worship Him and I did a whole lot of crying. I was in the worst predicament of my life and I was as desperate as I had ever been. Friends, I have seen many desperate moments in my life, but the storm I went through that began in 2003 took the cake for intensity and seriousness! I had never known what it really meant to get alone with God and seek Him and listen to Him.
Religion didn’t teach me that. In fact religion didn’t even help me to see how I had sinned against God. All I had learned in church was that we were all sinners who had fallen short of the glory of God. But that brought no personal conviction on my part. I thought, “Well, I know that’s true.” I knew I had done wrong things, but the church I attended never helped me to make that sin personal by helping me to really look at my life to see where I had sinned against our awesome and holy God.
I felt like I was just lumped together in a giant melting pot with everyone else. It didn’t have an effect on me like it should have. It did not cause me to repent or go home and get right with God – like we discussed yesterday. I was seeking God on a deeper level as best I understood before that terrible tragedy began, but little did I know how much I needed to meet with Him for an extended period of time – alone, away from the noise of life. Like Job in verses 8-9, I was looking for God, but I could not find Him. It seemed He was nowhere to be found.
I was living life on the fast track at the time, going what seemed like 1,000 miles an hour every day. I was busy raising two teenage daughters who were very actively involved in cheer leading, dance, music and competitions. One was the cheerleader and dancer and the other was the musician getting private singing, piano, oboe and vocal lessons while participating in the marching band at school. I wonder now how I ever kept up with all of it. Add to that the fact that I was working in a very high intensity job as an Account Manager for a top notch brokerage firm just outside of Detroit. I liked my job very much and planned to excel in it as far as I could go, but it was highly stressful and demanding.
Mix that in with running a household. I had to manage the bills. My husband wouldn’t do it. And we had an active social life and a second vacation home in northern Michigan. We attended two churches, one near home where the girls had been raised, and the other in northern Michigan where the vacation home was at. The girls participated heavily in school and church plays and functions. Many times I had to be in two different places at once. The laundry had to be done and groceries needed to be bought. I finally hired housekeepers because cleaning a 4,000 square foot home was not in my timetable with everything else that was going on.
I would work 11 hour days many times and even go in to the office on some Saturday’s and Sunday afternoons. At night when I could finally lay my head on the pillow I was so wound up from the day I was finding it difficult to drift off to sleep. Thoughts of the coming day would race through my mind like a locomotive. I ended up getting a prescription for Xanax to help me sleep. I knew that I had previously liked taking drugs when I was young way too much because they had helped me (so I thought) to escape the pressures of life. I had to be careful about taking these nighttime pills. I would take them for a couple nights and then back off for a couple. It all depended on what the schedule looked like. The more I had on my mind, the more I felt I needed something to help me to relax.
That was when I started drinking alcohol socially again. I had stopped for quite a long time while the girls were young, but now I was starting to drink and socialize more often than I had in years. The end was already in sight – I was just too busy to see it coming. A little here and a little there and I was being led like a sheep to the slaughter by the enemy without having a clue about what was going to hit me. I was completely in the dark. My husband and I would go out to party on the weekend and instead of resisting all that, I began to join back in just to relieve the pressure. I was like a pressure cooker that was about to explode. The pressure was mounting and little did I know that the fast pace would cause me to crash like I never could have imagined.
Let’s look again at verses 10-12 in our chapter today…
Job 23:10-12
But He knows the way that I take;
When He has tested me, I shall come forth as gold.
My foot has held fast to His steps; I have kept His way and not turned aside.
I have not departed from the commandment of His lips;
I have treasured the words of His mouth more than my necessary food.
Job knew one thing for sure. He understand that God knew everything about him – all of his ways, his thoughts, his anxieties and worries, his sins and what he did or did not understand. His bold statement in verse 10 is the shining piece of gold that God has for us in this chapter – hallelujah! Once we are tested we will come forth as gold…
Psalm 81:7-16
You called in trouble, and I delivered you; I answered you in the secret place of thunder; I tested you at the waters of Meribah. Selah
“Hear, O My people, and I will admonish you! O Israel, if you will listen to Me! There shall be no foreign god among you; nor shall you worship any foreign god.
I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt; open your mouth wide, and I will fill it.
“But My people would not heed My voice, and Israel would have none of Me. So I gave them over to their own stubborn heart, to walk in their own counsels.
“Oh, that My people would listen to Me, that Israel would walk in My ways! I would soon subdue their enemies,
and turn My hand against their adversaries. The haters of the LORD would pretend submission to Him, but their fate would endure forever.
He would have fed them also with the finest of wheat; and with honey from the rock I would have satisfied you.”
Before we get to the gold, let’s look at the test. The Lord will test our hearts. He is God and He can certainly do that, or anything else He deems necessary and in our best interest. He is always interested in our best, not bringing harm like so many falsely think. Life is a series of tests. If we fail one we will have to take it over and over until we get it right.
When my life got so crazy and I acted like a hamster running around on a wheel all the time, I was in the greatest test of my life. When the pressure is on, what is really in the heart will come out. Ugh! In my case, it was not pretty! Could I really be the great mom and the woman who could bring home the bacon and fry it up in the pan, all the while relaxed and smiling and ready for the next task? That is where the rubber met the road for me. The intensity became too much. I was drowning in anxiety and experiencing lots of physical sickness in the midst of it all. I ran from one Dr. to another (like I had time for that!) to find out why I was always full of pain throughout my body as if I had the flu all the time.
Nobody seemed to be able to diagnose anything until one day I went to see a Dr. I had never seen before. As soon as he walked into the room and heard me tell him my problem he pointed to my head and said, “That’s where your problem is!” I was furious! I stormed out after my appointment, thinking, “Who does he think he is trying to tell me it is all in my head? If only he knew how much pain I am in!” Little did I know at the time that God was speaking through this perfect stranger trying to give me a message. He was telling me that the physical pain I was experiencing was a sign of the emotional pain that was simmering beneath the surface.
I had been going to church for years by then. We raised our daughters there. I had volunteered and signed up for all the field trips because at that time I was not working outside the home. I was committed to the church and to the school attached to the church. When I started to lean what little I did about Jesus at church I loved Him, so I thought. I felt like I was doing everything right. Yet as 2002 rolled around, I was more uneasy than I had ever been in my life. It was as if subconsciously I couldn’t even stand to be in my own skin and I didn’t even know why. I lived in a big beautiful house in a very beautiful neighborhood. I had two wonderful daughters, a fantastic career in insurance, a nice vacation home up north, nice cars and a boat and new snowmobiles. I had 4 closets full of clothes, most of which I could no longer wear because I was growing fatter by the day while my food addiction went into full swing.
There were nights when I would peer out of my second story bedroom window and look at all the beauty that surrounded me and say out loud, “God, isn’t there one man out there in this world who is custom made just for me?” I thought I needed a better husband. I thought I needed someone to comfort me. Obviously food and sugar, my greatest addiction wasn’t cutting it. I was spiraling down a long dark tunnel like Alice in wonderland, only the pit I was falling into seemed to have no bottom. The thought of my daughters growing up and leaving home absolutely gripped my heart. They had become my “everything” and I dreaded the thought of seeing them go – though I knew they would have to.
I would be left in a less than perfect marriage with someone I had never loved to begin with, and then what? I was desperate for love and affection but it did not come. I did everything I could think of to make my daughters happy, running them all over town, throwing big birthday parties for them and giving them extravagant Christmases to try to show them how much I loved them the only way I knew how.
I was going out with friends to eat at expensive restaurants and my daughters, as well as clients from work during the day. Then there was the business socializing with our broker reps with the gang from work. It was as if I was trapped inside the tunnel of a tornado and I simply could not find the way to get out of it. So the drinking increased as did the pain in my body. By then I was nearly a size 18 weighing in at 215 pounds! I had always been thin growing up and never had an eating problem. I had not weighted more than 120-125 pounds except when I had been pregnant. But after the two girls I raised were born, I never went back to that weight again.
Over the years I kept creeping up little by little. The family I was in on my husband’s side really liked to eat and that’s where my eating trouble all started. After a while I thought food could be quite enjoyable so I ate more. Only the more I ate, the worse I felt. And the worse I felt the more I ate. It was a vicious cycle. All of that led to my decision to leave my husband for a perfect stranger and step off the edge of the world into complete darkness. It was a living hell – a nightmare every day!
Job knew what it was like to live in a nightmare every day. By this time in his events, he just knew in his heart that if he could get with God, his Judge, he would be acquitted. Job had held fast to the ways of God for a long time. He felt confident in that. And according to God, he had been a very righteous man. What Job didn’t know was what was simmering under the surface in his heart – just like me. I had no idea of all the garbage that was boiling in my soul from a lifetime of being wounded and hurt and left by the wayside by those whom I had loved the most – my own family.
Job said that he treasured God more than his food. That is a big statement. Think about it. How many people today would treasure God more than eating? Many are killing themselves with food because they are hurting on the inside. They have so much eating them that they are eating themselves into an early grave. Many are clueless about the root causes of their eating indulgences. That was me. I just didn’t know what I didn’t know.
But God knows what is going on in the depth of our hearts – even when we don’t. Yes, He really does. It is amazing. There will be things in our hearts that He will bring out that we had no idea happened to us or that bothered us. We have already looked at Psalm 139 in our study of Job. I would recommend that you look at the entire chapter again. It is very relative to this study today. But for now let’s focus on this verse…
Psalm 139:23-24
Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my anxieties; and see if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.
Nobody knows our anxieties like God. He knows everything! And only He can pull that junk out. Fortunately for us, He is very tender with us and doesn’t yank it all out at once! We couldn’t handle it. Look at this…
John 16:12-13
“I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. However, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth; for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak; and He will tell you things to come.”
Jesus knew that there were many things that His disciples needed to hear but they weren’t ready for it. If you had told me how much God was going to pull up and out of me over the last 10 years since I surrendered to Him I would have flipped out completely! I didn’t know all the darkness that was in me. And I am sure there is more yet to be revealed. I have the Holy Spirit now to lead me into all truth – just like all of you who are born again. So He will show us the things we need to see a step at a time. He shines His glorious light on those dark spots and delivers us from all our fears. Job would soon learn that it was fear that started this whole mess. And did Job think he had a problem back when it all began? Absolutely not!
He didn’t have the first clue that he was living in fear about his family and that it had opened the door for the devil to bring this terrible attack. I can relate to this part of his story. Back in the days preceding my trial that began in February – March of 2003, I didn’t realize anything about how the enemy works or about things we do opening doors for the enemy to work in our lives. I never learned any of that in our church. They wouldn’t go within a hundred miles of anything that taught on things like that! They only knew what they knew, bless their hearts, and they were happy with just that. But what we don’t know will hurt us.
Friends, if my trials and sins and many mistakes will help even one person to get back on track with God or help someone come to Him for the first time, than I consider all this bearing of my soul to be well worth it. Have I cried while I wrote some of this? You bet. And why? Because as I wrote the Lord was continuing to heal the deeper parts that still needed healing. I thought I had already cried two rivers of tears, but even then, there is more to come up and out. I know this may sound gross, but it is a lot like vomiting. The Lord has shown me that when I start crying about something just ‘out of the blue – all of a sudden’ it means it needs to come up and out.
He uses those tears to heal us. Staying in tears is another matter altogether. That should never be for the child of God because the joy of the Lord is our strength. If we stay in sorrow, it is of the devil and it will become a stranglehold on us if we are not careful. But getting it out, facing it and giving it to Jesus, the Deliverer is the way to freedom. You see, there is a lot more to the following verse than many realize…
John 8:32
“And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”
When we know the truth about something, then we get free – hallelujah! The devil, satan and all his workers want to keep us in darkness because he knows that when we find out that he has been pulling the ‘wool over our eyes’ we will get free of his lies and schemes. Once we get free, he has to find someone else to pick on because we begin to realize who we are in Christ and the power and authority that we have.
We realize that the Greater one lives in us and because He overcame, we are overcomers. Because He is more than a conqueror, we are more than conquerors. We find out that God always causes us to triumph and He always gives us the victory. When we find out that nothing is impossible with God, then the devil has to run off to some other clueless weakling and torment them. But that’s not us, is it saints? No, we have had our eyes opened to the schemes of the evil one. We are not unaware of his devices. We have a faithful God who is our Healer and our Deliverer. He shines the light on every dark spot until we come up shining like gold – spotless…
Proverbs 17:3
The refining pot is for silver and the furnace for gold, But the LORD tests the hearts.
1 Peter 5:10
But may the God of all grace, who called us to His eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after you have suffered a while, perfect, establish, strengthen, and settle you.
Jude 1:24
Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling, and to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy,
It is the Lord and only the Lord who can clean us up and burn all the dross off of our hearts. We cannot deliver ourselves. Only He can. And for those who will surrender to His care and keeping and purpose to live life His way, they can be certain that they will be cleansed from every dark spot. Look at verse 14 again in our chapter today…
Job 23:14
For He performs what is appointed for me, and many such things are with Him.
Job knew that God would perform His plan for him. The Lord has a plan for each of us. While He is not the one who brought on Job’s trial, or mine, He is the only one who can deliver us from those trials. As He delivers us, he cleans us and in that day, oh that glorious day when we get to see Him face to face, we will be like Him and we will be spotless – hallelujah! That is shoutin’ ground saints!
Job was afraid of God. There is a fear of God that is appropriate and right. But we are not to be scared of Him. Having a reverential fear of Him is absolutely required. That’s where our knowledge begins…
Job 1:7
The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction.
In summation of today’s chapter, Job was smart enough to want to meet with God. He knew that if He could talk with the Lord, his case would be heard and he would be acquitted. He couldn’t seem to find God amidst all the noise of his friends. He also knew that he had walked with God and kept His ways for a long time. He knew that his times were in God’s hands as best he could understand at that point. He didn’t yet realize that what wasn’t in God’s hands was how he had brought all this on himself. Job feared God and understood enough about Him to know that if he met with him, things would get straightened out. Do you know that too?
Questions:
What was Job’s desire in the first 7 chapters?
What was he trying to do in verses 8-9?
What did Job feel would happen to him if he could meet with God?
Have you been trying to meet with God but not been able to find Him lately? What ‘noise’ has been getting in your way?
1 Corinthians 4:1-5
Let a man so consider us, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. Moreover it is required in stewards that one be found faithful. But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by a human court. In fact, I do not even judge myself. For I know of nothing against myself, yet I am not justified by this; but He who judges me is the Lord. Therefore judge nothing before the time, until the Lord comes, who will both bring to light the hidden things of darkness and reveal the counsels of the hearts. Then each one’s praise will come from God.
There are three main points to consider from today’s study…
The first place to start is to seek God alone – away from the noise
God is waiting to speak – but be willing to take the time to get quiet and listen
The Lord tests us and then brings us forth as pure gold
Let’s pray…
Heavenly Father,
Thank You for being there whenever I need to talk. You are never far away when I sincerely seek You. Father, forgive me for not slowing down long enough to hear what You want to say to me. Lord, there is much in my heart that only You can remove. I am asking You now to reveal to me things I have not yet seen. Show me where there is darkness in my heart. Shine Your deliverance light on the things that need healing Lord. As You do, I will purpose to turn my attention to You more and listen to and receive all that You have just for me. Thank You in advance Lord in Jesus name. Amen!
Will you get away from the noise long enough to listen to Him?
And God Said… You fill in the blanks.
Luke 13:34
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