Surprise Ending

John 21:21 NIV

When Peter saw him, he asked, "Lord, what about him?"

Are You Surprised By How Things Have Gone?

I like a story with surprising twists and turns.  Whether it is a book or a movie, I want it to have some unpredictability to it. I have recently been reading To Kill A Mockingbird.  It has been fifty years since I read it the first time and I had forgotten enough of the storyline to be caught off guard by parts of the book.  Yet based on popularity alone, it seems that most Americans want their stories to go as predicted.  The cute couple eventually gets together, the villain is caught, the aliens are destroyed, the good guys survive and win in the end.  Every once in a while a La La Land comes along that catches me by surprise but generally like most, I want stories to end the way I expect them to end.  There is comfort in predictability.  I get Campbell’s Tomato Soup because I know how it will taste and it is good enough for me.  That is why I choose Gala apples and vanilla ice cream.  I know what I will find when I bite into it.

When I was young and studying chemistry I was surprised to discover that electrons did not revolve around the nucleus in simple and predictable orbitals.  New information threw the old pictures of atomic structures out of whack.  It turned out that electrons move about chaotically.  One can never predict where a given electron will be.  It might be within a certain area but its action is irrational and chaotic and you cannot even know where it is when you try to find it.  Many philosophers describe the universe in a similar way.  There is chaos and unpredictability to it.  “The universe is irrational without any intelligence behind it”, they contend.    Some people are comfortable with that notion.  They like the idea that nothing is certain or trustworthy.

When it comes to Christianity, the majority of church people believe there is one place of certainty and predictability.  It is God.  They speak of Him in ways that a mathematician speaks of her field.   We want our God to be predictable, mathematically determinable.  If we do this, God does that.  When this happens, it is because God has this in mind.  God is stable.  He goes this way or that but always in a logical and understandable process.   We want God to be reasonable and sensible to us.  There must be formulas that he follows, certain equations that determine His actions.  No one would design a god who can’t be counted on to run smoothly, to make His payments and provide His dividends.  The world has its eye on a mathematical God.  Do you?

Job and his friends were certain that God was bound up in rules and obligations…that there were formulas they could use to predict his actions.  What makes the book of Job so disorienting is that all the main characters discovered the Lord was not programmable.  He did not give Job an easy life because Job was honest, moral and generous.  Job’s friends knew God had to behave in certain ways and when He didn’t, they decided something must have been wrong with Job.  Like the jurists in To Kill A Mockingbird who could not recalibrate when the evidence went against their determinations, Job’s friends could not comprehend that God would put Job through so much pain and suffering it Job was not a bad man.  They thought God was mathematical when He isn’t.

Jonah had the same problem.  He had in mind a mathematical God when he heard God tell him to go to Nineveh and preach judgment to the people there.  Jonah did not expect that kind of job.  The Lord was predictable to him.  A terrible and cruel people like the Assyrians would be burnt to a crisp by God.  They didn’t need any warnings…just fire from heaven.  Yet that was not what happened.  God gave the Ninevites a chance to repent, they took it and God mercifully gave the Assyrians the opportunity to try again.  That did not fit Jonah’s God formula and he fell into a deep depression over his miscalculations.

Consider the strange case of Josiah, one of the last kings of Judah.  He was young when he became king, just eight years old.  His grandfather was perhaps the cruelest and most ungodly king Judah ever had.  Moreover, Manasseh also shed so much innocent blood that he filled Jerusalem from end to end — besides the sin that he had caused Judah to commit, so that they did evil in the eyes of the Lord.   As for the other events of Manasseh's reign, and all he did, including the sin he committed, are they not written in the book of the annals of the kings of Judah?   (2 Kings 21:16-18 NIV)  His father was no better a king and after two years of reigning, the people were so fed up with him that he was assassinated.  That left Josiah as next in line.  After eighteen years being king, Josiah ordered that the Temple of God be cleaned and restored.  For nearly sixty years it had been a center of pagan worship and it fell into ruin.  Josiah though loved the Lord and when a book of the Law was found in the wreckage, Josiah turned his life over to God and dedicated himself to following Him wholeheartedly.  Then the king called together all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem.  He went up to the temple of the Lord with the men of Judah, the people of Jerusalem, the priests and the prophets — all the people from the least to the greatest. He read in their hearing all the words of the Book of the Covenant, which had been found in the temple of the Lord.  The king stood by the pillar and renewed the covenant in the presence of the Lord-to follow the Lord and keep his commands, regulations and decrees with all his heart and all his soul, thus confirming the words of the covenant written in this book. Then all the people pledged themselves to the covenant.  (2 Kings 23:1-3 NIV)

How would God treat such a man as this, let alone a king like him?  It would seem that God would do with him as he did with Josiah’s great-grandfather who also was faithful to the Lord.  When faced with a great international threat and insurmountable odds, the Lord intervened on Hezekiah’s behalf and wrecked the army that came against him and the people.  That night the angel of the Lord went out and put to death a hundred and eighty-five thousand men in the Assyrian camp. When the people got up the next morning — there were all the dead bodies!  (2 Kings 19:35 NIV)  Plug in the variables, use your God formula and you have your answer for how things will go.  When the Egyptians formed a great army and posed a threat to Josiah’s kingdom, Josiah pulled together all his fighting forces and went up against the Egyptians in battle.  Everything would turn out fine he probably told his wife and kids as he left to go battle the Egyptians.  His generals he reassured that if they fought hard, the Lord would bring them victory.  Everything fit the God formula.  Good king.  Growing faith among the people!  What could go wrong?

While Josiah was king, Pharaoh Neco king of Egypt went up to the Euphrates River to help the king of Assyria. King Josiah marched out to meet him in battle, but Neco faced him and killed him at Megiddo.  (2 Kings 23:29 NIV)  So what do you make of that?  What should any good Christian brother or sister just trying to follow Jesus faithfully make of it?  How does that fit into the mathematics of God?   Even the Apostle Peter wanted to know what algebraic equation to use when trying to calculate the Lord’s plans for him.  As he and the other apostles were meeting with Jesus on the shore of Galilee after Christ rose from the dead following His crucifixion, the Lord revealed to Peter what would come of him.  “I tell you the truth, when you were younger you dressed yourself and went where you wanted; but when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go."  (John 21:18 NIV)

This  was in fact Jesus’ way of telling Peter how Peter would die.  That certainly didn’t fit into the equation Peter had of how God would deal with him and it must have thrown him.  It would have thrown you.  He then asked the Lord about the Apostle John, "Lord, what about him?"  (John 21:21 NIV)  He wanted to recalculate God with a better equation.  He thought He knew and understood God but now He realized he didn’t.  Christ’s reply took it all out of the realm of mathematics.  Jesus answered, "If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you? You must follow me."(John 21:22 NIV)  In other words, “Don’t try to predict what I will do.”  “Don’t think I can be understood with a calculator.”  The Lord is not bound by the rules of physics or logic.  His actions are not determined by what you think is best.  He does as He pleases whenever He wants.  He is absolutely free. 

There is only one way to think along God’s lines.  There is only this law through which He operates.  It is the Law of Love.  Not your love.  Not my love.  Pure, undefiled love is how you see into God.  John the Apostle, who knew Jesus as well as anyone has made this clear when He stated,  Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.  Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.  (1 John 4:7-8 NIV)  The only way to get into God’s mind is to love His people.  You are as confused about Him as a rock in a creek bed if you do not love.  Love is the map to His personality, it is the glasses through which we understand His actions.  The lowest of minds can think along the lines of Jesus if love is at play but the great intellects of the world are at a complete loss to comprehend even the smallest thing of God without love.  How can you understand God and know what He is doing with you?  Stare with fixed attention upon Jesus crucified, His hands riveted to the horizontal beam with rough iron nails, His feet fixed to the vertical wooden beam with another nail and the blood drops oozing down from his head.  That is how you understand what He is doing with you.  Watch Him as He dies to take from you your sin.  Gaze upon Him as He dies to give you a new and perfect life.  That is how you figure Him out.  It is love through and through that decides for Christ what He will do at any moment.  It is love that determines His actions.  Take heed to this.  The only ones who get a grasp on God and understand His ways are those who love and invest with love in the lives of others.  Let this be the way you think about all you see of God and hear about Him.  Let it be your rule of thumb whenever you look for what the Lord may be doing with you.  And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. (1 John 4:16 NIV)  It may be a surprise ending when it comes to what happens next for you but you can be certain of this.  It will be because God loves you and died to save you from your sin.

Loss Syndrome

Luke 17:32-33 NIV

Remember Lot's wife!  Whoever tries to keep his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it.

What Have You Lost?

Loss, or the threat of loss, is one of the greatest enemies of our peace of mind.  When I was in graduate school, I was fired from a part time job as an attendant at the campus gym.  After being told I was “relieved of my duties”, I went back to my dorm room and I wept.  This was a terrific blow leveled against me.  I felt humiliated.  I wondered what my worth was as it was just a goofy little job that anyone could do…but clearly not me.  I was afraid to walk down the streets of the campus knowing students would be looking at me in a new way; I was the one fired from the gym job. I was afraid of what others now thought of me. I was afraid of how I would pay my school fees without the job.  How could I find another job as good as that one?  It felt like my world had fallen apart and I was afraid that it could not be put back together.  All I could think about in my little room while I sat on my bed was all the losses I would face now.  I had lost a great job and I had lost my sense of worth with it and possibly my ability to stay in school.  The losses were too great for me to bear!

Losses come upon us often without warning and in dreadful ways.  A good friend suddenly cuts off all communication with you.  You get sick and the days you lose can never be regained.  A ministry ends that you loved and believed would have a tremendous impact.  The career you once believed would be so great is now a dead end.  Your degree has become worthless and now you have to somehow pay off the debt you owe for your college degree.  A love you cherished fades and someone you respected so much before has let you down.  Some losses are barely noticeable and others take your breath away.  Losses seem so unfair, so cruel at times.  You had hoped for so much more but losses made you cynical and moody.  What are we to do about the losses we face?  How are we to respond to loss?

If the ancient book of Job tells us anything, it is that Satan can hurl great big boulders at us, terrifying boulders.  Some of us have felt like Job because there are boulders that have hit us squarely too.  A friend wants to talk with us and it turns out he is deeply insulted by something we have said or done.  The owner of the company tells us layoffs are starting.  The doctor calls us into the office to discuss our test results.  We make an investment and it wrecks us.  A child of ours renounces Christianity.  The boulders slam us and we have a terrible time knowing what to do with Satan’s attacks upon us.  When Satan went after Job, the patriarch did not think a bit about Satan…all he could see was the loss he encountered and how unfair it all seemed.  It was unfair and Job was right about that.

Satan is a master at bringing us loss.  Satan disrupts our plans.  For we wanted to come to you — certainly I, Paul, did, again and again — but Satan stopped us. (1 Thessalonians 2:18 NIV)  How many of us have looked forward to a holiday that when it came, fell apart!  Satan has wrecked many long anticipated events.  Satan also torments us with worries and dissatisfaction and injuries and hardships.  To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. (2 Corinthians 12:7 NIV)  Satan can make our friends a stumbling block for us.  Jesus turned and said to Peter, "Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men." (Matthew 16:23 NIV)  Who hasn’t at some time or another felt betrayed by a friend who we trusted!  That is a terrible loss and Satan is the master at taking apart friendships.  We also know that Satan turns authorities against us so that those in positions of power can be used by Satan to multiply our losses.  Do not be afraid of what you are about to suffer. I tell you, the devil will put some of you in prison to test you… (Revelation 2:10 NIV) There are some losses we face that are due to our bad decisions and poor planning.  Satan even disrupts our thinking so that we go up against God to our loss.  Then Peter said, "Ananias, how is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit and have kept for yourself some of the money you received for the land? (Acts 5:3-4 NIV)  It is impossible to calculate how many bad decisions we have made because we have let Satan have sway over our thinking!

When Elijah the prophet fled the evil Queen Jezebel who threatened to kill him, he wound up in a cave and something that is enlightening for us occurred there.  As Elijah recuperated from his terrifying and exhausting flight, he was greeted in that cave by a series of horrifying calamities.  Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake.  After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. (1 Kings 19:11-12 NIV)  Famously, after the fire was a whispering voice that Elijah heard which was either external to him or placed by God straight into his mind and that whisper was God.  Each of these terrifying events…the great wind, the earthquake and the fire were clearly not from God or at least God was not “in them”.  So who was in them?  Would we be off-base if we said “Satan”?  They seem to have been supernaturally caused.  It’s not like rock shattering winds, earthquakes and fires pile up together in the normal, natural realm.  Regardless of their point of origin, we do know that if we were there, we would have been frightened by it all.

We suffer many losses in our lifetimes and most we barely notice.  They may be irritating or even a bit maddening but never really frightening.  Every once in a while though, like Elijah’s wind and earthquake and fire, they are stunning and mind-numbing and we care very much about them.  And the Lord is not in those losses.  Satan is behind them and we must remember who the taker is, who the thief that robs us is…who is behind the storm we fear. 

With Jesus resting peacefully at the back of their boat, the disciples encountered a great storm.  Now this storm must have been bigger than usual because although several of the disciples were seasoned fisherman, they all were panicked by the storm.  Without warning, a furious storm came up on the lake, so that the waves swept over the boat. But Jesus was sleeping. The disciples went and woke him, saying, "Lord, save us! We're going to drown!" (Matthew 8:24-25 NIV)  Let us now make a point that perhaps is unnecessary but pertinent to our discussion.  First, Jesus was not going against the Father in calming the storm.  The Son never opposed the Father in anything. His work as Savior was to put an end to the wreckage brought on by Satan and sin and in that deliverance came the calming of the storm.   Second, the storm did not frighten the disciples.  It may have been wild and potentially deadly but it was not what terrified the disciples.  What brought on their panic was the possible loss of life they faced because of the storm.  The storm itself was exciting, maybe even thrilling with the giant waves, the billowing, boiling clouds, the claps of thunder and bolts of lightning. The thought of terrific loss though made them scared out of their skulls and they could not take it.  Loss is not our problem; it is the fear of loss that we must battle.  Now how did the disciples cope with their fear of loss?  They went straight to Jesus Christ.  They did not paddle harder or duck behind the walls of the boat, they went directly to Christ.

There are two key considerations when it comes to losses.  The first is that if God is not in the losses, then the probability is that Satan is involved.  Therefore, it is not God who we blame and avoid when the storm comes that threatens to take away from us what we love.  It is Satan.  Second, the loss is rarely as grave and horrifying as the fear of the loss.  Many have suffered terrible losses in their lives and been just as peaceful and calm as Jesus sleeping in the back of the boat.  They may have been completely overwhelmed emotionally by the coming losses but afterward, they found comfort.  King David comes to mind.   He wept and fasted and begged God to intervene while his son was deathly ill but once the child died, he became calm and unperturbed.  Now this may sound cold and inhumane on David’s part but perhaps we have left out the supernatural component to loss.  Maybe David was helped by God when the loss came to pass.  Perhaps in his begging for God to not take his baby away, it brought into the event the supernatural kindness of God to comfort the inconsolable soul when the loss did come to pass.  Like the disciples who turned to Jesus when the storm raged, David went to the Lord when the storm he faced raged.

Because this world is wrecked by sin, dying is all around us and it hits us directly.  Dreams of careers die.  Marriages die.  Plans we have for our children die.  Vacations fall apart and investments collapse.  This happens and Satan is directly involved in many of these “deaths”.  We must face squarely this matter of death and dying in every realm we travel.  Friendships die and dinner arrangements die and much of what we hope to have goes up in smoke.  But there is one matter we must put into our equation of loss.  Jesus Christ is “in the boat”.  Satan may take our lunch but Jesus Christ is in the boat and when the disciples went to Him, they gained peace...a supernatural peace.  It is hard when the storm strikes to go to Jesus Christ then and there.  We are captivated by the storm and all we can think about are the losses we are going to face and perhaps we are angry with God for the storm.  We are in a way mesmerized by our fear and frustration and even anger over what is happening but Christ is in the boat.  The storm that rocks us rocks Him too.  When we turn to Him, we may not lose what we thought was lost.  He may completely take the storm away.  He can do that and He may do that.  We must have a little bit of faith but if we do, He might take our storm from us.  But if He doesn’t and He lets Satan steal something from us, He will give us peace…a supernatural peace.  Anyone can have peace when it is smooth sailing; but Christ gives us peace when the storm comes headlong into us.  You may not think you need the peace of Christ now…everything is nice and easy for you.  But the time will come when Satan will throw a great storm at you, a storm too big for your peace to handle and when He does, remember that Christ is in the boat and if you turn to Him, He will give you His peace…and you will have peace that is supernatural and big enough to carry you through whatever loss you face.

Community in Christ

The Christian Community is much too quick to snip at one another and go after the jugular of faults.  Do we think it was toward the Pharisees only that Jesus aimed his barbed arrow in the Sermon on the Mount?  It pricks us too and more truly stabs us all the way in the heart.  How can we ever hope to progress in joy if we are captivated by the splinters in the eyes of our fellow servants?  Evangelism is simply pious platitudes if we are not loving one another unconditionally.   It is laughable to hope that we can build the Kingdom if internally we are squabbling and mocking one another, critiquing and evaluating each other's works and motives.  The crisis in the Church has never been without but for two millennia within.    Much more damage has come to us at the hands of our fellow believers than any non-Christian has ever caused.  Love does not begin with some lavish pronouncement but with a single determination to overlook an offence or keep to ourselves our criticism.  We can do this with Christ living through us but without Him, we are hopelessly entangled by our grievances and dissatisfactions.  As we look to Christ in the heat of our acrimony, the Lord will grant us His love and kindness to come out of us at the very moment we need it.   Our Lord has a great deal of grace for those who "love too much" or "overlook too much" it seems and if we should err, it would be best to err on the side of mercy and compassion rather than take up with the older brother in his complaints.  Job's friends look all too familiar to us  and we must be careful we don't sit in their camp when Job comes our way.  We might find ourselves begging the Job God has given us for mercy when the Lord "catches up with us."

"Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you."   Matthew 7:1-2 NIV

The Psychology of Pain

Psychology of Pain

Job 16:6 NIV

"Yet if I speak, my pain is not relieved; and if I refrain, it does not go away.”

Why Do We Have To Face Pain?

I can’t make up my mind.  What is the worst form of pain to face?  Unconscious pain, manifested in nightmares and unexplained depression and anxiety is debilitating.  Conscious pain, brought on by clear and obvious events that make us miserable and breed anger and despair.  Physical pain which can be excruciating or more or less just tolerable is terrible too.  When I was in high school, I separated my shoulder playing goalie for our soccer team.  We didn’t have anyone else to play goalie so I finished the first half and then the second half.  I could not lift my hand above my shoulder which made it pretty tough diving to stop shots and that night I could not sleep because of the pain.  In fact it hurt to even breathe for two weeks.  The pain prevented many of my favorite activities…I could not play basketball, couldn’t practice with my softball team and could barely take notes in class.  I often prayed during the next few weeks that God would take the pain away, that He would help me get to sleep and that He would (I thought this somehow was needed) forgive me of whatever sins I had been committed that led Him to push such pain upon me.

When we are pain free, we are also many times carefree.  We can think about anything we want, daydream, put plans into place and take on whatever projects we care to start.  But when we are suffering from pain, we get swept away by it.  If you have lost your job and you are dumbfounded by your bills, the pain of your circumstance clogs your mind and makes it so you can think of nothing else.  When you have suffered a great trauma in childhood, the pain of it never really leaves you and it bubbles up in your dreams, your relationships and in your handling of problems and trying times.  Physical pain numbs your brain to everything else.  A broken finger, a bad back, an upset stomach and it takes a tremendous act of the will to think about something other than the pain.  You have done it and so have I, tried to get rid of pain with aspirin, Motrin, or perhaps illegal drugs or heavy drinking.  We go to counselors when our psychological pain is too much to bear and to chiropractors for the physical pain.  But why do we have to suffer pain at all?  What is the good of pain?  Why would God let us face pain if He could stop it?

There is nothing speculative about pain…we all face pain and some of us experience it every single day.  At the risk of being misunderstood and misinterpreted, it would be worthwhile to consider the point at which pain became a part of the human experience.  When Adam and Eve first sinned, the outcome was that Eve would suffer pain in childbirth and Adam pain in trying to get his work done.  To the woman he said, "I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children.  Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you." (Genesis 3:16 NIV)  That is both physical pain and tremendous potential for psychological pain for the woman.  To Adam he said, "Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, 'You must not eat of it,' "Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. (Genesis 3:17 NIV)  Again, we have for Adam physical pain and psychological pain built into the struggle to make a living.   Pain, in its most raw sense is the result of sin, of Adam and Eve deciding to be the master of their souls, to live as if God is absent.  That is the essence of all sin, the declaration of independence from God.  Sin is the force behind all that is wrong in our world and all that is wrong in us.  Both the sins we commit and the sins of others warp our personalities and our thinking.  Enough sin and God becomes an enemy and a prison guard rather than our joy and freedom.  Sin wrecks us from top to bottom and we often don’t even know it.

Pain knocks the legs out from under our independence.  If I have come to think that I am the boss, pain makes a fool of the thought.  Pain makes itself king and it refuses to be carelessly cast aside.  Try to ignore pain and if it continues, you cannot.  You can medicate pain but it comes back up and rules over you as a fierce tyrant.  You can go to Disneyland, hang out at a jazz bar, watch your favorite team on TV or start a new relationship but pain won’t let go of you and you cannot just shake it off.

The ancient book of Job located in the middle of the Bible is a sort of case study on pain.  It gives us a fresh understanding of what pain is and why God lets it continue for now.  Job lived a pretty care-free life up to the moment God and Satan had their monumental meeting in the heavens.  God pointed out just how good Job was and Satan contended that he was only good because God kept him from pain.  God insisted that Job would still be loyal to Him if he faced pain and Satan replied, “Let’s see!”  However, God only let Satan bring Job psychological pain.  This is not to belittle Job’s pain!  What he faced was horrific.  In one day all his kids died and he lost his wealth.  It is fascinating though to see that this psychological pain did not knock him off his feet.  At this, Job got up and tore his robe and shaved his head. Then he fell to the ground in worship and said: "Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked I will depart.  The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised."  In all this, Job did not sin by charging God with wrongdoing.  (Job 1:20-22 NIV)

For many, psychological pain is the worst sort of pain and it renders them unable to function practically.  The loss of a loved one, the abuse suffered as a child, the devastation caused by financial ruin, the experience of rejection all create a level of pain that can be unbearable.  But Job was not brought to his knees by psychological pain and so Satan demanded (if one can demand anything of God) that the Lord let Job suffer physical pain…and that did the trick.  The sores Satan used to afflict Job knocked Job off his feet.  He was wrecked by his pain.  He wished he had never been born.  "May the day of my birth perish, and the night it was said, 'A boy is born!'” (Job 3:3 NIV)  He wished he could just die. "If only you would hide me in the grave and conceal me till your anger has passed!” (Job 14:13 NIV) The pain was so intense that Job was forced by it to turn to his friends to help him cope with it.  But his friends did not have the capacity nor the will to really help him in his pain, and so Job did what pain is intended to stir in us, Job turned to the only one left to him.  God!

Before the pain, Job was carefree and unperturbed by what he faced.  When pain attacked him though, Job had only two categories of thought…pain and God.  Now we must admit Job’s thoughts about God were not civilized as we think of religiously civilized thought.  He said God was unfair.  "As surely as God lives, who has denied me justice, the Almighty, who has made me taste bitterness of soul, as long as I have life within me, the breath of God in my nostrils, my lips will not speak wickedness, and my tongue will utter no deceit.  I will never admit you are in the right; (Job 27:2-5 NIV) He thought God didn’t care.  “…then know that God has wronged me and drawn his net around me.  "Though I cry, 'I've been wronged!' I get no response; though I call for help, there is no justice.” (Job 19:6-7 NIV) He decided God was his enemy.  “God assails me and tears me in his anger and gnashes his teeth at me; my opponent fastens on me his piercing eyes.” (Job 16:9 NIV)

Something happened though with Job as his pain continued.  He began to think of God in a new way…as the one He needed, as his redeemer.  The Hebrew word translated redeemer is a fascinating term.  It describes one who is a relative that has the means to get you out of debt when you sold your land because you were too poor to keep it or a relative who marries you as a widow to protect your family or one who buys you out of slavery.  The redeemer was a savior who paid the price for your rescue.  When pain comes upon you and when it is deep pain, you can only think seriously of two matters: your pain and the hope of someone saving you from your pain.  Job voiced this well as his pain had evolved from psychological pain to physical pain and then to spiritual pain.  “I know that my Redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand upon the earth.  And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God; I myself will see him with my own eyes — I, and not another.  How my heart yearns within me!” (Job 19:25-27 NIV)  If you read closely the last parts of Job’s comments before God intervenes, all he can think about is God…His mind is on nothing else; not his marriage, not his friendships, not his finances; he is laser focused on God.  He does not need a tasty dinner, a new flock of sheep, a house with more rooms, an upgrade on his computer, a better smart phone, a wife who listens to him or friends who respect him.  He needs, and really needs a redeemer…he needs God.

Pain is the psychological button God uses to awaken us so that we will not waste our life with Him.  Imagine someone brilliantly talented at singing never developing her voice, a savant mathematician never bothering to study math, a greatly gifted inventor never working out one of her ideas.  The absurdity of unfulfilled talent is a terrible tragedy and yet there is not a talent we possess that compares to the opportunity before us to live our lives with Jesus Christ.  To cast our time with Him away is the greatest mistake of our lives and when we risk doing so, God pushes the button and pain erupts.  Suddenly we are thrown off our game, disoriented and like a driver trying desperately to get his car straightened when it begins to spin in a patch of black ice, we find pain shutting down every single concern we have but these two…our pain and our God.

Job’s story is about two matters only:  pain and the need for God.  Your life is the story of one matter…your life with God.  If you get distracted from this; if you lose your mind on something other than Jesus Christ saving you, it is a terrible tragedy for you.  Set your mind on Christ again and again and again.  When your mind is set on Christ and fully upon Him, then your mind is aligned with the mind of God and every thought you have has the power of God working in it and through it.  Why waste that great and glorious opportunity?  Why wait for pain to snap you back to reality?  God is present, God loves you, and God will work through you if you give Him the opportunity to do so!

Blindsided by Grace

We shuffle back and forth between believing God, questioning His goodness and forgetting His existence.  There is something God wants to do with you but it requires your perfect acceptance of His love for you in a matter and the moment you try to fix things yourself without Him working through you, the work crumbles.  Christ cannot and will not fill you if you slight God's love by complaining about your circumstance or by questioning His goodness.  Job was blindsided by the miracle of grace being worked out in Him and the Lord could not finish His work until Job threw up His hands in faith and accepted his place as creature rather than creator.  Job's friends proved to be of no help to him in this as they kept distracting him from the real development.  They pushed the discussion outside the realm of actuality by questioning Job's morality and integrity when those parts of him were never the issue.  Grace doesn't contend at the point of one's personal goodness  but rather at the spot of the Lord Himself working His own character into you.  Christ did not suffer the cross so that you could make a go at getting yourself straight or gaining some flury of accomplished gilding but rather to completely reconfigure your personality into the dynamic of God worked thoroughly through you.  Like yeast in dough, Christ risen in your heart will recreate all the promise he planted in you at the beginning through the difficulties and trials and mundane tasks of your everyday activities.  Be careless about what you're making of yourself but obsessed by the hand of God everywhere around you.

But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." 2 Corinthians 12:9 NIV

Uz Too! Part 2

When Job settles into the horror of his situation, he does what all of us try to do given rough circumstances. He tried to make some sense of it. The question is out there for him. “What is happening?” But like so many of us, Job doesn’t really think he will ever get a chance to ask it. I know for many the turning point in Job is God’s response to him out of the whirlwind. But I don’t think it is. The fulcrum of Job is his call for a “hearing” with God. Even if I summoned him and he responded, I do not believe he would give me a hearing. (Job 9:16 NIV) He doesn’t think it will happen but that is what he wants. Not success, not power, not health; all those things he has lost interest in as priorities. What Job wants is answers. “What are you doing God?” “What is happening?”

What is happening of course is that Satan was trying to shake Job free of his devotion to YHWH. But that does not explain God’s part in this. Was God watching with eager anticipation to see if Job would give up his faith in the same sort of way we watch the Olympics to see who wins or was God doing something else with Job that was not quite so small as Him showing off Job’s resilience as one might show off the skills of a prized racehorse? It certainly sounds ridiculous and certainly is ridiculous to think God at any point is waiting with eager anticipation to see how things turn in any part of the Universe and it is just as absurd to think God is vain and must show off His stuff to make Himself feel good.

If it is true that every person would like a hearing with God and is wondering often enough, “What is going on”, then it seems that Job as the ultimate transcript of human despair and God longing should give us something to help us know what we should do with our feelings toward God. Of course the book ends with very little to say about why God let Job suffer so much and it gives us little to hope that any of us should ever expect an explanation in this lifetime for what we go through. Job’s friends thought it was the “what goes around comes around” karma God they had but if there is anything that clearly comes out of the book it is that God does not operate that way in any sense. Karma does not govern any part of the universe and Job’s friends, for positing it as the reason for Job’s suffering were fiercely rebuked by God and made to offer animal sacrifices and beg for Job’s prayers to avoid an undisclosed punishment for their “folly”.

There are three clear conclusions we can make from Job that help us understand God’s dealings with us. First, as mentioned above, life is not a wrap around. What comes around goes around is a ludicrous view of life. If that were the case, then we all would be burned up in a ball of fire by now for our sins stink to heaven. God does not treat us as we deserve. I understand that the Proverbs point out the value of right living and that God does punish sin but as we see in Job, there is not and has never been a one to one correspondence of action by us and reaction by God. Bad people prosper and good people fail and good people prosper and bad people fail and that is the way it is. God never apologizes for this to Job, Job’s friends or anyone else. Karma, instant or otherwise is a myth.

Second, God is not overly concerned about our prosperity. Prosperity has never been the ideal Christian life although we seem to be enamored with it. Just a casual reading of Hebrews 11 makes that quite clear. Oh we love the teaching of verses 32-35. And what more shall I say? I do not have time to tell about Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel and the prophets, who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised; who shut the mouths of lions, quenched the fury of the flames, and escaped the edge of the sword; whose weakness was turned to strength; and who became powerful in battle and routed foreign armies. Women received back their dead, raised to life again. Now that sounds like good theology doesn’t it? Joel Osteen must love this passage.

To Be Continued...

Time Out

Perhaps the most famous time-out in history was the one Job received. Everything going well and without warning he was stopped in his tracks. What makes Job so shocking is not the horrors Job faced but rather the seeming unfairness of it all. Many have suffered just as worse or more than Job but no one has been so "unfairly" treated. The turning point in Job is Job 9: 16 Even if I summoned him and he responded, I do not believe he would give me a hearing.

Have you ever wanted a hearing with God?