Job was ticked. There's no point in fantasizing; he was upset about his condition. I would have been, too. Having seven children, my livelihood, and my health completely taken away, only to be left with a nagging, impious wife, would be trying. So Job complained. Job's friends, who approached him originally to comfort him, began chastising him. Chastisement is unnecessary, especially when someone really needs God's comfort communicated.
Bildad was one of the chastising friends. I was reading Bildad's remarks earlier and I realized something. Bildad was partially correct. In his first address to Job, Bildad told Job that he had nothing to say to God because humans life on earth is a breath compared to God's eternal reality. True. He also said that Job needs to remember that God knows our every deed. True again. What did he miss?
Bildad missed something very important that would have put some needed truth into the chastisement. He didn't miss the fact that God knew about Job - what Job did. He missed the fact that God knew Job - who Job was. And Job knew God. They were friends. If Bildad would have delivered his opening argument and turned to remind Job that God knew him, both gentlemen may have had revival. (Isn't it powerful? God, who is infinitely more than anything we conceive knows us intimately!) But Bildad missed the boat. He forgot that even in the Old Testament God knew people.
He walked with Adam in the cool of the day. He bickered with Abram over the fate of Sodom. He gently whispered to Elijah. Were Job to stop his complaining and speak with a positive mental attitude, he would have been like a white-washed tomb: dead with his complaints on the inside, bright with his words on the outside. Instead Job was honest with God. Job felt the complaints, and he said them. He treated God like a friend, even he didn't feel like God's friend. He felt beaten up by God, but he didn't cut God off. Who among us is courageous enough to be completely honest with God? If we do that, doesn't that open us up to God's response?
2 comments:
I was introduced to an idea similar to that awhile ago and it revolutionized my life. I think it was a speaker or evangelist, a woman I think, not that it matters but I'm a detail freak, and she was saying how people often feel like they have to come to God with flowery lanquage, and pray only happy prayers that praise and thank God,and while prayers that praise and thank God are good, that's not all he wants to hear from us. I've never been a flowery prayer, I tend to come to him on a more conversational level, although I can't shake some formality, but I had never really thought about the fact that even if I am talking to God and expressing a frustration, or questioning something, or anything not seen as ultra-positive, God is still glad that I am talking to him. I have been coming back to the idea that my relationship with God is quite like a marriage relationship. Sometimes you feel a great love for the person and you can't help but tell them in flowery words how much you love them. And sometimes, you question, or feel frustrated, but you still love and trust them, and I have always found it better to express myself, and see how we can resolve it, or just just express it, and know that nothing can be done and that's okay. If none of this makes sense I'm sorry, and I may be going in a different direction then where you had originally intented, but I just love how God wants us to talk to him, and it's okay to say God I don't understand and I'm frustrated right now, and yet even in the frustration, we can rest in the knowledge that he is in control.
When I felt like my world had fallen apart when God asked us to move from Halifax to Sussex, I was courageous enough to be honest with God about my anger, hurt, heartache and pain. He met me in those times and I left Sussex a different person and much closer to God. I had to trust Him to stay there with me even when I was acting like a child and bawling and complaining and saying "Why, God? Why?"
He met me in deeper levels in my hurt and honesty with Him than ever before. He LOVES us and wants us to come to Him. He is big enough to handle our honest hearts and words.
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