Category: Thoughts and Meditations

“If he should set his heart to it
and gather to himself his spirit and his breath,
all flesh would perish together,
and man would return to dust.”
– Job 34:14-15

God isn’t just your Creator, Redeemer, Father, and Friend. He sustains you along with everyone and everything you know. Your existence today is an act of His will. The universe in its entirety is held together at all times by the sustaining will of God. The forces and laws of nature exist from moment to moment by His will.

Too often, we only think about, pray for, and give thanks for the “big things” God does “for us”. In truth, we have much to meditate on and be thankful for simply because we are alive and breathing today (and because there is air to breathe). Rejoice that gravity works, up and down still point in the same direction as yesterday, and time continues to move forward!

Give thanks that your heart continues to beat through complex processes you probably don’t understand. Give thanks that countless invisible activities sustain your life while you’re reading this. All this is the gracious will of God! Apart from His will, we would return to dust very quickly. So, whether today is shaping up as you hoped or not, be thankful that it’s shaping up at all! ‘This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it!’ (Psalm 118:24). #FollowJesus

“Oh, that I knew where I might find him,
that I might come even to his seat!
I would lay my case before him
and fill my mouth with arguments.”
– Job 23:3-4

Ah, poor Job! Even he finally gave in into the false thinking that if he could just argue with God, all his problems would be solved. Many Christians think the same thing in times of despair. “There must be some mistake…” “What is God doing…” “This isn’t how it’s supposed to work…” Asking to speak with the manager about his complaints isn’t going to solve anything for Job. It generally doesn’t solve anything for anyone. Why not? Two reasons…

First, Job is wrong about why he’s suffering. He’s fallen into the same theological error as his so-called friends. He believes his suffering is being caused by God. He’s forgotten the existence of the devil, who is the real source of his pain. Wrongly blaming God for your suffering results in a lot of warped theology. Job’s desire to argue with God is literally barking up the wrong tree.

Second, and this is arguably more important, Job forgets that he can’t ever fully understand God, His will, and His ways. God is an infinite being. He’s all good and utterly without sin. He’s all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-wise. He sees all of space and time simultaneously and knows exactly how everything is going to unfold across countless generations. For theses reasons, God’s plans unfold in ways we simply can’t understand. We can’t understand how hard things today can yield glorious fruit generations from now. But God can!

When we long to argue with God about how He’s running the universe we do so from an incredibly narrow perspective – one moment in time and overwhelmingly focused on one single person – ourself. This is why a desire to debate with God, to dump our complaints on Him and blame Him for what He’s doing will never satisfy us. Never!

Do you know what will satisfy? Trusting God and intentionally laying aside doubts, questions, indignation, and argumentation to simply draw near to Him in faith and love. Abiding in Him. Dwelling in His presence. Meditating on the person and work of Jesus and His sacrificial death on your behalf. Choosing to delight in Him rather than debate with Him. It’s so simple and yet so difficult. Nonetheless, it’s the road to peace and joy amidst the chaos of life on earth. #FollowJesus

“For I know that my Redeemer lives,
and at the last he will stand upon the earth.”
– Job 19:25

Job was a man ahead of his time! Despite living thousands of years ago and enduring terrible suffering, Job could clearly see ahead to the coming of Jesus Christ, his Redeemer. Though it would be centuries before the eternal Son of God would become flesh and be born in Bethlehem, Job already KNEW the Lord!

Job knew that he needed a Redeemer and that he had one in Jesus. He knew that His eternal Redeemer would one day enter our world, setting foot upon the earth. He knew that his own salvation wasn’t rooted in his personal perfection but the redemptive work of Christ. Job probably didn’t know the name “Jesus” but he firmly believed in his Redeemer. That faith sustained him in his pain. Like Abraham, that faith was counted as righteousness.

Can you hold fast to this same confession during the hardest seasons of your life? Remember that even when things are darkest, the Light of the World, Jesus Christ, is your Redeemer and He is ALIVE! Jesus stood upon the earth, hung upon the cross, rose from the dead, rules from heaven, and will once again stand on the earth one day. Until then, hold firmly to this confession, because your Redeemer LIVES! #FollowJesus

“I have heard many such things;
miserable comforters are you all.
Shall windy words have an end?
Or what provokes you that you answer?”
– Job 16:2-3

Consider this a practical reminder from Job that when you’re comforting someone, you don’t have to try and explain everything. It usually isn’t helpful and may actually be hurtful. You don’t have to find “the right words” when someone is in agony, grief, or sorrow. Just be there for them. Love them. Weep with them. Mourn with them. Pray for them. Bless them with your presence. You aren’t required to explain why difficult things are happening, especially when you don’t know!

We live in a fallen world, infected and affected by human sin, under a curse, and constantly stirred up by the evil works of the devil. Because this is the world in which we live, people we care about – friends, relatives, colleagues, neighbors – will go through bad things. Illness, injury, betrayal, injustice, oppression, abandonment, disability, death, and more. Much of the time, no human can say with specificity why a particular bad thing is happening. So, don’t feel like you have to. Even if the person asks you.

It is usually enough just to be there. To offer prayers and the assurance of Christ’s love and God’s presence. To sit with them in their pain. To help in practical ways. To walk with them through hard seasons. Often, there are no “right words” because words can’t fix what’s wrong. Don’t stress about the words or your lack of them! Learn to be comfortable with silence. Simply be the presence of Jesus with those walking through the dark valleys of life. #FollowJesus

“Will you speak falsely for God
and speak deceitfully for him?”
– Job 13:7

As Job rebukes his “friends” for their false and hurtful theology, he highlights a problem we should all remember in this era of social media. There are many people who speak with a false piety about God. Who wrap themselves in religion while sharing words of insight or prophecy God didn’t give. Who speak confidently about God’s perspective on people or situations without a genuine biblical basis. Who radically distort the character of God while claiming (perhaps even believing) that they love Him. Be on the lookout for them, because they now have algorithms aiming their content straight at you!

Job is right about these folks. Later in the book, God will rebuke the men and have Job offer sacrifices on their behalf because they’ve spoken falsely about His nature. What did they do? Said things that were true but incomplete about God’s justice, knowledge, and power. Things that were immature and inadequate in understanding the difference between earthly life in a fallen world and eternal life with the Lord. Inadequate in understanding the existence of Satan and his role in testing the faith of God’s people. Immature in understanding that God’s perfect justice will play out in eternity but that there will be injustice on earth until Jesus returns. Then they used those partial truths as weapons against Job, declaring that obviously his suffering was being inflicted by God as punishment for some hidden sin. This was utterly false as the earlier chapters clearly revealed.

So, be careful with what you watch or read from your “feed”. Be careful about what you like, share, or forward. Test it against the Bible. Test it against the character of God. Test it against the words, actions, and attitudes of Jesus. If it sounds exactly like what you want to hear, test it again! The Bible is clear that we must be careful about things that really make our itching ears happy! Understand that the way God sovereignly rules over this world is infinitely more complicated that humans can understand. So be careful of anything that is “too simple”. Most importantly, spend more time reading and listening to God’s Word than you do reading and listening to people online. Get offline and #FollowJesus out into the world instead. Share His good news with others., Be His hands and feet of love to those in need.