At least three reasons can account for personal adversity: mis-spent lifestyle, humanity’s fallen state and God’s will. At least three! God’s will accounts for Job’s trials, with Job the object of God’s approval and Satan’s accusation. God’s will, the unknown factor in Job’s sorrows, leaves us with a helpful principle when counseling those under stress. When tragedy strikes:
We need to be aware that a time exists for everything in life. For example, counseling those with sickness or disease, health decline or death near means being there, with the person or family. With few words spoken—and any spoken pacific, hopeful and positive. Where death has taken a loved one, God’s Grace offered the Living. Where no sense can be made of the circumstance, God’s Peace offered with empathy, and accepted without explanation. Where faith in God is weak, assurance of the Spirit’s presence making it stronger. Where faith in God is strong, like Job’s awareness of losing what has meant most of all to him: his confidence in God, his mainstay in life, and his sense of God’s disfavor catastrophic to his intellect and emotions. ONLY FAITH suffices. Other times exist for investigation. Israel’s present fight for survival with Hamas—who knows who else?—an example. The essence now: fight to win, to destroy Hamas. For later, investigation: how could the intelligence services of all western nations, and of Israel, been so blind to the preparations for war against her? Intelligence failures being common in history, hard questions need to be asked. The lesson from Job’s sorrows is: the Golden Rule in place: offer the person God’s grace and peace, prayer and comfort. Exactly what we want and need at such a time. Fini
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Knowing that a time exists in every experience for:
So far, so good. Then, when in his opening speech, Job took his sorrow:
Leading to:
Leading to:
Leaving untouched:
Furthermore, leaving untouched:
End Part III Conclusion tomorrow. V In each cycle of speeches, a hardening of positions occurred. The helpers:
While Job:
Until feelings grew so alienated that Job considered the friends:
And they considered Job:
Nevertheless, neither Job’s pain nor his friends’ orthodoxy could resolve the issue debated. Each ignorant of the source of Job’s condition, they all acted the part of blind men leading the blind. All of them, including Job, needed correction. Only God’s scorching declarations of sovereignty convinced him 38-41:1-6. ` Whether it persuaded the friends remains unknown. However, since God expressed anger at the friends, and ordered them to offer sacrifices to be forgiven, MAYBE they sinned by forgetting the principle Paul would teach when dealing with believers with sorrowful experiences Galatians 6:1-2. End, Part II: Part III: Lessons we can learn from the book of Job, 10/16/23. Eliphaz, comforter of Job, certainly understood humanity’s vulnerability. “Yet, man is born to trouble as sure as sparks fly upward” Job 5:7. The existence of adversity—in whatever form it afflicts mortals, necessarily followed when our common parents disobeyed God in Eden.
They had known labor, but not hardship, while cocooned in Eden. They couldn’t have known how hard life would be in “the jungle” outside. They soon learned. Labor in Eden cost them nothing. Outside, “the sweat of their brow.” That sad beginning has continued since Eden and will until Jesus returns. Job 2:13 provides the key that unlocks understanding to the cycle of disagreements, truths and false charges in the book. “Then they sat on the ground with him for seven days and nights. No one said a word to him, because they saw how great his suffering was.” Had that empathy been engraved on their minds, lasting at least through Job’s first speech, the result could have been different. But, true to themselves as traditionalists, though false to Job’s need, their responses ignited his resistance, argument and debate. End Part I Erratum – this writer apologizes for inadvertently including Timothy in a study of John Mark. In Part IV of Discipleship (Finale – yesterday’s blog) Journey Through Failure to Success. Can’t explain the brain lapse. Caught it on a mental review of the article post – POST! V
Finding no answer in himself from the tragedy, David necessarily sought advice from Abiathar, God’s High Priest. Did he:
The priest necessarily related the wrong:
The burden lifted from the king like a bird from its perch. He soon issued new instructions that brought the Ark into the city. Let’s summarize: What David didn’t do that SO MANY people have done, and continue to do, when:
Nevertheless, despite the disaster priestly sin allowed to occur:
He remained faithful to God by remembering:
Believers CANNOT allow mortals to interfere with our faith in God. Thus, the way to turn adversity into an opportunity is:
Those two decisions made and kept will save us:
We’ll always be reminded of God’s faithfulness to us—and never forget how often we fail God. Amen. Fini Understand David’s unexpectedly negative response to Uzzah’s death from a review of his reign to that point. He had known only God’s benefactions:
The person who gets accustomed to winning as a habit takes defeat harder than the one tempered by failure as strengthened by success. For the first time since ascending to Israel’s throne, David felt God’s:
However, two perspectives led him to re-think the entire experience:
Which led to the second perspective:
Now…just so we appreciate David’s character, Saul would never have considered himself to blame. Whatever trouble came to Israel under his rule, he blamed:
David instead interrogated himself; had he been wrong:
But NO; from ancient times God wanted his people to:
On the morning of 8 June, 1815, a resurgent Napoleon Bonaparte, recently escaped from exile in Elba, and back in France, commanded a formidable French Army. That came perilously close to defeating the Allied armies of Wellington and Blucher at Waterloo. However, by sunset 8 June, 1815, a defeated Napoleon fled as fugitive from Allied justice. And, when found, went into exile in St. Helena till his death.
King David had a similar high on the morning he escorted God’s Ark into Jerusalem. Then experienced an equally devastating low when:
David’s response can help us turn an otherwise sure defeat into victory. He teaches us that an initial negative reaction to unexpected adversity need not be harmful IF: anger at God is only a temporary response. God knows how badly we can react when bushwhacked by unexpected stress. Uzzah’s death left everyone in the throng:
Killing a devoted servant guilty only of zeal for God seemed unjust, improper and merciless! How many of us have had similar reactions when:
Like the disciples on Lake Galilee when:
Didn’t he understand the crisis? Had he become so exhausted by the day’s activities that he jeopardized them all? Was he TOO tired to care? How possibly could he be so unaware of them with they so devoted to him? Anger. Annoyance. Anguish…we’ve all tempted to show when surprised by trouble! The nearest disciple kneed his way to the recumbent, fast-asleep Teacher. Shaking him awake, he desperately shouted, “Master, don’t you care if we perish?” End Part I I saw what seemed tongues of fire burning along the rails in Chicago Transit lines. Had Judy find it on the internet. Lo and behold, this winter’s frigid weather in the Windy City offered the explanation. Without heat generated by gas-fed lines adjacent to the rails, frozen “switch points”, especially at “A-2, Chicago’s busiest interlocking,” would paralyze mass transit throughout the region. A few weakened railroad ties constitutes the only cost in the present system. Internet 2/23/18
God designs adversity as Chicago engineers design gas-fed lines heat lines. They to keep interlockings working so mass transit can function. God to keep faith in him alive, active and ascendant in discipleship. Consider the patriarch Jacob at approximately 70 years of age. Before birth God promised him rule of his older brother. Yet his father Jacob, because he loved his son Esau’s tasty wild meat dishes—which, by the way, his wife Rebekah so cleverly imitated with domestic sheep he didn’t know the difference—would have betrayed God’s command and given the rule to Esau. The point of the blog, however, is Rebekah’s confidence that Jacob would leave home only “for a while,” Genesis 27:44-45, until Esau’s hatred diminished. That “while” turned into 20 years. A score of years! Because Jacob needed that time for spiritual character development. He learned under the hard, unfair tutelage of his father-in-law that God alone could protect and provide. That exile saved Jacob for God’s work. What could God be teaching us as we undergo trying times we wouldn’t have chosen to endure? Whatever it is, let God have his way, in his time. A more Christ-like person will result from whatever we are now; a more dedicated Christian, however dedicated now. None of us has yet paid in blood to grow in Christ. Most of us have yet to break a sweat in the effort. New Apologetics book at: Amazon Check out Virg Hurley books at Amazon Check out Virg Hurley Digital books at: Smashwords |
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