Yesterday I wrote about worship. I touched on the example of Job who praised God, even in the midst of losing every earthly thing that a man or woman could hold dear. His is not an easy example to follow, but I do believe that his response to adversity is one worth aiming to mirror in our lives.
One of the difficulties of reading the Bible is that we cannot always be clear as to how a person is saying the words that they say. We are missing key elements of communication. We do not always know what words in their sentences are emphasized more (or less), we do not know how their face looked, and we do not know if they rolled their eyes while they were talking (I have teenagers in my house, and something like ‘yes mom’ can have so many different meanings, depending on how it is said, what they are doing with their bodies and what their eyes are doing).
Our communication is so so much clearer when we experience it face to face.
But we do not have that opportunity when we read the Bible, so we are left to guess, assume, and input our own take on just how things might have been communicated. I, being an internal processor, would tend to go with the third option, that of inputting my own take on just how things might have been communicated.
When I think of the disasters, disappointments and losses that Job faced, I am pretty confident that he did not say, in a way that my kids might announce an A+ on their Math test, “The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away, praise the name of the Lord.” I also do not think he made that announcement as a question. I also do not think that he said what he did without tears of true and sincere pain falling down his cheeks.
I believe that God heard Jobs cry, I believe that God accepted Jobs praise, through his lament, through his tears and through his not seeing or understanding the big picture that God could see. And, I believe that Jobs tear-filled praise of the name of the Lord was sweeter than honey to the ears of God. Not because Job gave God praise that was due to Him (although it was), but because despite the outer turmoil that Job was facing and experiencing, head on, he gave his praise to God … anyway. He praised because that was what he was created to do. It was his main purpose, and he was fulfilling it … even though he was suffering.
God does not ask for the sugar-coated prayers and praises that we so often give (in public). God asks for prayers and praise that are saturated in the tears of his children. He wants our offering to Him to be one that we deliver on the alter … one that took effort and sacrifice. One that came from the heart … the heart of His child.
I hate suffering! I honestly do wish that I could live my life on easy street, and have every wish granted before I speak it. I do wish that there were guarantees in this life. But, that is not real life, here in our sin-filled world. I also have to say that the times when my heart felt as though it might be ripped in two (or I wished that it would be) by the pain I was feeling, are also the times when I was most real to God. I scream, I shout, I cry … I forfeit … yes, I give up. It is then, when I am so worn out, so discouraged, and feeling so hopeless that I finally hand control of my life back over to the only one who can control my life … my creator, my savior my redeemer.
That giving up of control, is when God takes over. Because we have been sincere in our heart, He is able to mold our lives.
One day a verse was read and the words ‘freewill offering’ stood out to me like neon lights in the black of a night.
itsawonderfilledlife 