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Presently reading Job in my daily devotions. Moved this AM by his reply to Eliphaz, poster boy for *with friends like these, who needs enemies?* In 6:24 Job says, “Teach me & I’ll be silent. Help me understand what I did wrong.” Rips my heart out. Some of you are there right now.
Your world’s falling apart & you don’t know what you did wrong. I lived most of my life believing all my hardship -which was truly unrelenting -was a consequence of my sin. In my case, I had sinned so much that it seemed reasonable. Miserable & reasonable. It was all punishment.
Can’t express how demoralizing it is to figure you’ll simply never live long enough to outlive your consequences. Of course, some of what I suffered was reaping what I’d sown. But by no means all or even most. It’s taken me a lifetime to know that. Don’t let it take that for you.
Sometimes we’ve done nothing wrong at all. Indeed in Job’s case, God bless him, his suffering was tied to what he’d done right. Sometimes (1 Peter 1) God allows fiery trials to come to prove we’re legit. Other times suffering comes because this world is sick & evil runs rampant.
One day this earth will be made new & this suffering will be over &, looking back from there, will only have lasted the merest moment. We will understand & know as we’ve been known. But until then, if we’re going to make it with our hearts intact, we must abide in Christ’s love.
When my heart is breaking or the raging waters threaten to engulf me, I say aloud to Jesus, “I know You love me so much. As the Father has loved You, You, my Christ, my Savior, my All, love me. Neither the worst of my sins or the best of my works can alter that. Here I will sit.”
Just sit down in it today. Rest in it. Lie down in it. Pull it over you like a blanket & sleep in it for a little while. Whatever harms & hurts have come your way, by the authority of the words of Christ, I can tell you this. They are not because He has removed His love from you.
