Sunday, January 28, 2018

Your thoughts are important to me! (Week 4, Day 5)


Have you ever heard a sermon on Job? If so, it was probably an exhortation to emulate Job's submissive and worshipful attitude in the midst of loss and suffering. While Job's initial response to his catastrophic experiences is honorable and praiseworthy, if this were all we could glean from this Old Testament book, reading chapter one would completely suffice, rendering the following 41 chapters superfluous. In doing so we would miss the raw emotions Job experiences throughout the rest of the book. He feels angry at God and he unashamedly approaches God with his accusations. 

Job feels like God has made him His mark (7:20), firing arrows through him (6:4) hitting him with a rod (9:34) and throwing him into the mud (Job 30:14). He accuses God of contending against him (10:2), oppressing and despising him (10:3), and destroying all his hope (14:19). Job even has the gall to call God his accuser (9:15), a title usually reserved for Satan. Doesn't it then seem surprising that, in God's eyes, Job never sinned in what he said (42:7-9)?

After Ani's death, I felt angry at God for taking my precious daughter. I thought I was wrong for feeling this way and my perceived guilt kept me from approaching God. When I could stand this tension no longer, I confided in a professional grief counselor who explained to me that only once in his entire career had he encountered a grieving parent who did not have feelings of anger towards God. While it was a comfort to me that I was not alone in this dilemma, I wondered what kind of spiritual saint this one parent must have been. I was totally surprised as my counselor provided the eye-opening reason she wasn’t angry at God: She was an atheist. She couldn’t possibly accuse a God she didn’t believe in.

In understanding that anger toward God is a natural response, and in reading the book of Job, I learned once again that God is much bigger than I had thought. God is not weak. He is not afraid that His name will be marred by our negative thoughts or emotions towards Him. We are permitted to come to Him and bring our complaints. He allows us to beat against His chest and scream in rage. He can take it! Moreover, He already knows how we feel and what we are thinking. He does not reject us but desires to gather us in His arms and show us that He is for us and with us, even when we do not understand, even if we are angry at Him.

This made me fall in love with the God of Job. If we skip over Job's painfully raw emotions towards God, we miss knowing that it is okay to be absolutely real with Him. God is greater, even greater than our emotions.

·       Read 1 John 3:30 and write your honest feelings to God.

                                                                                                                  

                                                                                                                  

                                                                                                                  

                                                                                                                   

__________________________________________________________


No comments:

Post a Comment