Sunday 10 Feb 2013

Sunday Reading: Job 16:1-5

Key Verse: Job 16:3
3  Shall vain words have an end? or what emboldeneth thee that thou answerest?

Devotion:
The book of Job has always been a hard book for me to read because of the depth that each of the men go into and the words used to try and describe what was going on at the time. If they had had tape recorders back in those days, would it have made it any easier for us to understand? I wonder whether we would have thought of it more as an argument and immediately taken sides without going further into the word.

I supposed that is one of the trapping of our modern world, that we have so many things that try to give us a précis instead of explaining things in full or correctly; we always seem to be in a rush to reach some sort of conclusion instead of waiting on God for a correct response. The men that came to help Job did not do a very good job at helping him because each of them had their own ideas of what was going on and their own ideas of who was to blame. They were trying to shorten the grief by apportioning blame in some manner so that everything could get back to normal and everyone could get on with their lives.

Much of our modern existence is still like that in that we look for the quick fixes for things instead of slogging on with God until He shows us the right way that we should be doing things. We want the fix now and we don’t want to wait! Well, sometimes God has given us a long route to travel so that we arrive well prepared for the conclusion rather than getting their early and still not knowing what to do. God has prepared for each of us a life that will teach us what we need to know in order to get the best out of it. If we are not willing to wait on Him and depend on Him then we may well find that we fall short of the mark.

When Job heard what Eliphaz had to say he could not believe what had just come out of his mouth. When we face other Christians, or even non-Christians, that are having troubles or are in need of help, then we have to spend time to understand what they are going through and not jump in and try and fix things by blaming someone to see if that will fix it. We jump in with all guns blazing and shoot anything that moves instead of calmly finding out what the problem is. For that sort of knowledge and wisdom we need to approach God first of all because that is the only source of correct Wisdom.

Points to Ponder:
Do you shoot first and talk later?

Do you ever ask God before you speak?