These are notes from one of the short sermons I’ve written this month, I hope you enjoy it I plan to write a more legitimate blog soon.
Wisdom from the physical world
As we live our lives we experience a series of highs and lows. There’s points in life when you feel like you’re on top of the world. Points where everything seems to be going your way. Points in life where you just feel truly blessed by the Lord.
But with the highs comes the lows.
There’s the spells of time when you feel more alone than ever. The periods when it feels like nothing is going your way. You feel like you can’t catch a break. You begin to feel completely drained emotionally, physically, and even spiritually. The points where you’re on your hands and knees Praying for any sort of refuge from these lows but your unfortunately greeted with another swift and powerful kick to the ribs by life.
Periods like this in life make it rather challenging to continue you to be intentional in your relationship with God. We often times can become confused and discouraged. It’s hard to be faithful when we feel like all it’s doing is causing us harm. So we begin to question him and demand to know why he’s allowing us to suffer. We can sometimes begin to wonder if he’s actually as loving as he’s made out to be in scripture.
“Pain is just weakness leaving the body to make room for knowledge.”
My mother used to say this whenever I would come to her with a minor injury as a child. It has taken me most of my life figure out what exactly she meant by this.
But before I dive into that I’d like to share a story with all of you.
This is a story about a man from the Bible who had everything taken away from him. This is the story of a man named Job.
Job is described by the lord as a blameless and upright man, who respects God and turns away from evil. He had seven sons and three daughters. He possessed 7,000 sheep, 3,000 camels, 500 yoke of oxen, and 500 female donkeys, and very many servants. Job was considered one of the wealthiest men in the land.
There was a day when the Angels in heaven and God met and Satan also came among them. Satan said to the Lord that the only reason your servant Job is so loyal to you is because you have blessed the works of his hands. Satan said if you stretch out your hand and touch everything he has I’m sure he’ll curse you to your face. So God excepts Satan’s bet with one exception Satan isn’t allowed to take Jobs life.
Satan then stretch’s out his hand and takes everything Job has. He kills all of Jobs livestock and servants. He sent people to steal Jobs land. He covers Job from head to toe in sores. Satan even takes the lives of all his children.
When Job is made aware of all that he has lost he rips off his robe shaves his head and begins to worship the Lord. Job didn’t get angry with the lord instead he prayed to him. Jobs wife asked him why do you still worship a God that has taken everything from him without reason. Job then rebukes her and tells her to not speak like a foolish person.
Satan took everything from Job. Job had every reason to curse God and throw his relationship away. But Job knew something we tend to forget when life is pressing down on us.
God is with us no matter how bad life gets. He’s right by our side to aid us and be our crutch when we need something to lean on. God isn’t just with us through the highs. He’s just as present through the lows, we just have to choose to look past the problems right in front of us to see that.
By choosing to not focus on how bad things are right in front of us that gives us the ability to focus on what God is trying to show us through the lows. We learn the most from the Lord in the lows believe it or not. God doesn’t cause us harm to punish us that’s not the type of God we follow as Christians. Instead he challenges us to grow our faith.
I believe Job was aware of this when everything tangible in life was taken from him. I believe he knew that Gods intent wasn’t to cause harm or punish him but to strengthen their relationship. To show Job that he was still with him even though he no longer had anything in the earthly sense.
This brings me back to the quote from my mother.
“Pain is just weakness leaving the body to make room for knowledge “
Reality is one of the great tools God uses to grow our faith. Growing up we learn things the hard way. We learn not to stick our fingers in the boiling water because it’s hot and will burn. We learn to put our hands out in front of us to catch ourselves when we fall so we don’t scrape our knees.
We gain wisdom from these lessons we learn growing up and we learn to adjust our lives to accommodate. The same lessons we learn and wisdom we gain carries over to the spiritual world as well. God wants us to be like children in our faith he wants us to be forever curious to know more and with that we must be prepared to learn like the children we are. That being said let’s get back to the story about Job.
While Job was suffering on earth he never once cursed God. He used the heart ache as heat to cook with. Instead of only focusing on the earthly problem right in front of him he decided to look beyond and focus on his and Gods relationship.
He took the pain and suffering he was experiencing from his great loss and recognized it. And instead of wallowing in it he turned his pain into a passion to love and be a light house for the lord.
The story of Job ends with God blessing Job with twice as much as he had before. Job again had 7 sons and 3 daughters. His family came to his aid and showed him great sympathy and blessed him with money and rings of gold. Job went on to live a long life of 140 years and watch his children and his children’s children grow up.
You see Job took full advantage of his situation and was able to recognize that God was showing him a new perspective. By choosing into the Lord even though it felt like he was attacking Job. Job was able to grow his faith and show all of us here that by putting our faith in God when life gets rough we’ll be blessed in the end. It may not always be money and gold but it will always be a gain of wisdom and knowledge. Wisdom and knowledge we can use to spread Gods word.
So take the lows as a blessing. God is trying to teach us the hard way, teach us like the children we are. God will be with us no matter what he’s there for us to lean on.
