Job

As I read Job, I cannot help but to think of the different ways in which God acts in people's lives. Job was always my grandmother's favorite book. She was a woman who knew what health problems were about. For example: she survived three different strains of cancer, rheumatoid arthritis and a number of other ailments that I cannot remember, but what I do remember was that she had 43 different surgeries before she died. There were times when she would have straight pens going through her toes all the way down to her heals. And others when she had pens going through her fingers. Our family sat in more hospital rooms than most people even enter a hospital. But through her illnesses, God was glorified. However, there was four days that she talked about often, and related these days to how upset she was with God when she was diagnosed with cancer, for the third time. It was during this four day time that she did not pray, "even once", she would say. When I was first diagnosed with MS, I felt like someone had handed me a death sentence. My reaction to my sickness was a little more severe than my grandmother's. I turned my back on everything that was godly and decided to "live it up." But I still held on to Him, just in case I needed Him. In each situation God was in control and in each situation we had our moments of weakness.

Job, "I came naked from my mothers womb, and I will be stripped of everything when I die. The LORD gave me everything I had, and the LORD has taken it away. Praise the name of the LORD!" Job was "blameless, a man of complete integrity. He feared God and stayed away from evil." Job questioned God and wanted to understand why he was suffering, but in this questioning he never turned from his LORD. This is where Job stayed strong, and where we often fail. Even my grandmother, who only turned her head from God for four days in all of her suffering, she still turned her head. One of the main lessons that we can learn from Job: It is okay to question, but in this questioning, we need not to sin. Job was a man of faith, patience, and endurance. He was generous and kind. His friends just knew that there must be some secret sin that he was hiding, or he would not have been afflicted in such a way. It was through his friends accusations that Job began to be weak. In their attempts to help Job, they only weakened him. This is when he began to question God and ask Him "why?" In the LORD's reply to Job, He begins with questioning Job. He reminds Job, that He is the only one in control. In His answer to Job, He never answered Job.

Many times we will never know why God chooses to do things the way that He does them. It can be very frustrating for us, but if we will just accept the fact that we may never know the answer and that God is Just, then we will be better equipped to keep our faith in our LORD and find rest in His presence. In watching my grandmother, I learned that her faith brought many others to Christ. Her testimony was in her illness and His strength was in her weakness. In looking back on my life, I can see that my faith was not true faith. I needed to be refined in the fires of His hand so that I could learn to lean on Him always. When we face hard times, we need to know that pain is not always a punishment for things we have done wrong. God is not unreasonable or uncaring. We need to learn that knowing God is better than knowing the answers. Job never got answers to his questions, but he learned who God was. In this his life was spared and he gained faith in his LORD. We can question God, but when we become truly discouraged is when we are looking for a direct answer.