Job was an impressive man of God. So
worthy was he that God singled him out for praise one day, but Satan (the
adversary) challenged God’s assessment of Job and also Job’s faith. Sure, he
said, Job is happy to worship and serve you because you give him everything he
wants. His wife is beautiful, his kids are darling, and his crops are bigger
than all of his neighbors. But if you give him some pain, if he suffers some
loss… if you send a storm his way, he will curse you to your face, So, God afflicted
Job with a lot of pain and heart-breaking loss, and Job cried out “Why me?”.
Why me? His friends told him that he must have sinned, but Job was adamant that
the pain which he had endured… wasn’t fair!
And it wasn’t because life is not fair.
The Bible speaks of sin and consequences, it speaks of forgiveness and grace
and new beginnings, but it never suggests that life ought to be fair. We know
that life is not fair and still, we have trouble accepting it. I’ve walked with
the casket to my father’s grave, and my brother Randy’s, grave, and my brother Larry’s,
grave, knowing that each of them died much too early. I walked beside my
brothers’ coffins knowing that I had prayed for their healing with all of my
heart. I prayed for them to live. They died anyway and like Job, I had to
struggle with God’s sovereignty. My father flew an airplane to the front lines in
WWII and he came home after the war. His co-pilot flew by himself one time, and
crashed into the cliffs of Dover. Did God love one of them more than the other?
And if so, which one?
Why me and not you? Why now and not
tomorrow? Why do the people who deal in sin live in a place with an ocean view,
while those who choose to work with the disadvantaged, disabled, and
disenfranchised just eke out a living? It rains and shines from time to time on
all of us, but why do some people get hit with storm after storm? It doesn’t
seem fair… and it’s not! If our faith is based on “fairness,”, if it’s
intertwined with what we think we’ve earned and deserve, then it’s bound to be
self-centered and fragile. If our faith is based on the things we have around
us, it’s not faith at all because faith is believing in what we cannot see. If
we think that faith will keep cancer, addictions, and storms away, we will be
disappointed… because faith is not designed for such things. God can, of
course, bless us as much as He likes…BUT faith shines most brightly when we are
walking in the darkness. Storms will come to each of us, but faith will give us
the strength to persevere, the resolve to hang on to God in the midst of the
storm, and an unshakable awareness that God is always with us.
We’re prone to panic when the going gets
tough because we’ve never really accepted that faith will not keep the storms
away from our doors. But life doesn’t seem to work that way. People suffer, drunk drivers kill Sunday
school teachers, and little kids are gunned down on Chicago’s streets. Faith
has little to do with such things… BUT it will give us hope when there’s no
reason to hope; it will give us the strength to believe that dry bones live,
and faith will also give us a deep peace in the midst of the storm. If faith
were only good for idle talk around the church or family table, it wouldn’t
change many lives, but if it’s something we can draw on when storm clouds form,
then faith makes all the difference in the world! It’s important to embrace our
faith when life gets difficult... so let me suggest that you keep these points
in mind:
1
Bad things happen to good people. Drunk drivers kill Sunday School teachers, young men
get hit by lightning, and innocent kids are gunned down. We all know this and
if we accept it, we will less likely to blame God when it happens to us;
2
Without a purpose, we’re destined to live lives of
quiet desperation, and it’s just a
matter of time before we ask, “Is this all there is?”. God has called each of
us to a purpose and if we’re walking along that road, we will experience joy,
even if it storms;
3
Living by faith
is a choice… and we can choose to believe in God’s presence, promises and power
right now. We can choose to believe in those
things that we don’t entirely understand
and when storms kick up in your lives, we can choose to rely all the more on
your faith. We can choose to run in circles or with a purpose;
4
Life is not a
stack of successes, but a circle of experiences, moments and opportunities, some
of which are glorious and some of which as painful. The threads that knit your
life together are made of love and grace, not money and things. If we see this
clearly, we will be less likely to feel wronged if we don’t get what we think
we deserve;
5
Finally, we can prepare
for the storms in our lives by getting spiritually fit. Please take time for
daily prayer, open your Bible and join us this fall when we study God’s word,
and make it a practice to show Christ’s love to someone else each day. Invite
someone, befriend someone, serve someone, forgive someone… and keep doing it.
Keep doing it and you will become strong spiritually. Make being a Christian a
daily thing and then, when the storms arise, you will be able to say, “Lord,
it’s storming and it’s so dark that I can’t see a thing. Water’s beginning to
fill my boat. So, before I lay my head down of my pillow of faith, I want to
thank you for being in the boat with me!” Amen.
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