devotional
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We conclude the book of Job. God’s word are not the bullying that so many people think and Job does not repent. Going into the Hebrew text and scholarly resources, we learn God conforts Job and restores him
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Elihu is a controversial character is the book of Job. Some people believe he speaks the truth, but is that what the Bible really says?
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Bildad’s speech is only six verse, but Job’s reply is five chapters. This is Job’s last speech to his friends, and it includes a section on wisdom and some reflections on his past prosperity. It is worth slowing down to study. I put it all in one post, so here we go!
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Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis was truly the most horrific and deeply moving book I have read in a good way. It was C.S. Lewis’s last novel and far darker than any of them.
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Many Christian novels focus on a non-Christian believing on Christ. Pilgrim’s Progress does this at the beginning, but the vast majority of the novel is about how to stay on the Christian walk your entire life. I
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We are starting the third round of speeches by Job’s friends with Job’s responses. The sign of which path, righteousness or wickedness, a person is on is not the hardship they face, but the choices they make.
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So far we have covered the narrative prologue that tells about Job’s sudden hardship and his friend’s journey to comfort him. Job give a poetic lament over his pain and calamity. Then each of Jobs friends, Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite each give a speech and Job replies to each.
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We now start the second round of peaches by Job’s friends. The tricky thing about Jon’s friends again is that they are not completely wrong. Much of what they say is true about how the world works. The main place in which they are wrong is that they assume all suffering is caused by the
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This whole speech is Job’s response to Eliphaz. It is quite long right after he has just been called long-winded. At this point, I have often stopped reading the poetry section of this book and have skipped ahead to the narrative section to find out what happens to Job. This time, I am going to
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Here in chapter 15 we begin the second round of speeches by Job’s friends. The speeches have been progressing to a much more confrontational tone. Eliphaz may be like a friend you have or like the critical voice in your own head. As a situation in our lives continues on and on, it is hard
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The study of the book of Job is a philosophical exploration of the nature of God. Job is righteous, though not perfect, and grieves the hardships he has endured. His friends have accused him of causing his own suffering through sin. Job and we the readers know that this is not the case, so Job
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In my past posts, I have summarized that Job is a righteous man who has been dealing with extreme hardships. The reason I mentioned this every time is that both Job and his friends continue to debate God’s goodness based on Job current situation. We know that God sees Job as righteous from both the
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In the previous chapters we learned about Job’s losses and illness. According to the narrator of the book of Job, we are told that he is righteous and faultless. We are expected to trust that the narrator is reliable and honest, but Job’s friend, Eliphaz has cast doubt on Job’s godly character and response to…
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At this point in the book of Job we have seen that Job was a righteous man who lost everything. Job then laments the day he was born, but his friend, Eliphaz, responses in critiquing Job’s emotional response. Eliphaz asserts that if Job just repent of some vague sin or foolishness, God would then fix
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Job has lost everything and has cursed the day of his birth to his three friends. Eliphaz is the first of Job’s friends to speak. Even though we know that Job’s friends become more and more his adversaries, they start out as friends who are there to comfort and speak the truth. Had they not
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In Job chapter 1 and 2 we learned that Job was a righteous man who lost everything. Those chapters were narrative sections that told the story of Job and gave us the facts we need as we now enter the poetic section. We must keep in mind the genre to understand what is being communicated.
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In the last chapter of Job, we learned that he was a godly man, but lost everything to test his faith in God. He passed the test, but the story is not over. We now dive into chapter 2. 1) Again there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before
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The book of Job in the Bible has always fascinated me. Very few books of the Bible have such a wide and extremely varied interpretation among both pastors and church members. I have heard people accuse Job of pride and others accuse him of various sins. Most people read the narrative sections at the beginning
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You may be facing an impossible situation that is keeping you awake at night. It may be creating anxiety and depression. Call out to God, and then look to see if you may be here for such a time as this for someone else’s deliverance… which will often lead to your own.
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Sometimes it seems like God has forgotten us or has ignored our pain. He hasn’t. Deliverance will come.
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Last week we talked about how Esther had to act with divine wit to navigate the political game, but this week, without Esther’s knowledge, God takes over the game.
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Just like a Queen’s gambit in chess take a sacrifice to gain an important position, God is leading Esther even when things look like they are getting darker.
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Esther knows that God’s faithfulness would shine through, but the path may not be easy. Have you had to trust God through a trial in which you weren’t sure if God’s answer would be a life-altering yes or no?
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When someone is extremely good at what they do, often, instead of being celebrated, insecure people point out their flaws, put them down, and make sure they know that they aren’t better than anyone else. Have you been bullied for being good at something or for being confident in a situation?
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These life-changing events often act as a magnifying glass to reveal the deepest darkest areas of our lives, both our good character and the bad character.
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Vashti’s actions destabilized the entire kingdom and required extreme action by her husband to fix it. She was asked to figure out an impossible situation with no clear answer and failed. Do you face an impossible situation today with no clear solutions?
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Small things grow into bigger things. One action leads to another. The choices Ruth made changed not only a nation but the world.
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This chapter is about hope. It is not just hope for Ruth, but also hope for Naomi and Boaz as well. Hope is one the great gifts God gives us to strengthen us and lift us up. Without hope for the future, life becomes too hard to bear.
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What I have been pondering is how so many fanasy novels have women dress like men to accomplish heroic deeds. Why is this? Do women have no God-given abilities?
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Our relationship with God is a lot like a dance, especially during difficult times. I am finding this time during the social distancing for Covid-19 difficult. The thing I find difficult is the frustration at not have much control and not being able to plan even a few weeks ahead.
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I keep reading these verses over and over again looking for what I am supposed to do to help God work fast to fix this. God tells Ezekiel to do is prophesy life into the death around him, then watch God do the rest.
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If you have ever planted old seeds, most of them don’t sprout even if you have perfect conditions. I can’t put the life into them. I can only give them the right environment for them to do what they were created to do naturally.
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I realized my life hasn’t really been the easy-to-build, cookie-cutter house I had originally imagined. We are all unique people with no two of us having the same life experience or purpose. God didn’t create a kit that each of us messed up. We were designed to be different.
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I want to feel like I can handle life and all that is in it. I want to imagine myself flying, running, and walking through every battle and trial… except sometimes it is just too hard for me. I get weary, tired, faint.
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In the hundreds of times I have heard the parable of the lost sheep, I never once saw myself as the lost sheep… until I discover that I got lost.
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As a Christian, I was never allowed to celebrate Halloween as a child because of various legends about it celebrating demons. Instead let us, like Christ, redeem the world and make it beautiful.
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I want to discuss where disability belongs in our churches, which is front a center of our theology and our ministry, not to receive sympathy, but as examples of Christ.
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SO, if Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and Paul were disabled, and God refused to heal them, why does God heal anyone? Why not leave things as they are? This is an unusual question and backward from the usual question.
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We, the church, are uncomfortable with disability and don’t really have an explanation for why God allows it to exist. My proposal was that God allows… even gives disability on purpose. So where in the Bible, other than Paul, I could possibly get such an idea?
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As long there are people with disabilities, the issue of where they fit in the church will continue to exist. We need to fix it and stop ignoring it.
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Without prayer, we are like naked dragon-slayers. We need the armor of God. We need God-given power. Be careful; those dragons breathe fire. They have a way of zapping you when you are alone and bare.
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Some days I feel like Jacob. This month has been tough because my youngest son was diagnosed with profound hearing loss in both ears. For the hundredth (perhaps more) time, I wrestled with God again.
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How often do we treat our spiritual walk like a cup of coffee? I am certainly guilty of it. I sit down to speed through my devotions looking for the feel-good verses to give me the emotional pick-me-up that I need.
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You see, I didn’t understand divine love like my son had for Sploosh. Of course, Sploosh would never have had a personality or life beyond the shore if it wasn’t for my son… the one with autism… the one who people assume can’t love because the media has told them that people with autism don’t…
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Life is hard sometimes, like being run over by a train driven by a half-drunk Irishman in a bad mood and then getting backed over by the same said train for good effect. I had one of those times, and I am sure you have too.
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Today I helped some people move furniture and was asked if I needed anything they were getting rid of. I visited some people at their home and was again offered some furniture. In fact for the past year I have been generously offered a lot of furniture.
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I started this blog mostly to be an encouragement to those like myself to slow down and savor life. In the past five years my family has gone through illnesses, hospital stays, deaths, financial loss, drama of relatives crises and divorces, personal spiritual crises, depression, homeless wandering, and extreme reduction of personal property.
