The Everyday Prayer

Re:Verse passage – Job 19:13-19 (day seven)

All my associates abhor me,
And those I love have turned against me. vs 19

Can you remember the first time you were ever rejected or your first breakup? Maybe you never had to experience relationship heartbreak, but I am sure you had a friend who abandoned you, or a job you were fired from, or an application that was turned away. Rejection is inevitable.

No matter how long ago any of those events were for you, the pain of the moment stays with you. “Studies show that the same areas of the brain become activated when we experience rejection as when we experience physical pain” (Psychology Today). Rejection hurts. This pain of rejection escalates our loneliness. Not only was Job alone, but he had been despised and rejected by all his friends and family. Sound like someone else you know?

He was despised and rejected by men,
    a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. Isaiah 53:3a (ESV)

Jesus knows your pain. He wants to comfort you even when you feel like the world has turned against you. You are not alone!

Re:Verse passage – Job 19:13-19 (day six)

I’m with Brian, there is a profoundness to Job’s soul-crushing loneliness. We quickly and easily see similarities to Jesus in the last hours of his life when he was totally abandoned. Perhaps loneliness is the full result of humanity’s brokenness, ultimately completed in death (could you be any more alone than in death?). When sin takes its full course it crumbles and destroys all relationships, leaving us totally alone.

Now interestingly enough, neither Job (a particular sin; he was still sinful) nor Jesus committed sin that led to their loneliness, but the sin of others. I think that similarity between Job and Jesus is on purpose. I think God the Holy Spirit wants to draw our attention from Job to Jesus.

What if another way to think about Jesus taking on the sin of the world is Jesus taking on crushing loneliness? What if the only way we could not be alone, is for Jesus to go through the full extent of our brokenness in his loneliness?

What if he became alone, so you never had to be alone?

Re:Verse passage – Job 19:13-19 (day five) “He has removed my brothers far from me, And my acquaintances are completely estranged from me. My relatives have failed, And my intimate friends have forgotten me.”

Part of the suffering that Job experiences is the absence of human relationships and fellowship.  The pain and torment of this facet of Job’s trials are quite real and profound.

“Job’s burning concern for God does not make him insensitive to human relationships. On the contrary, the two are inseparable in the life of any person who attains wholeness as a human being.”- Francis Anderson

Hopefully you have heard or will soon hear the words “Better Together” around FBCSA. We believe that human relationships and fellowship are part of God’s design for believers to grow and mature in their faith. And beginning in June, we will call our church to consider this important facet of personal faith and church-life (what it means to be Better Together). How might we be used to minister to those around us even now (inside and outside the church) who are suffering in the same kinds of ways as Job describes?  “and let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds,”

Re:Verse passage – Job 19:13-19 (day four)

Satan is very thorough in his quest to break the faithfulness of a child of God.  1 Corinthians 10:13 says God will not allow us to be tempted beyond what we are able.  This look at Job shows us what the red line looks like.  The deceiver had no limits, short of the life of Job.  God provided a way of escape for Job…He will do the same for us.

Since we have the Word of God, we can read Revelation, the last chapter.  Richard Wurmbrand was arrested.  A Romanian pastor, he began to lead the other prisoners to Christ.  The Communists planned to kill him.  Wurmbrand told his captors that if they killed him, his blood would become the blood of a martyr and more would be saved.  They released him out of fear of doing that.  They told Wurmbrand that they weren’t going to kill him, no matter what he did to try to make them.  He continued to bear fruitful witness in a communist land, without hindrance.  Have you read the last chapter?  (We win!)

Re:Verse passage – Job 19:13-19 (day three)

“My intimate friends have forgotten me.”

Bereft of his children, separated physically and emotionally from his wife, deserted by friends, no longer possessing social standing, and unable to find God, Job, from all he can see, has achieved non-person status. It’s worse than death because intimacy with others is out of reach. He can’t contact anyone and seemingly no one can contact him. He’s like the astronomers sending messages into the void of space not knowing whether any form of sentient life will ever receive – or answer – those messages. He is, in his experience, alone in the universe. Isolation is deadly to a human being. His cry to others and particularly to God – “Why have you forsaken me?” – is the very cry that will one day cross the lips of the Savior Job longs to find.

Re:Verse passage – Job 19:13-19 (day two) 

My relatives have failed,
And my intimate friends have forgotten me. vs. 14

The depths of grief that gripped Job’s heart was almost unendurable. This seeming pit is double-edged in that no one around you can walk your exact journey, and no one, then, is able to truly empathize. This is a hopeless place. If walking with Jesus on his journey to the cross last week has given us any insight into our savior, however, is that he understands the weight of sorry. Truly. It doesn’t help to simply say “Jesus understands”, but it may provide the beginning of a way out of the pit to run to the scriptures and observe the cosmic weight of Christ’s sorrow.

He was despised and forsaken of men,
A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief;
And like one from whom men hide their face
He was despised, and we did not esteem Him. Isaiah 53:3

Re:Verse passage – Job 19:13-19 (day one)

Join us as Senior Pastor Chris Johnson, Associate Pastor Aaron Hufty, and Associate Pastor Bryan Richardson walk us through Job 19:13-19 in our Spring Re:Verse Series: “JOB – Through the Storm.”

Re:Verse passage – Job 13:15-16; 14:1-2, 14-17 (day seven)

This also will be my salvation,
For a godless person cannot come before His presence. Job 13:16

This is our salvation. Our Savior was “born of a woman.” He came to walk in our shoes. He came to feel our pain and agony. He came to live our life. Yet, He came to die our death. He came to us so that we could come to Him:

For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things just as we are, yet without sin. Hebrews 4:15

This is our salvation. Our Savior “does not observe [our] sin” because He became it. He became our darkest secrets. He became deepest regrets. He became the very thing we hate. He became sin so we could become like Him:

He made Him who knew no sin to be sin in our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. 2 Cor 5:21

This is our salvation. The stone is rolled away. He conquered sin and grave. He lives so that we can “live again.” This is our salvation.

Re:Verse passage – Job 13:15-16; 14:1-2, 14-17 (day six)

How frail is humanity! How short is life, how full of trouble! Job 14:1

Suffering, or any of the hard things in life, have a way of making us really think about meaning and purpose. We can’t help but ask, “What is the meaning of all this?”

So, while suffering is a result of the Fall, if we allow him, God will use it to shape our thinking and understanding of the world and the purpose of life itself. That’s what Job has been doing in his painful musings and complaints, particularly in chapter 14. His reason drives him to an extraordinary and hopeful conclusion…almost (he lands more or less with his hopefulness in tatters).

And we are there with him all along the way.

I think there are two main reasons Job is in the Bible, one it reassures us that it is okay to be driven by suffering to feel deeply about life and to ask wonderful and terrible questions about its meaning and purpose. A faith-filled life is not void of these kind of deep and resonant contemplations, but full of them as we live and breath in the world this side of eternity. Two, we have a guide in Job in reasoning through suffering, leading us down a needed path towards a divine and eternal end-in awe of God and fellowship with him.

Job doesn’t allow us to take life for granted. Ponder it. Rejoice in it. And long for God.

Re:Verse passage – Job 13:15-16; 14:1-2, 14-17 (day five) 

“Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him; I will surely defend my ways to his face.”  Do you sense and see Job’s faith growing and stretching- ever so slightly. There is lament. There is sorrow. There is immense suffering. Yet woven into his heart and thoughts are little kernels of hope and trust. Which is easier, to trust God with praise or pain?  Which demands more determination, to recognize His silence or to believe that within His silence, He will hear our cries and pleas.  Job’s faith is still there. It is bludgeoned and bruised, it is its most minuscule, but Job’s faith continues to give rise to hope.  All that is needed according to Jesus is a mustard seed.

A Good Friday thought about Jesus’ suffering from Tim Keller: “Jesus lost all his glory so that we could be clothed in it. He was shut out so we could get access. He was bound, nailed, so that we could be free. He was cast out so we could approach. And Jesus took away the only kind of suffering that can really destroy you: that is being cast away from God.”