Keeping the Faith; Never losing Hope; Always Loving

Below is how God is SHAPE (ing) me today.

Job 6:8-9

S–O that I might have my request, and that God would grant my desire; that it would please God to crush me, that he would let loose his hand and cut me off!

H–Here Job is crying out to God in despair; He is laying it all on the line.  Unbridled, raw, passionate feelings that are full of questions and finally of plea of “just take me out, I can’t take it anymore.”  Right after this one of Job’s friends (Bildad) basically tries to explain away his pain as if to tell him that “Job, you must be getting punished for something; just turn back to God and He’ll reward you.”

A–I find it just like us to try to explain away someone’s pain or our own as a punishment of God.  Or at the same time thinking that a blessing is a reward from God.  We have the screwed up picture that God is this hairy old man that sits up on a cloud and constantly keeps tabs of our lives choosing to constantly reward or punish us based on our decisions.  We make comments like, “God would never give you something you can’t handle.”  Tell Job that and see if he doesn’t smac k that taste out your mouth.  In our finite ignorance we are Bildad trying to put God in this tight little box and rewards and punish.  Live this way and God will protect you; Live that way and God will destroy you.  If that is what God is like I want nothing to do with that God.  However, if this God is a God where I can cry out from the depths of my soul with raw, unbridled, and passionate prayer as a part of our relationship then this is something I’m interested in.  My hope is not that we are able to understand the suffering of our lives but that we wouldn’t minimize the suffering or God to a simple punishment/reward paradigm.

P–Lord help me not today to pack you into a tight little box where you are nothing more then a angry school teacher keeping score of her students of who gets to play at recess and who doesn’t.  But yet, empower me to lay myself before you completely with raw, unbridled, emotion and may you meet me where I am today.  Be with those that find themselves in deep unexplainable pain; may your grace go to them today.  Please protect them from “good little Christians” that will try to explain away their pain into their finite, limited, human theologies of you.  Amen.

E–This God is not an angry school teacher keeping score but an infinite God that welcomes my cry.

Peace, Pastor P

chadpullins@connect2crossroads.com; www.wedesiremore.com