The book of Job.

I have recently found that suffering comes in all forms, we each have our own sufferings and we each all feel that our own this suffering is our own. I was reading the book of Job this past week, because I felt a deep sense of suffering, and I knew that one man that did know what that was like was Job. However from reading Job, I discovered that there is much to learn about when it comes to dealing with a suffering soul and how to deal with suffering when it is you that is suffering.


I have also found that what a suffering person needs is not advise, In Job12:3 Job says to his friend, "But I have a mind as well as you; I am not inferior to you. Who does not know all these things? People in general find that we need to tell people what we think they should be doing, or how they should be feeling, and we can tell them that, we are free to say as we wish, but that is not always what they need. In moments of despair and frustration we as human beings don't need someone who is not in our shoes telling us what they think of our situation, and how we should be handling it. I believe that the book of Job, is a book of relationships. It depicts Jobs relationship with his God and then his relationship with his friends. The book is interesting how it brings to light our human tendencies to find reasons for our suffering, but This book is more about Justice and How God is justice in a broken world he is the father of Justice. This book is truly facinating.Job was blameless and True to God and his plan. When suffering happens to Job, he does not give up on God, his relationship deepens with God, God does not become this distant all knowing God, Job gets personal with God, he crys out to him, he yells at him asks him hundreds of questions, and yet he still trusts him, and knows that God is the only hope. Even through out his suffering he will not deny God, and his relationship. Then comes the friends, here Job thinks his friends are there to help because they sit with him for 7 days and 7 nights, but when Job breaks the silence with his groans,they listen and they felt that they are there to give advise. When his Friends came, they had once seen Job in his happiness and they had seen the lives that he had touched. Here now Job sits in front of them, covered in sores, sitting in Ashes. The one thing that they forgot when they looked at this man suffering is that they were not suffering the same as Job, they did not get in his shoes how could they. However they wanted to think that they understood and tried to find reasons for his suffering. They see Job and they don't understand how a man so upright, can be crying out the way that he is.They know that God will bless him again because he must have done something wrong, and they try to make Job see this. But here is where they missed out on the relationship that Job needed. Job 6:2-3 If only my anguish would be wieghed and all my misery be placed on the scales! I would surely outweigh the sand of the seas---..." In that moment Job's suffering was his life. He needed colsolation, and grace, he needed justification and a shoulder to cry on. His suffering was his life at that moment, and nothing anyone had said to him, or had tried to teach him would have made it in, why? Because all Job could see was his pain. When you suffer from anguish, you suffer. Nothing you do, seems to make sense to anyone else, because they just don't understand your pain, unless they have been there too! I believe that suffering takes us to an intimate place with God, a place where only you and God go. I know that my suffering is not in vain but my suffering does not end because I verbalize it, but I grow in my faith every time I get to that place.I think we as a human race need to understand that suffering is not designed by God, he does not want us to suffer; but because we live in a broken world we do, but God has not left us to fend for ourselves, He meets us at that place, He uses our suffering to show us his Glory. More recently for me and my husband that we need to have friends, friends that know our suffering and friends that don't understand it at all too, so that perhaps one day the Glory of God will shine through us, but right now, we will be found in that place, that special place just us and God. This place where God meets us is one of true growth, but also facing our true pain and bringing it to God, and wrestling through each doubt and lie that Satan has given us. I believe that is what Job was doing, wrestling his thoughts out to God. Job and his friends for Chapters have a relational war, back and forth, but each time, Job is crying out to them... "I have heard many things like these; miserable comforters are you all! I look at this part of Job, and I see 4 human beings sitting together, trying to understand God, but not realizing that they don't even understand each other, so how can they relate to each other on God's point of view of suffering? Job brings home the fact that he his human, and as human as we come.But he his met with comments and speeches like these Job 18:1-2 : Bildad the Shuhite replied: When will you end these speeches? Be sensible and then we can talk. Job 19:4 Job's reply: If it is true that I have gone astray my error remains my concern alone"... There are alot of words in the book of Job, I look at it very differently now, because I know what anguish feels like to me. Job 19:21: Have pity on me, my friends have pity for the hand of God has struck me...later in the same Chapter Job says this: 25-26 I know that my Redeemer lives and in the end he will stand on upon the earth, and after my skin has been destroyed I will see God; O myself with see him with my own eyes I and not another. How my heart yearns with in me". What a statement! This to me is one of the most profound verses in Job. Because He for verses and verses tells his friends that God has made him suffer, and then this verse. I see here that Job is also battling Satan, and then God comes through him right here. Job knows, that God is there, but he does not understand why he must go through such torment, but God does. Job and his friends are in relationship to each other, Job is suffering...friends trying to help Job by teaching him or trying to figure out why he is suffering...This is what I think is not what God wants from us in our relationships. Job is trying to get across, that he feels pain, and he is allowed to feel the pain, and he is allowed to be angry and he is allowed to feel alone and frusterated, his pain is real. He still knows that his Redeemer lives and because of this He can mourn and cry out in true anguish, because God loves him still and one day the suffering will be over, but right now in this moment in life, all he wanted was someone to come, dress his wounds, bring the kleenex for when the tears are flowing, because the tears need to flow, he had lost everything of worth in his life, and now he was physically suffering as well. Our pain and suffering is so much for us to take in the moments when it is happening to us. But those who suffer live it and it is thier own, and every person handles it different then the next. During this most of this book, the men are trying to find answers that they will not find and God knows that, and I believe that at that moment God used a young man named Elihu, to get just under the skin of just what Kind of a God we have. Elihu a young man prior to God talking to Job, says to the men, Job 34:12 "It is unthinkablethat God would do wrong, that the Almighty would pervert justice". God does not afflict us suffering, that is Satan. God will allow it, because it is for his Glory, that is beyond our comprehension. The whole book of Job starts with Satan coming the angels to God, and God asks him about Job, and God allows Satan to test Job, because God knows the end result, Satan nor Job or his friends knows the end result, But God did. We can not find reasons for our suffering because we can not see it, only God does, don't even try to understand that...it is beyond us. God uses our broken world and our broken hearts to reveal to us his grace, his love. In saying that, it does not take the suffering away, if God allows the suffering we will suffer, but we aren't doing it alone. He provides, what we need, not always what we want. But that is up to no one but God to decide what we need, verses what we want.When we suffer we often question God, just as Job did many times, why is this happening to me? God comes to Job, and asks him if he was there the day the sea was made, and puts Job lovingly in his place. God is far beyond our suffering we do not understand it, our friends, loved ones don't either and who are we to even try. Job is returned all that he had lost, but I doubt he ever forgot what he went through. I am sure that his arms reached down to hold those around him that suffered, because he knew what it was like. When we help each other through suffering, those that suffer feel less alone, less likely to feel that what they are thinking and battling, thier own thoughts and the words of the evil one aren't so hard to get through.Although the pain and suffering that we all may face may be different, the insight into suffering is there, we all should embrace the pain, and love the person, because we all need a shoulder to cry on. Understanding suffering as a real thing is key to understanding and acknowledging that a suffering person's actions, emotions as justified in thier own heart and mind, and that is not for you to dispute. For in the moments of despair I will be sitting in my Heavenly Father's Lap bawling my eye's out because I can freely, and know that God is there, he has not forsaken me, he has pulled me into his lap when no one else would. For when I see and feel joy again and I believe I will, it will be a celebration like no other, because He walked the road of sorrow with me when no one else would or could, and proved to me that He is the All knowing, amazing, loving Father, and I know my Redeemer lives, despite my pain.

Infertility is...
Thank you those who have lifted My husband and I in prayer. Please continue to pray for us, as we continue down the path of infertility. Please pray that our friendships may be blessed even in the suffering, that our faith would grow even in the pain, and that our hope in our heavenly Father would remain forever stedfast and true. Please pray that God would open our hearts to see His plan for our future.
"Naked I came, Naked I will go, the Lord gives and the Lord takes away, Praise be to God". Job 1:21(Paraphrased by Alida)