Mind your words when life hurts!

Everything that Job had has been taken away from him. All of the wealth that he had acquired, and his children have been taken away from him by Satan. God had previously referred to Job as a man of complete integrity. Satan, the constant accuser of the brethren challenges God by saying that Job worships God only because of what God has given him. God allowed Satan to test Job. Not only does God allow Satan to take everything from Job but He also allowed Satan to strike Job with boils all over his body. They say that a boil is excruciatingly painful. Try to imagine the pain of having boils all over your body.

Most of us will never experience what Job experienced. Praise God! Most of us will not have great wealth and lose it in an instant. Hopefully, none of us will have a large family and lose it in a moment of time. Most of us will not be stricken with a terrible disease. And certainly, none of us will have all of these things happen to us at once.

Here in Job 6 we have Job defending himself against the words of the first of his ‘friends’ that have come to ‘comfort’ him. Job is maintaining his innocence while his friends tell him to confess his sins and get right with God. It has grieved my heart on more than one occasion to hear a Christian tell another that the reason why they are experiencing trials and tribulations is because they have unconfessed sin in their life. How arrogant and presumptuous.

God allows trials and tribulations in our lives for all sorts of reasons. Only one of those reasons is as punishment for our sin. We cannot possibly know why God allows trials and tribulations into the lives of others. We often can’t understand why it happens in our own lives. Our role must be to always point people to the LORD.

Job responds to his friend by saying that even in the midst of the great anguish and suffering that he is in, He still believes God. He says that He will not deny the words of the Holy One. Earlier Job said that God gave him everything that He had and it was God‘s to take away. In responding to his wife Job said that they should accept both the good and the bad (our interpretation of bad) that comes from God.

In life and in ministry there will come times of great anguish and suffering. These things are a part of being in this world. Are you prepared for when those days come? Will you be able to say as Job did in chapter one: ‘The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.’ Do not hold on too tight to those things that are not yours to keep. The LORD might have need of it.

Read: Job 4:1-7:21; 1 Corinthians 14:18-40; Psalm 37:30-40; Proverbs 21:27