I want to supply many pointers on how to remain young. Spend a little time with folk who talk about events and concepts instead of sitting around a store talking about folk and how sorry this young generation has become. No-one wants to be around a crotchety old person who sees only the clouds and talks only about stormy weather.

I like being around older folk who still see the sunny aspect of life.

And while I am at it, give up addressing each ache and discomfort. Give up talking about how feeble you are getting and how others will need to do this or that for you. There are folk all around you who could use an inspiring word, an affirming note, a telephone call that asserts, “I love you and believe in you, and I’m praying for you.” So go there. The 5th is clear : Your God isn’t dead, keep serving and looking for Him. The Lord Jesus Christ is never-ending and ever important. Continue to enjoy a little time alone with your Lord. You have lived long enough to know that there’s no another true than the Lord Himself. Continue cultivating a significant relationship with Him.

I only wish for you a full life, like Job’s, marked not by living happily for ever ( an impossibility ), but by being really satisfied, satisfied, challenged, helpful, godly, balanced, and joyous.

Maybe Job lay under the stars till he was wet from the dew. And when he did, what an outstanding reply.

Verse twenty comprises nine words in the Hebrew text. These words describe what Job did before the text goes on to inform us what Job recounted. When you read your Bible, always pay attention to the verbs, because they move you thru the action of a story, helping you vicariously to go into the event. He “arose.” the subsequent verb tells us something peculiar.

He “tore his robe.” The word translated “robe” is a term describing a garment that fits over the body loosely, like an outer gown that reaches below the knees. This isn’t the undertunic ; it is the outer robe that kept him warm at night. Job reached to his neck and, not finding a seam, he grabbed a worn part of the fabric and ripped it. In the ripping of the robe he’s announcing his hideous grief. It’s used numerous times in the Old Testament to portray total grief. He “shaved his head.” The hair is always pictured in the Scriptures as the glory of a person an expression of his worth.

The shaving of the head , is symbological of the loss of private glory. And to hold his grief to its lowest depth, his 4th action is to fall to the ground. It’s this that portrays the heroism of Job’s endurance.

The Hebrew verb means “to fall prostrate in total submission and worship.” I dare say many of us haven’t worshiped like that.

I mean with your face on the ground, lying down, full-length. Before moving on, I want to proffer you try this sometime.

If you return to Job thirteen, you can read what Job originally owned. He had seven thousand sheep, and he winds up with 14,000. So his flocks grow as he feeds them and breeds them.

Their numbers increase to 2 times the original flock. And there’s also lots of land to graze, so that the sheep grow in number to fourteen thousand.

He could have been in a position to see from each window of his home delicious, green, and colourful plants and the expansion of all his crops. So that the man has 2x as much as he had before. He was rich before ; now he’s very loaded.

There are occasions when the Lord selects to praise certain people with way more than is sufficient. If envy is your besetting sin, I encourage you to wreck yourself from one of the most gruesome habits among Christian folk. I will be utterly fair with you, I hear it often. The great enticement is to remind the Lord of how trustworthy you’ve been when you see a neighbour or a friend whose business grows when yours does not.

Please stop attempting to outguess the Lord in such matters. It is both prejudiced and fallacious to presume that most rich people have not earned their wealth or did not receive them from the hand of Almighty God. Some of Almighty God’s dearest saints are eminently well off. If you’re one of them, you barely need the reminder that you did not create it yourself. And if He selects not to praise you as He has sanctified another, respect and appreciate His choice instead of resent it. 

I find at least 2 enduring truths for us as I believe thru these closing scenes in Job’s story. If there’s something which has come between you and your heavenly Dad , why wait at a distance? Come. He likes to hear the unguarded confessions of His youngsters.

He’s taking pleasure in our humble acceptance of wrong.

As we have seen, he can never turn you away. He will be able to faithfully bring it to pass—if not now, later. God, who patiently authorized Devil’s dastardly experiment with Job to completed, has brought it to completion. And the Lord is still enthroned, in control, and entirely glorified.

I don’t have any way to know what your present position is at the moment. I’m not sure what you are wrestling with or who has maltreated you. Nor do I know how grim life has been for you.

Your tests have probably not been as serious as Job’s, but I am sure they’ve been tough, perhaps the worst you have ever known in your lifetime. You have been maltreated, and it’s never been made right, and justice is on hold. Perhaps it’s to offer you time to look at your own life. Is there a wrong you want to admit, an offense you have caused but never tried to reconcile? I encourage you to set aside your pride and step into that unfinished business and look after things now. You’ll be dazzled how relieving it’ll be to draw in that anchor so you can get moving in the right path. It’d very well be that your eagerness to excuse and move on is all that’s important to prompt the Lord to let His justice roll down.

There is a plan that we explore which we will not understand, but it is best. Though each segment of it may not seem fair or pleasant, it works together for good. The disease Job endured wasn’t good in and of itself. Hardly! But it worked together for good. Our perspective is dreadfully limited. We see only a pinpoint of time, but God’s view is panoramic. God’s big-picture, cosmic plan is at work now, and He doesn’t feel the need (nor is He obligated) to explain it to us. If He tried, our answer would be like the confused teenager listening to his calculus teacher, “What?” You wouldn’t get it, nor would I. Just remember, the Father knows what is best for His children. Rest in that realization.

There are consequences we experience that we could not anticipate, but they are necessary. I don’t know where you find yourself today, but I would be willing to wager that most of you reading this book are going through something that is unfair. Chances are good that you simply don’t deserve what’s happening. The consequences may have started to get to you. You didn’t anticipate any of this. You didn’t think it would come to this, but it has. Trust me here. What has happened is a necessary part of your spiritual growth. Yes, necessary. I’ve finally begun to accept that reality after all these years of
my life.

I want to address you who have moved onto Job’s turf. If nothing else, it has prepared you to pay closer attention to the message of Job. You’ve seen only a glimpse of how things started. The story doesn’t end with Satan’s departing from the presence of the Lord. There’s a whole lot more to Job’s story. And the more it unfolds, the more you will realize that life is not only difficult, it’s unfair.

The silence of God’s voice will make you wonder if He is even there. And the absence of God’s presence will make you wonder if He even cares. He is there. And He does care.

Abigail I knew her hubby, failed to she? Everybody knew what he was like, so why hide it? Why attempt to cover up what he had done? She did not. “When you sent those 10 men and they’d got that interactions with my hubby, I was not there to give another sort of reply. I would like to stand as a mediator between this person and all your men who’ve been unjustly treated.”. She asserts, “David, as I look at you, I am looking at the following king. You’ve been maltreated, but murder isn’t the solution. . When you are faced with vital calls, occasionally you’ve got to do something awfully creative.

Aside from the Bible, there is no book that tells you what to do when those times come. Regularly when we are faced with an emergency, the standard, garden-variety answer is to kind of tuck your tail between your legs, run into a corner, and let spiderwebs form on you.

So long as you have breath in your lungs, you’ve got a purpose for living.

Irrespective of how bad that track record should have been, marked by insubordination and compromise thru much of your life, you are alive, you are existing. And I am prepared to do creative things thru you to put you back on your feet. But there is a better way.” it’ll take creativeness, it’ll take doggedness, it will take constant eyes on the Lord.

That’ll possibly handle Nabal, don’t you think? When you overdo something in our home, we have got a pronouncing, “You’re slaughtering a roach with a shotgun.” You kill the roach all right, but you blow the wall out at the same time.

Hey, no-one puts on a sword simply to have a consultation, so we have got a pretty brilliant idea what is going on thru David’s mind here. Honestly , this may be her chance to dump a nasty loser of a man. She gets word from the servants that David is going to complete him off.

She could say something religious like, “Oh, I better pray about this.” Those roaring hoofbeats are coming down the hill, and she’s in there praying, “Lord, take him swiftly. Of course, Nabal has set himself up for this. But one of the younger men told Abigail, Nabal’s better half, asserting, “Behold, David sent messengers from the wasteland to welcome our master, and he scorned them. Yet the men were excellent to us, and we weren’t insulted, nor did we miss anything so long as we went about with them, while we were in the fields. They used to be a wall to us both by night and by day, all of the time we were with them inclining the sheep.

Now know and consider what you must do, for malignant is plotted against our master and against all his household ; and he is a meaningless man that nobody can talk to him.” ( one Samuel 25:14–17 ).

Note the messengers come to Abigail, not to Nabal.

All this brings me to 3 beneficial principles to live by when it comes to life’s most refined enticement. Each is worth recollecting when we are maltreated. First, since man is depraved, expect to be maltreated.

The same nature that beat in the center of Saul beats in the guts of each person, yourself included. When we are operating our lives in the flesh, we may reply like Saul. Or, if you’re the person who’s doing the mistreatment, the offense, come to terms with it. I am pronouncing predict the feelings of vengeance, because you may be sure they’ll come. And is the reason why Jesus’ statement is so revolutionary : “Do unto others as you would have them do to you”—not as they do to you. Rare is the individual who won’t retaliate, or at least not wish to.

3rd , since the need for vengeance is predicted, refuse to battle in the flesh. His men recounted, “Go get him, David.” He just about did, I am convinced. But when he came close to the king, he got cold feet and just cut off a bit of robe rather than falling his knife in Saul’s back.

Let’s leave the traditional scene and bring this truth home to rest today. Ask Him to show it in all its hideousness and put it to death. Jesus Christ, who went thru hell for you, can provide you with the power you want to beat the worst sort of condition in your life.

They started their journey in the land of Goshen. If you’ve got a map of that area handy, you may want to glimpse over it as you pin down their location. The Red Sea ( or ocean of Reeds ) is north of the Gulf of Suez.

They crossed that sea, then commenced a south-southeasterly journey toward Mount Sinai. But before they turned up at the mount of Our Lord God, they reached the wasteland of Shur in the northernmost section of the Sinai Headland . Here’s where the cloud and fire led Israel into the badlands, with the shepherd Moses out in front of the flock. It absolutely was a massive expanse of desolation stretching south to the badlands of Etham.

But why were they there? If God took the people thru the Red Sea, could not He take them straight away to the lush land of Canaan? Naturally. If He was able to part the waters, and enable them to stroll on dry land, and deliver them from the Egyptians, wasn’t He also in a position to move them swiftly to the borders of milk-and-honey-land? Totally. If he will be able to take me and you thru our conversion, he will hasten our journey across this materialistic desert and swiftly deposit us into heaven.

Why does God put us thru outback experiences before Canaan? For one thing, He wants to check us. that is the reason why God led Israel into the outback, according to Deuteronomy 8:2 : “You shall remember all of the way that the LORD your God has led you in the wasteland these 40 years, that he would humble you, testing you, to grasp what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not.” ( Read that again.

God places us in the badlands to humble us, to check us, to stretch our non secular muscles. Our temporal badlands experiences are engineered to develop us into ladies and men of religion. Let’s admit it, our religious roots grow deep just when the winds around us are powerful. Take away the tests, and we become shallow-rooted, spiritual wimps. But bring on the wasteland winds, and it’s noteworthy how we grow as our roots dig terribly into religion.