Do You Ever Feel Like Job?

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Job 10:18-20

“‘Why, then, did you deliver me from my mother’s womb?

    Why didn’t you let me die at birth?

19 It would be as though I had never existed,

    going directly from the womb to the grave.

20 I have only a few days left, so leave me alone,

    that I may have a moment of comfort

21 before I leave—never to return—

    for the land of darkness and utter gloom.

22 It is a land as dark as midnight,

    a land of gloom and confusion,

    where even the light is dark as midnight.’”

Many of you know the story of Job. Job was reduced to sitting amidst the rubble of his once-prosperous life. The verses above show how desperate he really was. You might say he was hopeless and helpless. And, his friends didn't help him much either. They kept telling them to stop blaming God and admit that he was the cause of his own problems. 

Job was at a point many people get to in life. Things go wrong and even though you have tried to be faithful to God and do the right things it doesn't change the reality of where you are now sitting. And even when you pray, your prayers seem to go unanswered, or at the very least nothing changes. You wonder does God really care? Is God really real? Or maybe worse yet, "Did I do something to deserve this?" Or, "Has God forgotten me?" 

Yet, a little while later in Job 13:15, he will proclaim, “Though He [God] slay me, yet will I trust Him”  Still later proclaimed: “I know that my Redeemer lives, and He shall stand at last on the earth” (Job 19:25).

It is a lot easier to have faith when everything is going well in your life. You might be tempted to think since I am doing the right things, God is blessing me. After all, I deserve it right. But the reality is there are people on earth right now who are in the same state of mind as Job is. They wonder if life is worth living. Has God turned His back on them? Though they have tried to be faithful, they don't have much to show for it. 

Remarkably Job was able to cling to his faith despite his circumstances, and the woeful advice of his "so called friends". But, the worst part of it all was that Job was alone.

Who do you know who might need some encouragement today? Who might feel as though their bad circumstances were because of somerthing bad they did, or that God has abandoned them? Who do you know who is alone? Unlike Job's friends maybe your faith in God and in them might be just what they need to keep going!