Readings for today: Job 6-9
“Christianity isn’t about rules, it’s about a relationship.” I cannot tell you how many times I’ve said those words. And I believe them with all my heart. However, it wasn’t until I started reading the Bible “relationally” that I really began to grasp the depth of what I was trying to say. One of the real issues we have - and I struggled with it for years myself - when we read the Bible is we tend to approach it from a moralistic perspective. We describe it as a “manual for life” or “God’s playbook” or a roadmap to get your “best life now.” We make the false assumption - down deep - that if we just follow what it says, God will love us. God will be proud of us. God will bless us. The result is we flatten the text. We make it two-dimensional. We become the worst kind of literalists. Instead of reading the Bible for all its worth. Plunging into its emotional depths. Climbing the heights of its majestic poetry and prose. Exploring all the nooks and crannies of every genre. We take and dissect it in a lab. We atomize it and reduce it to its component parts. We rob it of its mystery and glory. This is true for conservatives and progressives alike. They weaponize the text against one another. Proof-texting one another to death. Performing all sorts of exegetical gymnastics to make the text say what they want it to say. God must be shaking His head.
Job - more than any other book - shows us the best way to read the Bible. Job spends his whole life worshipping God. He is blameless before the Lord. He is scrupulous in his behavior. He is as upright a man as they come. He even makes sacrifices on behalf of his children just in case they stumble and fall. Through it all, Job is building a deep and abiding relationship with God that will hold up under the harshest of tests. Job’s life is upended in ways many of us cannot even fathom. The loss of all his children and grandchildren. The loss of all his wealth and power and privilege. The loss of his health and well-being. (By the way, this book puts a stake in the heart of prosperity preaching!) Job loses everything. His own wife encourages him to curse God and die.
But Job understands something his wife and all his friends do not. He has a relationship with God. A real relationship. An authentic relationship. The kind of relationship where one can say anything. The kind of relationship where one can question and doubt and struggle and wish to die. Job trusts God with the rawest of emotions. Job trusts God with his anger and fear. Job trusts God enough to question his justice and demand an account. Like Abraham before him and Moses after him, Job understands what God wants is not a rule-follower so much as a friend. Someone to speak with face to face. Someone to walk with in the Garden in the cool of the day just as He once did with Adam.
Friends, God’s love forms the foundation of our relationship with Him. God’s faithfulness makes our relationship secure. God holds us in the palm of His hands and He promises nothing can separate us from His love. God sealed this promise with Abraham when He walked through the halves of the animals to establish the covenant. God stayed true to this promise when He sent His own Son to die on a cross. He will never, ever let us go!
Because God’s love is so fierce and loyal and true, we can be ourselves with Him. Our truest and most authentic selves. We can share anything with Him. We can get mad at Him. We can weep with Him. We can crawl into His lap when we are afraid. We can run to Him after we fall. We can come to Him when we sin. We can be demanding and spoiled and proud and foolish and God will never stop loving us. Never stop embracing us. Never cut off His relationship with us.
We will not always understand why things happen the way they do. We will not always know the reasons why God allows bad things to happen to good people and good things to happen to bad people. We do not need to try to justify God or defend God or speak for God like Job’s friends. He is perfectly capable of doing those things on His own! Our responsibility is to follow Job’s example. Be real. Be honest. Be authentic before the Lord and then ultimately trust and surrender and submit to His sovereign will.
The only reason Job was able to endure the test is because he spent his whole life building his relationship with God. He spent his whole life in worship. He cultivated an awareness of God in his everyday. He intentionally walked with God on a daily basis. How does this look in your life? In what ways are you intentionally walking with God? Are you spending time with Him everyday? Do you gather with His people every week? Do you have a small group you can be real and honest with about your sin? Do you find ways to serve? A relationship with God is built the same way all relationships are built. Time and intentionality. If you haven’t already, begin making time for God today!
Readings for tomorrow: Job 10-13