Job – Page 2 – The Nexus

What If God Answered?

August 27, 2018August 23, 2018Leave a comment

In this third part of our series, Grace in Hard Times, we finally get a look at what God had to say to Job and his friends after all their questions and assumptions about who He is and how He works. The result feels hard at first until you look a bit closer. What we learn is that God’s job in running the whole universe is a lot bigger than we think and that if we’ll let Him do it, He’ll do it well. Keep reading to see how this unfolds. Up next: A look at how we can keep the rhythm of our lives adjusted to the right beat.

What If God Answered?

Do you remember the worst lecture you ever got from your parents? While I confess that I fall to it way more often than I should with my boys, my folks either weren’t much for lecturing or else I’ve forgotten all of them (which really isn’t very comforting news for all the wisdom parents depart to their children through the vehicle of a lecture…). Still, though, there are times when as parents we need to impart a great deal of important information to our children in a rapid-fire fashion. And, coincidentally or not, these times often happen in conjunction with something they’ve done that wasn’t perhaps totally on the up-and-up and when we are in a state of mild to extreme anger. Now, if that happens to come across as a lecture, is that our fault? Well…probably…but that much is not where I want to go this morning. I’ll come back to this idea in a second. Read the rest…

How Not to Comfort the Hurting

August 20, 2018August 16, 2018Leave a comment

In part two of our series, Grace in Hard Times, we take a look at the conversation among Job and his friends as they wrestle with the awful tragedies that have befallen him. Their attempts at comforting gradually transform into attempts at condemning him when he won’t play ball with their notions of how the world works. Along the way, we learn an important lesson on how to approach getting our minds around the hard times we face. Keep reading to find out what it is.

How Not to Comfort the Hurting

Have you ever been sure you were right…until you learned you weren’t? Tell me if you’ve been here before. One day we were getting ready to go to the pool and I had asked Noah to go to the garage to get something for us to take. We weren’t planning on making it a long trip and so to the boys’ disappointment we pretty severely limited the number of toys they were going to be able to take. Read the rest…

What to Do When the Wheels Fall Off

August 13, 2018August 13, 2018Leave a comment

Evil is present everywhere in our world. We can’t escape it. We can only try and deal with the aftermath. This fact has long seemed deeply at odds with the idea of a good and loving God. The problem of evil is one of the thorniest challenges that has long seemed a roadblock to the Christian faith. In this new series, Grace in Hard Times, with the help of the book of Job, we are going to examine through the context of this epic story one powerful answer to the problem. In this first part of the conversation, we start with a bit of perspective.

What to Do When the Wheels Fall Off

A few years ago the news came out that Elizabeth Elliot had passed away at age 88. Elliot had been serving the Lord in various capacities for nearly her entire life. What she is perhaps best known for, though, is having been married for a short time to Jim Elliot. Jim was every bit as dedicated a servant of the Lord as Elizabeth was, but his story did not end in the same way hers did. In 1955, Jim and four other missionaries, including Nate Saint, were attempting to make contact with the Huaorani tribe deep in the jungles of Ecuador. After making several initial peace offerings by lowering gifts in a bucket from their plane, the pair finally decided it was time to make personal contact with the tribe. On the morning of January 3, 1956, they landed and met with some of the tribe members for the first time. They were received with excitement and it was looking like things were going to go smoothly. This road for the advance of the Gospel was appearing most promising. But just five days later everything fell apart. When the tribe warriors came out of the woods that morning to the Amazonian beach the missionaries were using as a landing strip and campsite, they did not come for peace. They came to shut down this outsider intrusion into their private lives. Nate, Jim, and the three other men with them were murdered in cold blood, speared to death by the Huaorani warriors. They each left behind a wife and a total of 10 kids among them. These five men had committed their lives to serving Jesus and advancing the Gospel regardless of the costs. They were selflessly committed to this goal and yet this was their end. Read the rest…

Morning Musings: Job 29:1-4

April 11, 2018April 10, 2018Leave a comment

“And Job again took up his discourse, and said: ‘Oh, that I were as in the months of old, as in the days when God watched over me, when his lamp shone upon my head, and by his light I walked through darkness, as I was in my prime, when the friendship of God was upon my tent…'” (ESV – Read the chapter)

Job’s ordeal had been intense at this point. He had lost everything including his health. That’s not really specific enough. He had faced total financial ruin. All of his children had died in a tragic accident (an accident we, the readers, know was caused by Satan). His wife had functionally abandoned him out of her own grief. And he was experiencing horrendous physical suffering as well. To make matters even worse, three of his best friends had spent days with him arguing with greater and greater intensity and insistence that he was ultimately to blame for all of his troubles because of some sin that was going unconfessed in his life. The old adage, “when it rains it pours,” does not even begin to cover it here. Read the rest…