Christian Podcast - Lesson from Job When we ask God why

Welcome to episode 258.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Spending time in the Word of God is the best way to spend time with God. Welcome to No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe podcast, where we will encourage, inspire, and empower you to live your best life in Christ. Here's Greg.

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, I'm continuing to talk about Job. I think I might can finish, but I don't know. You know how long-winded I get sometimes and how I start chasing rabbits. But the whole point of trying to get you to think about Job is just, you know, everything's not going to go right for you in life. I hate to be the one to break it to you if you didn't— if you didn't know that by now. If you're not old enough to know that bad things happen to good people, or good things happen to bad people. You just— there's one thing that I can tell you that's a steady or a constant in life, and things are going to change. So we have got seasons in our life. Sometimes we're planting, sometimes we're harvesting, sometimes we're just hanging out, and sometimes we're in that winter stage where God is pruning us. And we got to get used to, and we got to understand, where we are in our stage in our life is going to be different. We're different parts of the same body. The Bible is pretty clear you and I are not the same person. Thank God you're not like me, because life would be so boring if everybody thought just like me, and it would be a little bit weird. When I look at Job— and the reason I picked Job is because there's so much going on in this world today— and you look at— and if you've ever just found yourself recently, because I know I have, I know I've been looking at the TV when I turn it on, and I start looking at how people are doing things, and I'm going, why? Why are they doing that? And what's going on? And all of that stuff. And I don't have the same problem that a lot of people I know have with thinking that God's in control of everything. And see, I think that there's a freedom that comes from the fact that I don't believe that God controls every single thing. Now, I do know that God is sovereign. And if you define sovereignty of God as answering to no one, and he is not going to ask permission to do what he's going to do, he's sovereign in that regard. And he is the head honcho, he's the number one. And Jesus and the Holy Spirit are all the same level, they're all God. I don't claim to understand all the Trinity and everything like that, but I just want you to know that God is allow— he, let me rephrase that. My take on God is that he is watching over his word to make his word come to pass. And you and I can get involved in that, or we can sit back and let it happen. But I have chosen to get involved, and I have chosen to try my best to encourage you and inspire you and empower you to get into the word of God. And this is kind of early for a soapbox moment, but I want you to know that if you get into this word and you allow that word to get inside of you, that you can change things in your life. Now, you may not change everything. You may not change the gas price, and you may not be able to change anything that's significant in your, quote, mind, but you can change things in your world. And I— one thing is just your attitude. And when I talk about attitude, I'm just talking about how you react when things happen. When I look at Job, and one of the things that I see in Job is an amazing reaction. And someone that God said, have you considered my servant Job? He fears God and shuns evil. And when he told Satan— he told him twice in chapter 1 and in chapter 2, and we've already gone over that— God saw Job as being honorable, or at least fearing God and shunning evil. So the things that you and I should be doing every day, that's what Job was doing. And when I start looking at Job, and then I'm not going to get into the whole discord between his three friends and that other bubba that come in there, but I want you to look at— and when I ask God why, God, why did this happen? Or why is this happening? And I go almost always, whenever I get to that point where I'm asking God why and I'm not getting the answer, and so I just want, you know, how I want an answer. And I don't know that I've ever slammed my hand down and told God, I want an answer and I want it right now. I don't think I've ever done that, but I have asked multiple times, God, why? And one of the things while I was reading through Job I don't know if it was recently, may have been some years ago, but I stumbled on chapter 38 in Job. And I guess that God had gotten sick of listening to his friends trying to, quote, comfort him, or he got sick of listening to how Job was trying to describe things going on and why things were happening. And that's why a lot of times I'll say, look, I'm not trying to play God. And I say, you know, I didn't write anything in this book. So God has not got me on speed dial, and he's not using me as a writer in any new Bible that's coming out. But I can look at what is written, and I can try to help you and I to live accordingly. And that's what I'm doing here every day. I'm trying to help you become a better you, not to be more like me, because like I said at the beginning, we don't need any more Gregs. We need some more people that are different. You need to be the hero in your story. You need to rise up and get sick at what Satan is doing because it's the punk that's doing all this damage here on earth. And it's schemes and it's, he's just using deception and he's using all kinds of different things to get everybody stirred up. But I've had, I've just about had it. But I want to get into scripture right now. And again, I'm going to hit you with my superior reading skills. In Job chapter 38, is where I believe it just kind of stopped me when I read it. And I told you multiple times, when I read something and it just kind of— I just stop, I just kind of dig in when there's something in the scripture that gives me pause. That to me is like the Holy Spirit telling me, whoa, right here, stop right here. And so I do. And, and the one thing that made me pause was in Job 38:3. And I— he says it twice, not in 38:3, but he says in another chapter, I think it's 40. But God says to Job in 38:3, 'Now prepare yourself like a man. I will question you and you shall answer me.' And I just want you to think about if God sat you down or was talking to you through a whirlwind or wherever he was going to talk to you. The whole reason I wanted to do this lesson on Job is because I want you to think about if God asked you a question. And again, I've said this before, that if God asks a question, he's not looking for an answer. God is all-knowing. God is everywhere. He's omnipresent and he's omnipotent. He's all-powerful. So God doesn't need yours or my help in anything, in running this world and in running the universe and running heaven. So he don't need our input on that. But God loves you and I. You— and I've said this a bunch— if God had a refrigerator in heaven, your picture would be all over it. God loves you, and God loves hearing from you. And I believe that God wants you and I to think. He wants us to slow down. As you go through Job 38 through 42, it is just one thing after the other after the other that God starts asking Job these things.. And Job does not have an answer. And I tell you, I don't have an answer because I wasn't there. I wasn't there. And there's a lot of things that God asked Job, where were you when this, when I did this? And surely you know this. And he just kept just pounding Job with all these questions. I love the end of Job 38 through 42. I want to encourage you to get your Bible out after you get done listening to this episode, or after you get done watching the video, I want to encourage you to read chapter 1 and chapter 2, and then Job chapter 38 through 42. And I just want you to just to think, just to slow down. Bad things are going to happen to you and I. Good things are going to happen to you and I. But how are we going to handle it? Are we going to handle it like Job did? Are we going to handle it like the children of Israel did in Numbers 14 and all through Exodus? The the first 5 books of the Old Testament, are— is that how we're going to handle it? We're going to complain, we're going to moan, or the complaining side of an issue. I want to encourage you that we can be a little more positive, and we can at least, if nothing else, we can at least keep our mouth shut. And if you, if you read Joshua— and I think I've taught on this— when they were walking around Jericho, Joshua, because he was one of the 12 spies that went out to spy the promised land, the land flowing with milk and honey. And he came back and brought a good report, he and Caleb. The other 10 spies brought the bad report. And so the bad report got everybody stirred up, and well, that's what got them into the wilderness for 40 years. That was a bad report. That is complaining, and that is not believing God. And so what I want you to do is I want you to get into the mindset of, even if you can't say something Nice. Don't say anything at all. That's what my mama used to say. Joshua, he forbid the children of Israel from even speaking, and I didn't see where God told them not to say a word. Joshua, through his experience, his life experience with the Jewish people or with the Israeli people, he said, look, you don't say a word. Don't say nothing. They marched around this Jericho. You know the story. And if you don't, it's in Joshua, I think 3 or 4. God gave them specific instructions on how they were going to destroy Jericho. And the first 6 days, they were going to march around Jericho 1 time. And then on the 7th day, they marched around there 7 times. On the 7th time, when they did the loud trumpet blast, then the people were going to shout with a great shout. And I just want you to kind of see when we talk about words having power, and why you need to watch what comes out of your mouth. That is why words have power. Words had enough power, and that sound had enough power. When that shout came together with God's supernatural power, the walls fell down flat. And it— they didn't just crumble. These walled cities where they were racing chariots and stuff, and there was houses built on these walls, they came down flat. If you start reading this Bible and you start picturing, that is incredible in itself. That is a huge miracle where everything comes down flat. Well, then the children of Israel, they didn't have to climb over all those stones and all those broken rubble. If you've ever seen a concrete wall fall down, it's just broken rubble. I mean, you're climbing all kinds of stuff. I mean, it'd take you half as long to get up over all that mess as it would to go kill all the inhabitants of Jericho. This wall fell down flat, and then the people were able to go up. The Job story that I want to talk about is how Job just sat there and took it. God said, "Brace yourself like a man, because I have some questions for you." And I just looked at the clock. I don't want to speed this through. I'm going to do this in another episode. So I'm going to cut this one off a little bit short, but I want you in the next day or so to go pick up your Bible and read. And I don't know if I can give homework, on a podcast, but I do it all the time, so it's okay. But I want you to get Job 1, read Job 1, Job 2, and then Job 38 through the end of it. And I think it's 42, but I just want you to, to read. And I want you to think about when you start asking God why and you're not hearing the answer. And we'll, we'll talk about it in the next episode. We'll do a conclusion to Job. But I did— let's just pray real quick. God, I thank you so much for everything you've done in my life. God, I thank you for this listener. I thank you for your word. Holy Spirit, I thank you for never leaving us nor forsaking us. And I thank you that you can teach us, each one of us, that when we get into your word, we can teach— you can teach us what we need to hear individually and as a group. God, we thank you, we love you, we ask it all in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, thank you for being a part of this, and I look forward to visiting with you in the next episode.

Thanks for listening to the No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe podcast at www.nodoubtonlybelieve.com.