Christian Podcast- What lessons can we learn from Job losing his health

Welcome to episode 257, 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 want to continue with talking about Job today, and I know you may be a little bit tired of this. This is not one of those warm fuzzy lessons that we can just get into and think, man, that's going to make my life better. But I think every lesson that we can get out of the word of God, if we can just put ourselves into where Job was, somehow, and hopefully none of this would ever happen to you, But if you ever struggle with some kind of question like, why would God do this to me? Or why is this happening to me? If you've never had that conversation with God or with yourself, I think you need to get into Job and figure out how Job handled it, what was going on, what was the dynamics of all of this situation here. But I want to go to Job 2:1. Before I get started with the lesson today, I want to apologize to you for the sound system. That I've had the last couple of videos. I've gone into doing the video and the audio together, and obviously I wasn't doing something right. I had my microphone for— however it got kicked off, or we couldn't get it working right, or whatever. And whatever the input was that I was using was horrible. And I just want to apologize. I could not fix it on the previous episode. I hope I fixed it on this episode. But if you had to listen to the last couple episodes and it sounded like I was in a well, well, that's the reason. It was just me screwing up. I'm trying to combine video and audio, and there's always a learning curve. And again, I want to punch fear in the face. I want to do this thing and do it the best of my ability with video and audio now. So it's a new challenge. I've always got to keep pushing myself, just keep pushing. And I want to encourage you to do the same thing. I want you, if there's something you're uncomfortable with doing, I just say do it. Just jump in. And I know I'm kind of ready, fire, aim, but it's okay because if you mess up, you just got to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and do it again. And the good news is the more you do something, the better you get at it. So that's enough of that. I want to get back into Job. We're going to start in 2:1, and we see Satan is back in heaven, and God asked him, hey, what you been doing? And I'll read it to you real quick. Again there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan came also among them to present himself before the Lord. And the Lord said to Satan, "From where do you come?" So Satan answered the Lord and said, "From going to and fro the earth and from walking back and forth on it." Then the Lord said to Satan, "Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on earth—a blameless and upright man, one who fears God and shuns evil?" And still he holds fast to his integrity, although you incited me against him to destroy him without cause. And I'm going to stop there right quick, and I'm going to continue reading here in a minute. But I just want you to think about God and Satan having this conversation. And I know sometimes, you know, the people are outside of the camp of Christianity, they read some of these things and they think God's up there just using us as pawns. For his big scheme of things. And God is not using you and I as a pawn. God loves you. You are God's favorite. I've said this multiple times: if God had a refrigerator in heaven, your picture would be all over it. So God is not using you just to see you jump through a hoop like you're in a circus. That's not God's intention. God's intention, now that the fall of man has come— and I'm not trying to put words in God's mouth, I'm just reading the Bible And kind of what I see as I read the Bible is God is looking at a way to get his kids back from the fall when Adam and Eve bit that fruit and sin entered the world. Then now God has put into place a way for redemption. And I'm not going to jump on that soapbox yet. I'm going to say get into the word. This is a love story, and I've said this multiple times, this Bible is a love story with a backdrop of a war going on, a supernatural spiritual war. Good and evil fighting against each other with us involved in the middle of it, and they're fighting over you and I. God is trying to get us to come back into his kingdom, and Satan is trying to drag us into hell with him. And I think it's just as simple as that. And Satan's tools that he uses— he uses fear, he uses doubt, He uses division. He uses deception. He uses all kinds of things to try to pull us away from getting into a relationship with God. God loves us, and he's trying to show us through his word how Satan is out there. And you know, Satan in the Old Testament, you don't see a lot of mentions of him, but you do see him in Job in the first couple chapters. And I just want you to see Satan is coming as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. And I want you to understand that God is not going to give Satan permission to devour you. Now, sometimes he used— God will allow circumstances to come into your life to make you stronger, and we're going to see that at the end of Job. He's not going to bring anything to you I— that you cannot handle. You're always going to be tempted, and Satan is a punk. And when things start happening— and we saw that in the previous episode where they had one after the other after the other after the other— there was 4 servants that came and spoke to Job, all the devastations that were into his life, one after that. One hadn't finished speaking when the next person comes busting into the room. And I just want you to see that's how Satan works. Satan is a punk. We hate him. We're told to hate evil. And Satan does— is not going to let up. If he gets you down, this punk is going to kick you, and this punk is going to spit in your face, and he's going to throw accusations at you. He is going to condemn you. That's just his job. He comes only to steal, to kill, and destroy. If it's not in those three job descriptions, it's not probably Satan, or he's setting you up for one of those three. So I want you to just picture your enemy as someone we hate, and Satan is— he's just evil. And he went in— God knows the end from the beginning. I've got to have you understand that God knew all of this was going to happen when he set this in motion. And to me, it's kind of like Satan's in front of all these spiritual beings up there in heaven, you know, all the hosts, all the Gabriel and Michael and all these other angels that are in heaven. I just believe that God likes having conversations. I believe you and I can talk. I believe God likes talking to his kids. And so he's saying, hey Satan, what you been up to? And Satan says, ah, you know, God, just walking to and fro the earth. And he said, have you considered my servant Job? That guy's an animal. This is the second time that God has said, "Have you considered my servant Job?" And he knows the answer. Again, God doesn't ask questions that he don't know the answer to. He's just asking to get the conversation started. Then we go to Job 2:4. So Satan answered the Lord and said, "Skin for skin, yes, all that a man has will he give for his life. But stretch out your hand now and touch his bone and his flesh, and and he will surely curse you to your face. And the Lord said to Satan, Behold, he is in your hand, but spare his life. So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord, and struck Job with painful boils from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head. And he took for himself a potsherd with which to scrape himself while he sat in the midst of ashes. Then his wife said to him, Do you still hold fast to your integrity? Curse God and die! But he said to her, You speak as one of the foolish women speaks. Shall we indeed accept good from God and shall not accept adversity? In all of this Job did not sin with his lips. And I'm going to stop there. I know I have superior reading skills, and I know you love it when I read to you. I want you to picture a couple of things going on. They took everything from Job in chapter 1 except his health. And then in chapter 2, Satan comes up and says, if you take his health, he will curse you to your face. God said, go ahead, but don't kill him. They put boils on him. Just, oh my goodness, I can't imagine Job going through all that. But then when his wife comes in and sees him and he's sitting on this heap of ashes and he is in pain, he's in agony, and his wife comes in and says, "Why don't you just curse God and die? Just give it up." Then Job says, "No, you're talking about something like somebody that doesn't know God would say. He does not curse God, and he does not die, and he does not sin with his lips." And I just want you to read that, and I want you just to picture This thing has gone way bad for Job, and all he was doing was fearing God and shunning evil. Job was just going about his business. He had as much integrity as anybody on the earth at this time. He caught God's eye. I believe it was Satan just being a punk who called him out. He pretty much challenged God in front of all of his other sons. I mean, shoot ya if you just give him everything, then yeah, he's going to be fine. But if you take it away, what you're saying about Job is not true. He pretty much, in my mind, he's calling God a liar. Satan is challenging God's assessment of Job, and in front of all of God's kids, he calls God a liar, or wrong, or whatever, however you want to interpret this. But he calls out God in front of all of his kids. And I believe, you know, I— if you go back and ponder why all this happened to poor Job, I believe it happened up in heaven. And I believe it was in this meeting with all of these spiritual sons— Michael, Gabriel, Lucifer, Satan, whatever— all these other kids up there in the spirit realm. God is called out by Satan And so God says, oh yeah, really? So you know, you know Job like I know Job. And so he knew Job's integrity, he knew Job's character, and he knew that Job would not curse God to his face. And so God allowed Job to go through with this, not because he was mad at Job, not because of any other thing, but that he just loved Job, and Job was strong as a garlic milkshake. Job— God knew that Job was tough as nails, tough as a $2 steak, whatever the analogy you want to put. God knew Job. He knew his character. He knew his integrity, and he knew Job could handle it. Now, is that the kind of line any of us are wanting to stand in? Heck no. I don't know of anybody that would want to build their character, and I'm putting air quotes up, build— God, build my character. How many people have ever prayed that prayer? I'm going to transition into a little segue. I prayed a prayer one time, and I'm telling you, it was one of those dangerous prayers. And I think I've talked about it in a previous episode, but I prayed, Lord, use me. Lord, break me. Lord, send me. This was when I broke down in the Pep Boys bathroom. I don't know if you remember that story, but I'll try to find the episode. I'm telling you, there's getting to be so much. I'm getting so confused on this organization of all these different episodes. I just prayed a prayer because they said, man, this is the most dangerous prayer you can pray. And because of my ready, fire, aim mentality, I'm like, that don't sound that dangerous. Lord, use me. Break me, send me. I'll pray that. So I started praying that, and God answered that prayer. So be careful what you pray for, because God really is listening. I wanna encourage you that God hears everything that you and I say. And that is the kind of the segue into from Numbers 14 to Job. I just want you to understand that God hears us when we praise him and we're grateful and we're thankful. But God also hears us when we get upset and we complain to him. And if we're constantly just whining and complaining— I don't know if you've ever been around somebody that's always negative, but you try real hard not to— at least me, at least I do. I don't know, you may be more spiritual than I am, but if there's somebody that's super negative, I try my best after a while to get away from that person. I just can't take a lot of that. It doesn't lift me up. It doesn't build me up. Now, if I'm condoling, if I'm trying to build a relationship and they're constantly negative, it's very difficult. I'm just saying. So God, I don't think, wants to hear just a bunch of complaining from his kids. Now, I think he's got big old broad shoulders and he can handle it, but I think he would prefer, just like you and I would prefer, gratefulness, thankfulness, praise, glory. All of those things, I think, make God a little bit more happy than when we complain and moan and complain some more. I, I just think that just gets tiresome for God, for you or I. I mean, anytime that's going on. The last thing I want to talk about is I've heard people talk about how Job's wife— look at Job, look at his wife, I mean, she lost, she's unspiritual. I don't want you to ever judge another person without walking in their shoes, and I want you to think about what's going on. Job's wife is mourning the loss of her children, the loss of her income, the loss of her house, all of everything that she's owned in life. She has lost, and it doesn't say how long since her children had died to when Job is sitting on this ash heap with all these boils on him. So I just want to encourage you, don't judge Job's wife. This is a hurt woman, and this is a mama bear, and you don't want to mess with mama bear and her cubs. This lady, she is hurt and she's in pain, and when you're in pain and you're hurt, you say things that you really don't mean a lot of times. So I just think we need to give Job's wife a break and cut her a little bit of slack because it doesn't talk about her and it doesn't say that God smited her down. God is so loving and he's so kind and he's so patient. I think that God thought, you know, that's probably a pretty good reaction if this was my wife. Anyway, I'm not putting words in God's mouth. I looked up the clock and I'm going awful long and I just want to stop right here. We're going to go into the next maybe two, I don't know, maybe, maybe I can get it done in one more episode. But we're gonna talk about what happens when God does not answer why. When we have the why, the big why question, why God, why God? And so we're gonna deal with that in the next episode, but let's pray real quick. God, I thank you so much for your word. Lord, I thank you for this listener. I thank you that we can get in this, your word, and we can look at the same story. And Holy Spirit, I thank you that you are there. Where any two or more are gathered together, you are right there. And I pray, Holy Spirit, that you would just lead this listener into what it is you want them to know from the story of Job. 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.