Job week 2

Intro- we all experience disappointments….unrequnted love

When everything feels like it’s falling apart, hold on to the God who never fails.

Disappointment is not a sin, we don’t have to like God’s plans to follow them.

The key is not letting disappointment fester and become despair because despair leads us away from trusting in God.

The New International Version (Chapter 7)

7 Remember, O God, that my life is but a breath;

my eyes will never see happiness again.

8 The eye that now sees me will see me no longer;

you will look for me, but I will be no more.

9 As a cloud vanishes and is gone,

so one who goes down to the grave does not return.

10 He will never come to his house again;

his place will know him no more.

11 “Therefore I will not keep silent;

I will speak out in the anguish of my spirit,

I will complain in the bitterness of my soul.

12 Am I the sea, or the monster of the deep,

that you put me under guard?

13 When I think my bed will comfort me

and my couch will ease my complaint,

14 even then you frighten me with dreams

and terrify me with visions,

15 so that I prefer strangling and death,

rather than this body of mine.

16 I despise my life; I would not live forever.

Let me alone; my days have no meaning.

The New International Version (Chapter 23)

2 “Even today my complaint is bitter;

his hand is heavy in spite of my groaning.

3 If only I knew where to find him;

if only I could go to his dwelling!

4 I would state my case before him

and fill my mouth with arguments.

8 “But if I go to the east, he is not there;

if I go to the west, I do not find him.

9 When he is at work in the north, I do not see him;

when he turns to the south, I catch no glimpse of him.

Life is unfair.

God never promised fairness from life but He has promised presence, grace, and final justice from Him.

How To Process through disappointment

1. Name The Disappointment and Share It With God

2. Ask God to Search your heart

3. Ask God to Meet You in The Pain

4. Let Go of Control and Need For Answers

Name The Disappointment and Share It With God

“One bold message in the Book of Job is that you can say anything to God. Throw at him your grief, your anger, your doubt, your bitterness, your betrayal, your disappointment—he can absorb them all. As often as not, spiritual giants of the Bible are shown contending with God. They prefer to go away limping, like Jacob, rather than to shut God out. In this respect, the Bible prefigures a tenet of modern psychology: you can’t really deny your feelings or make them disappear, so you might as well express them. God can deal with every human response save one. He cannot abide the response I fall back on instinctively: an attempt to ignore him or treat him as though he does not exist. That response never once occurred to Job.”

― Philip Yancey, Disappointment with God: Three Questions No One Asks Aloud

Ask God to Search your heart

The gift of physical pain is sometimes it gives our body chance to deal with issues we would otherwise not have known.

Romans

The New International Version (Chapter 8)

26 In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. 27 And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God.

28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.

Ask God to Meet You in The Pain

The New International Version (Chapter 38)

Then the LORD spoke to Job out of the storm. He said:

2 “Who is this that obscures my plans

with words without knowledge?

3 Brace yourself like a man;

I will question you,

and you shall answer me.

4 “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?

Tell me, if you understand.

5 Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!

Who stretched a measuring line across it?

6 On what were its footings set,

or who laid its cornerstone—

7 while the morning stars sang together

and all the angels j shouted for joy?

8 “Who shut up the sea behind doors

when it burst forth from the womb,

9 when I made the clouds its garment

and wrapped it in thick darkness,

10 when I fixed limits for it

and set its doors and bars in place,

11 when I said, ‘This far you may come and no farther;

here is where your proud waves halt’?

12 “Have you ever given orders to the morning,

or shown the dawn its place,

13 that it might take the earth by the edges

and shake the wicked out of it?

.

Let Go of Control and Need For Answers

The New International Version (Chapter 42)

2 “I know that you can do all things;

no purpose of yours can be thwarted.

3 You asked, ‘Who is this that obscures my plans without knowledge?’

Surely I spoke of things I did not understand,

things too wonderful for me to know.

4 “You said, ‘Listen now, and I will speak;

I will question you,

and you shall answer me.’

5 My ears had heard of you

but now my eyes have seen you.

6 Therefore I despise myself

and repent in dust and ashes.”

All that the downtrodden can do is go on hoping. After every disappointment they must find fresh reason for hope.

-Alexander Solzhenitsyn

When everything feels like it’s falling apart, hold on to the God who never fails.