Behind the Curtain (2)

Life is full of…

How would you finish the statement? You don’t need to answer it out loud but think about this.

There is a lot of pain, stress, trauma and drama.

These four things are absolutely true. Many of us will experience trauma and many individuals including our veterans experience PTSD.

Drama is something we will all expeirence and most of us will create.

We have an opportunity!

We have an opportunity to be a healing presence to all we come into contact with. We have the opportunity to show and share the love of Jesus with those hurting.

We have the opportunity to show what overcoming life by the power of Jesus can do.

Job will be our guide.

This summer will interact with the book of Job to help us learn how to heal our pain, trauma and drama. It will also help us interact with those hurting.

Job’s world-suffering was the result of sin.

If we could boil down his world and to some extent our own it would be those words. Sin causes suffering (see Deuteronomy)and therefore if one is suffering one must have sinned.

Job’s character-integrity, honest, and submitted to God.

Job was what we all want to be. This is important: he never claims to be without sin but he is not someone who “deserves” drama and trauma.

The trial-God’s ways are not “right”.

Job is not on trial. Job is not the one the story is to some extent about. It is about whether or not God’s ways are correct and whether God’s ways promote true faith.

Job experiences trauma in all forms: natural disaster, terrorism, and an “act of God”.

Notice this. Sometimes as we know real life is stranger than fiction but Job experiences all of the worst parts of life.

We must be honest in our pain and trauma.

Job does not sugarcoat what has happened and neither should we. When the pain is the freshest it is not the time for words like, “this too shall pass”. It is time for the words, “wow this is awful!”

God is still sovereign.

If we want to be a healing presence we must remember this. We may not always get to share this but we cannot lose sight of this. There will come a time when we can start to share there is something greater

We can worship in our pain.

Don’t let your pain stop you from worshipping. Sometimes that is the most honest thing we can do.