Job #3

Suffering - Job 2:11-4:17

PERSONAL REFLECTION . Describe an experience in which you were tempted to doubt God’s goodness. What questions did you ask? What thoughts, if any, did you have of God?

Each of Job’s three friends makes a speech with Job responding— a cycle that is repeated three times in the book. Read Job 4:1-17 . Eliphaz responds cautiously at first and then attacks. Why does Eliphaz think Job is suffering?

Eliphaz thinks he has God’s word (4:12-17). Job only has dark questions. What have you learned so far about finding God in the midst of pain and loss?

How do you feel about living with unanswered questions?

Ask God to show you how to put aside your life circumstances and find rest for your soul (Matthew 11:28).

Now or Later

None of the friends breathes a prayer in the whole book. But Job pours out his heart to God. Prayer is, paradoxically, both a blessing and a battle. Consider some of the many scriptural examples of “taking God on” by righteous men and women: Abraham haggling over Sodom (Genesis 18:16-33); Jacob wrestling a blessing out of God (Genesis 32:22-29); Jesus praying in the garden (Matthew 26:36-46); Paul pleading three times for the removal of his “thorn” (2 Corinthians 12:8-9). See also the Psalms, Jeremiah 20:14-18 and Lamentations 3:1-18. As P. T. Forsyth once said, it may be God’s will that we surmount his will. What we mainly “get” through prayer is God!