EXPECTATIONS

   As I read further in Job, chapters 10-13, I see that Job may have had expectations of God that are being challenged by God's very actions toward him.  Job is not able to align God's actions toward him with his expectations of what God is "supposed to do" and be like.  Bless his dear heart, I can share in Job's dilemma, and I imagine that you can share it also.  The foolishness to think we can put God in a box of our expectations!

We, as Christ followers,  may have held on to a felonious belief that if we do everything right, checking the list of do's and do not's, that we will be approved by God, and  we will experience only good from HIM.  Like it or not, that is the spirit of perfectionism and performance of the Pharisees.  The mentality that I am good enough to be saved and I must always be good to maintain my salvation and His approval...how is that for a LIE?  Tragically, this is the hill that many Christ followers try to live out and also along the way get weary and throw in the towel of despair realizing that  we just cannot attain perfection on this earth !  Duh!  This is the mentality of Job and his friends.  Some observations borrowed from C. H. Spurgeon:
1.  Is God desirous to show His power to Job?
2.  Is God developing Job's graces?
3.  Does Job have unconfessed secret sin?
4.  According to Romans 8:17, is Job being invited to enter into the sufferings of Christ and to enter into His joy also?
5.  Is God desirous to humble Job?  

At this point, Job is not told, and you and I may not know the reasons why God has allowed difficulties to come into our lives. Two facts we do know:  God is good (Psalm 86:5) and that storms will come!  (John 16:33) Storms have a tendency to either shake out our false beliefs about God and draw us into  deepening faith or drive us further into looking for reasons why.  At the present in the reading, Job is so weary from his wounds that his perception of God is skewed and that also happens to us at times. I hope that you will spend some time in Job and come away with a  better understanding of yourself, Job, and God.

A precious promise which Job did not the privilege of knowing, but we do, personalized, "Therefore I do not lose heart.  Though outwardly I am wasting away, yet inwardly, I am being renewed day by day. For my light and momentary troubles are achieving for me an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.  So I fix my eyes no on what is seen, but on what is unseen.  For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal."   What a promise.  Forever learning.  In process.  #IHAVETHREESONS.