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Job 29, 30:1-19
In Job 28 Job was speaking of what real wisdom is. He now continues his discourse reminiscing on former days.
He speaks of his previous intimacy with God, of having his children all around him, his prosperity and the great respect that all had for him.
All blessed him and listened to what he had to say, because of his justice and compassion in helping all in need. Such was the regard for him that he was like a king.
But now, young people whose fathers he would have disdained to have even put with his sheepdogs, and people who were virtually outcasts from society in their poverty - now despised and mocked him, spitting in his face and mocking him with songs.
Now he was so afflicted in soul, mind and body that he felt like God had cast him into the mire and he was as the very dust and ashes which he was covered in.
'Oh that I were as in months past' (verse 2).
Are you wishing your life is how it used to be?
Are there things or people you are missing so much or does life seem especially hard at the moment?
Job knew this feeling. He was so down and overwhelmed by it all that he felt like God had thrown him into mire.
Mire is like a swamp or boggy ground.
Every footstep is difficult... sinking... ... ... perhaps so far you feel you are going to be overwhelmed and suffocated by it.
It is devoid of all comfort, and perhaps extensive.
Sometimes it looks deceptively normal and then you take a next step on what you thought looked stable ground only to sink and squelch into the filthy deep mud again.
Mud clings to you.
You cannot get free of it.
You long to escape it.
We can sympathise with Job and agree he had valid reason to feel like this. He had lost so much and been made so ill. And what was clearly his biggest sorrow was his felt loss of communion with God.
He longed for the months past when not only did he feel that God 'preserved' him but that the 'secret of God was upon' his tabernacle - or as my Bible notes suggest, he had 'intimate counsel' with God (verses 2,4) - and he felt the 'Almighty was yet with me' (verse 5).
Do you know this feeling of trouble and the worst thing about it is that you feel you have lost God's presence and comfort?
You think God has abandoned you and is not protecting you?
It is as if bad as things are, all the time we feel we can fall back into our Father's arms for comfort, we sort of feel we are coping - but then if he removes the sense of his presence we are totally bereft and cannot be comforted, by even our closest family and friends.
I realised last night that this is fellowship with the Lord Jesus' suffering - his experience of losing the presence of his Father with him on the cross because of our sin which he was carrying.
When we lose the sense of the Lord's presence, which sometimes seems to come on us gradually and before we have noticed, Spurgeon (page 46) says,
'Tell me where you lost the company of Christ, and I will tell you the most likely place to find Him.
Have you lost Christ in prayer? Then it is there you must seek and find Him.
Did you lose Christ by sin? You will find Christ in no other way but by giving up of the sin, and seeking by the Holy Spirit to mortify the member in which the lust doth dwell.
Did you lose Christ by neglecting the scriptures? You must find Christ in the Scriptures...'
In Job's case we know that he had been very upright - what a contrast he was now experiencing. From being treated as a king he was now being mocked and jeered at and sitting in the dust like a poor tramp!
And yet his situation wasn't as it may often be with us - as far as we can tell he hadn't grieved the Holy Spirit. We know that it was because God was allowing this trouble to come on him from Satan.
We know that God was preserving him - from Satan being able to take his life.
We know that God was with him - he knew every single cry or word that Job uttered. He knew his every thought.
Perhaps this could actually be an encouragement to you today - that although you feel far from your Lord and bereft of his comfort, that he still knows, still cares and is still in control.
What compassion and love the Lord looks at his children with! He can understand what you are suffering because he has entered into all our troubles in his own life and temptations here as a man.
Maybe for a moment he has withdrawn the feeling of his presence that you might pray more urgently and press closer to him in your spirit feeling your need and dependence on him, but he is trying your faith.
Listen to David's Psalm of praise:
"I waited patiently for the LORD; and he inclined unto me, and heard my cry. He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings. And he hath put a new song in my mouth, even praise unto our God: many shall see it, and fear, and shall trust in the LORD. Blessed is that man that maketh the LORD his trust..." (Psalm 40).
The Lord can come to you and bless you with such a sense or word of his presence and love that you will feel completely lifted out of your trouble, although it is still going on.
You will feel as if he has set your feet on the rock of his love and all that he is; you will feel the security of your feet resting on him as he goes before you working it all out, and you will lean into his arms as he does this for you, trusting him.
May you be helped to pray and patiently wait for the Lord to appear and bless you in your circumstances today, so that despite feeling like Job - bereft, alone and deserted by your Lord - you may again be comforted and reassured that he is your God, he is watching over you, and he is in control.
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