God Meets Us Where We’re At
Today in Staff Devo I shared a bit about the awful suffering of Job. In many ways, our church and our culture can relate a bit more to Job’s situation nowadays, than ever before. Job experienced sickness. Loss. Isolation from friends and family. Grief. Fear. And profound questions about Who exactly God is.
Job’s problem wasn’t that He didn’t know God, but that He didn’t have the experience of God’s presence in His suffering. And the whole book is a profound picture of a very authentic man working this out in relationship with God (all the while His friends offer worse and worse interpretations of pain, that are not only unhelpful, but actually reiterate His loneliness and isolation).
At one point, Job recounts His fear of coming before God with these honest struggles He’s going through.
He’s fearful that:
God will rebuke Him for coming.
God will find him guilty in his pain, even though Job has done his best to honor God
And that his own words will indict him before God, even as he please for his innocence.
Ultimately, he will not be heard in his suffering or gain understanding from God about why this is happening.
What may be surprising, is that if we’re honest many of us fear these same things before God. We’re consciously nervous or unconsciously avoidant, because somewhere deep we’re anticipating the negative response of God before we’ve even given Him the opportunity to respond.
This may be because our own voice, or the voices of our culture around us have such a deafening volume in our mental processes. But if we really slow down, read a bit of God’s word, we’ll begin to discover a longing that Job’s own words articulate about a Mediator to come:
“For I know you will not find me innocent, O God.
Whatever happens, I will be found guilty.
So what’s the use of trying?
Even if I were to wash myself with soap
and clean my hands with lye,
you would plunge me into a muddy ditch,
and my own filthy clothing would hate me.
God is not a mortal like me,
so I cannot argue with him or take him to trial.
If only there were a mediator between us,
someone who could bring us together.
The mediator could make God stop beating me,
and I would no longer live in terror of his punishment.
Then I could speak to him without fear,
but I cannot do that in my own strength.”
Can you see the crucial part that both Job and our own heart’s cry for? We cry for a Mediator between us and God. A Mediator who could take our struggles with sin and our honest suffering and bring it before God for us. Our heart’s may be afraid of what God might say or certain we’ll be pushed away, ignored, or placated…
But, unlike Job, we do have a Mediator!
We have Jesus, the Author and Perfector of our faith, the Mediator who carrys our sins and sufferings on His shoulders—and carrys our souls with Him—to God to be reconciled. Jesus is called the Priest, which is a person who takes on the role of Mediator between humans and the divine. And when Jesus does this work, He does it as a Son to a Father, not just a Priest to a Divine Being. And so sweeps us into a Mediator relationship that is now based not just one His one time sacrifice, but on an intimate relationship between us and our Heavenly Father.
I bet Job wishes he understood Jesus then. What a different it would have made to be able, equipped, even invited to share his most painful secrets with God His Father, based on His perfect love for us through Jesus’s work on the cross.
What if Job knew He was welcome to share His sufferings with Jesus and Jesus would share those with God.
And that God the Father Himself would respond to Job, not as a servant, but a son?
Wow, this is what we’re invited into as New Testament Christians.
Why don’t you take a few minutes and consider these scriptures with Jesus.
And ask Him to help you share your thoughts, emotions, longings, and prayers with the Father.
And then take a few minutes to listen.
Listen for the response of the Father….
Consider:
“So then, since we have a great High Priest who has entered heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to what we believe. This High Priest of ours understands our weaknesses, for he faced all of the same testings we do, yet he did not sin. So let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God. There we will receive his mercy, and we will find grace to help us when we need it most.”
“O Lord, you have searched me and known me!
You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from afar.
You search out my path and my lying down
and are acquainted with all my ways.
Even before a word is on my tongue,
behold, O Lord, you know it altogether.
You hem me in, behind and before,
and lay your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
it is high; I cannot attain it.
Where shall I go from your Spirit?
Or where shall I flee from your presence?”