My Pastor, Perry Noble, started a new series last Sunday on The Life of Job - A Story of Hope. There is a lot of anticipation that God is going to do some amazing things in the lives of hurting people.
Life can be hard. Just because I am a follower of Jesus Christ doesn't mean I get a free pass on the trouble, the anxieties, the worries of this world. But because of Jesus Christ and his death, burial and resurrection, I have victory over all that comes my way. And - as an aside - Jesus was in the very center of God's will for His life when He was nailed to the cross. He didn't get a pass on trouble and pain!
A lot of times we forget that, as believers, this world is not our home. Our lives are just a vapor, a mist, that is only here for a snap of the fingers. Our lives seem so long but on the scale of eternity, the time is nothing really.
However, the pain we feel over broken relationships and broken dreams and disasters and sickness and death and hardships and all the other stuff of life is very real. Often that pain is so intense because we are focusing on ourselves. In the moment of great hurt, we tend to focus on our loss, our pain. Sometimes we focus on anger and assigning blame to the one who hurt us or maybe even to God.
But God wants so much more for us. God comforts us in our pain and our sorrow so that we can then comfort others. If we allow Him to, He will use our circumstances as a testimony of His faithfulness. If we look beyond human wisdom to the wisdom of God, we will know, as Job did, "...that my Redeemer lives, and at the last He will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God." (Job 19:25-26)
Learning to focus on Jesus during times of great hurt will enable us to not only endure but to thrive.
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