Stumbling on Job

So, today I opened up to the book of Job and read for a while. I'm not exactly why I turned it there but the first part of it got me interested. I kept reading and pretty much skipped to around the end when Elihu speaks to Job about God's righteousness and goodness. And I think it really hit me deep inside.

You see, I have, for the past few years, had this feeling that I was being unjustly or unfairly treated by God. I had read the book of Job before but I had never realized as much of the fullness of the meaning as I have now. I believe that I accused God of treating me unfairly. I was angry, upset on the inside. But Elihu's comments got to me. God is just and not only that he is righteous and good. Who am I to think that I could judge God?

I was also upset because I felt as if I wanted to come to Him, begging Him to let me in, but He just wouldn't. I felt that I had done my part but God was just letting me hang. I felt as if I was doing what was right and He wasn't doing His part of the deal. Then BAM, by reading Job I realized that I had been seeing myself as more righteous than God was.

Whatever difficulties we go through in life and whatever happens we can know and trust that God is just, God is righteous, God is good, and that He is in control. If we ever get to the place that we start condemning God or thinking that we have been unjustly treated by Him then we are treading on dangerous ground. For who has any right to speak to God like that. Can I stand in a position to say, "God, I know better than you do about this"? Do we dare speak to the one who sees every aspect and angle of every situation and complain that He doesn't know what He is doing? It is pride in our hearts and evil to think that we could know righteousness and truth and justice better than God.

We need to trust, no matter what, that not only can God do whatever He wants because He is God, but that He, along with that, is always righteous, is always good, is always just. He is a God full of loving-kindness and mercy.

I used to look at the Old Testament and complain in my mind about how God seemed to do some pretty horrible stuff. "How could he be a God of love" I would say. But if you look you see that the character of God shown in the Old Testament is one of especially great love, kindness, and mercy. Just take a look at the book of Jonah. Sometimes we seem to think that we can judge God from our tiny miniscule angles. We just can't.