A Journey Through Job

I've always been encouraged by Job, and yesterday afternoon Joey and I were reading the first few chapters. If you're not familiar with Job, here's his story in a nutshell:

He was a rich man with a bunch of wonderful kids and all of them loved God with all their hearts. Satan went before God and asked if he could try and break Job's faith. God said Satan could do anything short of killing him. So Satan sent men to kill Job's animals and servants. He caused all of Job's children to die. All Job was left with was his life and his wife, who told him to curse God and die. He was covered with boils and sat in ashes, scraping the boils with a shard of pottery. (Job 1+2, heavily generalized)

We think WE have it bad sometimes.

And through all of it, Job PRAISED GOD. I can't underline that enough times. There's so much in this book that you'll have to read for yourself. Go ahead. Set aside time to read the Word.


One of my favorite Bible passages comes from Job 12: 7-10. I remember the first time I saw a calf born, and afterward, Grandpa and I stood in the barn and watched the cow and her little baby as the calf struggled to stand up and then wobbled around the pen. Grandpa told me he'd seen calves born so many times, and every time, he felt again the wonder and amazement at God's world. Myself? I'm overwhelmed by it.

7. "But ask now the beasts, and they shall teach thee; and the fowls of the air, and they shall tell thee:
8. Or speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee; and the fishes of the sea shall declare unto thee:
9. Who knoweth not in all these that the hand of the LORD hath wrought [made] this?
10. In whose hand is the soul of every living thing, and the breath of all mankind."

A study... and a challenge.

My Bible reading comes from Roman's 12. Go get your Bible. I'll wait...

And I didn't pick just one topic to write on, because this chapter is too amazing to say one thing. And this is MY blog. So there.

Okay, Roman's 12:1 "...by the mercies of God, present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable until God, which is your reasonable service." You are a child of God, and therefore a sacrifice. The person you were before might as well have died and been buried. It is "our reasonable service." It's our job. It's not God asking too much of us. It's required. And it's impossible.

For us, that is. God, in His mercy, will help us to accomplish it. We have to decide in our hearts and minds that we WANT to follow him. Be willing and able.

Verse 2 tells us to stand fast in this world. Don't let it change and conform you. Let God wash your mind clear of the world's snares continually. It's only this way that you can demonstrate to the world that a) you are God's personal ambassador to them and b) that they should be like you. If you let the world sway you in any way, even little things like things you say, things you wear, music you listen to... it will destroy your entire testimony. You're different. They're watching you. They're waiting breathlessly for you to fall.

Don't let the world win. You have brothers and sisters in Christ who will gladly get on their knees and pray for you if you start to slip. If pride gets in your way, tell him to leave, because it's just your old pal, Satan. Humble yourself in the sight of the LORD and He will lift you up.

Verses 3-8. These boil down to this: don't be proud and snobbish of your spiritual gift. We're all different in this body of Christ. You're a hand. The person next to you is a foot. The one beside him is the nose. Imagine life without a nose. It would kind of stink. Imagine if we were all prophets and none were teachers. No one would learn from the prophets. Or if all of us were teachers and no one showed mercy. There's be a total lack of 4.0s. Give deference to the gifts of others.



Your challenge from my rambling on verse 2: Practice humbling yourself and asking for prayer. Call, text, send an email to, or meet with your friends weekly to ask if you can pray for them and if they can pray for you. If there's nothing in your life needing urgent prayer, ask for prayers of spiritual strength, faith, or unwavering trust in the LORD. Or anything. Just ask and pray diligently.

Aaaah... Twilight.

On Friday, I gave Twilight a try. The book, not the movie. I have several reactions to the first hundred pages, which I struggled to get through and scrapped the book after that.

Reaction #1: From a writer's standpoint, the voice Stephanie Meyers uses is passive. (Example: "He was looking at her." vs. the active voice - "He looked at her.") That all but drove me insane. Not completely, but it came thisclose. I toyed with the idea of counting how many times the word "was" occurred on each page. This gave me a thumb-down right off the bat.

Reaction #2: High school romantic drama. Need I say more? *gags*

Reaction #3: I fail to see how great the "hero" of this story is if he's stalking the heroine. Yes, I said stalking.

Reaction #4: Aren't vampires evil? The whole story had a darkness shadowing it, which, I think, is a main draw.

Reaction #5: Well... At least she had a Chevy truck... (I'm stretching for a good point to mention)

My vote on this book is for you to pass on it. Go find something better to read. It won't be that difficult.