Lessons from the Book of Job

The last few years I've read through the Bible in a year by listening to the Daily Audio Bible app. This year I decided to use the app and read through the Bible in chronological order. So far I've read the first 11 chapters of Genesis and now we're in the book of Job. The Hardin family produces the app. Brian reads the daily scriptures in the first plan, while Jill, his wife, and their daughter China alternate reading the chronological portions. They all give thoughts at the end of the reading for us to reflect on.

The first reading plan has portions of the OT and NT and Psalms and Proverbs every day. I'm finding the chronological plan allows more concentration on just one book at a time. I also like the different voices, female voice perspectives. 

I've never "enjoyed" the book of Job. It just seemed a repetition of Job's mourning and his friends' wrong advice. And could I take any good or truth out of his friends' advice since they didn't have their theology right?

This time around, I've been seeing more of the depth of Job's suffering and his response to it. I also listen to The Bible Recap app where Tara Leigh Cobble gives a brief summary of what the chronological reading of the day meant to her. Tara has brought out some of the verses in Job's discourses that show how deep his trust is in God. And encourages us to have patience with Job. Expressing grief doesn't mean you aren't trusting God.

In Job 14:5 he says, ..."man's days are numbered..."  God is sovereign over my life span. We can't exceed God's limits. That should be a comforting promise. Then she shared a couple of questions that  really challenge me. Where do I feel offended that he's in charge? Where do I want to be the God of my own life? Where do I feel he's infringing on my rights with his sovereignty? 

I often pray Psalms 139:23-24. Seach me, oh God, and know my heart...and see if there be any offensive way in me. I've understood that as any way I'm offensive to God, but now I add anyway God has become offensive to me. I want to be led in the way everlasting where my heart is humbly acknowledging his sovereignty and submitted to his leading. 

Job's statement in 19:25 is familiar. "I know that my Redeemer lives and that in the end he will stand on the earth...in my flesh I will see God...How my heart yearns within me!" This past Christmas advent brought a new longing in me for Jesus' second return. Even after not hearing a word from the Lord for 400 years, God's people still harbored an expectation that the Messiah would come. They were longing for a political deliverer, which we know now was not Jesus' mission. It was so much better that what they expected. Jesus' second coming will be better than what we can imagine also. Maybe I haven't lived in a longing for that because my life is comfortable right now. Maybe we associate his second coming with only judgment. But it will be Christ returning for his Bride. Like Job, I pray my heart yearns within me to see my Redeemer and Bridegroom.