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Summer 2006
Dear Truth Encounter Family:
A young soldier comes home from Iraq wounded and broken. Basic training hardened his muscles to steel but the shrapnel from a suicide bomber’s death pack shredded them like paper. Struggling in rehab in a Vet hospital near Washington, he staggers like a baby learning to walk and at night his dreams attack him with the picture of his best friend dying in the seat beside him in the blinding flash.
Raised in a small town in Texas, Cody was taught that Jesus loved him and had a wonderful plan for his life. Now he shouts in anger at God, but what’s the use. God doesn’t listen.
Imagine that Cody is your close friend. You arrive in the parking lot walk through the front door, ride the elevator to his room. How will you comfort him? What can you do or say?
When you have not suffered, life is simple. The basic advice you hear is, If you are good and obey God’s wise instructions, He will bless and give you the good life. If you disobey, you will pay for it, but you will know that you are getting what you deserve. Proverbs teaches children this basic principle of justice: It pays to obey God’s instructions. But there is another Old Testament wisdom book—the book of Job. It wrestles with the dark questions when “bad things happen to good people” to Christ’s people; like when a brave young man like Cody faces agony just to walk the rest of his life.
Job begins with a heavenly scene that exposes a devilish plot. God asks his Adversary if he has considered his servant Job. Satan sneers and says, “The only reason Job worships you is because you are his sugar daddy in the sky. His love for you is simply a business deal---basic economics. I scratch your back, and you scratch mine. Take away the gifts and the blessing, and Job will curse you in a second!”
Is our love for God only self-interest? Do we obey and worship Him because, like Mary Kay, he will give us a pink Cadillac if we do the things He tells us?
This is the wager that Satan made in the heavenly court and amazingly, God took him up on it. Job became the center of a war in the heavens about the authenticity of the love between a man and his God. This war is still going on.
Job teaches us that Satan is real and so is God. Prosperity and blessing are real, but so are pain, suffering, and death. When you get the news that cancer has spread through your body, this is no longer an abstract discussion for a theology class. Suddenly, the experience of Job becomes your experience, and you begin to understand the emotion, the anger, the abandonment, and the agony of being betrayed by your closest friends—and worse, apparently betrayed by God.
How did Job respond?
For I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last he will stand upon the earth; and after my skin has been thus destroyed, then in my flesh I shall see God, Job 19:25-26
Think about this statement and ask yourself, “What was Job’s secret that enabled him to say this from the ash heap with his body covered in seeping, infected sores? What was the source of his hope?”
Mary and I just finished taking care of our three grand kids in Dripping Springs south of Austin. Joel and Courtney, their parents, needed to attend a Rett conference out in San Francisco. Blythe, their oldest daughter, is now four. Unlike her 2 ½ year old sister, she can’t feed herself. Papa had to do this and make sure that he gave her some drink and that she didn’t chew her hand until it bled.
Why does a severe genetic disorder like Rett mess up the neurological development of my precious grand daughter? If your family is facing severe testing like ours, let me encourage you to spend some time with Job.
Recently, I summarized the entire book of Job for our Midlothian Bible Church family in a message titled “Down But Not Out.” Mary and I would love to send a copy to you because we believe that there are some “Cody’s” that you need to visit. We don’t want you to blow it like Job’s well-meaning friends.
Dave and Mary Wyrtzen
PS. To receive my message titled “Down But Not Out," click on FREE SPECIAL OFFER on our online order form.
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