Job 16:6-17 New American Standard Bible
Job Says God Shattered Him
6 “If I speak, my pain is not lessened,
And if I refrain, what pain leaves me?
7 But now He has exhausted me;
You have laid waste all my group of loved ones.
8 And You have shriveled me up,
[a]It has become a witness;
And my infirmity rises up against me,
It testifies to my face.
9 His anger has torn me and [b]hunted me down,
He has gnashed at me with His teeth;
My enemy [c]glares at me.
10 They have gaped at me with their mouths,
They have [d]slapped me on the cheek with contempt;
They have massed themselves against me.
11 God hands me over to criminals,
And tosses me into the hands of the wicked.
12 I was at ease, but He shattered me,
And He has grasped me by my neck and shaken me to pieces;
He has also set me up as His target.
13 His arrows surround me.
He splits my kidneys open without mercy;
He pours out my bile on the ground.
14 He breaks through me with breach after breach;
He runs at me like a warrior.
15 I have sewed sackcloth over my skin,
And thrust my horn in the dust.
16 My face is flushed from weeping,
And deep darkness is on my eyelids,
17 Although there is no violence in my hands,
And my prayer is pure.
Word of God for the Children of God
Glory be to the Father,
and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost;
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and ever shall be,
world without end. Amen, amen.
We are loved!
We are held together by God’s love!
We are held together by God’s unbreakable, unshakeable perfect love.
We are genuinely loved!
We are authentically loved!
We are perfectly loved!
We are loved with an everlasting love! (Jeremiah 31:3)
We are unconditionally loved by God the Father, the Son, God the Holy Spirit!
1 John 4:7-12 New American Standard Bible
God Is Love
7 Beloved, let’s love one another; for love is from God, and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 The one who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 By this the love of God was revealed [a]in us, that God has sent His only Son into the world so that we may live through Him. 10 In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the [b]propitiation for our sins. 11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; if we all love one another, God remains in us, and His love is perfected in us.
These are simple sounding, deeply comforting, reassuring biblical truths that we all too often, tragically, catastrophically, we always remember to forget.
For some reason our believing we are loved, secure, precious, forgiven, and too created for a purpose, are inevitably something we will all have to struggle with.
Abraham … ordered by God to take the only son of his body, the one to whom Abraham would pass his inheritance to, Isaac, up a mountain, to be sacrificed.
Jacob who in his old age, learning that his youngest son, Joseph, had just been ravaged by a wild animal and was killed. Except his other sons had lied to him showing him a blood soaked garment, lied to, by his envious sons to cover up a conspiracy to kill Joseph, when in fact they had sold him into slavery in Egypt.
Then they had deliberately concealed the truth from their father for many long years until they needed food to stave off a severe famine throughout the region.
Then there is the 400 years of hardcore dehumanizing murderous unrelenting bondage in Egypt meant to destroy spirits, to starve a nation into submission.
The magnitude of the trauma cannot be imagined, measured nor quantified.
The short and long-term significance of God’s absence upon the spirits of the enslaved humanity believing there would be no relief, rescue and no freedom, redemption, likewise cannot be conceived, imagined, measured, nor quantified.
The promised love of God … transformed into what magnitude of anger, hatred?
Great is thy faithfulness, O’ God my Father?
Greater still thy faithlessness, O God!
Greater still shall be my growing hatred, growing disbelief, growing mistrust!
What about all that always faithful, always available love?
Wait, God … I will ask my taskmaster if he knows where your “love” went!
He said … “right here in my whip, right there on your breaking, laboring, body.”
So, Lord … just keep your alleged love to yourself … I cannot long bear it nor can I long survive it. Your love is literally killing me and my brethren. Please, STOP!
Please Lord, stop loving me so much…it is hard enough for me to just stay alive.
God, get out of my life!
I do not need nor do I want or desire your kind of love!
God, your “love” just brutalizes me, demeans me, hurts me too much!
God … just keep your love locked away in your house!
No one wants any part of it, anymore!
Get lost! God …
And stay lost … forever and ever … Amen!
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
Praying ….
An Experience of the Captivity.
137 By the rivers of Babylon,
There we sat down and wept,
When we remembered Zion.
2 Upon the [a]willows in the midst of it
We hung our [b]harps.
3 For there our captors [c]demanded of us [d]songs,
And our tormentors, jubilation, saying,
“Sing for us one of the songs of Zion!”
4 How can we sing the Lord’s song
In a foreign land?
5 If I forget you, Jerusalem,
May my right hand [e]forget its skill.
6 May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth
If I do not remember you,
If I do not [f]exalt Jerusalem
Above my chief joy.
7 Remember, Lord, against the sons of Edom
The day of Jerusalem,
Those who said, “Lay it bare, lay it bare
To its foundation!”
8 Daughter of Babylon, you [g]devastated one,
Blessed will be one who repays you
With [h]the retribution with which you have repaid us.
9 Blessed will be one who seizes and dashes your children
Against the rock.
Glory be to the Father,
and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost;
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and ever shall be,
world without end. Amen, amen.
Loving God, Living God, Loving Hope, Living Hope, Loving Living Life His Way! "Many things are possible for the person who has hope. Even more is possible for the person who has faith. And still more is possible for the person who knows how to love. But everything is possible for the person who practices all three virtues." - Brother Lawrence (1605-1691), Practicing the Presence of God (1692). 