Hide Me - Job 14:13

If only you would hide me in Sheol and conceal me until your anger passes. If only you would appoint a time for me and then remember me. Job 14:13

Believers trust in the Lord, and yet when bad things happen, it is easy to think He has forgotten us. We think God wandered off somewhere and one day, maybe he’ll be back.

And when bad things happen to us (especially due to our own sin), we can think that God is done with us. I am not worth His time anymore. I have messed up so badly that I need to dig my way out of this before He’ll ever listen to my cry. And I’ll never be able to do it.

Those are half-lies. God is right with his Children at all times. If you seek Him, He will be found (yes He will!). 

God is not done with me when I sin. God uses the sin as a tool to chisel me.

It’s a painful discipline, but it is ultimately joyful.

In the case of Job, he didn’t do anything evil. Job stood up for himself in this. His friends told him to repent and his wife told him to curse God and die.

Job defended his own righteousness. And he stayed righteous.

Yet in the bad times, he felt abandoned and wanted desperately to die.

Even in this, He knew that God was sovereign, that He oversees all. He knew that God had decided to do these things to him. It’s interesting that Job never blames it on Satan. And we know that God used Satan to do what He wanted with Job, to craft him into a most singular man.

But he wanted to die.

There have been days that I wanted to die. I felt so hopeless about my condition before God. And it wasn’t until I felt that intensely that I started to cry out to Him.

And when I cried out, God answered.

In my case, His answers were both immediate and slow. My issues required a crock pot approach, not a microwave. Maybe I’m more like one of those wines that age for years.

I fermented slowly. During that season, my hope increased. It was up and down. And some days I felt crushed like a cigarette under a man’s boot. But good things were happening. My mentally destructive habits began to wash away as I replaced them with the truth of his scripture.

The reason I began to write this journal (which turned into these devotions that I share) was that I figured if I could write about God’s truth, that I could internalize it. See, I had the head knowledge, but the moldy, rotten recordings in my head kept taking over.

And I wanted it to happen in a blast from Aaron’s rod, but God made me wait.

I had to pray. I had to cry out. I had to wait.

See, I have an issue with patience; I guess it doesn’t help a guy like me to give him what he wants immediately!

I had to learn to be honest about my own feelings. I had to say I was sad. I had to say I was angry. I had to say I was jealous.

And some of those things are sinful. I hated to admit sin. It was almost like there were two of me: one that wanted to live righteously and one that wanted to live riotously. But I never admitted that I wanted to paint the town red.

I never admitted to any feeling, desire, or thought that I knew was sin.

And that was sinful.

Ultimately, we must admit our ugliness to ourselves, to God, and to another person. When I admit it, Jesus then says, “I died for that.”

When I don’t admit it. I imagine that He says, “Go figure it out until you are ready to own up to it.”

Now, here’s what happens: my pain and misery lead me back to Him.

In the worst of those years, I felt oh so far from God. And He was always right with me. Loving me. Teaching me. Being merciful to me.

In those years, I didn’t become a drunk, cheat on my wife, nor steal people’s money.

Still, I did try to escape reality with entertainment, lust, and debt. It was different in severity, but led to the same spiritual problems.

And I sinned in that I sometimes thought I was missing out because I didn’t participate in the drunkenness nor carousing. I kept those thoughts tight to myself. So they worked a kind of damp swamp in my head.

And when I had done that for years. When I had given up hope. He met me in my despair. He gave me the grace to cry out. He gave me a trickle of hope.

During these years, I often read and mentally passed right over the very verses that would have given me light. It was like stepping on the very treasure that I needed and not picking it up. Those verses were there prodding me with hope that I wouldn’t acknowledge. I was stubborn in my hopelessness.

But He kindly, mercifully, broke through my rebellious heart. He heard my cry. He pulled me out of the water and dried me off. Little by little. Hope on top of hope on top of hope.

And then, out of the blue, He began to use me to help others.

Lord, I have wanted to just die like Job. I didn’t have his righteousness. But I thought I had fouled up all of the plans you had for me. You gave me the grace to cry out to you. Again and again. And each time, you gave me hope. 

You showed me that I could regularly put the flesh thoughts away and live by the Spirit. Living by the Spirit was something I thought that super Christians did. Not me. But you showed me that you are so powerful, that you died for the awkward, and the unwise like me. And even a regular old struggling Christian like me can live by the Spirit. Today. Blessed be the Name of the Lord.