#DailyDevotion Your Friends Mean Well When You’re Suffering
February 10th
Read Job 6:14–30
Job 6:14 “He who withholds kindness from a friend forsakes the fear of the Almighty. 22 Have I said, ‘Make me a gift’? Or, ‘From your wealth offer a bribe for me’? (23) Or, ‘Deliver me from the adversary’s hand’? Or, ‘Redeem me from the hand of the ruthless’? (24) “Teach me, and I will be silent; make me understand how I have gone astray. (25) How forceful are upright words! But what does reproof from you reprove? (26) Do you think that you can reprove words, when the speech of a despairing man is wind?”
Well we have at times been a friend to someone who is suffering or experienced suffering in our own lives and we may have said or done things similar to Job’s friends. Their thinking and our thinking at times is someone must have done something wrong to have all these bad things happening to them (other than being a poor sinful being). We question and dig like Job’s friends trying to figure out why this is happening. 99.99999999% we will be wrong. When we act like Job’s friends we are not being friends at all. We are withholding kindness, faithful love from them and we forsake the fear of the Almighty.
It’s not like we really don’t deserve the bad things that happen to use. We sin daily because we are sinful human beings. But most of our suffering is not from us committing any particular sinful act. We just live in a sinful world. Put it this way, if you rob a bank and you get shot, well there is a direct correlation there. If you are in the bank getting robbed and get shot, that’s just part of living in a sinful world.
What does Job need? What do you and I need when trouble befalls us? We need to have the presence of our friends, just to hold our hands, tell a funny story and remind us of the love God our Father has for us in Christ Jesus. We need to hear the assurance that God disciplines those he loves as sons and is using this trouble for our good. We need to hear the suffering we are undergoing is the cross assigned to us by God himself as these sufferings have been sanctified by Christ on the cross.
Paul in 2 Cor. 1 reminds us the sufferings of Christ overflow into our lives. He in the court of the high priest and the court of Pilate suffered our indignities. He took the blame for our sins, our rebellion. By his wounds we are healed for he has taken our sickness into himself. The Father punished him with what we truly deserve for our transgressions. Our part that was laid upon Christ; that which is our suffering is returned back to us sanctified. It is no longer our trials and tribulations but Jesus’. The cross is ours to bear but it has been made holy by the cross of Christ for our good. It won’t be pleasant. It’s not called a cross for nothing. But remember the word excruciating. Ex-from, crucis-the cross. It is our participation of Christ’crucifixion.
Lord Jesus Christ, we the sufferings of your cross overflow into our lives, may the comfort of your Father overflow even in greater abundance that we may be able to comfort others with the comfort you comfort us with. Amen.