Pain, Perplexity & Promotion: A Prophetic Interpretation of the Book of Job by Bob Sorge; Joy Dawson

Author:Bob Sorge; Joy Dawson
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Biblical Studies, Religion, Bible, Biblical Commentary, Old Testament
ISBN: 9780962118562
Publisher: Oasis House
Published: 1999-06-13T22:00:00+00:00

Thirteen

Seeking Fervently

God’s purpose in making you desperate for Him is that you might seek Him more fervently than you ever have in all your life. It's the impassioned pursuit of God that changes us. “And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart” (Jeremiah 29:13).

Here’s what this kind of desperate seeking looks like:

• You turn away from the fulfillment of social relationships with other people and are driven into the secret place of solitude with God where you seek His face. “And he took for himself a potsherd with which to scrape himself while he sat in the midst of the ashes” (2:8).

(Nobody resorts to the ashes of solitude with God on their own volition, they are driven there in desperation.)

• You devour the Bible as food for a dying man. You search the Scriptures from cover to cover, frantically scouring the pages and tunneling into every verse for life-giving manna. (The Scriptures become manna for us when the Holy Spirit quickens the sacred writings to our heart by His awesome power.) These small fragments of God-breathed manna become your survival and source of sanity.

• You spend wholesale chunks of time staring at God, waiting upon Him in prayer and vigilant contemplation. “Behold, as the eyes of servants look to the hand of their masters, as the eyes of a maid to the hand of her mistress, so our eyes look to the LORD our God, until He has mercy on us” (Psalm 123:2). You believe that exposing yourself to His fiery presence will bring the change for which you pant. Job’s friends “sat down with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him” (2:13). They joined Job in seven days of silent staring, but for Job this was a long-term commitment.

• Spiritual disciplines such as fasting, solitude, and selfdenial are used gratefully as the gifts God intended them to be—vehicles which enable us to intensify our pursuit of Christ. Referring to fasting, Job said, “I have not departed from the commandment of His lips; I have treasured the words of His mouth more than my necessary food” (23:12).

Few have been driven to this desperation, and thus few have known the life-transforming power of this kind of seeking after God.

The Great Theological Tension

Job articulates a great theological tension which is of critical importance in maintaining a passionate pursuit of God. Theology dictates behavior. What you believe in this theological tension will determine whether you seek God passionately to the desired fulfillment, or whether you give up prematurely and abort God’s purposes in the crucible.

Here’s the tension articulated:

“'For I know that my Redeemer lives, and He shall stand at last on the earth; and after my skin is destroyed, this I know, that in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another. How my heart yearns within me!’” (19:25-27).

On the one hand, Job knew that his Redeemer would stand at last on the earth.

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