Sackcloth and Ashes: Travels with Job (8)
“I cry out to You for help, but You do not answer me; I stand up, and You turn Your attention against me. “You have become cruel to me;” Job 30:20-21 NASB
Not answer – And what if God doesn’t answer? What if we never hear from Him? What if we live those thirteen years of silence like Abraham? What then? After we stop talking, after there is nothing left to say, we arrive at another stage—despair.
There are a lot of synonyms for despair. Some of them still leave a little room for change. Disheartened, for example, suggests a temporary condition. Unhappiness is the same. Melancholy, pessimism, discouragement—all with a sliver of light at the end of the tunnel. But then there’s hopelessness, anguish, desperation and wretchedness. These, I’m afraid, are much closer to Job’s experience. And perhaps ours.
What sliver of hope can you give to a woman who has been selling her body for twelve years in order that she and her children will not starve? You can give her food for today, and maybe tomorrow, but her real circumstances don’t change. She will still have to go to that dingy room with another client. Hopelessness. The psychological barrier must be in place to live like this. It wasn’t different for her mother. It won’t be different for her. And probably not for her daughter either. This is the real world—evil, dehumanizing, ruthless.
But, of course, we don’t have to live on the streets of Calcutta or Jakarta or Kinshasa to know what hopelessness feels like. All we need is a continuously broken relationship, a loss of purpose, a feeling of being lost in a heartless world. All we need are 900 Facebook friends who don’t know our emptiness. A peer group that rejects us. A parent who doesn’t care. That’s when we need to hear from a God who loves, and His silence is deafening.
Don’t we wish we could have the faith of others? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if somehow we could just experience that warm feeling of acceptance they talk about, that intimate conversation with “Father” that seems to escape us? What is wrong with us? We try to believe. We try to imagine God cares. We ratchet up our spiritual expectations and do what we can to be worthy of His voice. But it doesn’t come. Day after day we wait. We are not Elijah, commanding the sign of His presence. We are Job, cursing our own existence. Something is wrong with the world and we don’t know how to fix it.
Do you think that despair is a stop on the journey toward faith? Surely God cannot have planned this route. But here we are. God didn’t save us from this emptiness. The only question we have left is this: Will He? Will He look upon our misery and rescue us now?
Do you suppose that those who truly love are the ones who have known the depths of rejection?
Topical Index: despair, not answer, Job 3:20-21
What did I find in the “depths of (my) rejection”? Utter, incontrovertible proof that expectations are only setups for disappointment. The ‘hope’ the world and the flesh employ is expectation. Expectations are a poor substitute for the real stuff, y’all. I had to decide to quit that bad habit once and for all. Being burned to the bone makes it easy to quit!
We start out thinking we know the good stuff like love, hope, trust and joy. Y’all, I have decided we ‘don’t know nuttin'”. The flesh has its nefarious substitutes for all of it, and we get taught these things as if they were the truth. Conversely, we learn to fear all the really good stuff, like vulnerability, real faith that does not need to ‘know’ the future, real forgiveness (yes, the world has a counterfeit for forgiveness, too!), and real function (connection). In fact, we can go to church itself and learn this fake stuff from unsanctified, earnest folks but, then, when we try it and it fails us, we conclude that that religion stuff does not work!
I have concluded that experience is the only way we can KNOW, as in Biblical know (experience), the truth. Only experience can show us what we need to be set free FROM. Only when we can see the fake poser unfruitful ‘righteousness’ the world has to teach us will we be able to repent and become willing to start over.
I had to start over.
Disaster gave me a ticket to doubt and I took it. Despair sold me that ticket, and the bleak outlook I had convinced me that I had nothing to lose. I was right! I didn’t! This is the level it takes to turn loose trust in the flesh by means of that doubt. I did not say trust in my real self, which we can only find in Christ. There is a difference, but we won’t be able to tell that difference unless and until the experience of utter despair in the flesh can convince us that that cistern is irreparably broken. The flesh stays alive, kicking and screaming, all the way down to the very bottom.
Jonah discovered his flesh in the belly of the fish. I bet he remembered the associated stink for the rest of his life! I, too, will never forget that utter bleakness that convinced me that the flesh – mine or others’ – had nothing to offer me. I hit bottom. Y’all, its as awful as we can possibly fear that it is, but as necessary. My flesh had to get on board the glory train, because the spirit can’t leave without it. Despair was what convinced my flesh to buy a ticket out of hell.
This is getting pretty grim! Our life does get very challenging with the Lord, our faith is constantly being challenged.
This causes me to be reminded of how life would be without (Mercy) guidance I would be without hope also .
Prayer is the only answer ,He pursues us,then, and only then does His indwelling comfort come.
Getting grim because Job must endure grim. So must we if we are on Job’s path. Not all of us are, but those who are know that they are.
I think I know the difference,? PLEASE explain.
I’m not sure about your question. The difference between what?
Shalom I apologize for the late response, if you don’t answer I don’t understand due to the timing of the post.. the answer May clarify for me and for all of us. Your comment we must know whether we are on job’s path or not some of us know and some of us don’t how do you know the difference?
OK, if you mean the difference between being on the path with Job or not being on the path, then I would suggest that it is a matter of the emotional and physical effects of suffering. Especially the emotional part, since suffering in Scripture is not simply physical. When you are in the midst of really questioning the purpose of your life, the benevolence of God, the seeming meaninglessness of existence, and when all that brings you to the edge of despair, to a point where you can’t imagine continuing to live, then I think you know you are close to Job.
Yes, the ones that truly love ARE the ones who have known the depths of rejection. When I tell someone “I love you,” it is not sexual at all. It comes from a deep fraternal love that is very deep and abiding. If I tell someone outside my family those 3 words, it means I sense there is some kind of common bond between us, I don’t care what sins they have committed, and I accept them and truly love them for who they are, warts and all. When I spontaneously say it, I really mean it. When you constantly live in the depths of despair and agony, you have only a few choices. You can be bitter and hateful, despising life. You can forgive and move on. You can cry, which is okay. You can accept the hopeless feelings and press on because you have to. Otherwise, suicide might be your only option. You can choose to open your eyes to those around you, love people deeply, and encourage them. We should do this because everyone has pain whether or not they admit it; you don’t like pain yourself, and you should want to ease the pain in others. Whether they love you back is irrelevant; although it would be really nice to know and to have your pain eased a bit. The last thing you want is to be belittlied and mocked to add to your misery. Love is a healing balm that heals wounds which counseling, money, and things just can’t fully reach and mend. Those each still have their place and purpose. When you are in a place of hopelessness and despair, there is nothing left in life but to decide which people you are going to love, tell them so, hold them, and encourage them. Just keep it fraternal, don’t cross the line of the sexual; that would really screw things up. Maybe the end of the tunnel of despair will come someday, you won’t ever know unless you hold out for it. To do that, we need a glimmer of hope; I think love can provide that, especially when God seems silent. I think that God speaks to us through others to remind us that He does indeed love us and that this season has its purpose even if we can’t see it as He does. It may not even be to mold us into His image or test us, but to mold others into His and to test them. One of God’s goals for us is to live together in shalom. How can that happen without love, concern, and compassion?
“Do you suppose that those who truly love are the ones who have known the depths of rejection?”
I do suppose that is true. Though just knowing the depths of rejection has not been enough for me to learn to truly love. For my heart has also become bitter and hardened, I have drawn back in fear, and my love has grown cold. In my experiences and sense of rejection, I must, instead, come to know the depths of the perfect love that comes from Messiah Yeshua and the Father. I must forgive my offenders and be truly healed of my own broken heartedness by the impartation of His. And I must be filled with and abide in His love if I am to be one of those who truly loves.
And there is another way to become one of those who truly loves. It is also written that Messiah said, “For this reason I tell you, her sins, which are many, have been forgiven—for she loved much. But the one who is forgiven little, loves little.” [Luk 7:47]
So, it seems that not only knowing the depths of rejection can be a precondition to being one who of those who truly loves, but being forgiven of many sins also is another prerequisite to becoming one of those who truly loves. And by this, I don’t think it’s necessarily the frequency, longevity, or even severity of one’s sins that, when forgiven, causes one to truly love, but one’s knowledge and conviction of their sins, His righteousness, and His judgement of their sin all in the light of His righteousness – the purpose of the coming of the Ruach HaKodesh – which makes for such a great sense of His forgiveness and causes one to be so humbled and to become one of those who truly loves.
Neither my experiences and sense of rejection nor my many sins have ever, in and of themselves, made me a person who truly loves. But when I have gone to Messiah Yeshua and the Father with my rejection and with my sins, and I have received His perfect love for deliverance and healing, and I have remorsefully repented of my sin and received His mercy and forgiveness, that is when I have experienced becoming a more humble, whole, and a truly loving person. But how sad and frustrating that I can seem to so quickly re-experience these pitiful conditions of my soul. That is why I must ever so perseveringly strive to enter into and abide in His rest. I must strive to abide in His perfect love.
I may cry out to Him, and He may ever remain silent, while I ever remain in the suffering external conditions of my life. However, I know that there is a faith that is pleasing to Him. And it is the faith that believes that He is and He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. And this is what it means to diligently seek Him…..seek Him until rewards me…..seek Him until I find HIM! For that is what pleases Him…..to reward me with finding HIM!
“Then you will call on Me, and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. You will seek Me and find Me, when you will search for Me with all your heart. [Jer 29:12-13]
Hunger, physically and spiritually, is an interesting animal. There are times when a starving person will want to gorge themselves to be filled, but this is with the ordinary, the food that the world holds out to us.
But then there’s the food that’s beyond description. It’s not to just be filled with, with no sense of taste, texture or sweetness. It’s the food that pervades our senses and overwhelms us with goodness and flavor unspeakable.
It may not come along often, but when it does, our soul, and maybe our spirit too are satisfied, and we can go on with the drugry of existence in a tasteless world.