Rediscover the power of Responsibility

I think we all have days where we feel like Job, that the whole world is out for me and that God has left me to my own devices.

 

Job, that poor man, was a good and honest man, deeply faithful and rich in both material and spiritual ways. But Job, because of his holiness, was chosen by God and Satin to undergo a test of sorts, a test of his resolve.

 

The devil was convinced that any human would crumble under stress renounce God and give himself over to satin.

 

So what did poor Job have to deal with?

 

·         Death of his children

·         Loss of his money

·         Loss of his land

·         Loss of his friends

·         Illness

 

And so on, the devil poured it all on, thick as he could, leavening little room for faith to enter Job at all. But Job took stock, and held strong to his faith.

 

Yep, and we think we have it bad, just look at poor Job, he lost it all. If you have never read the book of Job I would recommend it, by the time you get done with it you will think “My problems are not so bad”. Yep, the book of Job will put your life in to perspective.

I think that’s what the book is about, perspective. Job’s friends could not understand why Job just didn’t give up on God, it was obvious to them that God gave up on him, But Job held strong, sure he had him moments of weakness, but in the end the faith of Job got him through it all.

In today’s economic situations there are probable a lot of people who feel like Job, that God must be testing them, that they are part of a game between the devil and God. I would have to say, ummm… NO. I would have to venture to guess that it most likely is a problem created by our own sins, unlike Job who did nothing wrong, we have created this mess on our own. We have over purchased and indulged ourselves in to a life style that had to fall, we could not keep it up forever, so now it comes crashing down. Life has a way of correcting itself, and this is the correction.

We have sinned through our gluttony of wants:

·         Large House

·         Lattes electronic gadgets

·         Best Cars

·         Name brand mania

We decided somewhere along the way that these items and many others had become entitlements, that for some reason we were owed them. And if we were not given them we would get them on our own some way or another. The world and especially America has become selfish, we want the best of everything and we want it now! Except we had no way to pay for it, so we are paying for it now.

Times are only going to get harder, the sooner we learn that we are not owed anything from the government that we are responsible for our own failures, the sooner we will recover. President Obama has signed in to law the largest spending bill in the history of the United States, in fact if you added all the spending bills from the time of the first President until President Bush, this one bill President Obama signed is larger than the total of them all. Think about that for a second…. We are looking to a government that is willing to spend us in to poverty to rescue us! We are looking to the government to fix our problems when we should be looking to God and to ourselves. Haven’t we learned yet?

How much more will it take for us to see that we must be responsible for ourselves, that the government is not the answer to our problems. How slow are we to learn that spending will not lead us to a sound economic recovery. When will we see that government oversight of our lives, that a nanny state is not true authentic freedom? How many more lives must be sacrificed to the god of government before we understand that government is there to assist us in our lives, not to provide us with our lives.

God was reluctant to give the Israelites a King, when they asked God for one He was concerned because God understands the human heart and mind better than we. God knew that the human heart and mind would gravitate to the king, and soon the king would replace God as the one we placed our trust in. Job knew were his trust was, his trust was in God and nothing would remove that trust. Job did not have a government to pass trillion dollar spending bills to bail him out; Job relied on God and His mercy, not on government and her hand outs.

The bible has lessons for us to still learn, take some time this lent and read the book of Job; rediscover the power of God in the lives of is people. Rediscover the power of responsibility and see the mercy of God working in your life.

Paul