Job - Continued

As I mentioned in my last post, I wanted to share some of the cool “nuggets” from the commentary I read on the book of Job (“The Gospel According to Job” by Mike Mason, all thoughts below are from this book) in honor of the book of Job we read last week (sorry I have not been able to post this sooner). Notes: 1) There were many great points in the book and it was difficult to narrow them down to a few, but here are some that I really liked. 2) The structure of the book: the author took a verse or group of verses from the Job, broke it down, then provided life applications based on the verse(s). The following are thoughts/life applications drawn from the verses in Job.

Job 33:1-2
One of the principle lessons of the book is the need to wait upon the Lord and persistently seek Him though times of darkness. Without painful waiting, true faith would be impossible.

Job 36:16
Often unhappiness merely signals that the Lord is about to open some new door for us, or to unveil some new facet to our character. Happiness may be given to us not so much for our own comfort, as to enable us to bring relief to someone else in need.

Job 23:16-17
Without fear, one does not take evil seriously. Yet without comfort, one cannot take a stand against it.

Job 26:7, 14
Throughout the bible the things of nature are immensely significant as living signs of our Creator’s glory. Yet more than that, they are signs of the inestimable worth of His highest creature, human beings. Just to look into the eyes of the most miserable and repulsive person on earth is to be closer to God, in truth, than when gazing at a flowery meadow or starry sky. Stars are finite things, but a human being can go on forever. A flower can develop only so much and be only so beautiful, but for people there are no such limits.

Job 27:2
Faith is the ability to tolerate the intolerable paradox of God’s clear and undisputed title as Lord of the universe in spite of His apparent absence.

Job 31:13-15
What makes an act truly great is not its bigness, but the purity of heart of the one who performs it.

Job 34:33
We do have free will, but it is the freedom to make just one choice: Christ. If we do not choose for Christ, then already we have chosen not to be free. We have thus abdicated our freedom. We are not free but are in the grip of something we might call fate, a kind of self-determined prison existing outside the freedom which is only to be found in Christ.

(There are many more great points, but I need to go to bed, sooooo sleeeeepy hehe)