Begin Again Page 5

chapter six

  Accept the Gift of Himself

  I had heard about you before, but now I have seen you.

  —JOB 42:5 TLB

  It all happened in one day. One day he could choose his tee time at the nicest golf course in the country; the next he couldn’t even be the caddie. One day he could Learjet across the country to see the heavyweight bout at the Las Vegas Mirage. The next he couldn’t afford a city bus across town.

  Talk about calm becoming chaos . . .

  The first thing to go is his empire. The market crashes; his assets tumble. What is liquid goes dry. What has been up goes down. Stocks go flat, and Job goes broke. There he sits in his leather chair by his soon-to-be-auctioned-off mahogany desk when the phone rings with news of calamity number two: the kids were at a resort for the holidays when a storm blew in and took them with it.

  Shell-shocked and dumbfounded, Job looks out the window into the sky that seems to be getting darker by the minute. He starts praying, telling God that things can’t get any worse . . . and that’s exactly what happens. He feels a pain in his chest that is more than last night’s ravioli. The next thing he knows, he is bouncing in an ambulance with wires stuck to his chest and needles stuck in his arm.

  He ends up tethered to a heart monitor in a hospital room, his only companion the beeps and alerts of medical machines.

  Not, however, that Job lacks for conversation.

  First there is his wife. Who could blame her for being upset after the week’s calamities? Who could blame her for telling Job to curse God? But to curse God and die? If Job didn’t already feel abandoned, you know he does the minute his wife tells him to pull the plug and be done with it.

  Then there are his friends. They have the bedside manner of a drill sergeant and the compassion of a chain-saw killer. A revised version of their theology might read like this: “Boy, you must have done something really bad! We know that God is good, so if bad things are happening to you, then you have been bad. Period.”

  Does Job take that lying down? Not hardly.

  “You are doctors who don’t know what they are doing,” he says. “Oh, please be quiet! That would be your highest wisdom.”1

  Translation? “Why don’t you take your philosophy back to the pigpen where you learned it?”

  “I’m not a bad man,” Job argues. “I paid my taxes. I’m active in civic duties. I’m a major contributor to United Way and a volunteer at the hospital bazaar.”

  Job is, in his eyes, a good man. And a good man, he reasons, deserves a good answer.

  “Your suffering is for your own good,” states Elihu, a young minister fresh out of seminary who hasn’t lived long enough to be cynical and hasn’t hurt enough to be quiet. He paces back and forth in the hospital room with his Bible under his arm and his finger punching the air.

  “God does all these things to a person—twice, even three times—to turn them back from the pit, that the light of life may shine on them.”2

  Job follows his pacing like you’d follow a tennis player, head turning from side to side. What the young man says isn’t bad theology, but it isn’t much comfort either. Job steadily tunes him out and slides lower and lower under the covers. His head hurts. His eyes burn. His legs ache. And he can’t stomach any more hollow homilies.

  Yet his question still hasn’t been answered: “God, why is this happening to me?”

  So God speaks.

  Out of the thunder he speaks. Out of the sky he speaks. For all of us who would put ditto marks under Job’s question and sign our names to it, he speaks.

  For the father who holds a rose taken off his son’s coffin, he speaks.

  For the wife who holds the flag taken off her husband’s casket, he speaks.

  For the couple with the barren womb and the fervent prayers, he speaks.

  For any person who has tried to see God through shattered glass, he speaks.

  For those of us who have dared to say, “If God is God, then . . . ,” God speaks.

  He speaks out of the storm and into the storm, for that is where Job is. That is where God is best heard.

  God’s voice thunders in the room. Elihu sits down. Job sits up. And the two will never be the same again.

  “Who is this that obscures my plans with words without knowledge?”3

  Job doesn’t respond.

  “Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me.”4

  “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell me, if you know so much.”5

  One question would have been enough for Job, but it isn’t enough for God.

  “Do you know how its dimensions were determined, and who did the surveying?” God asks. “What supports its foundations, and who laid its cornerstone as the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy?”6

  Questions rush forth. They pour like sheets of rain out of the clouds. They splatter in the chambers of Job’s heart with a wildness and a beauty and a terror that leave every Job who has ever lived drenched and speechless, watching the Master redefine who is who in the universe.

  Have you ever once commanded the morning to appear and caused the dawn to rise in the east? Have you ever told the daylight to spread to the ends of the earth, to end the night’s wickedness?7

  God’s questions aren’t intended to teach; they are intended to stun. They aren’t intended to enlighten; they are intended to awaken. They aren’t intended to stir the mind; they are intended to bend the knees.

  Has the location of the gates of death been revealed to you? Do you realize the extent of the earth? Tell me about it if you know! Where does the light come from, and how do you get there? Or tell me about the darkness. Where does it come from? Can you find its boundaries, or go to its source? But of course you know all this! For you were born before it was all created, and you are so very experienced!8

  Finally Job’s feeble hand lifts, and God stops long enough for him to respond. “I am nothing—how could I ever find the answers? I lay my hand upon my mouth in silence. I have said too much already.”9

  God’s message has connected:

  Job is a peasant, telling the King how to run the kingdom.

  Job is an illiterate, telling e. e. cummings to capitalize his personal pronouns.

  Job is the batboy, telling Babe Ruth to change his batting stance.

  Job is the clay, telling the potter not to press so hard.

  “I owe no one anything,” God declares in the crescendo of the wind. “Everything under the heaven is mine.”10

  Job couldn’t argue. God owes no one anything. No explanations. No excuses. No help. God has no debt, no outstanding balance, no favors to return. God owes no man anything.

  Which makes the fact that he gave us everything even more astounding.

  How you interpret this holy presentation is key. You can interpret God’s hammering speech as a divine in-your-face tirade if you want. You can use the list of unanswerable questions to prove that God is harsh, cruel, and distant. You can use the book of Job as evidence that God gives us questions and no answers. But to do so, you need some scissors. To do so, you need to cut out the rest of the book of Job.

  For that is not how Job heard it. All his life Job had been a good man. All his life he had believed in God. All his life he had discussed God, had notions about him, and had prayed to him.

  But in the storm Job sees him!

  He sees Hope. Lover. Destroyer. Giver. Taker. Dreamer. Deliverer.

  Job sees the tender anger of a God whose unending love is often received with peculiar mistrust. Job stands as a blade of grass against the consuming fire of God’s splendor. Job’s demands melt like wax as God pulls back the curtain and heaven’s light falls uneclipsed across the earth.

  Job sees God.

  God could turn away at this point. The gavel has been slammed; the verdict has been rendered. The Eternal Judge has spoken.

  Ah, but God is not angry with Job. Firm? Yes. Direct? No doubt. Clear and con
vincing? Absolutely. But angry? No.

  God is never irritated by the candle of an honest seeker.

  If you underline any passage in the book of Job, underline this one: “I had heard about you before, but now I have seen you.”11

  Job sees God—and that is enough.

  But it isn’t enough for God. He will give Job a chance to begin again.

  The years to come find Job once again sitting behind his mahogany desk with health restored and profits up. His lap is once again full of children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren—for four generations! A new beginning indeed.

  If Job ever wonders why God doesn’t bring back the children he has taken away, he doesn’t ask. Maybe he doesn’t ask because he knows that his children could never be happier than they are in the presence of this One he has seen so briefly.

  Something tells me that Job would do it all again if that’s what it would take to hear God’s voice and stand in his presence. Even if God left him with his bedsores and bills, Job would do it again.

  For God gave Job more than Job ever dreamed. God gave Job himself.

  chapter seven

  Rely On the Holy Spirit

  When you believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit.

  —EPHESIANS 1:13

  Why anyone would pester Hannah Lake is beyond me. If the sweet face of this ten-year-old doesn’t destarch your shirt, her cherubic voice will. But according to her dad a grade school bully tried to stir up some trouble. Intimidation tactics, pressure—the pest tried it all. But Hannah didn’t fold. And in the end it was not her dimples or tender voice but her faith that pulled her through.

  The older student warned Hannah to prepare for battle. “Any day now I’m coming after you.” Hannah didn’t flinch or cry. She simply informed the perpetrator about the facts. “Do whatever you need to do,” she explained. “But just know this: God is on my side.”

  Last word has it that no more threats have been made.

  Elementary school bullies don’t await you, but funeral homes do. Job transfers and fair-weather friends do. Challenges pockmark the pathway of your life. Where do you find energy to face them? God never promises an absence of distress on your new-beginning journey. But he does promise the assuring presence of his Holy Spirit.

  At first blush a person might assume that the Holy Spirit is all about the spectacular and stupendous. We’ve seen the television images of sweating preachers, fainting and falling audiences, unintelligible tongue speaking, and questionable miracle working. While no one would deny the pupil-popping nature of the Holy Spirit’s work (such as tongues of fire over the apostles’ heads), a focus on the phenomenal might lead you to miss his quieter stabilizing work.

  The Holy Spirit invisibly, yet indispensably, serves as a rudder for the ship of your soul, keeping you afloat and on track. This is no solo journey. Next time you feel as though it is, review some of the gifts the Spirit gives. For example, “you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is given as a pledge of our inheritance” (Eph. 1:13–14 NASB).

  The Spirit seals you. The verb sealed stirs a variety of images. To protect a letter, you seal the envelope. To keep air out of a jar, you seal its mouth with a rubber-ringed lid. To keep oxygen from the wine, you seal the opening with cork and wax. To seal a deal, you might sign a contract or notarize a signature. Sealing declares ownership and secures contents.

  The most famous New Testament “sealing” occurred with the tomb of Jesus. Roman soldiers rolled a rock over the entrance and “set a seal on the stone” (Matt. 27:66 NASB). Archaeologists envision two ribbons stretched in front of the entrance, glued together with hardened wax that bore the imprimatur of the Roman government—SPQR (Senatus Populusque Romanus)—as if to say, “Stay away! The contents of this tomb belong to Rome.” Their seal, of course, proved futile.

  The seal of the Spirit, however, proves forceful. When you accepted Christ, God sealed you with the Spirit. “When you believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit” (Eph. 1:13). When hell’s interlopers come seeking to snatch you from God, the seal turns them away. He bought you, owns you, and protects you. God paid too high a price to leave you unguarded. As Paul writes later, “Remember, he has identified you as his own, guaranteeing that you will be saved on the day of redemption” (Eph. 4:30 NLT).

  In his delightful book The Dance of Hope, my friend Bill Frey tells of a blind student named John, whom he tutored at the University of Colorado in 1951. One day Bill asked John how he had become blind. The sightless student described an accident that had happened in his teenage years. The tragedy took not just the boy’s sight but also his hope. He told Bill, “I was bitter and angry with God for letting it happen, and I took my anger out on everyone around me. I felt that since I had no future, I wouldn’t lift a finger on my own behalf. Let others wait on me. I shut my bedroom door and refused to come out except for meals.”

  His admission surprised Bill. The student he assisted displayed no bitterness or anger. He asked John to explain the change. John credited his father. Weary of the pity party and ready for his son to get on with life, he reminded the boy of the impending winter and told him to mount the storm windows. “Do the work before I get home or else,” the dad insisted, slamming the door on the way out.

  John reacted with anger. Muttering and cursing and groping all the way to the garage, he found the windows, stepladder, and tools and went to work. “They’ll be sorry when I fall off my ladder and break my neck.” But he didn’t fall. Little by little he inched around the house and finished the chore.

  The assignment achieved the dad’s goal. John reluctantly realized he could still work and began to reconstruct his life. Years later he learned something else about that day. When he shared this detail with Bill, his blind eyes misted. “I later discovered that at no time during the day had my father ever been more than four or five feet from my side.”1

  The father had no intention of letting the boy fall.

  Your Father has no intention of letting you fall, either. You can’t see him, but he is present. You are “shielded by God’s power” (1 Peter 1:5). He is “able to keep you from falling and to present you before his glory without fault and with unspeakable joy” (Jude v. 24 PHILLIPS).

  Drink deeply from this truth. God is able to keep you from falling! Does he want you living in fear? No! Just the opposite. “The Spirit we received does not make us slaves again to fear; it makes us children of God. With that Spirit we cry out, ‘Father.’ And the Spirit himself joins with our spirits to say we are God’s children” (Rom. 8:15–16 NCV).

  What an intriguing statement. Deep within you God’s Spirit confirms with your spirit that you belong to him. Beneath the vitals of the heart, God’s Spirit whispers, “You are mine. I bought you and sealed you, and no one can take you.” The Spirit offers an inward, comforting witness.

  He is like a father who walks hand in hand with his little child. The child knows he belongs to his daddy, his small hand happily lost in the large one. He feels no uncertainty about his papa’s love. But suddenly the father, moved by some impulse, swings his boy up into the air and into his arms and says, “I love you, Son.” He puts a big kiss on the bubbly cheek and lowers the boy to the ground, and the two go on walking together.

  Has the relationship between the two changed? On one level no. The father is no more the father than he was before the expression of love. But on a deeper level yes. The dad drenched, showered, and saturated the boy in love. God’s Spirit does the same with us. “The love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us” (Rom. 5:5 NKJV). Note the preposition of. The Holy Spirit pours the love of God in our hearts, not love for God. God hands a bucket of love to the Spirit and instructs, “Douse their hearts.”

  There are moments when the Spirit enchants us with sweet rhapsody. You belong to the Father. Signed, sealed, and soon-to-be delivered. Been a while since you heard him whisper words
of assurance? Then tell him. He’s listening to you. And—get this!—he’s speaking for you.

  The Spirit comes to the aid of our weakness. We do not even know how we ought to pray, but through our inarticulate groans the Spirit himself is pleading for us, and God who searches our inmost being knows what the Spirit means, because he pleads for God’s own people in God’s own way. (Rom. 8:26–27 NEB)

  The Spirit comes to the aid of our weakness. What a sentence worthy of a highlighter. Who does not need this reminder? Weak bodies. Weak wills. Weakened resolves. We’ve known them all. The word weakness can refer to physical infirmities, as with the invalid who had been unable to walk for thirty-eight years (John 5:5), or spiritual impotence, as with the spiritually “helpless” of Romans 5:6 (NLT).

  Whether we are feeble of soul or body or both, how good to know it’s not up to us. “The Spirit himself is pleading for us.”

  Imagine: your value to God is so great that your needs top the Holy Spirit’s to-do list. Did you have any idea that your needs are being described in heaven? The Holy Spirit “prays for us with groanings that cannot be expressed in words. And the Father who knows all hearts knows what the Spirit is saying, for the Spirit pleads for us believers in harmony with God’s own will” (Rom. 8:26–27 NLT).

  As I write, I’m thinking of a pandemic that has clouded our planet and of those people whose lives have been derailed by the virus. The COVID-19–infected man is isolated. He has no voice, no clout, and no influence. But he has a friend. And his friend speaks on his behalf. The impoverished orphan of Russia, the distraught widow of the battlefield, the aging saint in the convalescent home—they may think they have no voice, no clout, no influence. But they have a friend—a counselor, a comforter—the blessed Spirit of God, who speaks the language of heaven in heaven. “He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans. He . . . keeps us present before God” (vv. 26–27 THE MESSAGE).