THE BEAT e125 God Uses My Repentant Heart to Bring Others to Repentance. Think Job.

This is Faith to Witness 99, motivating us to hear God and share the Shepherd.  

Season 2 Episode 125

THE BEAT | God Uses My Repentant Heart to Bring Others to Repentance. Think Job.

Quick Take 

Hey human, in this episode we consider Job, his suffering, and those zealous friends. And a gem of an epilogue that shows just how God works through our repentance to bring others to him. e125. Thanks for listening.

How is God turned toward you today?

I’m Kathryn Bise, your host.

What should we do with the story of Job? The apostle James tells us in James 5:11 that Job is an example of perseverance and suffering.

I should note that this is a journal entry of my “live” Bible read thru going on for the next two months. If you want to check-in on my journaling journey, check me out on KathrynABise@substack.com

On this note, Job doesn’t come after Genesis in the Bible because it is not historical narrative. It is considered a poetic book, but Job lived in the Land of Ur, and likely along with the patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, Jacob) based on cultural clues in the book of Job.

I think it gives the historical narrative deeper dimension to know that as the patriarchal players (the “big dawgs”) are making their way to the land of Canaan, there are many “Job-like” folks in a relationship with God, finding their way, tripping over their own human condition every day. Scraping their skin with broken pottery.

Ewe. (Sorry.)

God’s Conversation with Satan

Seems everyone knows this story, believers and non-believers alike. Job loses everything as a very wealthy man. God and Satan have a conversation. One of the things that keeps me so engaged in God’s story is the conversations He has with His people. This one though, with Satan, makes me want to go hide in my closet. I want to hear it. But I don’t want Satan seeing me hear it. With this reading though, it jumped out how calm our God is, with no hesitation, no fear, no having to “drink a Red Bull” to pump up for it. He confronted the enemy of enemies, remember, He knew Satan from before his fallen-angel days.

From that conversation, God agrees to put Job in circumstances void of blessings. It starts with taking away livestock, staff, then his family, and finally self-affliction. Job is left with nothing except terrible pain from disease, and all that goes with it. On the outset Job praises God and does not “charge God with wrongdoing.” But as it continues, he says: “What I feared has come upon me; what I dreaded has happened to me.” Job 3:25 If I had to name one thing that will destroy spiritual growth the most, right now I think it is fear. It consumes, it is not from God, and like a train going the wrong way, fear causes me to jump the God-track and go another way.

Job goes on to refer to the “anguish of his spirit and says:

“I will complain in the bitterness of my soul.” Job 7:11

There is something about bitterness that just doesn’t belong in my soul.

And About Job’s Friends

His three friends—Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zohar—have been duly judged by many as doing a very poor job of consoling Job, but what I want to come back to is how they verbally navigate God’s nature to try to “school” Job. It’s a lesson to be learned about how not to use God in the conversation. They try to witness to Job, bear witness to God’s nature. Why is it not working, why does it misrepresent?

At one point, Job points this out, when he questions them, that he already knows these things about God. Why are they telling him?

I want God to show me this interchange up close and personal. But not today. Another episode. Another time. So, I am tagging this to return to: my witness is to show God’s nature, not talk about it, and also the human condition, and the state of heart (not mind) we are to be in to be in God’s presence. To be able to have a conversation with him. So much to discover in this interchange between 3 friends and the man who lost everything at God’s hand.

In Chapter 23 Job begins to show a “longing” for finding God. A shift away from his misery, and toward His creator.

In Job Ch 29:4 Job defines his relationship with God as an “intimate friendship” when he was in his prime. That this friendship blessed his house. Yet, when Job finished his final defense in ch 31, when he said God “will know that I am blameless” I wrote in the margin: “We do not deserve his mercy.” I meant this is the origin of repentance. Thinking we have no sin.

Warm-up Act, Elihu, Then God Speaks

Elihu enters, a young guy. I think he is an angel.

Ch 32:8 is everything.

Job 32:8

“But it is the spirit in a person, the breath of the Almighty. that gives them understanding.” Yikes! God breathed into Adam’s nostrils. The “breath of life” is used throughout the Old Testament to mean the essence, the nature of God.

 

He points out that to his sin, Job adds rebellion. I know this, personally and as a way humans justify a lifestyle. Elihu asks Job to consider the wonders of God. This alone could be a one-act, one person play. So good, and I think of it as the warm-up act, because what?

God enters.

 Chapter 38 and 39 should be read out loud. I’ll help jumpstart you. Please return to it.

Job 38:1-11

The Lord Speaks

38 Then the Lord spoke to Job out of the storm. He said:

2 “Who is this that obscures my plans

    with words without knowledge?

3 Brace yourself like a man;

    I will question you,

    and you shall answer me.

4 “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?

    Tell me, if you understand.

5 Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!

    Who stretched a measuring line across it?

6 On what were its footings set,

    or who laid its cornerstone—

7 while the morning stars sang together

    and all the angels[a] shouted for joy?

8 “Who shut up the sea behind doors

    when it burst forth from the womb,

9 when I made the clouds its garment

    and wrapped it in thick darkness,

10 when I fixed limits for it

    and set its doors and bars in place,

11 when I said, ‘This far you may come and no farther;

    here is where your proud waves halt’?

 

Chapter 40, verse 7, we should hear this every day, what God said to Job then. “Brace yourself like a man. I will question you and you will answer me.”

Answer God, Kathryn.

Job responds in chapter 42:

42 Then Job replied to the Lord:

2 “I know that you can do all things;

    no purpose of yours can be thwarted.

3 You asked, ‘Who is this that obscures my plans without knowledge?’

    Surely I spoke of things I did not understand,

    things too wonderful for me to know.

4 “You said, ‘Listen now, and I will speak;

    I will question you,

    and you shall answer me.’

5 My ears had heard of you

    but now my eyes have seen you.

6 Therefore I despise myself

    and repent in dust and ashes.”

Job repents in his mortality. His eyes are the window to his soul. I can’t take it. “I see you, God” as Job said, “because you saw me, first.”

Most commentaries, sermons, messages I have read, heard use Job’s story to flag pride and the path to a repentant heart. True, true, true. But for me, this time, there is more. As is always true of God drawing us closer to His abundant spirit.

Repentance is a Spiritual Path to What?

So, a powerful insight I return to write about today. The epilogue of Job. Job repents, and God uses Job’s repentance to bring his three friends to repentance.

Let’s read it:

Job 42:7-10

Epilogue

7 After the Lord had said these things to Job, he said to Eliphaz the Temanite, “I am angry with you and your two friends, because you have not spoken the truth about me, as my servant Job has. 8 So now take seven bulls and seven rams and go to my servant Job and sacrifice a burnt offering for yourselves. My servant Job will pray for you, and I will accept his prayer and not deal with you according to your folly. You have not spoken the truth about me, as my servant Job has.” 9 So Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite did what the Lord told them; and the Lord accepted Job’s prayer.

10 After Job had prayed for his friends, the Lord restored his fortunes and gave him twice as much as he had before.

Matthew 3:8, the words of John the Baptist, for the Pharisees and Sadducees, and for us:

Matthew 3:8

8 Produce fruit in keeping with repentance.

Job’s repentance serves as the intermediary between God and the folly of Job’s 3 friends. To be a witness, we are an example of what God is doing in our lives, and it starts with a repentant heart. Our repentance, our humility, pouring out our self-reliance before God, lays a spiritual path, turns God’s ear toward us, AND those we are witnessing to, those who think they know, but need someone to bear witness to repentance in their own life. Job prayed, and God responded. Job prayed out of his repentance. God made Job’s repentance the path to their forgiveness.

And this pouring out of our self-reliance, is a daily practice. To lay the next path. It is what makes it possible for us to lift up prayers on behalf of other humans.

God responds to a repentant heart.

Job lived 140 years. He saw his children and their children to the fourth generation.

A Repentant Heart is at the Center of My Witness

Thank you, Lord. Your story fills my heart and spills over the brim into my soul. It flushes out the bitterness and brings my witness to the eyes of others. The 1, or 2, or 3, all those you are sending my way. For sure, the 1 who needs a trail marker to a path to repentance. Let me not forget that it always starts here. A repentant heart is at the center of my witness.