FINDING GOD IN THE EMPTINESS OF LIFE
“Running on Empty”
Job 14:14 and John 11:25
We have spent nearly 3 months now on Wednesday evenings studying the book of Job. The story of Job is one of the best known in the entire Bible yet it is still one of the least understood. Most of us at one time or another have referred to someone is having the patience of Job for some of us that is about all that we know about the story. There are several things in the book I have noticed about this story as I have been preparing each week to teach.
(1) It is the story of a man who had great patience. In the area of patience I believe he is light years ahead of all of us, certainly me.
(2) It is the story of a man who experienced great loss. He lost his children, home, livelihood. Then he has almost zero support as far as a support system to help him.
(3) It is a story about the importance of how we choose our friends. Because when Job really needed help, all they do is criticize. All of us have to be careful about how we choose our friends because there comes a time for all of when we will really need them.
(4) It is the story of a man who went from being extremely successful-his life was filled with every blessing imaginable-then he fell about as far as you can imagine. Everything fell apart and for a period of time, Job was lonely, depressed and sitting at rock-bottom. He was the picture of emptiness.
Some of you have felt that you have walked in Job’s sandals. So hopefully there are some insights we can gain as we see how he worked through his trials and tribulations. There several phrases that come to mind for me it must describe how Job felt.
• Job was at rock bottom. We understand those words. Even if we haven’t been there we all know someone who has.
• He was empty. Without hope. We could even use the word depressed. Embrace it comes to mind for me is that he was running on empty.
Basically the book no tells us things that we need to understand to get hold of the purpose of this book.
1. Job was considered to be a righteous man. Scripture says he was the most righteous man in the East. He was a man of great faith.
2. job was a very blessed man. A wife and 10 children. He was a family man.
3. Job owned 7000 sheep/goats, 3000 camels, 500 yoke of oxen, 500 donkeys had many servants. Job had great fortune.
4. There was no one else like him. He feared God and turned away from evil. He was a God-fearing man.
5. Job was a man who had friends.
But tragedy strikes and everything he owned was taken from him. He lost his home, his means of earning a living, his children and his servants. Then just when you would think there was nothing else to lose, he lost his health. Joe was afflicted memorials from the top of his head to the soles of his feet.
Then for a moment it seems there is hope for him-his three friends come to see him. They are discouraged by everything that is happening so they basically tell him to just go ahead and die. They must’ve done something wrong-committed some sort of sin…. Something that he has not asked forgiveness for and everything that has happened is all his fault. If all of this is not enough, his wife advises him to just curse God and die.
So empty does not begin to describe Job’s life at this point. He is beyond empty ---he hits rock bottom and in chapter 14 he poses this question to God; if a man dies will he live again? In the midst of all of Job’s trials and troubles he was searching for meaning in life. We do too. All of us search for meaning when bad things happen and if we are honest we often come up empty. And the reason is that too often we look in the wrong places. Job was a man who had it all and suddenly lost it all. And when he did, his friends gave him one piece of advice after another----his wife gave up on him and Job could say well it’s just you and me God and I’m not so sure about you. I got nothin’. Everything is gone.
There is likely not one here today who hasn’t walked through a time when you felt alone. Not one of us who hasn’t felt the pain of grief and loss and some have felt the pain of losing everything you have financially. But not discounting anything you have been through I want you to consider two statements.
• The sum total of everything (difficult) you and I have experienced does not surpass the difficulty Jon experienced. Again.
? Loss of family
? Loss of fortune and fame
? Loss of friends
? Loss of faith
Job must have felt that the whole world had run out of him.
• As bad as things were Job made it to the other side. You will too. If God can turn Job’s situation around and it is worse than yours, he can certainly do the same for you.
Let me share with you some things we need to remember when we are running on empty. When we have hit rock bottom. When we are running on empty.
1. God has not forgotten about you. In his book, Our God is too small, JB Philips describes a variety of ways we see God and then reminds us why these views are not accurate.
• Some see God as a policeman---only noticing when we do something wrong
• Others see God as being just like our parents. Could be good. Or not. Either way, it’s not adequate.
• A switchboard operator. Putting through one prayer at a time. Wait your turn! I’ll get to you!
And all of this theology shares one thing in common. It stinks. It’s stinking thinking and as a line ball, redeemed, saved, forgiven believer in the Lord Jesus Christ I believe we actually know better.
No matter what you might be facing, never forget that God loves you and that he has not forgotten about you.
2. Recognize that life will contain trials. You and I are not the first to experience a trial, nor will we be the last. Jesus said, in this life you WILL have trials and tribulations. Nor are we the first ones to think that our trials must be the worst. We will face trials yet we are shocked when they occur. And one of the first things that comes out of our mouths is “God, this is not supposed to happen to me. Why me Lord? I just don’t understand.”
3. At some point we need to come to grips with the fact that we may be part of the problem. You may have played a part in whatever the whatever catastrophe aim and. Teddy Roosevelt our 26th president said if I could kick the person in the pants who is responsible for most of my troubles, I wouldn’t be able to sit down for a month.
If you are in a bad situation right now, deep down you know whether or not you are responsible, right? So if you immediately know that you are not the cause, then move on. It’s the best thing to do. But if you think you are to blame, the advice is pretty much the same. Move On. It’s the best thing to do. Learn from it. But beating yourself up over it and heaping guilt on yourself will not solve anything. We make mistakes but making the same ones over and over…That’s what insanity is right? Repeating the same behavior over and over thinking somehow this time it’s going to work. It won’t. So move on.
4. Choose not to live by your emotions. Often we feel a certain way so we think this must be right otherwise I wouldn’t feel this way. Rarely can we trust our feelings; our emotions. We have to stop allowing our feelings to guide our thoughts. Instead let your thoughts shape your feelings, allow truth to shape your feelings. Do not allow your life to be ruled by your emotions. Instead, focus on the facts. The truth. We say:
God no longer cares. God says cast all your cares on Him
I’m not good enough. You are a child of the king.
I can’t do anything. I can do all things through Christ.
This verse really struck me several years ago so I took my dictionary and cut out the word impossible. Nothing is impossible with Christ.
5. When you hit rock bottom, remember Jesus is the rock and the rock is always solid. When we hit rock bottom the only way to go is up.
Look at this. If you have never reached rock bottom, you have never attended the school of greatness. Mark it down. If a person achieves true greatness they will have to graduate from the school of trials and tribulations. We come back now and look at Job. Job is not well known for all of the trials that he faced. He is well known because of how he faced those trials. All of us have trials. Many choose to give up. But not Job. Job lost absolutely everything but he came back around to the greatest truth in life. He said, I KNOW my redeemer lives. In all of the emptiness he found fullness once again in Jesus Christ. He came to a life changing conclusion…. I KNOW my redeemer lives. God began then to reconstruct every single area of His life. He was even more blessed than before. He wants to do the same with us. Don’t allow your trails to cause you to give up before the blessings arrive. It is possible you will look back on where you are today and realize it wasn’t as bad as you thought. Now is not the time to give up.
In 1952, young Florence Chadwick stepped into the waters of the Pacific Ocean off Catalina Island, determined to swim to the shore of mainland California. She’d already been the first woman to swim the English Channel both ways. The weather was foggy and chilly; she could hardly see the boats accompanying her. Still, she swam for fifteen hours. When she begged to be taken out of the water along the way, her mother, in a boat alongside, told her she was close and that she could make it. Finally, physically and emotionally exhausted, she stopped swimming and was pulled out. It wasn’t until she was on the boat that she discovered the shore was less than half a mile away.
At a news conference the next day she said, “All I could see was the fog .… I think if I could have seen the shore, I would have made it.”
