The Perfect Storm Of Job Series

But what I want to share with you today is that it is RIGHT THERE… right there in the ‘smack dab middle’ of the storm… that is where we can learn some of life’s most important lessons… they became apparent for Job and they can for us as well.

A “perfect storm” of suffering may overwhelm you.

Now I believe I can confidently say that this “perfect storm” in Job’s life had totally overwhelmed him. In an amazingly brief period of time, enemies had attacked, his financial portfolio had been stripped and worst of all, his children had been killed. In the aftermath, his own health deteriorated to the point that he wanted to die.

But Job could NOT die, and to make matters worse, his wife and his friends had come to ‘comfort’ him and they had come to the conclusion that the entire thing had to be Job’s fault!

In their own ways, they all said “Confess your sin, Job, and maybe God will abandon His attack against you!” They told Job, “We know God to be fair, and just, and right. No matter how much you protest your innocence, Job, God simply cannot be wrong. Come now … what did you do to deserve this?”

It was a perfect storm that sank Job to the depths of discouragement and depression as surely as the Andrea Gail sank to the bottom of the North Atlantic.

Haven’t you seen it? When the funerals start arriving for a family, they seem to come in bunches. A family that didn’t even know where the community funeral home was suddenly knows the back hallways and hidden rooms, the price of coffins and the way to organize a memorial service. After a rash of funerals, it numbs them. At times, the survivors wonder which one of them will be the next they remember in their season of death.

Or what of the health issues? A person who has known only the best of health slams into a troubling symptom as if he’d hit a truck on the highway. And the problems pile up behind him, bringing tests and surgeries and treatments and expensive medical bills and thoughts of giving up.

Financial pressures can do the same thing to a person, or a family. A job is lost, and bills are missed. The debts pile up, and a car – or a refrigerator – decides to quit, just when there is no money to pay for the repairs.

When the storm of financial worry builds to a peak, changes are made, attorneys consulted, letters written, and phone calls are avoided. It’s a little like dancing around the lightning bolts, unsure where the storm will strike next.

It is the kind of situation that only needs one more element before the perfect storm sinks the entire family in a wave of crushing financial pressure. If, in the midst of one kind of trouble another one develops, it can be absolutely overwhelming.

I want us to ALL understand that just because we are believers… we are NOT immune to such pressures. Like I said last week, we cannot simply sing our favorite hymn and wish the problems away.