Thought for the Week

Affliction is a Biblical word meaning physical or mental pain or suffering testing a person’s ability to function. There are generally three root causes for affliction: Satan, God, and simply being human and living in a fallen, sin-cursed world. Satan uses affliction to try to get people to reject God as unmerciful and or see Him as not loving. Job would be the primary example here. Satan brought all kinds of afflictions on Job, to cause him to lose his faith in God. Through all of them Job never lost his faith in God nor his integrity. Job recognized God as Sovereign with the right to give or take away anything. He knew, and came to know better, the wisdom and ability of God, to do whatever would be right and good. Certainly Job must have searched his heart, mind, and life to see if there was some way he was sinning. He could find nothing. This we should also do and even ask for the Holy Spirit to reveal anything in our lives that displeases God. We are not all-knowing as God is. If a person is sincere in searching for the right, God will help him find it. King Josiah of Israel was doing everything he could to serve God. One day, the Book of the Law was found. It had been hidden away or lost for decades but it helped Josiah to know how he could serve God better. The natural world has lots of reasons people suffer afflictions: sickness, accidents, and violence self-inflicted or inflicted by others. We certainly do not seek for these things to come upon us but they do. We need to deal with them the best way we know how. One fairly sure thing, we seek God and pray more when we are going through afflictions and troubles than when things are sailing along smoothly. It is not that we plan to seek God less when things are going well. It is simply a part of our humanity. We can certainly note the churches filled up around the time of 9 – 11, during ‘Covid’, during the plagues and epidemics of the past, and during the World Wars. People sought God because they were scared, and could find no human solutions. Sometimes God gives humans the wisdom to find solutions: There is a polio vaccine. Sometimes God simply over rules. I understand Germany had deadly ‘mustard gas’ in World War I and would have used it but did not dare to because they were dependent on horses and mules that would have been killed. I can think of many times, people call coincidences, when God was simply answering prayers behind the scenes of life. We do not give God nearly enough credit. We pray, perhaps even trust, but when God answers in an untypical way we do not give Him the credit, praise, and honor He deserves. Considering how unthankful and ungrateful we are, it is a wonder God ever listens to and answers our prayers. It is just another example of His love. Because of Israel’s grumbling and complaining God sent fiery serpents among them. They prayed for God to deliver them. He offered a solution to Moses: “Make a bronze serpent in the image of those that are killing Israelites.” Then He said, “Anyone who looks on this replica and trusts in Me, will recover from the snake bite.” (Certainly untypical but it worked.) What happened then? The people began to worship the bronze image and not to worship God. Before we criticize them, we might want to consider, ‘Have I been giving credit to something else, instead of God, for meeting my needs and prayer requests?’ Confession is good for the soul.

Scriptures to Read

Job 1:1-5

Job 1:6-12

Job 1:13-22

Job 2:1-7

Job 2:8-10

Job 42:1-6