Poison

Job 42:10
“And the Lord restored Job’s losses when he prayed for his friends. Indeed the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before.”

Job lost his health, wealth, family and friends, yet he “Did not sin nor charge God with wrong” (Job 1:22),No matter what the devil threw at him, he remained faithful to the Lord. When his wife told him he should curse God and die, he responded, “Shall we indeed accept good from God, and shall we not accept adversity?”(Job 2:10) We are told “In all this Job did not sin with his lips.” However, by the end of the book, Job, in fact, sinned and charged God with doing wrong. It wasn’t his circumstances or the attacks of the devil that led Job to sin, but the treatment he received from his friends. What Satan was unable to do, his friends did. Their treatment led him to sin with his mouth. It is no wonder Job declared,

Job 16:2 “I have heard many such things; Miserable comforters are you all!”

Job seems to have had every reason to hold a grudge against those who tore him down instead of building him up, but he chose to forgive. We read “The LORD restored Job’s losses WHEN he prayed for his friends. Indeed the LORD gave Job twice as much as he had before.” The blessings of God flowed into Job’s life when he chose to forgive those who had wronged him. No matter how we have been wronged, forgiveness is always the road to take. Failing to forgive will slow your progress and keep you from experiencing the blessings of God in your own life. One man put it like this, “Harboring bitterness is like drinking poison and expecting someone else will die.”

Sadly, Job is not alone in this experience. It is common, in our times of greatest need, to find those who we thought were our closest friends and allies are no where to be found. I have met many people who wandered from the Lord and are currently backslidden. They once had a vibrant relationship with the Lord, but that bond is in the distant past. Now, they find themselves far from the Lord and missing out on His blessings. Frequently, their fall from the Lord can be traced to a time when they were hurt by another Christian, or let down by their church. Instead of forgiving and moving forward, they harbored bitterness; and it has eaten away at their relationship with the Lord.

Let’s learn a lesson from the closing verses of Job. No matter how we have been wronged, lets choose the road of forgiveness and allow the Lord to pour forth His blessings on our life.

Pastor Jim