Categories: forty-blogs-of-lent
Tags: God, Christianity, Jesus, Christ, Bible
Date: 18 March 2012 23:40:57
A little girl is drawing a picture. Mother says, "What are you drawing?" "I'm drawing a picture of God." "But no one knows what God looks like." "They will when I've finished."
It is easy to be like the mother in the story above and discourage the efforts of others. There is a danger in this, discouragement prevents us from focussing on God. Discouragement leads to spiritual apathy. Job's wife is a good example of this.His [Job's] wife said to him, Are you still holding on to your integrity? Curse God and die! (Job 2:9 NIVUK)
When Job has lost everything, his posessions, his children and his health his wife was not encouraging. "Curse God and die." Give up and blame God. Job's response to his wife:He replied, You are talking like a foolish woman. Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble? In all this, Job did not sin in what he said. (v 10)
The solution, even when things are at their worst, is to keep trusting in God, to look to Jesus. To go back to the story at the beginning of this blog, We may not know what God looks like, but we know what God is like. God is like Jesus. It is by keeping our attention on Jesus that we overcome discouragement.-o0o-
Based on points from a sermon preached on Sunday 18th March 2012 by Rev Calvert Prentis at Holy Trinity Huddersfield.