“The Gospel According to Job” Blogpost #4
by Jason
The fact is everybody has a breaking point, the end of his rope. He abandons all restraint. He doesn’t necessarily abandon his faith; he just gets thoroughly sick and tired of trying to put a good face on everything, especially when they are not good. This is not being sinful, but just plain honest. It’s calling a spade a spade.
And what you must remember at times like that is that God does not want us to just put on a happy face, or to recite empty religious jargon or happy Christian ghetto speech. He just wants us to be real and honest. He wants what’s in our heart.
Job did just that in Job 3. This is a most difficult chapter of Scripture for Christians to come to grips with. (link to Jason’s sermon on this chapter)
John Calvin says in the introduction of his Institutes that true wisdom includes both a knowledge of God and a knowledge of self. Being a believer in God necessarily implies grappling with the dark side of humanity that lies within us all. But many of us are so afraid to submit one’s self to letting the light of God’s Word shine a spotlight into our souls. We are afraid of what may be found in our darkness. We repress it; we deny it. And we should ask ourselves — if we do so chronically, if we refuse to deal with the darkness that lies within us all — do we really believe in the healing power of God’s forgiveness? Do we really believe in His victory over our evil natures? Do we really consider ourselves repentant people?
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Jason Robertson is a husband and a father and a pastor. He is dedicated to leading and equipping his the Church with God’s word and biblical theology for life ministry, using a combination of pastoral, church planting and evangelism experience. He holds a Master of Divinity from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. He is experienced in church planting, evangelism, missions, and the training of pastors and Bible teachers.
Jason has been preaching the gospel since 1985, serving the first ten years of ministry as a Southern Baptist itinerant evangelist out of Milldale Baptist Church in Zachary, LA which ordained him in 1993. He has preached in hundreds of churches in over 30 States and 4 countries. He planted churches in Siberia, Russia in the summers of 1993 and 1994. He founded Murrieta Valley Church in California, which he planted in cooperation with the SBC NAMB in 2001. He also teaches ministry students at California Baptist University.
You can hear his sermons and read his manuscripts on sermonaudio.com. Just follow the link to "sermons" at the top of this page.
Preach it Jason!! Your thoughts here are really talking about the biggest problem in the American church today. Sunday smiles covering interior pain. Everybody wants to say that prayer and get their ticket to heaven, but hardly anybody wants to have their habitual sin exposed and changed by God’s grace. The American church are professional cover up artists training centers.
I praise God for you Jason and telling the truth in this matter. I love that you mention Calvin. The older fellas got it. It is whole life, not just a cheap profession of faith followed by years of church shopping to find the most entertaining, ear tickling services.
If being at the end of one’s rope is the focus, then I and my wife qualify. We’ve been struggling for years to stay afloat with too many bills and not enough income. I was unemployed for well over a year after losing my 10-year job in television and finally go employed by the state of Florida. However my wife is still unable to get a fulltime job (right now she’s working what is essentially a part-time job as an adjunct professor at a community college and is assigned different amounts of classes each semester — only two this semester — she has no benefits, no paid vacation, no sick leave — and probably no classes for the summer). We live with lots of stress, worry and fretting…we know we should trust in God and He will grant us peace, but we admit it…we’re both spiritual wussies who sucuumb to the worries and stress. Anyway, anyone reading this…prayers are appreciated.
Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lillies of the field, how they grow: They neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore do not be anxious, saying, What shall we eat? or What shall we drink? or What shall we wear? For the gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.
I pray Carl that you will taste the goodness of God. That you will totally loose your life to Jesus to gain the life He has for you. One of total provision for your basic needs from God’s kingdom because you have abandoned yourself to Him.
heath, I do taste the goodness of God, but as human sometimes I get overwhelmed. I pray a lot for help in this aspect and I believe I’m getting better all the time thanks to God.