The Touch of God

“What strength do I have, that I should still hope? What prospects, that I should be patient? Do I have the strength of stone? Is my flesh bronze? Do I have any power to help myself, now that success has been driven from me?” Job 6:11-13

This scene from the Book of Job both breaks by heart and challenges my faith. Job’s suffering has turned from days into weeks and months. His friends have visited him to encourage but quickly began judging him. Their sentiment was basically that no one would suffer this intensely unless God was trying to get them to repent of some unconfessed sin. Job is crying out that he is totally void of any strength or hope based on his intense suffering and the length of time for which he has suffered. It is a call for death from God before he begins doubting and blaming God for everything. It is a plea for God to remove him from this situation before his faith is removed from his heart.

If we honestly probe our hearts there have been times when we all have cried out verses 11-13 to God in our circumstances. We challenge Him to give us something for which to hang on to, anything that will be something outside of own strength.

Last year, when my daughter’s boyfriend was killed, in an effort to get through an impossible weekend of gatherings in his memory she pushed me away emotionally. I remember feeling sad, rejected and like I had lost something valuable for which I had worked towards for 18 years. Mourning Todd was coupled with the pain of rejection from her. This was also three weeks before my sister died so emotions were at an all time high. I remember crying to God that it was all too much and that I had my limits, I was not as strong as what He was accrediting me with and SOMETHING HAD TO GIVE!

At that moment I reached my hand up to wipe tears from my face as I prayed. I felt the hand of God on my face instead of my own hand wiping my tears. I felt His touch providing me with a multitude of assurances from Him without any words. It was a touch I knew not to doubt but to receive as complete love, complete assurance and complete faithfulness for deliverance. I was immediately transformed into complete peace, love and all consuming belief in things coming back around to the good which they did. It was a time for Caroline to grieve and to experience God apart from her mother. It was time for God to touch her life and show Himself to be HER God. Like Job, she had to feel like she needed something larger than herself, something different than the “standby comfort” she had in me. God did a much better job at consoling and loving her through her tragedy than I could and showed her complete dependency on Him.

We cannot understand intense suffering like Job’s but some things are not meant to understand, they are just meant for God to be God.