 Guys, I gotta be honest with you, this season of life has been so hard, so, so hard, and it's hard to conceive that God could be the one that's causing it to be so hard. But I was just discovering the book of Job, really for the first time deeply. You know, I've read it a few times, but this was the first time I really took a deep dive and I felt like I related with Job in some way. And when you look at the book of Job, it's a story of a man who had everything, right? He had everything you could ever ask for. And it's kind of a reflection of proverbs in a way because Job was a man of wisdom, of integrity. He was a man that really loved God deeply. And so when you look at the book of proverbs and all that, you know, it has to say about being wise and approaching things with integrity and actually blessing coming from that, you think, wow, like this is the book of proverbs played out in a man. And we look at that for our own life. We want to, you know, OK, hey, if I got God, if I stick to your word, if I listen to what you have to say, then you will make my life turn out as, you know, Job's and Job has all these livestock and he is an abundant family and he seems like he has this wonderful life and that's what we want. But then you look a little bit deeper in the story of Job and I'm sure you're familiar with at least a little bit. Job, everything that Job has is taken from him. Everything that Job has is taken from him. And, you know, we see this kind of dialogue between God and Satan and how God gives Satan permission to, you know, basically take this stuff away from Job, and this is a very unique circumstance here. We don't see this, you know, any else in the Bible where Satan is given free reign over a person with the exception of his life. And God is proving a point here. He's saying that, hey, look, this man, though you will take everything from him, he will not deny me because he loves me. And I think, OK, wow, that's crazy. Like God had such confidence in Job and his faith in him that he says, hey, you could take everything from him and he will not deny me. But we think about our own life and we say, OK, God, I've done everything right. I've done everything right up until this point. Why wouldn't you give me what I want? And obviously, we're seeing ourselves in a tainted light because the truth is we haven't been perfect. But even still, maybe we have this belief that if I'm a good Christian, if I kind of, you know, hey, I've repented for my sin, I get in the forgiveness of Jesus and now I'm living a good Christian life. Well, why wouldn't I get what I want in my life? Why would you hurt me, God? Why would you allow these things to happen in my life that are painful, that that actually caused me real hurt and real pain and real heartbreak? Why would you allow that, God? Why would God wound us? Why would God wound us? And I think about, you know, this, this is kind of the order of operation that we generally believe it. It's my obedience equals God's blessing. And you think about Job's wife. Well, Job's wife, after everything had came, you know, hit the wall, basically, you know, a bunch of people were killed. His livestock was just cast away. He's has all these sores and boils on him. He's not in good shape. And his wife comes to him and basically says, hey, you know what, curse God and die. There's nothing left for you here. And maybe she operated on that same belief that, hey, Job had done everything right in a lot of ways, probably more right than we've done. And yet this happened to him. That's not fair. And so Job's wife is like, hey, you know, this is unfair. God has left you. God has not treated you justly. And so curse him and die. One of my favorite books and authors of all time is Shattered Dreams. God's unexpected path to joy by Larry Crabb. And I want to read you a section from this. It's so natural to think the presence of Jesus has no greater purpose than to improve the quality of our journey through life with quality to find as pleasurable, satisfying, self-affirming existence, a journey where certain things don't go wrong. Or if they do, they correct themselves. Marriages should work. Biopsies should come back benign. Ministry efforts should succeed. And we should feel pretty good about the way most things go. If our dreams never shattered, we would continue to believe that that lie and value only what God can do for us now. We would value neither his presence nor all he intends to do later. And we would never be willing to pay the devastating price required to experience his presence now. We can say all we want, that the gospel is not about life improvement, that Jesus coming to this earth was not about giving me a better life. We can say that all day. But do we believe it? Because when things get hard, when all that we had worked for is taken away from us, do we really believe that it wasn't about that? It was about our relationship with God. And it was about us being reconciled to him. That's a hard thing to really, really believe. Now, we look at Job and Job was this great, you know, man, after God's own heart, really, and then everything was taken away from him. Well, what would we expect? He gets so frustrated. He gets so angry and he curses the day that he was born. But then three of his friends come forward and one of them gives him this piece of wisdom. Behold, the blessed is the one whom God reproves. Therefore, despise not the discipline of the Almighty, for he wounds, but he binds up. He shatters, but his hands heal. This lands us to a much deeper theological conversation that we can have in this video. But we talk about, well, does God truly wound? Is that God or is that the devil? Well, here I think it's clear that God does wound. He does bring about his discipline. And so we can say all day that, no, this is just the devil. And this is just, no, this isn't in God's plan. This is just something bad that's happened. And yeah, God can bring it for good, but, you know, God had no part in this. But God is sovereign. God is sovereign over everything. And you think about it. It's like, is there a span? Is there an inch of creation that God does not have a say in? You know, he is powerful enough. So you really need to come to the terms that to come to terms with that he allowed this to happen. And yet he was standing by and he was still powerful enough to stop it. So there still must be some purpose in it. There still must be some plan in it. That's what I have to believe based on my reading of scripture. And so when I look at that, I say, okay, God is sovereign. And he, and he, this is his plan. And sometimes he will bring about things in our life that will wound us. And he will shatter, shatter us. He will shatter our dreams. He will shatter the way that we wanted to live our life for the thought, the way that we had seen our life playing out. And he does this. Why does he do this? Well, I believe this is my primary belief. If I can communicate anything with you in this whole channel and everything that I've done online. It's this, it's a God wants to know you in a deep and intimate way. And the way that he does that is through molding you and breaking down the areas of your life that have yet to be submitted to him. And that will cause pain and that will be tough and just the most excruciating brokenness that you will experience. And what I've come to find out is that many people, they will not enter this healing process. They will not enter this brokenness because they're scared. But in so doing, they're missing out on the deep connection and reliance that God is trying to grow within them. They're scared. They don't want to bring up the things of the past that have hurt them, that have wounded them. They don't want to acknowledge the things that are going in their life right now that are counter to their dream. The fact that they are truly broken. Because they don't want to have to deal with it because it's painful, but the truth is only when we deal with it, only when we go head on into the pain, into that brokenness, into that disappointment, can we realize that Jesus is all we ever wanted and all we ever needed. And it's in that, it's in that sadness. It's in that just absolute broken heartedness that we see God most brilliantly. Guys, I'm broken. Without God, I just don't even know. I couldn't get out of bed. I just couldn't. And the truth is, is that when your life is, is going perfectly, you know, everything's going right. It's really easy to kind of forget about God. It's really easy to just kind of push him to the side and say, you know, I read my Bible occasionally and I know I'm a Christian and I go to church and all that. But when things become real, you're forced to ask the tough questions like Job does and he's cursing the day that he was born. And yet his friends come alongside him and you want to be one of these friends. You want to be one of these friends in your life, in your friend's life and say, God wounds, but his hands heal, God wounds, but his hands heal. Blessed be the one who experiences the discipline of the Almighty because it is out of his love. It is out of his forming. It is just shaping within us. When pain happens in your life, it will either bring you to a place of bitterness and harden you or a place of just brokenness and softness before God ready for him to mold. That's what I want for you. That, that is why I believe that God's purpose for why he wounds us, he wounds us so that in that healing, he can take out the deep infection within our soul that is idol worship that is distractedness from him. In the midst of that healing, he can bring full and whole restoration to our souls and that is the beauty of it. That is why it's so painful because he's breaking away those things, those, those old coping mechanisms that used to do it for us. They used to bring us peace, but they don't anymore. They've been taken away. I want you to know if you're experiencing pain, if you're experiencing brokenheartedness right now that God wants to meet you right there, that you're in such a crucial state of your spiritual development. It's a privileged state to be because this is the groundwork. This is where God builds on, but don't let it destroy you. Ask God to give you the strength to carry on. Ask God to give you the hope to carry on, even though it doesn't make sense right now. That's what I want for you. If you found this video to be helpful, I want you to pass it on to somebody in your life that you think might benefit from it too. Thank you to everyone that subscribes this channel and watches my content here. It's such a blessing to be able to speak into your guys life each and every week. I don't take that for granted. And I thank you to each and every one of you that is on Patreon that supports this ministry daily disciple in what I'm doing and equipping people to follow Jesus daily. This is my heart. This is what I've been called to do. And thank you for enabling me to do this. Till next time. God bless.