RASH WORDS

“My Words Have Been Rash…” (Job 6:3 NKJV)
By Timothy S. Adkins

Have your words ever been rash? Have you ever spoken as an impetuous fool, either before God or to men, when crushing burdens weighed upon your soul? When heaven’s books are opened will rash utterances from your lips appear, that you now vainly wish had never been thought, much less spoken? Yet somehow your battered soul seemed incapable of holding back its flood. Have you felt ashamed to speak another word to God in prayer? He knows all that you said in those moments and what you meant. Indeed, He knew our thoughts before we distilled them and while they were still formulating He knew our rash words.

In pain and puzzlement, “my words have been rash,” too. Yet, amazingly, there is still comfort even in the midst of what feels like a gross failure of faith. Faith still believes and hopes during the dark storm as much as when skies were blue and clear. In spite of the struggle and heart-rending disappointment, it is still true that God is incapable of erring. And, yes, all of this, all that now hurts, was always part of His plan. His purpose is pure and good and for my good, whether or not I feel it to be true. It is true. My quivering faith trusts His heart when His ways are utterly baffling. There is peace in His love when His ways make no sense to me.

In times of suffering, whether of body, mind, or spirit, we believers so often believe faintly. Not that we doubt God’s ability to intervene and to powerfully change the course of our lives anytime He wills; we know that He is El Shaddai, God Almighty. We believe in His utter independency and absolute power; our belief remains unshaken although less than the grain of mustard seed. We know He will be Himself as He is declared in His Word. His attributes and character are comforts in the very worst of times. When the storms are raging and the torrents sweeping life away, He changes not. The presence of the storm or the flood does not announce a change in His mind, but yet another path superintended by love and grace and wisdom beyond us.

Our problem is to correctly discern His will. Interpreting providence as it unfolds is not an exact science. God never changes in His being, but He is not predictable. The God who defined Himself as “I AM” is not subject to our definition. He cannot err or fail or be less than He is, and He does as He pleases and all He pleases. All of this we believe and doubt not. Yet, the comfort and assurance that we long for is often absent.

At the thought of losing his beloved Benjamin also, after having already lost Joseph to Egypt, old Jacob cried, “All these things are against me.” Whereas all of those painful things were for his ultimate salvation and the preservation of his entire family, at the moment his heart was broken. God’s love would mend his heart and Jacob would know joy in another day. But on that day, as he watched Benjamin’s form grow smaller as he walked toward Egypt, the old man must have thought that he would never see another good day in this world.

Some of David’s psalms prove that our believing hearts are not the first to feel as though God has stopped listening, that He has not been paying attention to what’s been going on, and that He must not care that our hearts are burdened and bleeding. How did life come to such a place? “My soul is among lions…they have prepared a net for my steps” (Psalm 57:4, 6). “From the end of the earth I call to Thee, when my heart is faint” (Psalm 61:2a). “My soul thirsts for Thee…in a dry and weary land” (Psalm 63:1). “Out of the depths I have cried to Thee, O Lord” (Psalm 130:1).

Lions…snares…the end of the earth…a dry and weary land…out of the depths! Such is the story of so many of God’s beloved children. Consider Hebrews 11. There was not a fainting flower among them or even one who enjoyed a life without intense trial. As for those who portray “the victorious Christian life” as always prosperous and an always hopeful affair, can they not read?

These psalms graphically show that the life of faith will sometimes be lived with frightful danger near at hand. A true believer may sometimes find himself at the very end of the earth, peering off the very precipice of death, feeling all alone, and crying out to God. Instead of the well-watered plains of Goshen, even the most faithful believers may live in parched places that dehydrate their very souls. Instead of treading the heights, they walk through the valley of the shadow of death. Not surprisingly, they are not always the most cheerful lot; to some they seem unspiritual and unthankful. They seem preoccupied and much too difficult to encourage and even bitter. They are like the captives of the 137th Psalm who, in bitterness of soul, could not bring themselves to sing the Lord’s song beside Babylon’s stream so far from home and so far from peace.

Truth be told, many of God’s dear people look to Him with mystified expressions. There is no doubting His faithfulness. He will fulfill His promises: “You have magnified Your word above all Your name” (Psalm 138:2). But we do often wonder whether we have correctly understood what His promises in Scripture (made to others) truly mean for us. How may we rightly appropriate the truth to our lives?

Many seem to find multiple promises in every verse and then treat them all as personal guarantees; as if all that God said to Abraham or David or Noah or Jonah was intended as a direct personal message. Others see the character of God revealed in scriptural accounts and indeed find some promises to which they tenaciously cling; certain that the same God who dealt faithfully with His people then will also deal in love and grace with us now. So these look to God trusting His heart, although perfectly puzzled at His providence.

Have we misread God’s will? Why is He so silent? Or has He spoken and we have not heard? Are we wrong to expect specific answers to our specific prayers? Has He truly promised to grant all that we ask? What about those times when we put our wishes into His mouth and call our wishes divine promises?

Too many people think they have God all figured out. Truth is, He does all that He wants to do, on His terms, according to His wisdom. No one can dictate to Him or demand anything of Him. He does all of His will; He cannot deny Himself. The sooner we understand, the better and more peacefully our hearts may rest.

“Then Job answered and said: "Oh, that my grief were fully weighed, and my calamity laid with it on the scales! For then it would be heavier than the sand of the sea — therefore my words have been rash. For the arrows of the Almighty are within me; my spirit drinks in their poison; the terrors of God are arrayed against me.” (Job 6:1-4 NKJV)

He suffered for reasons known to God. The angels that heard the heavenly proceedings knew. Even the one for whom hell was first set on fire knew more about Job’s circumstances than he did. He had no clue as to why so much was happening, nor why there seemed to be no response from God. None of God’s providences made sense to him. Property destroyed, children dead, body in ruins, Job yearned for death as one longs for a cherished friend. But death would not come. He could not see how life was worth living anymore; and why would a merciful God not just let him die and have rest from this life of misery. All life held now was grief and suffering; and, as far as he could see, it was all for no fathomable purpose.

From all Job could tell God had painted a target on him. How else could all of those things have befallen him? He didn’t understand anymore than we sometimes do, why certain things happen. Is He not the sovereign Lord of history? Does He not rule the present and the future? Does He not govern the comings and goings of men and microbes; directing, orchestrating, and overruling when and where and how He pleases? Ultimately, whatever the means, it was God that ordained all of this ruin for Job’s life, reducing him to less than dust.

The painful, poisonous barbs sticking out of Job’s body and spirit were God’s arrows. But WHY? What had so provoked God that He would deal so harshly with him? Had Job sinned grievously? Had his hypocrisy stirred up God’s wrath? His friends were certain that he had provoked God to punish him; as they knew God to be, they were sure that He never did things like this to one who didn’t deserve it.

Terrified by calamity, buried by grief, miserable Job longed to know just where the mercies of God were now? He felt that God was hounding his very life, chasing him like a frightened rabbit now caught in burning underbrush; refusing him a peaceful moment to swallow a mouthful of spit.

To read of Job’s inner and outer terrors and to think of his sorrows makes most of us ashamed to whine. Just how much have we suffered? Have we endured a tiny fraction of what Job suffered? Still, we wonder as Job wondered: how could God possibly be honored by the cold, hard providence that unfolded? Unlike Job, we are not so exceptional and accomplished in grace that God would deal with us as with him. It is not faith and faithfulness on display in us nearly as much as weakness and fear. So what’s in this for God? Is there glory, praise, vindication? Are the multiplied sorrows for our growth in grace or for our humiliation? Are they for any purpose that we might begin to grasp before we reach heaven?

Why does it seem that He prefers not to grant a single request out of the hundreds held up before Him? Why does it seem that Heaven’s mind is steeled against those who have been so loved? Jesus taught us that, if we who are evil know how to give good gifts to our children, much more will our Father in heaven give good gifts to us. So, why does it seem that the heavens are brazen and that God will not be persuaded by our pleading? He has emboldened us to pray and given to us boldness to hope for an answer beyond imagination; but we cannot dictate His answer. O that our faith might not waver! Again to have a truly expectant faith! But we have been disappointed; asking and not receiving, and not understanding even now why His answer was “no.”

Have we misunderstood? Has delusion taken hold? Did not our Savior instruct us to keep on asking, seeking, and knocking at our Father’s door? But when does faith take on the nature of presumption? How long do we ask and seek and knock before we perceive that God has answered with “no” or “not yet?” It is not always an absence of faith to determine, at length, that the desires of our hearts must not be the desires of His. If our ways are not His ways and our thoughts are not His thoughts, why are we surprised when our desires sometimes don’t match His desires for us? Acquiescence is not unbelief. Submission to God’s providence is not surrender to hopelessness.

Sometimes mistaken, certain that we are not, we may earnestly pray for what God has not willed. Still, we must not become disheartened. God is yet God. We are mere men. Prayer is worship, not prescribing what God will do and when He will do it. Prayer is hope. It is trust given a voice. Faith can take “no” for an answer when it is God’s answer, for true faith wants nothing that He is not pleased to grant from His heart.

“And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose” (Romans 8:28). We say we know this; but do we? If it is true that nothing is outside the scope of God’s infinite wisdom and sovereign power, then why do we still live with white knuckles, holding on for dear life? Why do we not rest completely secure? The mountain that stands between us and the peace we long for, let it be removed and be cast into the sea! Drown mountain, drown!

O that our faith might embrace His faithfulness! And with a greater vigor than that with which we once clung to our fears! Thanks be to God that He forgives all our sins through Jesus Christ, including the sins of a rash tongue and a trembling faith. “If You, Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? But there is forgiveness with You, that You may be feared” (Psalm 130:3-4). –TSA