When You Are Wounded

Bad things happen to all of us.  We can’t prevent it, but we can decide to not get bitter.

The Book of Job in the Bible is the story of a man who had every reason to be bitter, yet did not.  From his story we draw three lessons of what we can do to prevent getting bitter.

The first lesson is to accept the sovereignty of God.  God is the prime mover, the king of the universe.  God can do whatever he wants.  Some of the things that happen to us may be difficult to understand, but we know all things ultimately come from God.  As Job said, “Shall we receive the good at the hand of God and not receive the bad?”

The second lesson is to acknowledge the assumptions we didn’t know we had until things went wrong.  When our life falls apart we discover our belief that if we lived a good life, we would be protected.  Job knew better.  He knew that being a righteous man did not obligate God to protect him.  If we don’t want to wind up bitter, we need to acknowledge the assumptions we didn’t know we had.

The third lesson is to affirm the grace of God.  When everything is going well, we don’t even think about grace.  We feel we can handle everything ourselves.  When things go bad, then we learn that we depend upon a power greater than our own.  As has been said, you don’t know that God is all you need until God is all you have.  In our time of trouble we learn about grace.

In our sermon this Sunday we will talk about what to do when you are wounded.