- Miserable comforters are you all! But I would strengthen you with my mouth, and the comfort of my lips would relieve your grief.
- Job thinks he would have done a better job of comforting and encouraging his friends if the tables were turned.
- A good friend might very well say to a friend in pain and struggling, “Have you asked the Lord if there is anything you need to repent of?” Sickness and death are linked with sin in the New Testament, as well as the Old. It’s a legitimate question, but it needs to be a question, not something you’ve determined for them. And it can be let go with just a question.
- Job’s friends are determined to get Job to confess a sin that Job can’t find to confess.
- I mentioned before how my husband and I were told we need to confess our sin so that our son could be healed. There was nothing to confess. If there had been sin, it had already been confessed and repented of. We don’t live in sin. They had no faith to pray for our child to be healed. They were pinning his lack of healing on our sin, so they had no motivation to seek God for his healing. There is certainly no comfort for the parents in that case, blaming them for their child’s condition. Don’t ever do it! Thankfully, my husband and I were in a great place in our marriage and in our faith to have not been thrown off by all that.
- It’s not your job to search someone’s heart for sin. God searches the heart. You can gently encourage them to seek the Lord, but you can also remind them that the Lord can use such things to bring Himself great glory.
- I also mentioned before, the man who was born blind. He had to wait decades to be healed. Jesus said his parents had not sinned, but it happened to him for the glory of God to be revealed. The man gets salvation, and he gets the Savior revealed to him. What a gift!
- Let me wrap up with one more hint at the need for Jesus.
- Oh, that one might plead for a man with God, as a man pleads for his neighbor!
- Jesus lives to make intercession for us! (Hebrews 7:25)
