Live as God's Servant
Opening Prayer
Lord of creation, You are good and all You do is good. In this fallen world, I trust that You will set all things right.
Read JOB 41:1-11
[1] “Can you pull in Leviathan with a fishhook or tie down its tongue with a rope? [2] Can you put a cord through its nose or pierce its jaw with a hook? [3] Will it keep begging you for mercy? Will it speak to you with gentle words? [4] Will it make an agreement with you for you to take it as your slave for life? [5] Can you make a pet of it like a bird or put it on a leash for the young women in your house? [6] Will traders barter for it? Will they divide it up among the merchants? [7] Can you fill its hide with harpoons or its head with fishing spears? [8] If you lay a hand on it, you will remember the struggle and never do it again! [9] Any hope of subduing it is false; the mere sight of it is overpowering. [10] No one is fierce enough to rouse it. Who then is able to stand against me? [11] Who has a claim against me that I must pay? Everything under heaven belongs to me. Scripture taken from the THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION, NIV Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
Reflect
Do you struggle to trust when injustice seems to prevail?In this, the last of the four chapters of his speech to Job, God continues to draw Job’s attention to the natural world through which, according to Paul, we can see the nature of God (Rom. 1:20). Having confronted Job with the behemoth (40:15), which has been variously understood to be either the hippopotamus or the elephant, God now directs his attention to the leviathan (1), possibly the crocodile. The point of this “show and tell” from God seems to be to remind Job that this is God’s world (11), regardless of how it might appear to Job. Just as Jeremiah was reminded about God’s power and our small place in the world through watching a potter at work (Jer. 18:1-10), here God uses the natural world for the same teaching.In a suffering world that has clearly gone wrong, our right response is to remember that this is God’s world and to trust that God is actively working to make things right, even if we can’t see or understand what he’s doing.
Apply
Take time today to be in nature, or spend time under the stars tonight. Remember who made it all and rest in him.
Closing prayer
Lord, I am small and my understanding is so limited. You who were patient with Job will not give up on me.
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