Job 2:1-8 AMP
The day started for Job just like any other day. There were duties to perform. There was family to enjoy. But Job’s life changed in an instant. All of a sudden Job’s life was turned upside down over a conversation that he knew nothing about.
Job’s faith was about to be tested. Satan was about to throw his trilogy of torment – the ability to steal, kill and destroy – against Job with all of his force and with all of his might. “Test my servant Job. Only spare his life.”
How do you react when hardships and suffering and tribulation unexpectedly come? Most of us are tempted to do absolutely nothing.
Job sat down in the ashes. He sat with a piece of broken pottery and began to scrape his sores. The action and direction that Job decided to take would make no difference in his life at all. Job was caught in a state of emptiness, an emotional abyss, a moment of paralysis. He found himself stuck somewhere in the middle of the desire to not feel pain and the decision to move beyond the pain. Job wallowed in the ashes of unforgiveness.
It has been said that unforgiveness is like taking poison and expecting someone else to die. Unforgiveness is usually not a purposeful negative reaction. It is a failure to take any action. Unforgiveness is to sit in the ashes and do nothing.
Forgiveness requires you to act. God is not going to impose the ability to forgive upon you. It is not a gift you can receive from Him. It is not a virtue that will be miraculously bestowed upon you. Forgiveness demands that you exercise the discipline necessary to make the decision to forgive.
What brings us together as a people of faith is not our ecclesiology; it is not our eschatology; it is not our soteriology; it is not our demonology; it is not any aspect of our theology. What unites us and brings us all to our knees before the throne of Almighty God is the understanding that every single one of us carries the revelation that the only reason we are alive today is because a good and loving and gracious God forgave you of your sin.
I fight to forgive because I live forgiven.
Unforgiveness? I can’t sit here.
