Today’s Passage – Job 7 – 9
I read this passage last night before bed in order to get a jump start on the day. I am preaching a message this morning (and possibly the next two weeks) from the Book of Job on the subject of suffering. I have been immersing myself in the book for the last several days.
Anyway, I got to thinking last night about how our friends and family members react when we are going through the dark days. When you get down to it, it is really impossible for people outside of our situation to completely identify or understand what we are going through. Sometimes when people try to help, they can often cause more trouble for us with the things that they say. I guess we often ask for the added problems because we so desire to have the fellowship of people around us, especially when we are hurting.
My advice to you that are hurting right now is to try to understand the lack of understanding on the part of your “encourager”. Try to appreciate their motivation to help you; but don’t be too frustrated by the help itself. Understand also, that you may be the one who is not seeing things clearly; and the people who are trying to help you might just be right about what they are saying, though you may not want to hear it.
My advice to you who would try to encourage those that are hurting is that you would be slow to judge, and slow to speak. Give a listening ear; let them vent a little; let them cry on your shoulder for a while. There will eventually come a time when they will need to move forward; but give them a little space to see what God is doing their lives. Remember, some day it will be you that is going through the valley; and you will be glad that there are others around you who are patient and understanding with you.
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This was a great thought. I frequently forget to look at both sides. I remembered back to a couple of your mother's day messages. You used the story of Ruth and Naomi for both. One you seemed to focus more on the devotion of the daughter-in-law to her mother-in-law (boy was I ever brought under conviction on that one!) The other, the focus was more on what kind of mother-in-law Naomi must have been to have the kind of devotion of Ruth ( I was slammed on that as well). I don't know if either of these were your intentions when you preached these messages but God gave me exactly what I needed at the time.
Self examination is what we often need help with. What kind of daughter-in-law, mother-in-law, or what kind of friend am I? Thanks for the reminder.
The Sophist philosophy
In traditional logical argument, a set of premises are connected together according to the rules of logic and lead therefore to some conclusion. When someone criticizes the argument, they do so by pointing out either falsehoods among the premises or logical fallacies, flaws in the logical scaffolding. These criticisms may be subject to counter-criticisms, which in turn may be subject to counter-counter-criticisms, etc. Generally, some judge or audience eventually either concurs with or rejects the position of one side and thus a consensus opinion of the truth is arrived at.