There are 10 things every person needs in order to live a happy life. At least that’s what a youtube series from GQ says. They ask celebrities what are 10 things you can’t live without. The answers that people give are always basic things from brands that usually cost a lot. Lip balm, toothpaste, hairbrush, or lotion are some of the things that get mentioned. It’s always funny to me because I’m expecting some exclusive items that i would never see at any local store. But they always say the things they need are the things anyone could get any day. This makes me question my own needs. I feel like I couldn’t live without air conditioning but I guess I would never know. I’ve never tried. I just know that's one of the reasons I avoid going outside when friends invite me over to camping trips.
“Life is hard and air conditioning makes it bearable,” says Gennie as he places his venti pink dragonfruit drink back on the oak desk. Maybe I do have it easy. My point in this is to explain that no matter where you are in life you have it easier than someone else. Look at the things you could never go without. Put them on paper and then talk to someone who never had those things. You would find out a new perspective on a way to live your life. Emily Dickinson never had a computer but managed to send out every feeling she felt. Paul, in the Bible, didn’t have a local Starbucks but always managed to find time to write a letter that would later become part of the Bible. Abraham Lincoln didn’t have a pair of Beats headphones but managed to write some of the most thought-inspiring documents that we still read today. The Apostle Peter didn’t have a formal education but still managed to convey a message of Jesus that led to a growing and thriving community of people, which became Christianity.
The thing you depend on in order to do good in your life is not always needed. God knows that and sometimes will test you on that. He did this to Job in the Bible. Job was a great man by God’s standards. He had not only wealth but love and family. If there was anything good to have, Job had it. He was the best of the best. Then God allowed life to take everything away from him and all Job had left was his wife and his character. Job’s wife was not too happy. Seeing the trouble they had gone through, her advice to Job was he should curse God and die. Obviously, there are not many people in Job’s corner after all the bad things that happened. Then he gets 3 friends who do everything but console him while trying to console him. They actually complicate Job’s understanding of the situation all the way from blaming him for his trouble to blaming luck and other things. If i were Job i would be thinking that i could go without those friends for sure.
The question that comes from all of this is what are we without the things we enjoy? What is the value of your character when money is not easily found? What is the currency of your resilience when you run out of resources? What do you depend on when your dependants don’t show up for you? Answering those questions can be interesting but I think it’s important to understand something about all of our needs and problems. At the end of the day, we are not Job. God is not going to take everything away from us or forsake us completely in order to test us. I don’t say this because I know every person that's ever existed. I say this because I know of one person that did exist and the story of Job has a huge lesson that is worth learning.
The story of Job teaches us that we should not worry about losing but we should be wary of listening to the world and bad advice more than we listen to God. God is not the reason we go through the hard times. Our dependence on the things we lose is usually the reason life seems so hard on us. I am by no means implying that we should all jump out of our homes and become minimalist right away. I am saying that we should not let our stuff, circumstances, and relationships control how we see the value of life and purpose. Even if everything you have is taken away, in the story of Job, we can see that our purpose in life is not based on things. Jesus said the “love of money is the root of all evil”. The root of evil is not the stuff you have but how stuff has your heart. It means that your love life decides how you will see life.
In the end, I don’t think God would do to you what he did to Job because you could never be Job. Jesus is our Job. He took the worst pain and suffering of the cross and paid for our sins. Before the fall of humanity in the garden, Adam and Eve didn’t know any hardships because the world was in the perfect balance of obedience to God. After they sinned everything became conflicted and problematic. The culmination of all of those issues that came from the Garden is not weighed on the balance of your happiness. They are weighed on the cross of Christ. Now that we know who Jesus is we can look to the story of Job and see that God doesn’t love bad things happening to good people. God loves evil people being changed through a good Jesus. We are all the kind of people that have sin issues and problems of disobedience to the laws of God. God is a spirit and not a human. We are not a deity, so everything we see in this life is based on our limited understanding and desires. We desire whats quick and easy. We cling to what we see.
We love the way we see things more than the truth of how things are. Sadly that is the story of Job. His perspective was based on how good he was and not the truth of how real God is. The story of Job shows us that if nothing else is going right, God is still right. If nothing in your life is going your way, God is still the best way. If nothing in life is giving you life(motivation), God is life (motivation). Jesus answers this problem of finding all these things by saying in John 14:6, “Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” Everything we are seeking to make our life the best is found in who Jesus is and not in what happened to Job. It might be enticing to see how much stuff you could go without. That way you can test if you could be like Job. But I think you should just be thankful to who Jesus is. Because of Jesus, good people don’t have bad things happening to them. For the first time in history, bad people (all of us) have something that's too good to ignore in Jesus. A Job who took our worst possible outcome in life and gave us a new life in Christ.
Whether you have the things in your life that you want or not, be thankful. Faith in God helps us to see who He is but thankfulness makes us whole in Him. A thankful person can go through the hardest parts of life and see something most people would miss. In thankfulness and worship to God, we see the other side of every hardship, temptation, and failure. A life that gets a chance. Until you learn to be thankful for what you do have it’s possible you might miss out on all the things that are waiting for you in God’s great world. He created this world for you to live in. To let the things that are missing in your life decide how you enjoy this life will always make life the worst it can be.
Let thankfulness flow out of your heart into the etches of your greatest tragedies and see the beautiful painting that God has created with a life full of understanding and wisdom that comes from finally knowing the Creator of all things. Do you lack anything? Be thankful to God. Do you miss anything? Be thankful to God. Do you have any pain? Be thankful to God and see the Creator work His perspective into the holes in your heart, in order to create a whole heart that is full, pure, and blessed.
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