So we’re going back to ministry school today after 4 weeks off.

I have mixed feelings about this.

It’s going to be good to be back and yet, at the same time, I don’t want to go.

It’s going to be good to be back at school because I really enjoy the journey there and back. I get to travel with two awesome guys who I am really blessed to be getting to know and am really benefiting from their wisdom and their friendship.

The down side of going back to school is that the class we are starting tonight is going to be really challenging both spiritually and emotionally. I am dreading it, to be honest!

We had some pre-reading to do and it was extremely hard for me. I REALLY don’t want to do this class!

At the same time, I had an email today from a friend at church who is going through a very difficult time emotionally and it hurts me that I really don’t know what to say to him. I guess I should do what Job’s three friends did before they started messing everything up – just go and be with him.

If you don’t know the story very well, Job was an upright and Godly man who God blessed greatly. Satan was given permission to afflict him because Satan was convinced that Job was only righteous because God blessed him so much.

Job was reduced from being rich and healthy with a large family to being poor, diseased and alone.

His three friends came and sat with him for 7 days, not talking, just being there to bear his pain with him.

After the 7 days, they started giving ‘advice’ as to why this had all happened but everything they said was just garbage.

Through it all, Job never blamed God and at the end, God came and explained to Job why it had all happened. The explanation was:

You don’t have the capacity to understand why. Just trust me.

It was a fascinating answer from God. I’ve simplified and shortened it considerably but that is essentially what God was saying.

We don’t have to know WHY. Quite often, the WHY would require knowledge of the past, present and future, an understanding of everything that happens in both the physical and spiritual realms and how it is all interconnected. In our humanness, we cannot possibly know and understand all those things though.

What we need to learn to do is just trust God. He knows everything and He loves us and He reveals what we need to know, when we need to know it.

We desperately search for understanding when what we should be searching for is deeper faith and trust in God.

My friend has been able to trust God through the pain he is experiencing and he is a great example to me of how to see God even in the storm and look to Him through times of hardship.

I want to leave you with one sentence my friend wrote in an email, even while pouring out his pain:

God has a purpose and a more perfect plan than He has even revealed.

Peter
www.nabitunics.com