How do you respond to well-meaning friends or even casual observers who believe they are ‘helping’ you when they speak their perceptions into your circumstances? Even more insidious, how do you respond to your own thoughts of what ‘must’ be true about your situations, why you are in your current struggles?
Job has listened to his wife, three ‘friends’ and then a young theologian all deride him for being at fault for what he is experiencing. Repeatedly, Job tries to sort the truth out of what they say to and about him but he eventually admits does not comprehend this experience because it is outside his understanding of God. After thirty-plus chapters of listening, defending himself and questioning God in the circumstances, Job begins to get the answers:
When we listen to others (or even ourself) without understanding the reality of this moment, we are, as God points out, listening to ‘darkened counsel by words without knowledge.’ We seem to think we know more than we know, especially when we are not hearing the Lᴏʀᴅ. We give Job a little slack because, in his lifetime, there was no written Word of God but in our era we have the complete Bible and even the presence of the Holy Spirit leading us in the Way, the Truth and the Life. There is only one Counselor who correctly applies the Truth in a life-giving fashion at all times. And He is this same God who made Himself known to Job when Job listened.