Job: Embracing the Cross

 
The purpose of this article is to stimulate you to willfully take hold of the Cross of Jesus Christ and let it work within you deeply.
 
While there is a lot to learn of the cross in Job, I want to center in on how he sat there under its bloody application to his life, and let it do its work.  

It has become somewhat fashionable in some Christian circles to blast at anything that would oppose what some would call prosperity and wealth. Yet at God’s instigation and permission, He allowed Job to be devastated in every area of His life.  What I want us to look at is how Job responded to what came upon him. The person closest to him counseled him to curse God and die. In other words, she was encouraging him to commit spiritual suicide that would result in his physical death. In this view at least, his suffering and torment would be over.  

Of course all of us who have read Job know of how his friends came and gave their opinion as to why all of these things had happened.  

What was Job’s response? He simply sat under what happened until what was meant to be accomplished was accomplished. In other words; he embraced the cross!  Embracing the cross refers to the fact that he didn’t try to get out from under what it was that God was doing until the time that he was allowed to be.  

In high school I was on the wrestling team. Our coach one time was showing us the move that it took to escape somebody that was using a certain hold upon us. In doing this, he chose one of the students to use for an example. When the student came to him and grabbed hold of the coach in the way that he was instructed, the coach then proceeded to show us how to escape the hold of the student. A surprising thing happened: The coach couldn’t get the student to let go of the hold that he had upon the coach.  If you can picture yourself going through the painful cross of Jesus Christ, this is about the only response that you can have that will profit you spiritually. Like the student above, all you can do is hang onto the Lord with all your strength while He allows what is happening to you to go on. Any other response will take away the desired purpose that God has for you.  

One of the practical steps in hanging on while your world is turned upside down, is to not try to figure out and analyze what is going on while you are going through it. Both Job and his friends attempted to do this and failed completely. While we are told that Job spoke more accurately about the Lord, yet he was also rebuked for assuming to know what was going on.  

The end is this: we must allow the hand of God to work not only in good times, but especially in the tough times. It is the tough times that will determine who you will be as a Christian and as the church of Jesus Christ. He is quite able to hold you up and to cause you to endure. The way to do this is the same way that Christ did it. You can have your anguishing moment of Gethsemane , but once this is over, you must, like Jesus, submit in peace to the will of the father. Do this and the resultant resurrection life of Jesus Christ will be able to work within you. If there is no cross, after all, how can there be a resurrection?