Deep Creek Baptist Church

My instinctive reaction was to continue walking up the mountain, forget about her, and go straight home. Then a thought surfaced: “When you are ‘down-and-out’ do something for another. It will turn your thoughts around.” “Well, I’ll try it,” I said to myself. “After all, it has probably been a bad day at the nursing home, too.”

2 Corinthians 1:4 He comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any kind of affliction, through the comfort we ourselves receive from God.

When I got to her room, she was lying on her bed, gazing out the window, watching the raindrops fall. A tear, as big as a raindrop, slid silently down her face. “Good evening,” I said. “It’s a dreary day, isn’t it?” She did not speak, but I can imagine what she would say, “You don’t know how dreary unless you were here.  This kind of weather makes me depressed, and I have more aches than normal.”

I talked with her for a few minutes, and soon she was smiling. Her face reminded me of the sky after the rain has passed. Then I thought of my feelings. In trying to lift her feelings, I found that my bad mood had disappeared. I had been reluctant to come, but that was exactly what I had needed to do.  Reaching out to others in love can solve many of our problems. The next time we are depressed, we need to remember to reach out to someone more depressed than we are. Lifting others up can bring a smile, not only to their face, but to ours as well.  Think of others when you are depressed.

When a smith can see his own reflection in the metal, he then knows the metal is ready to be removed from the fire.  God’s purpose is to make each one of us as believer’s to be more and more like Christ Jesus everyday.  When the trials and the heartaches come, God knows what He’s doing.  It has always been His will and His desire to reveal more of Himself in the lives of the believers.  So the next time you are suffering, stop and think, “there must be a purpose for why I am suffering”.  Know that as the impurities are skimmed from the surface, the image of the Son will come forth as shinning as gold.  Friends that is only the beginning of the process.  For once the gold is refined and the Smith sees His image, He now has the gold in a place to make it pliable.

This is when the Smith takes the refined gold and makes something beautiful out of it, which reflects His glory and His craft.  This is something the Smith says, “Yes, this is my creation and it is very good!”  Can you hear the Lord saying this about you?  Perhaps you are just beginning to bubble as the impurities rise to the top.  Just what after the fire comes the glory!  So friend let go of grudges, heartache, bad attitudes, selfishness, bitterness and plain ole down right meanness…let go and let God!

He had knowledge of God’s power, wisdom and presence at every place in Creation.  He knew God ruled with sovereignty the temporal and spiritual world.  His writings teach us that evil is personified in Satan and that Satan hates the people of God and delivers them to malice.  Satan is subject to God, reports to God and can only do what God permits him to do.  We are born into iniquity and are personal sinners; this sin is acknowledged by Job in his youth!  Job believed in the resurrection of the body and knew he would see God after his death.

Most importantly, Job teaches us that man needs an intercessor to appeal to God on his behalf.  God gives a man (Jesus, the God-Man) who will save people from their sin and act as a mediator between God and man.  Friend do you have the patience of Job to wait for an intercessor; a mediator who will come to God on your behalf?  Do you know Jesus Christ as that person?  Is He your personal Lord and Savior…Friend have you confessed your life over time Him?  He is the only One standing between you and the devil.  If He is not fighting on your side, then you have made Him a bystander in the battle for your soul–without Jesus you LOSE!