Year 5, Day 129: Job 35

Theological Commentary: Click Here

Discipleship Focus: Ambition, Appetite

• Appetite: We all have needs that need to be filled.  When we allow ourselves to be filled with the people and things that God brings into our life, we will be satisfied because our In will be in proper focus.  But when we try to fill ourselves with our own desires we end up frustrated by an insatiable hunger.
• Ambition: We all need a goal to which we can strive.  When our ambition comes from God, we find fulfillment in our obedience into that for which we have been equipped because our Out is in proper focus.  But when our ambition comes from ourselves, we find ourselves chasing after our own dreams and trying to find fulfillment in accomplishments of our own making.

Elihu focuses on two major points in his critique of Job.  Elihu asks how it is that Job can ask, “What benefit is there to being righteous?”  In other words, Job has questioned what good his righteousness has been to him.  The second point that Elihu raises is what is to us whether we bring anything to God.  In other words, why are we concerned with what we can add to God?

While I think Job is an amazing man and he lived an incredible life in incredibly horrible circumstances, I also think that Job is guilty on each of these points.  The one place of error that Job has been consistent is in questioning why God hasn’t defended him.  He is guilty of short-sightedness.  In fact, he is guilty of self-centered sight.  Job has occasionally been focused on what is in it for him.  This is rooted in appetite.  Job wants to know what benefit has come to him for his faith.  Of course, we know what benefit comes from relationship with God.  We also know that Job knows this, too.  Job knows his redeemer lives.  He just is forgetful and occasionally has a temporal mindset rather than an eternal mindset.  That’s often what appetite brings about.

As to Elihu’s point regarding what we bring to God, I think that this is an error of ambition.  Think about this for a second.  If God is omnipotent and omniscient, what can I possibly bring to God?  What can I bring to God that He already isn’t?  We want to be important.  We want to be recognized.  That’s ambition speaking.  But the truth is that what should be important is our humbleness before God that allows us to be used in His hand.  That’s what is truly important.

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