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There are moments in every serious life
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when prayer becomes the hardest
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discipline. Not because you don't know
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how to do it, but because you've done it
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faithfully and nothing has changed.
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You've asked, waited, asked again. The
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silence has become almost hostile. This
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is where faith separates from sentiment.
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Where real belief begins. Job knew this
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silence intimately. His friends came
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with answers, easy answers, formulaic
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answers. Job had sinned. Job lacked
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faith. Job needed to confess something.
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All of it was wrong. And Job, in his
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devastation, was honest enough to say
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so. He did not perform certainty he
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didn't feel. He did not manufacture
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comfort for his own suffering. He argued
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with God, and God respected him for it.
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Notice what God does not do when God
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finally speaks. God does not explain.
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God does not justify. God does not offer
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a theoticy. God asks questions. God
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redirects Job's gaze from his own
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suffering to the structure of creation
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itself to the pleades to Leviathan
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to the mystery that precedes him. Paul
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too knew this. He asked for his thorn to
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be removed. Three times he asked. Three
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times the answer was no. But embedded in
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that refusal was a promise that changed
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everything. My grace is sufficient for
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you. For my power is made perfect in
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weakness. Not an explanation, a
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The closed heaven is not abandonment. It
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is redirection. It is the withdrawal of
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comfort so that something harder,
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something realer can emerge. Trust
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without the feeling of being heard.
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Obedience without the reward of
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understanding. Faithfulness when the
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most reasonable response would be to
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walk away. This is not for the weak. But
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neither is life. Choose which kind of
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weakness you'll accept.
