Where Were You

One autumn Monday night, years ago, my friends and I were starting a new worship service on the University of North Texas campus, where we all attended.  We were all very overconfident going in, but as we sat down to pray before we started, the enormity of what we were taking on settled in. I was terrified! We had no idea what we were doing. We looked around us and saw a box with Job 38 written on the side. 

Now of course, I’m sure this had something to do with its purpose here and had some industrial meaning, but we thought we would take a chance and see if God had a deeper purpose for it. So we flipped open a Bible and found this passage:

 “Then the Lord answered Job out of the storm.  He said: ‘Who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge?  Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me.  Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?  Tell me, if you understand.  Who marked off its dimensions?  Surely you know!  Who stretched a measuring line across it?  On what were its footings set, or who laid its cornerstone – while the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy?  Who shut up the sea behind doors when it burst forth from the womb, when I made the clouds its garment and wrapped it in thick darkness, when I fixed limits for it and set its doors and bars in place, when I said, ‘This far you may come and no farther, here is where your proud waves halt’?  Have you ever given orders to the morning, or shown the dawn its place, that it might take the earth by the edges and shake the wicked out of it?”

Had enough yet? 

Here are a few other favorite highlights.  “What is the way to the abode of light?  And where does darkness reside?” (Job 38:19).  “Have you entered the storehouses of the snow or seen the storehouses of the hail, which I reserve for times of trouble, for days of war and battle?” (Job 38:22-23).  “Does the rain have a father?” (Job 38:28a).  “Can you bind the beautiful Pleiades?” (Job 38:34a).  “Who let the wild donkey go free?” (Job 39:5a).  “Does the hawk take flight by your wisdom and spread his wings toward the south?” (Job 39:26).

Who am I to doubt my God?  What He tells me, I can believe without fail. Who am I to question His wisdom and purpose?  I don’t need to understand where this path leads.  I have no need to see the big picture in order to trust Him.  Why do I place my faith in my own vision rather than in His guidance?  Why do I live with all my focus on how this world can fill me when He has offered living water?  Why am I so hell-bent to choose my own way and not follow His?  When did I forget that I am human and He is God?  I am not His equal.  Where has my divine fear gone, or did it ever exist? 

I do not quake in fear of my God because I have focused on stories of His love, but not gazed into His glory.  The mercy of God is not separate from the wrath of God.  We cannot worship one without the other.  In the Bible, every time someone sees an angel, the angel’s first words are “Do not fear.”  Why?  Because people were terrified!  Terrified of beings with no glory of their own; beings who reside in the presence of the Lord in such proximity that they reflect His glory in a more powerful way than we have ever experienced.  If they were that scared of angels, how frightened do you think we would be to see the fullness of the glory and presence of God?  Where there are armies of these angels merely supplying the background music: would we be able to stand, much less respond in our typical American bravado and sarcasm?

We think of ourselves as wise, and yet both Psalms and Proverbs state, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”  I found the love of the Lord to be true in my life, but the fear of the Lord to be absent.  If it were real, many of my doubts would fade.  If it were true, many of my questions would be unnecessary.  If the fear of the Lord were present, my disobedience would be dealt with.  In Luke 6:46, Jesus says, “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord’ and not do what I say?”  I use the term “Lord,” but rarely am I recognizing Him as the all-powerful Master of all.  When I struggle with obedience, I am obviously considering myself as a valid opponent to God for control of the throne of my life. 

Therefore, I must not be looking at God clearly, because He is so far my superior that to even consider an alternative is utter foolishness.  And yet, I scream my questions.  Where do I go from here?  How could You let this happen?  Who do I marry?  Why do bad things happen to good people?  When all the time, I should be declaring with a joyful heart, “You are God, and I am Yours.”

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