Some Thursday Encouragement

I just read a chapter in Job that totally got me...Bear with me..it's long.

This is the chapter that Elihu finally speaks up to Job and the others after previously being scared because he is so much younger. The past 15 chapters or so have been Job's friends telling him that God was punishing him because he had sinned...and then eventually Job being angry because he couldn't see how he had ever sinned enough to deserve the desolation he was given...and even more angry because God was seemingly silent in the midst of it all.

Get it Elihu.

"But I tell you, in this you are not right, for God is greater than man. Why do you complain to him that he answers none of man's words? For God does speak--now one way, now another-- though man may not perceive it. In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falls on men as they slumber in their beds, he may speak in their ears and terrify them with warnings, to turn man from wrongdoing and keep him from pride, to preserve his soul from the pit, his life from perishing by the sword. Or a man may be chastened on a bed of pain with constant distress in his bones, so that his very being finds food repulsive and his soul loathes the choicest meal. His flesh wastes away to nothing, and his bones, once hidden, now stick out. His sould draws near to the pit, and his life to the messengers of death.

Yet if there is an angel on his side as a mediator, one out of a thousand, to tell a man what is right for him, to be gracious to him and say, 'Spare him from going down to the pit; I have found a ransom for him (Jesus?)'--then his flesh is renewed like a child's; it is restored as in the days of his youth. He prays to God and finds favor with him, he sees God's face and shouts for joy; he is restored by God to his righteous state.

Then he comes to men and says, 'I sinned and perverted what was right, but I did not get what I deserved. He reedemed my soul from going down to the pit, and I will live to enjoy the light.

God does all these things to a man--twice, even three times--to turn back his soul from the pit, that the light of life may shine on him." --Job 33:12-30

So, you mean that I'm really not supposed to be perfect?? And that me not being that way actually glorifies God??

Go figure...