Counsel, Endurance for the Journey, Featured
“But consider the joy of those corrected by God!
Do not despise the discipline of the Almighty when you sin.
We have studied life and found all this to be true.
Listen to my counsel, and apply it to yourself.”
JOB 5:17,27 (NLT – WORDS FROM JOB’S “COMFORTERS”)
I don’t think that finger pointing “comforters” intend to hurt people who are suffering. Most of them sincerely want to help – but they lack the experience of suffering to understand the journey of pain of suffering. They are careless in the way they go about encouraging – as many of us are. They are not able to extend God’s grace.
Deep inside they may fear that the suffering they observe may happen to them, so they build up a wall of self-false protection by thinking, I am not like that person. I haven’t done what that person has done, so I won’t suffer like that. As were Job’s “comforters” when they spoke their words of “encouragement.”
The words of the Godly encourage many,
but fools are destroyed by their lack of common sense.
PROVERBS 10:21 (NLT)
On the journey with you,
Dave Dravecky