Beauty in the Breaking Point

Job 1:1-22

                We’ve all at one point placed a box around God, and if you haven’t, I wish I could say the same. We try to fit Him inside these manmade walls, and we decide, “Ok God, you can handle this, this and this. That’s what you’re allowed to touch. I’ve got this, this and this under control.” So, we lay down a couple things at His feet, pack up the big stuff that we have “under control” and go about our business. The tricky thing is that sometimes we don’t even realize we’re doing it. Sometimes we fall into this fight or flight mode where instead of immediately going to God and asking Him to take over, we skip the humble prayer time and jump straight to the overthinking, problem-solving, anxiety-ridden state that we find ourselves living in. And if you’ve never found yourself camped out there, let me tell you from experience, it’s not fun. But if we’re not careful, we’ll allow that to become our permanent residence, which is the exact opposite of what God wants for us.

                It’s no secret that this world gets tough. In fact, I’m pretty sure that saying, “when it rains, it pours” originated from my life story. It’s always one thing after another after another. There’s never a catch-up time or a period to just process what you’ve been through before the next thing hits. And yes, a lot of the time the devil brings about these struggles to shift our focus from God to our problems. But here’s the thing about God: He's the only One capable of turning the biggest test in our lives into our biggest testimony. And I know there are probably some of you that are reading this that are going through the worst possible thing you could imagine and think, “how could anything good possibly come from this struggle?” But bear with me while I try to walk through what God has placed on my heart.

                In the book of Job, we find this faithful, God-fearing man undergo one of the worst possible things I could ever imagine. His sons, his daughters, his health, his possessions and his livestock: all gone. Ripped from him without a second glance. But the things he lost isn’t what I want to focus on, it’s the conversation between God and Satan that I really want to read into. In Job 1:10, Satan asks God, “Hast not thou made an hedge about him, and about his house, and about all that he hath on every side?” The hedge. That’s the focus here. This conversation paints the beautiful picture of the protection God has over His children. But soon, that beauty becomes a breaking point for Job. God allows that hedge to come down, for Satan to do what he does best and destroy everything that he had. That’s when Job hit his breaking point. But here is where the beauty is found. Job says in 1:21, “…the Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” It goes on to tell us that throughout all this that Job went through, he didn’t once blame God.

                You know, in the midst of this suffering, the unanswered prayers, the hurt, the pain, and the devastation, Job had that moment of realization and reverence in knowing that it was out of his control. That God was the only One capable of bringing beauty from ashes. Job’s response in this moment wasn’t a surprise to God. He knew that it brought Job to the end of himself. And here’s what I want us to understand: there is such a beauty in reaching that breaking point where we don’t have a choice but to hand over our struggles to God. When those things that we claimed to have “under control” get so far out of our control that there’s no fixing them ourselves. When the battles we’re facing bust through the walls of that box we try to contain God in. As awful as it feels in the moment when our circumstances get so far beyond our control that we hit this breaking point, there’s nothing in this world any better. I know some of you are reading that and saying, “how could you know? Where do you get the right to say that?” Because I’ve been there. I’ve been the one crying out to God as a sick teenage girl who has no clue what the future held. Who’s held her baby nephew in her hands after he’s taken his last breath. Who ran through the hospital parking lot to make it to tell my mamaw I loved her before they took her back for a surgery we didn’t know if she’d make it through. Who sat beside my papaw month after month while he did chemo treatments. Who sat in the waiting room while her best friend was fighting for her life. I’ve been there.

What’s so crazy is that these moments when it felt like the earth was shattering around me, those were the times when I felt God the most. The times when things got so far beyond my control that I didn’t have a choice but to hand it over to God. It took me reaching a breaking point. It took me getting to a place where I finally let go and let God. We’re born into this world that tries to tell us that we know what’s best, but that’s so far from the truth. God is the One that can see what's best for us and how these struggles are going to make us stronger. Don’t ever be discouraged when you feel that hedge around you come down. When the enemy is fighting his hardest to rob you of your joy. Because chances are, God's about to use whatever it is that you're going through to draw you closer to Him. Sometimes, unfortunately that breakthrough that we pray for doesn't come in the way we expect it to. But no matter what, God is still good.

“I think there’s something really humbling and mysterious and beautiful about how as a human, I always try to put God’s capabilities in a box and about how, in the most loving way, He always rips it up.”