NEEDING GOD AND NEEDING OTHERS
Job 6:13-14 (NIV 1984) 13 Do I have any power to help myself, now that success has been driven from me? 14 “A despairing man should have the devotion of his friends …”
There is real prosperity that comes from the Lord, where God seems to bless what we touch and bring success to the tasks in which we engage. While some of the modern ideas on prosperity and success are extreme, neither are outside God’s normal activity in relation to His people (see 2 Chron 32:30). How do we feel when what we touch turns to gold? What is our response to God, and disposition toward others, when we are succeeding? Good questions, and ones we all would like to entertain more often. But our text takes us in a different direction.
“Do I have any power to help myself, now that success has been driven from me?” (v.13) Where are we emotionally when we are not succeeding? When our career is not advancing as planned? When our projects seem to fail, and fail often? When our marriage is falling apart? When what we touch turns into something else, less shiny and worth little? There is a place in our weakness where our talents cannot rescue, where our abilities, experience, and even our determination are all unhelpful. What do we do in times like these, times when we cannot seem to get on top of things? What do we do when we cannot turn the tables, mount a comeback, and secure the victory we think we are owed? What do we do when we are completely dependent on the hand of the Lord, the mercy of others, and the strength we hope they possess?
When our strength fails we need the Lord, but not only the Lord, we need our friends. “A despairing man should have the devotion of his friends…” (v.14) We need the help of people that love us and believe in us and are able to hold us up when we cannot hold ourselves up. Here is where our investment in others pays off, where kindness and sacrificial love for our friends are returned. The soul who never invests in others, isolating themselves with their TV, phone, dog (or cat), has not sown into the lives of others; and when they are in desperate situations, find the relational support they need unavailable. Perhaps Jesus was partly thinking about this when he taught us that the greatest commandments are to love God and love our neighbor (Lk 10:27). From a strictly selfish viewpoint, loving others is the way we make long-term relational investments that can pay off when we need it most. We are not always promised success; in fact, we may find ourselves in situations where we are utterly failing and lost; but we are not left without help. We have God. We have others. We need both! And to need both can be humiliating. For the driven believer with aspirations of kingdom success, it is quite humbling to hit the wall of failure, where our goal to change the world struggles to find one or two souls positively impacted. But to be here may be a great gift of God, where we find that He, and the others He puts in our lives, are simply enough, and where our investments turn from grandiose kingdom goals to a more simple end, loving Him and loving others.
