SCRIPTURE: Job 33
OBSERVATION/APPLICATION:
For God speaks again and again, though people do not recognize it. He speaks in dreams, in visions of the night, when deep sleep falls on people as they lie in their beds. He whispers in their ears and terrifies them with warnings. He makes them turn from doing wrong; he keeps them from pride. He protects them from the grave, from crossing over the river of death. Or God disciplines people with pain on their sickbeds, with ceaseless aching in their bones. [Job 33:14-19]
I like what Elihu has to say so far, for the most part.
Yes, God is always speaking, but we do not always hear Him.
God speaks through all kinds of mediums – other people, our circumstances, the bible, history, dreams, suffering.
In all of these ways, and so many more, He is trying to get our attention, to show us our need for Him.
As C.S. Lewis once wrote: “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains; it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” (from The Problem of Pain).

O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones God’s messengers! How often I have wanted to gather your children together as a hen protects her chicks beneath her wings, but you wouldn’t let me. [Matthew 23:37]
I have referred to this passage before, and often think about it: God sends all kinds of messengers, communicating His love and concern – but we do not hear Him because we are not willing.
Something in us refuses to listen, closed to God’s message of love and concern, refusing to allow the Lord to bring us close and keep us safe.

Elihu is right in what he says, and yet he is not totally right.
His problem is that he thinks he has God figured out, that his perspective on things is right!
He claims to understand God where others do not, and this of course is pride.
Because we know the whole story of Job, we know that God did allow Job to suffer, not because of his sin but to beat the devil in his trickery.
Elihu thinks he has Job’s story all figured out, but he is wrong.
And this is the issue: when we think we have things all figured out, we become closed to the truth, closed to what God may be saying to us.
In his own way Elihu won’t let God speak to him because he thinks he already has God figured out.

What I take from all of this is that we always need to be humble and open to correction, even when we think we’re right.
Closed minds run the risk of keeping God locked out – unwilling to hear His message.
The solution to a closed mind is not an open mind – open to believing anything – but an open humble heart.
We can state what we think we know, we can share our opinions, but we need to be very careful that we do not insist that we are absolutely right, or that our view of God’s truth is the only right answer.
When I hear some christian teachers speak, that is what I hear; they talk with such authority that anyone who disagrees with them is disagreeing with God.
I will be the first to admit that I have ideas and opinions about how things are, but I also know that I do not have a grasp of the whole truth, and there are also wrong ideas built into m thinking.
As I said before, I believe in absolute truth, I just don’t think my view of it is absolutely true.
This is hard for some people to accept; they prefer the clear boundaries of black and white thinking to the fuzzy lines of humble, open beliefs.

But just remember, the Pharisees were the ones who held clear boundaries of black and white thinking, and in the end they were closed God’s message of love.
They were not willing to accept Jesus because He did not fit their version of “absolute truth”.

PRAYER:
Lord, forgive me the pride of Elihu in my own thinking. Show me where I am resisting You, closed to Your message of love and concern. Keep my heart humble and open to You and Your truth.