Job 11:13-20 “Still, if you set your heart on God and reach out to him, If you scrub your hands of sin and refuse to entertain evil in your home,You’ll be able to face the world unashamed and keep a firm grip on life, guiltless and fearless. You’ll forget your troubles; they’ll be like old, faded photographs. Your world will be washed in sunshine, every shadow dispersed by dawn. Full of hope, you’ll relax, confident again; you’ll look around, sit back, and take it easy. Expansive, without a care in the world, you’ll be hunted out by many for your blessing. But the wicked will see none of this. They’re headed down a dead-end road with nothing to look forward to—nothing.” (msg. translation) This episode talks about how our life could be if we turn away from sin. It also talks about how troubling it is to watch the news obsessively. Music:"Adding the Sun" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
A World Washed In Sunshine
Job 11:13-20 “Still, if you set your heart on God and reach out to him, If you scrub your hands of sin and refuse to entertain evil in your home,You’ll be able to face the world unashamed and keep a firm grip on life, guiltless and fearless. You’ll forget your troubles; they’ll be like old, faded photographs. Your world will be washed in sunshine, every shadow dispersed by dawn. Full of hope, you’ll relax, confident again; you’ll look around, sit back, and take it easy. Expansive, without a care in the world, you’ll be hunted out by many for your blessing. But the wicked will see none of this. They’re headed down a dead-end road with nothing to look forward to—nothing.” (msg. translation)
How great would it be to forget your troubles. The verse gives us the image of old, faded photographs. Imagine if your troubles were so far away that they felt like old faded photographs? It also says your world would be washed in sunshine, every shadow dispersed by dawn. Imagine if this were true? You life was bright and filled with light and there was no darkness. Sin lurked in the darkness. Then enemy lurked in the darkness. However, if we scrub our hands of sin and refuse to entertain evil in our home the we can live in the light. We can chase away our troubles. Turning away from sin is not something that is easy and it is not something we can do on our own. This is why God is telling us to reach out to Him. If we ask Him for help and He will help us.
The next line says “full of hope, you’ll relax, confident again; you’ll look around, sit back, and take it easy. Doesn’t that sound so nice? When is the last time you felt like that? When is the last time you looked around at your life, or this world that we live in and felt like you could take it easy? Most people I know are super stressed about what is going on in this world. They are worried about the government in the United States. They are worried about their jobs and how it will be affected if they do or do not take the covid vaccine. They are worried about their civil rights and personal freedom of choice and wonder if they will be taken away from them. There are so many people that ware worried about the war in Europe and I think we all wonder when it will stop. I have heard many people are super worried that this war between two countries will turn into WW III, I get it. There is a lot of scary things going on in the world right now and that causes many of us to be anxious and to be worried.
If this is you, first know that you are not alone. There are many people who are stressing and worrying about all these things too. You are in good company. The second thing I want you to know is that you don’t have to keep worrying and being anxious about these things. Part of the reason that we worry so much is because we watch or read the news a lot. When we are constantly putting that information into our brain, then our brains are going to focus on it. I have talked before about our Reticular Activator System. It is a filter that we all have in our brains. Our brains take in so much information per second and our brain can’t process it all, so it filters out the things it doesn’t think we are interested in. We set our filter by the things we do, watch, read, etc. If we spend a lot of time on something then our brain thinks we are interested in it and so it lets in all the info that it sees on those things and filters out a lot of other things.
For instance, if you are constantly watching news about the war then your brain thinks you are really interested in that topic and so it will point out things about the war every where you look. If you are suddenly into running a lot, your brain would allow in all things that have to do with running. For instance, my friend said one time that it seems like everyone has run a marathon. In all actuality less than 1% of the population of the United States have run a marathon. It just seemed like more to her because everywhere she looked her brain showed her runners.
If you want to be full of hope, relax, and be confident again you have the power to do this. You just need to change your focus. I had a friend that was very upset with all that is going on in the world. It was affecting her job and even her motivation to get out of bed in the morning. She felt like what was the point of getting out of bed when the world was falling apart anyway. I asked her to make one small change. Stop watching the news. Here’s the thing, yes, it is important to be informed, but do you really need to watch the news and check the news as often as you do? Is that why you are checking the news, to be informed? Or, are you checking if obsessively? If the news is affecting your mood and you feel you are anxious and worried a lot, stop watching the news. I promise you will see that worry and anxiety lessen. Sometimes we think we will worry less if we are more informed. I don’t think this is the case with the news because it is set up to shock you. They want you to keep watching so it is not just facts, it is information with a spin that makes you want to keep watching.
In my opinion, if there is nothing you can change about what is going on, then it doesn’t do any good to obsess about it. We don’t know what is going to happen with the war in Ukraine. Hopefully it will end soon, and maybe it will turn into WW III. Either way there is nothing we can do to change it. The government is a mess right now, but there is nothing we can do to change that either. There are things we can do sometimes. We can vote in local elections. We can write to our congressmen and women. However, watching the news and worrying won’t change anything and it is not serving most of us. Nothing good is coming out of obsessively watching the news. If you find that you are anxious and worried a lot I challenge you to take a one week break from the news, and just see how you feel. You do not have to take my word for it. Test it out and see for yourself. I know my friend said she felt so much better!
The next line of the verse says, “Expansive, without a care in the world, you’ll be hunted out by many for your blessing. But the wicked will see none of this. They’re headed down a dead-end road with nothing to look forward to—nothing.” Imagine if you didn’t have a care in the world? Can you remember the last time you didn’t have a care in the world? It was probably when you were a child. “You’ll be hunted out by many for your blessing. Imagine that. People seeking you out for your blessing. This whole verse is telling us what we need to do to have this extraordinary life. If we want the things we talked about in this verse we need to reach out to the Lord and scrub sin from our lives. We don’t have to do this perfectly. God is not expecting us to wake up one day and sin no more. It isn’t about being perfect, it is about our small daily decisions. Can you avoid one sin today? Can you acknowledge to God some sin that you know you are struggling with? Can you just take one step closer to God today? The verse says the wicked will see none of this. They are headed down a dead-end road with noting to look forward to-nothing. We don’t want this to be us. We want the carefree life, the sun washed life. We want to relax and have all of our troubles disappear. God is telling us how to make this happen, now all we have to do it say yes. Yes Lord, I will reach out to you. Yes, Lord, I struggle with sin and I want to sin no more, please help me. Yes Lord, I want all that you offer to me. Yes Lord, I will do my best to scrub sin from my life with your help. It feel impossible, but Matthew 19:26 says, “With God all things are Possible.”
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to turn away from sin, please help us. We want to reach out to you in our time of need, why is this so hard? Please help us reach out Lord. Lord, we accept your offer of a world washed with sunshine and free of shadows, help us do our part to live in that world. We would love for our troubles to go away. We are so grateful for all of your promises. It is amazing how you take care of us so well when we are turning away from you so often. Lord, we are so grateful that you are so forgiving and that you shower us with grace. I don’t know where we would be without all that grace. Help us to accept your grace and forgiveness. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!