He Will Always Desire Thee

“Thou shalt call, and I will answer thee: thou wilt have a desire to the work of thine hands.” (Job 14:15 AV)

 

Job, although he is struggling with his circumstances and the temporary silence of God, knows that God will answer and that when He does, Job will hear.  He knows God will speak to him because God has a desire towards the work of His hands.  I cannot even imagine how Job must have felt.  To survive this trial let alone thrive after it was completed is something very few would claim.  As an aside, reading through Job this time I am noticing Job utters kernels of truth of which he is not aware.  He is not aware of how deep the truth is and consequently, loses an opportunity for a self-evident truth to do him some good.  This is one such case.  We are like that, though.  In the throws of deep trials, we say a thing or two that speaks directly to our situation and can be a source of enlightenment or comfort, yet it goes over our heads because of the emotional turmoil we are suffering at the moment.  If Job would have truly meditated upon that which he just said, he would have gained even more faith and confidence that would have tide him over for the duration of this deep hardship.

I have this tradition of which my children remind me.  Every major holiday, I make homemade cinnamon rolls for breakfast.  It is quite an undertaking.  Making and working the dough is time-consuming.  Over the years, I have made some tweaks to the recipe.  I used to get up four hours before serving time.  It took about a half-hour to mix the dough but at least two hours for the dough to rise and proof.  Then another half-hour to roll it out and put it all together followed by about thirty-five to forty minutes of baking time.  It was quite a project.  I messed with the dough recipe most of all.  I started out buying frozen bread dough.  But that wasn’t sweet enough.  Then I hand mixed the dough.  This took extra time.  I followed that by using a bread machine.  That was ok.  It did all the work for me.  However, I couldn’t make enough in one batch to serve a family of ten people.  Kids, spouses, and grandkids at the time.  I was always trying to perfect this recipe.  A change here.  An overhaul there.  A few more spices. A bit less spices.  Sometimes adding pecans.  Or, walnuts.  Then there was the time we made eggnog icing.  The best!  The last few times I tried a hack on a whim and it worked out great!  The whole project only takes about thirty minutes from start to finish.  I use baguette rolls!  Slicing them into inch-and-a-half pieces, I soak them in melted butter for about twenty minutes.  Placing them in a baking dish, I pour all the butter over them after it begins to cool a bit and will pool on top of the bread.  Then I sprinkle cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg on top; followed by a dollop of brown sugar on top.  Into a 350 degree oven for ten minutes and presto – done!  This is a work of my hands.  I had a desire to keep working with it until it became the best that I could do.  I am sure we will continue to tweak it.

Never doubt that God has a desire towards the work of His hands.  Especially at times when it seems like He may not.  Again, one can only imagine what Job was feeling.  Losing all of his kids, material wealth, and good health, Job had nothing to live for.  He wished he could die or that he had never been born at all.  It can truly be said that Job was suffering from a direct satanic attack.  The Devil’s whole goal was to see Job fall.  If Job fell, then God had no bragging rights.  Being asked to endure what he did, God thought a lot about Job.  What Job refused to allow is the thought that God had completely abandoned him or that God did not have a purpose in all of his troubles.  He couldn’t make sense of it.  He wondered why God would allow such a thing.  Particularly because Job had been so faithful in all his life.  Job hung on to one truth through it all.  The truth stated above.  Just because our perception may say one thing, it does not mean reality has changed.  We may feel like God wants nothing to do with us, but nothing could be further from the truth.  Job did nothing wrong.  Our feelings come amid our failures.  We fail God in great ways and think He has turned His back on us forever.  It is almost like we think we have a home in heaven, but because we are such failures, we will be assigned the furthest point from God’s presence.  This is devil-speak.  God loves us and His desire towards us never fades.  He will work with us to bring us into Christlikeness and love us despite what we are or what we have done.  We can say the same as Job.  We know God will call and when He does, we will answer.  We know this because God desires to work on our lives more than we can comprehend.