Soot and Silence. Part II.

"These are the nations that God left there, using them to test the Israelites who had no experience in the Canaanite wars. He did it to train the descendants of Israel, the ones who had no battle experience, in the art of war. "  -Judges 3:1-2, The Message

A few months ago, I had the opportunity to preach a sermon on Sunday morning entitled: "Soot and Silence."  Using Job as an example, the point of the sermon was that when it seems like God is silent is when He's actually the most active in our problems and situations.  And that many times when we get Him frustrated to the point of actually responding, His response won't quite make total sense because He's looking from a perspective of the complete picture while we only see the present moment.

I was reading my Bible this morning and these verses above really stuck out at me.  Nowhere does God actually address the Israelites and tell them that they are being put into these uncomfortable circumstances for the purpose of growth; the author had the hindsight to be able to state this.  I've been thinking about my own life lately and why certain things have been happening.  I need to be honest; a lot of times, I just don't get it.  There are many people in our church have been going through even rougher times of trial then me and I am pretty sure they're in the same boat as me though. 

Is there a lesson that God feels everyone of us needs to learn together?  Are they different lessons?  All I know for sure is that Genesis, Exodus, Judges, and Job all show pretty good examples of people who went through some pretty tough stuff and didn't understand why they were experiencing it, yet those life lessons came back to make sense either to them or later generations.  In the meantime, Galatians 6:2 says that we should: "share each other’s burdens, and in this way obey the law of Christ."  We're all in this together so let's do our best to be there for each other in their times of need.