Job 2:1-8

In a single day, Job’s entire life was turned upside down by a conversation that he was not privy to. God offered Job up to Satan with the intent to demonstrate His goodness and greatness in the lives of his free creation. God’s trust in the ironclad tenacity of Job’s righteousness created a test of Job’s faith to prove to Satan that God’s love need not ever be manipulated, but it is offered up in pure faith and total trust.

Satan believed that if Job was hit hard enough, he would curse God to His face. However, Job trusted God so much that when his children would go out, he would go into prayer and ask God to cover them and forgive them in case they sinned.

Satan was permitted to unleash his complete trilogy of demonic attempt: to steal, to kill, and to destroy. In one day, Job’s livestock perished, all his children died, his land lay infertile, and his body is covered in boils.

Trying to make sense of his seemingly unjustified suffering, Job sat in a pile of ashes scraping the puss out of his boils. He is in the emotional abyss, sitting and making no moves—not actively bringing about any answer or change to his current condition.

This is a portrait of spiritual unforgiveness. This is what happens to us when we are suddenly hit by human injury. When we cannot forgive, life comes to a standstill. We sit just as Job did. Our sores still run open because the actions that we are taking are not making a positive difference at all. As the saying goes, “Unforgiveness is like taking poison and expecting someone else to die.”

We cannot expect forgiveness to be a gift bestowed upon us by God. Forgiveness will not come to us as a virtue, supernaturally or otherwise. Forgiveness requires that we exercise discipline and decide to forgive. God wants us to wake up in the morning and exercise forgiveness by acknowledging the forgiveness that we have received from God.

Acknowledging the love of God in our lives brings us together. The only reason we are alive today is because our good God forgave us of our sins. We should fight to forgive because we live forgiven. God has accepted our repentance and treats us as though we have never created an offense against Him.

We have no business sitting on the ash heap scraping our sores. It is stealing precious time from an otherwise blessed life. We are empowering our offenders to have far too much control over our souls. We were not destined to sit in unforgiveness.