[Darris McNeely] Have you ever started reading the book of Job and wondered where this is going? What's the point? A lot of bad news, some suffering there in the book of Job. My wife asked me one time that she was reading through Job in her annual Bible reading, "Why?" I said, "Honey, stay with it, get to the end, chapter 42. It will all make sense." It is one of those books that works out that way. You know the story of Job. He was prosperous. He was tempted. God allowed Satan to touch his life and his family. He lost his family. He lost all those possessions. He went through a great deal of personal torment and suffering, 41 chapters' worth, until God then finally began to intervene after all of his friends were there talking to him. And it's in chapter 42 that Job comes to really know God and says so in a way that he hadn't before.

Job says in chapter 42, beginning in verse 2, "I know," as he speaks to God, "that You can do everything. No purpose of Yours can be withheld from You. You ask, 'Who is this who hides counsel without knowledge?' And therefore I have uttered what I don't understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know. Listen, please, and let me speak." Job says in verse 5, "I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees You. Therefore, I abhor myself, and repent in dust and in ashes."

A lot of suffering, a lot of advice from friends, a lot of dialogue that goes on in the book of Job. And finally, he comes to the end of the book where he admits, "I've heard of You. Now I see finally, after all of this, who You are and what You are doing and I acknowledge You." Job, came to know God in a way probably no other human been has, although sometimes we have run across some pretty extreme, trying situations of life that people have had to deal with. But at the end of the story Job came to know God and he came to understand that. And when it is involving this desire that you and I have to know God, to know what He is doing with our life, what and why this is all working as it is in our lives and our relationships, at our job, with our health, with the health of someone close to us, and we seek to understand there's a lot that we go through and sometimes there's a lot of advice that comes from other people that we try to filter through.

I think one of the keys to coming to know God, in any part of our life as it comes to us, is what we might draw as after 41 chapters of trial and experience, of advice, of counsel, of talk with friends, chatter, emotions, hurt, misunderstanding, anger, disappointment. All that finally removed and then Job confronts God, and Job comes to know God and he says, "Finally, I get it and I understand now who You are and what You are doing."

Sometimes a lot of things have to be removed out of our lives in our relationship with God to come to know Him. Job's one of the deepest books of the Bible to seek to understand and to figure out what is going on. But if that one point there can help us to know God in our own relationship, it's a valuable lesson out of the book of Job when it comes to knowing God.

That's "BT Daily." Join us next time.