062. Job’s Prayer For An Answer To His Petitions.

Job’s Prayer For An Answer To His Petitions. The Prayer as recorded.—Job 30:20-31. The Lord’s Answer to Job’s Prayers.—Job 38:1-23. The Lord’s Answer is continued through this chapter, and the Thirty-Ninth, Fortieth, and Forty-first (Job 39-41). That the prayers of Christians are not immediately answered ought never to discourage or dishearten, we must “pray on, pray ever,” remembering the promise, that God will hear and answer in his own good time. The ways of the Almighty are not as our ways, neither are his thoughts like ours; his plans and purposes with regard to us are concealed, and the Christian should find it “sweet to lie passive in his hands, and know no will but God’s.” However dark the dispensations of Providence, however cold and bleak our path in life may have become, when the loved are buried and the idol taken, we should remember there is a source of comfort; it is earnest, heartfelt prayer; it is this which will lead us under the heaviest trial to say with the poet—

“Nearer, my God, nearer to thee, E’en though it be a cross That bringeth me, Nearer my God, nearer to thee!

Then let my way appear Steps unto heaven, All that thou sendest me, In mercy given.

Nearer, my God, to thee, Nearer to thee!”

Job’s distress was great that he could receive no answer to his prayers, and he therefore infers rashly that God is cruelly afflicting him. He forgot in his present terrible condition—for his body is wasted by disease, and sorrow deep and heavy is in his heart—that “God prepares the ear to hear;” he seems impatient for the Lord’s answer. This spirit is reproved in that answer.