Life Focused On Self Never Helps

-July 1, 2025-

Good morning beloved, happy Tuesday,

“My spirit is broken, my days are extinguished, the grave is ready for me.”

(Job 17:1).

Christians can go through times of difficulty, discouragement, despondency, despair, and depression. It usually happens when life seems unbearable. One hard thing after another piles up on us, and the sheer weight of it brings us down.

This was Job’s story. It had several major trials that all came at the same time, and he tried to process it, to make sense of it. It is at these times we need to focus on the Lord not on ourselves.

God allowed the devil to use any means to bring Job down barring killing him. Job through it all held on by his fingernails, but he held on. His burdens seemed inescapable, incomprehensible, and interminable.

We notice Job says, “my spirit,” “my days,” and “for me.” His thoughts on himself only made things worse. If one loses hope, he loses everything.

When we are broken, only God can put us back together; when our days are extinguished, only God can reignite us; when we think we are going to die, only God can breathe into us see us through.

Job was despondent. The word despondent is defined as, “in low spirits from loss of hope or courage; feeling or showing extreme discouragement, dejection, or depression.”

Fortunately, Job looked to the Lord and concluded, “I know my Redeemer lives, and He shall stand at last on the earth; And after my skin is destroyed, this I know, that in my flesh I shall see God” (Job 19:25-26).

The same thing happened to the psalmist Asaph in Psalm 73. He saw how the wicked seemed to prosper while he suffered, and pondered his life in comparison. Finally he said in psalm 73:17, “Until I went into the sanctuary of God; then I understood their end.”

Let us keep our eyes on Jesus not on ourselves or on our circumstances. Have a blessed day in the sanctuary of the Lord.

Jesus is our only hope amid hopelessness.

Dean