Day 147, or May 27. I am totally innocent before God. Our thoughts today are rooted
in Job chapter 31, verses 5 and 6. If I have walked with falsehood, or my foot has hurried
after deceit, let God weigh me in honest scales, and He will know that I am blameless.
Now the big picture surrounding these verses. Job's debates with his friends come to an
end now, and he has no more to say until he has a conversation with God Himself at the
end of the book. It's interesting how much of what he says could be summed up by saying,
I have kept the law. But Job lived centuries before Moses brought the first written law
that the Jews ever had. So it seems he was keeping the law within him, the law that God
His Creator had put there, the law that could be called His conscience. He declares he is
innocent of sexual crimes, abuse of power, and trusting in wealth alone. Job lived by
God's moral compass.
And now our action step for today. In our twenty-first century Western world it seems
the bottom line is always money. Factories don't make good products, they make money.
Governments don't rule with fairness and equity, they keep taxes low. Simplistic I
know, but the concept was underlined to me when I was told that a film director had been
replaced by a competitor to make a sequel for a very successful blockbuster. When he
protested that he had made some of the greatest films ever, the reply he received was chilling.
We aren't in business to make great films, we're in business to make money. As the
founding director of Walk Through the Bible here in the UK, I had to make money in order
to be able to do ministry. Of course in ministry we call it funding. At no time did I sense
I had crossed the line into simply making money, but I have to say I came close to teetering
on the brink occasionally when funds were particularly low. We have lots of guidance
in the Bible, but a great one is the gut feeling that God gave Job and you and me. If what
you are doing today doesn't feel right, stop it right now. It probably isn't right.