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Day 147, or May 27. I am totally innocent before God. Our thoughts today are rooted

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in Job chapter 31, verses 5 and 6. If I have walked with falsehood, or my foot has hurried

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after deceit, let God weigh me in honest scales, and He will know that I am blameless.

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Now the big picture surrounding these verses. Job's debates with his friends come to an

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end now, and he has no more to say until he has a conversation with God Himself at the

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end of the book. It's interesting how much of what he says could be summed up by saying,

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I have kept the law. But Job lived centuries before Moses brought the first written law

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that the Jews ever had. So it seems he was keeping the law within him, the law that God

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His Creator had put there, the law that could be called His conscience. He declares he is

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innocent of sexual crimes, abuse of power, and trusting in wealth alone. Job lived by

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God's moral compass.

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And now our action step for today. In our twenty-first century Western world it seems

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the bottom line is always money. Factories don't make good products, they make money.

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Governments don't rule with fairness and equity, they keep taxes low. Simplistic I

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know, but the concept was underlined to me when I was told that a film director had been

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replaced by a competitor to make a sequel for a very successful blockbuster. When he

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protested that he had made some of the greatest films ever, the reply he received was chilling.

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We aren't in business to make great films, we're in business to make money. As the

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founding director of Walk Through the Bible here in the UK, I had to make money in order

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to be able to do ministry. Of course in ministry we call it funding. At no time did I sense

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I had crossed the line into simply making money, but I have to say I came close to teetering

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on the brink occasionally when funds were particularly low. We have lots of guidance

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in the Bible, but a great one is the gut feeling that God gave Job and you and me. If what

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you are doing today doesn't feel right, stop it right now. It probably isn't right.