Job 9:3

If one wished to contend with God,

   They would not succeed once with a thousand tries.

(Written 6/7, Posted posted 6/14)

I was talking to my pastor this morning and I mentioned the expectation that I received joy from utilizing my spiritual gifts. I experience happiness sometimes when listening to guitar. Two of my cousins play guitar. One I expect experiences joy as he seems to play at church or in similar circumstances. They other I expect experiences happiness as he seems to play in a band at public events. (They probably both do both, but…) I want to experience joy or happiness from playing the guitar, but with my lack of fine motor skills, I only experience frustration when I try.

I selected “contend” over “dispute”, “challenge”, “bring a grievance”, and “go to trial”. I see an aspect of trial and bringing a grievance in the background of the verse, but I felt contend held all the possibilities and that the basic “fight” meaning of contend was more applicable.

Each of my sources had “not answer” rather than “not succeed”. Some had variations on the themes of who answered. Some had the incorrect idea that God could not answer. Some had the logical idea that God would not respond to the challenge.

I was torn over whether to include the idea of the person failing or God not responding. In the end, I feel that God always responds. He wrestled with Jacob, and he came out Israel. We also never win when we challenge God. Therefore, I went with the theme of the man failing and not God.

So here is where I am at. I have a keyboard, two guitars, a drum set, and no one to play them. (Maybe I should get some friends and have a band, except I am sure I cannot sing either.) I have this issue with painting too. I really like paintings, I want to paint, but …

God gives us talents and gifts. I need to learn to pass on the opportunities that I know are not for me and focus on those things God has presented to me that my talents and gifts do help with. This should not be so hard, but I find that it is. I want to be perfect, but I know I am not. But look at Jesus. He was perfect and even He did not do all things. He limited Himself to those things God called Him to do. I need to follow that part of the example.