"OVERWHELMED BY A RELENTLESS GOD"

The passages of scripture in Job is not often preached in the church at large, and I believe it is so because to understand it, you must know something deeper about God and His direct interaction with us. And certainly on this occasion with God and Job, you can believe I have never heard anyone say that they wish they could have taken Job's place. But God loved Job in an overwhelming way!!!

There is certainly an awesome feeling we get just from reading how God questioned Job and the overwhelming aspects of the questions themselves. No one, but no one had ever even thought of questions such as what God asked Job, much less the answers.

How awesome God it is to us today ' to allow us the blessing of being able to listen in on that conversation between God and Job ' thus demonstrating to us how awesome and overwhelming God is, and how useless is our intelligence when it comes to approaching Almighty God.

Truly God is an OVERWHELMING AND RELENTLESS GOD!!!

And so today, in an effort to bring home this subject, I would like to simply provide you with three main points:

1. Overwhelmed in an overwhelming world
2. God's overwhelming love for you.
3. God wants you to be overwhelmed with Him

Number one: Living in an Overwhelming World

It is a fact that we live in a world that simply overwhelms all of us from time to time. It's either that we are OBE'd (overcome by events), as I sometimes will say, or that we simply run out of ourselves ' we run out of us. We have no more to give, we can't give anything more of ourselves, and we have no more to give to situations, issues, challenges, and please ' please, no more crises for today!

We're simply overwhelmed!!!

And there are other reasons and ways in which the 'wagons of worldly weight' can overcome us is we're not careful.

Well, we can all identify with the fact that we've seen a serious increase in the number of people who are right now overcome with all that is going on in their lives both at work and at home ' and even at church ' and then seemingly every facet of their lives it appears that things have almost gone crazy.

I have repeatedly heard people say these three things- over and over and over:

1. Problems seem to be NEVER-ENDING more so than they used to be.
2. Problems seem BIGGER AND TOUGHER than they used to be.
3. Life in general just seems to be much MORE COMPLEX than it used to be.

In general, people now have a sense that the world is tilted out of control (personally, I never thought the world was in control, but that's beside the point).

But why are we overwhelmed ' why do we sometimes feel overwhelmed?

Let me give you four reasons:

1. Feeling that whatever it is you're dealing with - the magnitude of it is too big for you to handle.
2. Being put into the position of doing something that you have not done before.
3. Being put in or caught up in circumstances where you don't know what to do. (This is especially aggravating when you have had no training to deal with it, and there appears to be no plan, and you have no answers.)
4. Fear of failure.

And so in any one of those situations you can come to the conclusion that YOU ARE OVEERWHELMED and your central anxiety kicks in leading to ' guess what, yes, you got it 'fear! AMEN!!!

But watch out because fear can overwhelm you itself!!!
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And while we are wrestling with being overwhelmed with the general things of this life, more and more we end up forgetting to remember:

1. Our spiritual health ' what are we doing daily for our spiritual health
2. Have we broken/divided the complex things down into simpler parts
3. Have we looked for alternatives
4. Did we seek God's help at all ' or did we forget about Him
5. Whose battle is it ' and whose job is it anyway

You know something, when we even FEEL overwhelmed, God is simply waiting on us to give Him a call, ask for help, and give it all to Him. Because, remember, His yoke is easy and His burdens are light! And He does this one thing for us' He takes the hardest, most difficult, most perplexing, the most mind-blowing things in our life ' He takes them upon Himself ' why, because He loves us. He loves us just that much.

Have we ever known God to have a headache; have we ever known God to have a problem?

When we are overwhelmed in an overwhelming world we simply should allow God just a little room to work within that problem or that circumstance. God will step in and demonstrated His OVERWHELMING love in ways in which we cannot even begin to fathom.

When we are overwhelmed by the world, please know that God is not overwhelmed. And God still loves you most and best when you're in an overwhelming situation.

And that's my 2nd point: God's overwhelming love for you!!!
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Number two: God's Overwhelming Love for You

To use a common phrase that I think we're all familiar with, and that is: ' 'God, the ruler of the universe is crazy about you! His love for you is the most powerful thing in the world and He gives this love to you' ' He constantly and continually gives to you His most deepest love so you can live with Him and for Him.

So, think about it, if you have made a true, sincere, no hesitation-commitment to follow Christ, then continue to read God's crazy, overwhelming love story in His Word, and be reminded, be uplifted, be encouraged, and be challenged in your walk ' and let the love you have received from God impact your life and your every decision like never before.

Remember the saying - ...