Job 4:4-6

Job 4:4-6 4 Your words have supported those who stumbled; you have strengthened faltering knees. 5 But now trouble comes to you, and you are discouraged; it strikes you, and you are dismayed. 6 Should not your piety be your confidence and your blameless ways your hope?

In these verse Eliphaz reminds me of many well meaning, good Christians trying to help someone though a difficult time in their life. They offer canned wisdom, things that we “all ways said” but unfortunately they don’t remember that we always say them when we’re the one’s giving the advice not the ones receiving. Eliphaz is trying to be a good friend; he genuinely wants to help Job, to set Job on the road to recovery and well being. Unfortunately he doesn’t realize that he was better off not saying anything. In our lives that maybe our task more often than not. When someone who isn’t a Christian or someone who is a Christian but has hit hard times, it is not our place to explain their suffering to them. It’s not our place to remind them of what they may have once said, our place is to be silent, listening until they can articulate their needs. Until they can turn to God for help. Then we are there, then we can help, then we can speak.