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I loathe my life; I will give free utterance to my complaint; I will speak in the bitterness of my soul.

Prayer needs to be honest. Our communication with God is not about our words, but it is sharing our hearts with the Lord. We don’t have to say the right things, but we do need to speak the truth. How do you feel? What is your emotional state? Try to put those feelings into words and then give them to God. There may not even be words to fully encapsulate what you feel, but you need to get it out. You need to tell God. Not for him, he already knows, but your you. Saying them out loud is helpful as well. If you’re going to pray it, you need to say it. Focus first on being honest with God, then you can move on to how to help and heal.

Has not man a hard service on earth, and are not his days like the days of a hired hand? Like a slave who longs for the shadow, and like a hired hand who looks for his wages, so I am allotted months of emptiness, and nights of misery are apportioned to me.

Life is not always easy. Following the Lord is not about making your life free of trouble. When you begin to feel the pressure, and it seems like everything is closing in on you, hang in there. Just like for Job, life can get very hard. Wave after wave of hardship can seem like more than you can handle, it’s not. You can make it. You may have to change some of your desires, you may have to let other things go, but we do have the promise of Jesus “I will never leave you, nor forsake you.” He is always with you. If he is the one at the center of your life, you’ll never have more than you can bear. Trust in Jesus.

He who withholds kindness from a friend forsakes the fear of the Almighty.

To say that Job was having a bad day would be an understatement. He needed support from those whom he thought cared about him in this time more than ever, and it wasn’t there. When we turn our backs on our friends, that matters. How we treat other people is also how we treat God, especially fellow Believers today. Remember what Jesus said to Paul on the road to Damascus? “Why are you persecuting ME?” Do you remember what Jesus said in Matthew 25 how when you give a cup of cool water “to the least of these MY BROTHERS you’ve done it unto ME.” Treat others as you wish to be treated, but also understand, how you treat others is how you treat your Lord, don’t forsake Him.

Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came among them. The Lord said to Satan, “From where have you come?” Satan answered the Lord and said, “From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down on it.”

Satan and God are not fighting some kind of “cosmic battle” because there is no contest. He and his fallen angels with him only have as much power and ability which is granted to them by the Lord himself. Don’t misunderstand, Satan is powerful, but God is infinitely more. Take the devil seriously, but understand who you are with the Holy Spirit (if you’re a Believer). Satan is on a leash, he is not free to deceive whomever he wishes. Resist him, and he flees.

Now there was no food in all the land, for the famine was very severe, so that the land of Egypt and the land of Canaan languished by reason of the famine. And Joseph gathered up all the money that was found in the land of Egypt and in the land of Canaan, in exchange for the grain that they bought. And Joseph brought the money into Pharaoh’s house.

There are a few lessons here. First of all, you need to plan for times when you won’t be earning. You may lose a job, you might want to retire, or you could find yourself wanting to follow a new passion by starting a new business or go on mission. Joseph was wise to set aside in the good years to pay for the lean years. We should always be thinking about that. Living “paycheck to paycheck” if you don’t have to, is not good stewardship. Secondly, if you fail to do this, you end up selling yourself into slavery, usually to the government. When you place the responsibility of taking care of you in the hands of the government, they will take everything you have. That’s what happened in Egypt, and it took Moses, the plagues, several generations, and an act of God to reverse their troubles. Each person is responsible for themselves and their own family, that’s the best way.