"Behold, I go forward, but He is not there; and backward, but I cannot perceive Him: On the left hand, where He doth work, but I cannot behold Him: He hideth Himself on the right hand, that I cannot see Him. But He knoweth the way that I take: when He hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold." (Job 23:8-10)
Because that's what we all want, I suppose. To attain a level of standing where we sail in flow with God's will and don't have the hangups or wounds or scars that keep us at bay. Job is an amazing example of a man caught in the throes of a testing that brought all his life under the microscope. And I don't know anyone (myself included) who can say of themselves the things God did of Job. This is why it's good to lay back and rest in Christ even as God scourges and purges us of the things we didn't even know were keeping us from becoming more Christlike. One of the reasons we need an advocate. Job lived before Christ. This is something I have only recently realized because I have felt the need for a go-between in my relationship with the Father. God is utterly exacting. He is, as I have mentioned before, the unstoppable force and the immovable object--and more. And without the shed blood of Jesus, the angel of death deals thusly. But brushing all this aside for a moment, think about where you're headed. The road on which we find ourselves leads to one place or another. This is why Job was stopped in his tracks in the passage at the top of the page.
"Also when I cry and shout, He shutteth out my prayer. He hath inclosed my ways with hewn stone, he hath made my paths crooked." (Lamentations 3:8-9)
My first inclination upon seeing myself in this position is one of anger. Circumstances stirred up (with my help of course) and as I continued to ignore the subtle promptings of the Holy Spirit, grieving Him along the way, the state of things got worst and the lies continued to sprout and grow unabated. To where I now am feeling like giving up completely. This is the wrong response, obviously. But if you feel you can go nowhere (now here) and God looks to be nothing but unloving and harsh, what would the natural response be? Jesus, of course. This is me:
"And ye have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto children, My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of Him: For whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth. If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not? But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons." (Hebrews 12:5-8)
"Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the [children] of God: therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew Him not." (1 John 3:1)
So is that, thankfully. But only because of Jesus.