I want to tell you about a funny story about a round I recently had. Well, today it's funny. It was one of those days where everything was clicking, drives were finding the fairway, irons were dialed in. One of those rare days where the game actually feels like it makes sense. I'm walking down the course, feeling like I've finally figured this out. Which, if you've listened to this podcast enough, you already know that's a dangerous thing to think. I was standing in the middle of the fairway halfway through the round, lining up my 120-yard approach shot, looking at the flag, figuring out the wind, waiting for the group in front of me to leave the green. And then out of nowhere, a 120 mile an hour golf ball hits me right smack dab in the mouth. Yeah, the mouth. Before I could even figure out what happened, I looked down and blood was pouring out of my mouth. My face was numb. And I was like, man, what was that? What in the world just happened to me? And so you may be asking, what was the damage? Did I visit the ER? Did I get into fisticuffs with the guy that hit it? Did I finish the round? Did I cry? Did I die? All these questions I'll answer. Stay tuned. Hey friends, my name is Mark, and welcome back to another painful episode of Shantification. Now to alleviate the suspense right off the bat, I did not die. I did, however, eventually have to get three teeth repaired by a dentist, and I had multiple stitches on my upper and lower lip. But here's the part that matters. I finished the round. That's right. I assessed the situation, decided I was still upright, and the back nine wasn't going to play itself. So with my lips looking like a really bad botched Botox job from a third world country, and my entire shirt, my entire golf towel just covered in blood, looked like a murder scene. I played on. This was in spite of my wife's extensive thoughts about that decision, by the way. After a couple of hours of very confused looks by fellow passing golfers and a pretty funny interaction with a cart girl who wouldn't make eye contact with me and drove off pretty speedily, I found myself on about the 16th hole thinking about Job. Not because I'm deeply spiritual in moments of dental emergency, but because that gut punch feeling of wait, everything was going so well. What just happened? That feeling is as old as scripture itself. Job was having a great round. Chapter 1, verse 1, he says, he was blameless, upright. He feared God. He had everything. A big family, real wealth, a reputation that preceded him. By any measure of his life, he was flourishing. And then the bad news just kept coming. Livestock gone. Servants dead. And then the worst of it, his children, all of them, in a single catastrophic moment. Job didn't do anything wrong. That's the whole setup of the book. He wasn't out of position, he wasn't playing recklessly, he was right where he was supposed to be, doing exactly what he's supposed to be doing. But the 120 mile an hour golf ball found him anyway. We want to believe that if we do everything right, bad things won't find us. Golfers especially. Work the fundamentals, trust the process, commit to the shot, and mostly, mostly that's true. Better choices lead to better outcomes. But most of the time is not all the time. And when something bad happens on a good day, our first instinct is to go back to the tape. What did I miss? What broke down? What did I do wrong? Job's friends did exactly that. They showed up, they sat with him in silence for seven days. Honestly, that part was good. They should have stopped there. But then they started talking. And for chapter after chapter, they basically argued, Job, you must have caused this. Good things happen to good people, and bad things happen to bad people. So what is it you did? God corrected them at the end of the book, not Job, them, his friends. Because the idea that bad things only happen to people who've earned them, it feels logical, it feels fair, it feels like it should be true, but it isn't always. And believing it doesn't make us wise. It just makes us bad at sitting with people in pain. Job himself in chapter 9 says, When he passes me, I cannot see him. When he goes by, I cannot perceive him. Sometimes what changes our day or our life moves so fast you never see it coming. That's not a penalty stroke, it's just the course. So what do you do when life hits you with a shot you never saw coming? The book of Job gives us three things, and none of them are smile and say everything happens for a reason. Number one, feel it. Job didn't stuff it down. He grieved loudly and honestly. He tore his robe, he sat in the dirt, he argued with God for chapters, expressing pain and confusion and flat out anger. He didn't perform okayness for the crowd. If something hard has happened to you and you've been pretending you're fine, you don't have to be. Job wasn't. Secondly, push back on the easy explanations. When his friends kept insisting he must have caused his own suffering, Job held his ground. In chapter 27, verse 5, he says, I will never admit you are right until I die. I will not deny my integrity. There's a well-meaning cruelty that happens when people hand suffering people tidy answers, like, God's teaching you something. You must have needed this. Everything happens for a reason. But Job knew the difference between a real answer and a comfortable one, and so should we. And lastly, stay in the conversation. Job never went quiet. He argued, he questioned, he demanded, and God answered. In chapter 38, verse 1, then the Lord spoke to Job out of the storm. Not a full explanation, not a tidy resolution, just presence. God showed up in the middle of his mess. And Job's response in chapter 42 is one of the most striking lines of scripture. He says, My ears have heard of you, but now my eyes have seen you. The suffering moved his relationship with God from a second hand to a first hand. That's not a justification for the pain, it's just what happened on the other side of it. Job did not quit. That's easy to miss because we get so focused on his suffering that we forget. He stayed in it. He kept showing up, he kept talking to God, even when God felt completely out of reach. He didn't walk off the course just because the round got hard. And at the end of Job's story in chapter 42, God restores him with a new family, a greater blessing than before. The story ends better than it started. Now, I want to be careful here because Job's restoration isn't a promise that our suffering will always resolve neatly in this life. Sometimes it doesn't. The point isn't the happy ending. The point is that Job finished. He saw it through. He didn't let a devastating middle chapter become the final word of his story. That is sanctification, by the way. That's the whole thing this podcast is about. It's not about playing a perfect round. It's about finishing the round in whatever condition you're in when you get to the last hole. I played the back nine with stitches waiting and some teeth loose because something in me just refused to let anybody else's bad shot write the ending to my round. Maybe also because I'm a little stubborn. Unfortunately, the ER was still there to wait for me after the 18th hole. So were the stitches, so were the dental bills, so were the pain, so were the sedatives, all the things. And Job stayed in it too, for a lot longer, with a lot more at stake, and no guarantee of what was waiting for him on the other side. Now, in no way am I remotely comparing my circumstances to what Job went through. But here's what I want you to take away with today. If life is good now, enjoy it. Savor it. Be grateful for every clean fairway and every solid iron shot. Don't let the fear of what might happen rob you of what's actually happening. And if someone has blindsided you, something unfair, something random, something you absolutely did not see coming, you are not alone. And you're not finished. The oldest wisdom literature ever written was put together by a man sitting in the rubble of a beautiful life, asking the same questions you might be asking right now. He made it through. Not because he was a stoic, not because he had the right answers, but because he stayed in the conversation and he finished the round. And we can too. Hey guys, thank you for joining me on another week of shanctification. If this one means something to you, share it with somebody maybe who needs it today. And hey, if you're ever on the golf course and you hear somebody yell for, do yourself a favor and take it seriously. In the meantime, my name is Mark, and keep chasing back.