Do maggots talk to God?

Does the view of who we are affect our relationship with God?

This past week I have been asked 3 times why I became a youth pastor. What was it that lead me to make that decision? So 3 times this past week I have told the story of my call to different individuals and groups. The story is of the subtle yet firm way in which God lead me to understand public ministry was the path he had for me to take. Starting with, well I don't really know what it started with probably something I haven't even recognized yet. The things I have recognized start with being on a drama team my senior year in high school. This was my first experience with public ministry anyway. He moved me from speaking lines other people had written to sharing my own thoughts and study my third year in college on a traveling youth ministry team. As I stepped back from sharing my own words back into the world of drama and then back into a major of behind the scenes ministry of counseling he let me feel the loss of the public ministry he was calling me to.

Then he spoke very directly using my own emotional control to get through to me. Panic attacks I had never had before and have never had sense to make me uncomfortable enough to ask him if he wanted a change from me. When I processed the choice of psychology or theology with him in prayer the peace and relief flooding my soul was clear enough, so I accepted my call into public ministry. (Feel free to ask me sometime if you don't actually know the story.)

So here is my question when it comes to Job chap 25, Bildad says, "man is nothing in the sight of God. What man can be righteous, who born of a woman can be pure? The stars were not good enough for God so how can a man be? Man is but a maggot before God the son of man is a worm." Does God talk to maggots? Does God call maggots to share the gospel to the rest of the maggot mankind? I know God cares for all of his creation he sees every sparrow fall, but I don't think he has the same relationship with maggots as he does with man. In fact, after the sparrow thing, Jesus tells us how much more will he look after us.

Sometimes we are still sharing this maggot message with the world around us. Man is nothing in the sight of God, he has the same reaction to us as we do to maggots. Disgusting! Get them out of my sight destroy them before they mature. But this isn't the way God sees us at all. In fact he became the son of man himself. Redemption is accomplished so we can have a relationship with him once again.

Even in Job's time this was true, the system of sacrifice had already been set up pointing to the messiah who was to come and has now come. Even in Job's time God cared about humanity and wanted relationship with them.

Those who take the view of the nothingness of man like Bildad can't have much of a relationship with God. If they believe themselves to be maggots then how can they actually have a conversation with God let alone a relationship. God would be someone to be feared and avoided. Life would be spent groveling just hoping not to get squished.

This is not what God has in mind. We are invited into an intimate and direct relationship with him. To approach boldly before the throne of grace. Jesus teaches us to pray to God as our Father not our exterminator.

May we accept the much more privileged relationship and status God has in mind for us and move from maggots of God, to men and women of God.