How to send a message to Handler on a dead thread

Question

I have a start and stop job method that checks to see if my connection is maintained. This is for a softphone app so the connection needs to be on as long as the user has the app opened. The code for these methods are below

public void startJob(){
    mJobThread = new Thread(new Runnable() {
        @Override
        public void run() {
            while (!Thread.currentThread().isInterrupted() && Thread.currentThread().isAlive()) {
                try {
                    Thread.sleep(7000);
                    mJobHandler.post(myJobRunnable);
                } catch(InterruptedException e){
                    System.out.println("startJob Interrupt Runnable");
                    Thread.currentThread().interrupt();
                    return;
                } catch (Exception e) {
                    Log.v("startJob Runnable", e.getLocalizedMessage());
                }
            }
        }
    });
    mJobThread.start();
}

public void stopJob(){
    if(mJobHandler != null){
        mJobHandler.removeCallbacks(myJobRunnable);
    }
    if(mJobThread != null) {
        mJobThread.interrupt();
    }
}

The issue I am getting RuntimeException (nothing that crashes the application) saying

W/MessageQueue( 1946): java.lang.RuntimeException: Handler (android.os.Handler) {421ac808} sending message to a Handler on a dead thread
W/MessageQueue( 1946):  at android.os.MessageQueue.enqueueMessage(MessageQueue.java:309)
W/MessageQueue( 1946):  at android.os.Handler.enqueueMessage(Handler.java:623)
W/MessageQueue( 1946):  at android.os.Handler.sendMessageAtTime(Handler.java:592)
W/MessageQueue( 1946):  at android.os.Handler.sendMessageDelayed(Handler.java:563)
W/MessageQueue( 1946):  at android.os.Handler.post(Handler.java:323)
W/MessageQueue( 1946):  at com.zxd.activity.Manager$5.run(Manager.java:256)
W/MessageQueue( 1946):  at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:841)

Where line 256 is the try{ in startJob. I call startJob when the user logs in and stopJob when the user logs out. I have a Service that establishes connection sometimes but that does not call startJob or stopJob

Why am I getting this exception and what can I do to fix this?