Zachary has been going through Job in his Sunday school class.
It’s always struck me how Satan comments that Job will only follow after the Lord as long as his life is thriving and his body is well and how that sentiment is still so pervasive among our world today.
Job obviously proves that to be untrue, for he holds fast to the Lord, while also showing his imperfect nature in the unknowns and the suffering. I love Job. I empathize with him, and also his friends at times. Trying to tie suffering up in a neat little box and bow is what is most appealing to me too. Yet Job is a book for those who don’t see the rhyme or reason to great suffering. The suffering you ask “what was the point of this?” We don’t want to be bewildered. It shows us that sometimes, we just will be, and it’s ok. Job ends the book in humility, repentance and trust in the Lord. He just sits in the knowledge that we may never understand why some suffering has occurred and that the Lord’s ways are deep, His wisdom and Knowledge so far above us, his ways simply inscrutable at times. That, at the end of the day, be it good or calamity that comes from the hand of God, we trust the good hand it all flows from.
He is the almighty Creator after all, we are simply his creatures, no matter how much that bruises our self-autonomous pride.
I’m writing this today because I feel Facebook, social media in general and just life are filled with people praising the Lord and others looking on thinking. . . yea, because your life is fine and unencumbered. And I want to tell you that that isn’t true. We, Christ followers, will indeed praise the Lord in the mire, if that’s what it takes. One glimpse of the majority of Christians suffering with joy around the world would dispel this myth completely, but alas, we all sit with our American minds of “comfort and happiness or God’s not good.”
The month of November has put our own little family through the wringer. We lost a baby recently. 10 weeks of a growing, precious, secret surprise that we were all preparing for. I wasn’t ever going to share this publicly, but I feel it would rob the Lord of such glory if I did not.
We were held in a mighty way, in a way even I was flabbergasted by. I had never truly and fully felt “a peace that surpasses all understanding”. Maybe a little, but not in such a way that I just had it involuntarily wash over me when I was too weary in my spirit to seek it out or ask for it. Honestly, the week after, albeit filled with some tears, also brought a secret joy, where I sincerely wanted to proclaim God’s goodness and gentleness toward me whenever someone would approach with condolences. The day it happened I had a moment. A moment where my flesh felt the Lord cruel. Surprise then heartache. . .all for nothing?
I empathize with Job.
And yet, when my flesh spoke lies concerning the nature of God, the Spirit intervened and recalled truth to my bewildered heart. God’s very words to me. Of comfort. Of greatness. His ways are inscrutable at times, I remind my imperfect mind as it tries to understand a perfect Creator.
As Spurgeon says, ““God is too good to be unkind. He is too wise to make a mistake. When I can’t trace His hand, I can always trust His heart.”
A humble and contrite heart. A heart that trusts, beyond sight. That is what He is growing in me, a heart and mind like Christ’s, because He cares for me and for my holiness. The Lord gives and the Lord takes away, blessed be the name of the Lord. (Job 1:21)
What thanksgivings I could share with you if only I had the perfect words and an eternity to say them.
Thanksgiving day my husband and I failed each other in a few ways. We ended up driving to our Thanksgiving lunch with our family in silence and deep breaths.
But in the dark of the night before bed there were whispered laments and repentance. There were confessions of feeling like a failure and quiet encouragements. There were deeper things that had to be fleshed out, and honestly more mourning to be done from a hard month and a hard morning.
Only by the Lord’s grace.
I am simply sharing all this to say, this month I did have such thanksgivings and there were smiles and laughs and bread. But it was all mingled with real and true struggle. With failure, with lament and physical emptiness at times.
And joy.
I honestly don’t how people go through struggle and heartbreak without the hope of Christ and the knowledge of a God who is close to the brokenhearted, a God who is gentle with His people like a father is to a hurting child, gathering us under His wings like a mother bird. A God that is about His glory and the good of His children, not matter what.
Our kind Father.
This is not just something I think I should say as a Christ follower. This is something I have experienced and have seen in tangible ways, but our experience is no different than so many other believers’ experiences. And even WITHOUT experience, I cling and trust in God’s promises and love for me, because I believe He is who He has said He is. A multitude of saints, past and present sing the Lord’s praise amongst rubble. Always have. Always will.
Till death and to eternity.
This is all because of what Christ has accomplished for us, not because we have chosen to have thick skin in our own failing strength.
If Christ has taught us that loss is gain, then what can take our joy away?
Please know He says come. For all those who believe in the Lord will be saved. No matter how broken. No matter how deep in whatever problem you find yourself. No matter how poor or how rich. How worn or how shiny. We are all dead in our sin and in need of Christ. We are all broken and hopeless and rebels before the Savior raises us, mends us and keeps us.
And for those who have repented that trust in and hope in and love the God who created them, we really do find ourselves, when in dark times, echoing Job,
“Though He slay me. I will hope in Him.”
and we further mimic Christ as he showed us suffering perfected in the garden. Through the strength of the Spirit we can say as well, “Father if you are willing, take this cup from me, yet not my will but Yours be done.”
The Spirit sustains us in suffering and the Lord is a good, good father to His children, and He is worthy to be praised.
This post isn’t here to hash out a theology of suffering fully, which would be impossible since I am always seeking the scripture and learning more and more of how the Lord works among a broken world. But what I do know is that nothing happens outside of the Lord’s hand, that absolutely nothing can thwart his will and trajectory of plans, that it rains on the just and the unjust, that Satan is alive and active but still in some ways restrained, that the Lord sees His people as beloved and covered in Christ and in all things seeks the good of those who follow him while also seeking His glory above all. I also know that He is more concerned with our Holiness during these fleeting lives moreso than our constant happiness (and we should be too), but yet, just like a pagan father would not give us a stone if we ask for bread. . . He would not either. He seeks to give us good and precious gifts.
This post is here to encourage the believer to trust the Lord, even when you have no idea what He is doing. and for the unbeliever, to not think as Satan did. Christians who count it all joy when they face trials of many kinds, are not just stronger or more optimistic people, we are being held by the very Spirit promised to us by Christ who came and died in our place and has reconciled us to our mighty Creator God, and that is open to all who place trust in Christ. We love God because he first loved us, not because he is some sort of cosmic genie.
So, we give thanks to the Lord, no matter the circumstances, for He is good, for his Love endures forever and ever. His mercy is great and His Grace is free.
Blessed be the name of the Lord. Fix your eyes on that which is eternal so you can rest in the unknowns of this visible world.
“”Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. 1 Corinthians 4:16-18
-W
the pender place 