Finding God in the Midst of Suffering
Devotional
Sermon Summary
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"I look upon suffering as one of God's ways of getting our attention. In fact, C. S. Lewis calls pain 'God's megaphone.' He said, 'God whispers to us in our conscience, speaks to us in our joys, and shouts to us in our pain. Pain is God's megaphone.' And I'd like for us to think about some of the things which God needs to say to us, that He needs to get our attention for, first of all, and it's interesting to me it's of great significance, I think, that as far as we know, the oldest book in the Bible, the book of Job, is the one that deals most specifically and head on with the subject of suffering." [00:22:00]
"You remember that Job was called 'a blameless man,' 'that righteous man.' God Himself said that Job was a blameless man, and if the morality of those days was that a good man would be blessed, and an evil man would be punished, then Job's experience seemed to turn that completely upside down. And Job lost everything. You remember that there was a drama that went on behind the scenes that, as far as we know, Job was never given a clue about, where Satan challenged God in heaven. And he said, 'Of course, Job trusts You, but does he trust You for nothing? Try taking away all those blessings, and then see where Job's faith goes.' And God accepted Satan's challenge, and here we have a mystery which we cannot begin to explain." [00:84:99]
"We hear Job called a patient man, but if you read the book of Job, you won't really find a lot of evidence that he was patient, but he never doubted that God existed. And he said some of the very worst things that could possibly be said about God, and isn't it interesting that the Spirit of God preserved those things for you and me. God is big enough to take anything that we can dish out to Him, and He even saw to it that Job's howls and complaints were preserved in black and white for our instruction. So never hesitate to say what you really feel to God, because remember that God knows what you think before you know and certainly knows what you're going to say before you even think it." [00:186:44]
"Job never denies God's existence, never imagines that God has nothing to do with his troubles, but has a thousand questions, and so do we. And let me just tell you a story or two that comes out of my first year as a missionary. I thought of myself as being very well prepared to be a missionary. As I told you, I came from a strong Christian home. My parents had been missionaries themselves and we had dozens, probably hundreds, of missionaries traipsing through our house. We had a guest room which always seemed to be full, we had suitcases bumping up and down the stairs all the time, and we listened from our earliest memories to many, many missionary stories at our own dinner table." [00:525:09]
"But, within the first year, God saw fit to give me three major blows to what I thought was a very well-founded and very sinewy faith. And the first of these was that a man by the name of Macario, who was my informant as I was attempting to learn an unwritten Indian language in the Western jungle of Ecuador, the language of the Colorado tribe, a very small tribe who had never had any written language, and therefore had none of the Bible in their language. I had prayed that God would give me an informant, someone who would be prepared to sit down with me and go over, and over, and over, what for him was the easiest language in the world, and have the patience to deal with this apparently retarded foreigner." [00:618:63]
"And God answered my prayer by sending me this man by the name of Macario, who was bilingual, which was an enormous advantage. He spoke Spanish and Colorado, and I had had to learn Spanish as the national language of the country, and so we worked together very happily for about six weeks or two months -- I've forgotten exactly what it was. And I was on my knees one morning in my bedroom, as was my habit, reading my Bible and praying, and I happened to be reading in the third chapter, or the fourth chapter of 1 Peter, and these were the words: 'Think it not strange concerning the fiery trial that is to try you, as though some strange thing happened. It happens to give you a share in the sufferings of Christ.'" [00:667:83]
"Now, it would be very nice if I could tell you that I easily found another informant, but the truth was that Macario was literally the only person in the world who was capable of doing the job that he had been doing with me. Nobody else knew both Spanish and Colorado. So I was faced for the first time in my personal experience with that awful 'Why?' Like Job, I didn't doubt for a second that God was up there, and that God knew what He was doing. But I couldn't imagine what He could possibly have in mind, and God's answer to my 'Why?' was, 'Trust me.' No explanations. Just 'Trust me.' That was the message." [00:755:92]
"And I thought of Daniel in the lion's den. I remember the picture that we had on our wall at home, a painting. When I was a child, I often gazed at that painting, and Daniel is standing in the den of lions, there's a light on his face, and he stands very tall and straight with his hands behind his back, and just very faintly in the dark you can see these glowing eyes of the hungry lions, and I realized that the painting is telling me that here's a man whose faith rests in the character of God. Now, of course, I wouldn't have put it in those terms as a child, but that picture spoke volumes to me. God was there in the pit." [00:869:81]
"Every one of us, I'm sure, sooner or later, has to face up to that painful question, 'Why?' and God is saying, 'Trust me.' If your prayers don't get answered the way you thought they were supposed to be, what happens to your faith? The world says God doesn't love you; the Scriptures tell me something very different. Those blesseds of the -- those blesseds of the Beatitudes, Paul's word, 'It is my happiness to suffer for you.' We don't know the answer, but we know that it lies deep within the mystery of the freedom to choose." [00:990:37]
"If we learn to know God in the midst of our pain, we come to know Him as one who is not a high priest that cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities. He is one who has been over every inch of the road. I love that old hymn from, I think, the 17th-century, by Richard Baxter, 'Christ leads me through no darker rooms than He went through before.' I love those words. I have some dear friends who were missionaries in North Africa. He was one of the many seminary students who have lived in our house. And I had a letter from them about a year or so ago to tell me that they had just lost their baby girl." [01:162:17]
"And now we're saying, 'Why doesn't God do something about it?' And the Christian answer is, 'He did. He became the Victim, a Lamb slain from before the foundation of the world.' George Herbert, another 17th-century poet, wrote this: 'Afflictions sorted, anguish of all sizes, fine nets and stratagems to catch us in.' Then George McDonald, a 19th century poet said this: 'Pain, with dog and spear, hounds false faith from human hearts.' Two different expressions of what God is up to. 'Fine nets and stratagems to catch us in,' to give us this message." [01:797:07]
"And as the psalmist said in Psalm 46, 'Though the mountains shake and be carried -- though the earth shake, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea, God is our refuge.' And I speak to you as one who has desperately needed a refuge. And in that same psalm, He says, 'Be still,' and I'm told that it's legitimate to translate that, 'Shut up and know that I am God.' That's the message." [01:853:84]
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"You remember that Job was called 'a blameless man,' 'that righteous man.' God Himself said that Job was a blameless man, and if the morality of those days was that a good man would be blessed, and an evil man would be punished, then Job's experience seemed to turn that completely upside down. And Job lost everything. You remember that there was a drama that went on behind the scenes that, as far as we know, Job was never given a clue about, where Satan challenged God in heaven. And he said, 'Of course, Job trusts You, but does he trust You for nothing? Try taking away all those blessings, and then see where Job's faith goes.' And God accepted Satan's challenge, and here we have a mystery which we cannot begin to explain." [00:84:99]
"We hear Job called a patient man, but if you read the book of Job, you won't really find a lot of evidence that he was patient, but he never doubted that God existed. And he said some of the very worst things that could possibly be said about God, and isn't it interesting that the Spirit of God preserved those things for you and me. God is big enough to take anything that we can dish out to Him, and He even saw to it that Job's howls and complaints were preserved in black and white for our instruction. So never hesitate to say what you really feel to God, because remember that God knows what you think before you know and certainly knows what you're going to say before you even think it." [00:186:44]
"Job never denies God's existence, never imagines that God has nothing to do with his troubles, but has a thousand questions, and so do we. And let me just tell you a story or two that comes out of my first year as a missionary. I thought of myself as being very well prepared to be a missionary. As I told you, I came from a strong Christian home. My parents had been missionaries themselves and we had dozens, probably hundreds, of missionaries traipsing through our house. We had a guest room which always seemed to be full, we had suitcases bumping up and down the stairs all the time, and we listened from our earliest memories to many, many missionary stories at our own dinner table." [00:525:09]
"But, within the first year, God saw fit to give me three major blows to what I thought was a very well-founded and very sinewy faith. And the first of these was that a man by the name of Macario, who was my informant as I was attempting to learn an unwritten Indian language in the Western jungle of Ecuador, the language of the Colorado tribe, a very small tribe who had never had any written language, and therefore had none of the Bible in their language. I had prayed that God would give me an informant, someone who would be prepared to sit down with me and go over, and over, and over, what for him was the easiest language in the world, and have the patience to deal with this apparently retarded foreigner." [00:618:63]
"And God answered my prayer by sending me this man by the name of Macario, who was bilingual, which was an enormous advantage. He spoke Spanish and Colorado, and I had had to learn Spanish as the national language of the country, and so we worked together very happily for about six weeks or two months -- I've forgotten exactly what it was. And I was on my knees one morning in my bedroom, as was my habit, reading my Bible and praying, and I happened to be reading in the third chapter, or the fourth chapter of 1 Peter, and these were the words: 'Think it not strange concerning the fiery trial that is to try you, as though some strange thing happened. It happens to give you a share in the sufferings of Christ.'" [00:667:83]
"Now, it would be very nice if I could tell you that I easily found another informant, but the truth was that Macario was literally the only person in the world who was capable of doing the job that he had been doing with me. Nobody else knew both Spanish and Colorado. So I was faced for the first time in my personal experience with that awful 'Why?' Like Job, I didn't doubt for a second that God was up there, and that God knew what He was doing. But I couldn't imagine what He could possibly have in mind, and God's answer to my 'Why?' was, 'Trust me.' No explanations. Just 'Trust me.' That was the message." [00:755:92]
"And I thought of Daniel in the lion's den. I remember the picture that we had on our wall at home, a painting. When I was a child, I often gazed at that painting, and Daniel is standing in the den of lions, there's a light on his face, and he stands very tall and straight with his hands behind his back, and just very faintly in the dark you can see these glowing eyes of the hungry lions, and I realized that the painting is telling me that here's a man whose faith rests in the character of God. Now, of course, I wouldn't have put it in those terms as a child, but that picture spoke volumes to me. God was there in the pit." [00:869:81]
"Every one of us, I'm sure, sooner or later, has to face up to that painful question, 'Why?' and God is saying, 'Trust me.' If your prayers don't get answered the way you thought they were supposed to be, what happens to your faith? The world says God doesn't love you; the Scriptures tell me something very different. Those blesseds of the -- those blesseds of the Beatitudes, Paul's word, 'It is my happiness to suffer for you.' We don't know the answer, but we know that it lies deep within the mystery of the freedom to choose." [00:990:37]
"If we learn to know God in the midst of our pain, we come to know Him as one who is not a high priest that cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities. He is one who has been over every inch of the road. I love that old hymn from, I think, the 17th-century, by Richard Baxter, 'Christ leads me through no darker rooms than He went through before.' I love those words. I have some dear friends who were missionaries in North Africa. He was one of the many seminary students who have lived in our house. And I had a letter from them about a year or so ago to tell me that they had just lost their baby girl." [01:162:17]
"And now we're saying, 'Why doesn't God do something about it?' And the Christian answer is, 'He did. He became the Victim, a Lamb slain from before the foundation of the world.' George Herbert, another 17th-century poet, wrote this: 'Afflictions sorted, anguish of all sizes, fine nets and stratagems to catch us in.' Then George McDonald, a 19th century poet said this: 'Pain, with dog and spear, hounds false faith from human hearts.' Two different expressions of what God is up to. 'Fine nets and stratagems to catch us in,' to give us this message." [01:797:07]
"And as the psalmist said in Psalm 46, 'Though the mountains shake and be carried -- though the earth shake, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea, God is our refuge.' And I speak to you as one who has desperately needed a refuge. And in that same psalm, He says, 'Be still,' and I'm told that it's legitimate to translate that, 'Shut up and know that I am God.' That's the message." [01:853:84]
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