REPLAY: What If God Doesn't Explain WHY We're Suffering?

Pull up a chair for a word of encouragement, especially for those of you needing comfort and help in a time of pain and darkness. This isn't your everyday interpretation of Job, and I really believe it'll provide a bright spot and some helpful handholds to guide you in your time of struggle. 

For those of you who have listened to this episode already, scrub through to the last nine minutes to get a real-time personal update and mini word of encouragement for all my parent listeners. If you're struggling through a difficult season of parenting and are dealing with waves of grief, frustration because you don't know what to do next, or general discouragement that the seeds you're planting in your children's lives aren't working, THIS MOMENT IS FOR YOU. 

Pull up a chair 🪑 

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Before we jump into season three of the mentor's table, I wanted to take a minute and reflect back on and remember one of the most downloaded episodes from season two, and that is what if God doesn't explain why we are suffering? What do you do then? There's a lot of really powerful examples, and I just feel like you're gonna find a lot of um moments where you feel seen and where you feel heard, and you're gonna find a lot of connection in this episode, as well as some hope, as well as encouragement, as well as specific action steps to be able to surrender how difficult this moment is when you cannot figure out why you're going through the pain that you're going through right now. Pull up a chair. Welcome back to the mentor's table, a place where you can pull up a chair for deeper discussions about spiritual and emotional health with an uncomfortable focus on surrender. I'm Joy. Welcome. Today we are talking about chapter three of my book. I've labeled this series table read because we're going to read through a little bit of my book. But more than reading through, I'm actually just kind of summarizing and talking a little bit about the subjects covered in each chapter. Today's chapter is especially difficult to hear and to metabolize in your soul and to actually live out. But I think it's super, super important. I don't know about you, but I have been inundated recently with messages about surrendering and obedience and doing what God is leading you to do right away, not just holding on until you understand it or know how or why. And today we're gonna talk about that word, why. But before we get started, as always, let's take a moment to set ourselves and be still before the Lord. So take a deep breath in, release it slowly. Lord, we welcome you to this place. We open our hands, our hearts, our eyes, and fix them on you. We open our ears to listen, truly listen and hear what you have to say. Another deep breath in. And as you release it slowly, imagine letting go of all the things that are racing around in your head and your heart right now. Just clear it all out so we can hear directly from God. Holy Spirit, we invite you to guide our words and our thoughts. Amen. Every other week we are coming to you this summer talking about the book that I am working on, all about surrender. I always welcome comments from you. I know some of you have been so gracious to either send me a voicemail or a voxer if you know me personally, or a text and give me some feedback on what you think about the things that I'm talking about with my book. And I just want to remind you that it is so easy to do that, and I really, really love hearing from you. So if you go to the show notes wherever you listen to podcasts, at the very top it says send us fan mail. It's a hyperlink. You just need to click on it in a couple of easy steps. You can leave a voicemail that comes directly to me and let me know your thoughts and responses. I love hearing from you. And since we're in the summer and we're going at a slower pace and maybe life is looking a little different, and you're having a little bit more bandwidth to do something like that. Would you take a moment and send me a voicemail and give me some feedback? I would really love to hear from you. Today we're gonna dig into chapter three of my book. And I'm playing around with some ideas for the title of this chapter, but the idea is an invitation to stop demanding why. And we're gonna talk about why that's important and what that has to do with surrender. And to set the stage though, I just want to connect with you as the listener and recognize that all of us are dealing with a world that is broken and dark and continually feels like it's getting worse. You know, I believe that everybody listening is dealing with something, if not some things, many, many things that are really hard, that hurt, that leave you feeling lonely, that leave you questioning your faith or your walk with God, that don't come with easy answers, that feel very justified in spending your time trying to figure out why, why are we here? Why are we feeling this way? Why did this happen? I believe that everybody here is dealing with one or more of these things: sickness, suicide, and maybe it's not you necessarily that's dealing with it, but somebody close to you, and it's so hard to be alongside them and to continue to point their eyes to God in the midst of it. Maybe somebody is dealing with or knows somebody dealing with a deep depression, maybe a rebellious child that is causing constant hurt to the family, maybe it's divorce that has broken up a family, especially one that you always thought they're the ones that are gonna make it. Maybe it's an abortion or it's some sort of sexual misconduct on the part of somebody that you know, maybe it's abuse or unexpected bills, as my pastor would say, too much month left at the end of your paycheck. Maybe it's surgeries that have gone wrong, and there's questions about why are we here having to talk about another surgery when this has already been taken care of? Maybe it's miscarriage or an unexpected death of a loved one. Maybe it's an inability to get weight off, maybe it's natural disasters, fires, or storms or flooding that have affected where you live or where your loved ones live. Maybe it's some sort of a housing crisis, just an inability to find something that can safely and adequately house you or your family or your loved ones. Maybe it's some sort of unfaithful spiritual leader that has really disappointed you, a role model that you've looked up to, and all of a sudden you're questioning everything that came out of his or her mouth. Maybe it's a misunderstanding with friends, and all of a sudden you find that lifelong friendships or what you perceived as lifelong friendships are suddenly completely broken and there's no communication whatever. Maybe it's broken relationships in your family. The list could go on and on and on. I know that we're all dealing with really difficult, complicated, hard to explain situations, and it doesn't bring any comfort. But I know to be true is that it's because we live in a broken, broken world where Satan is still given jurisdiction over our lives. So many times when we blame and shake our fist at God, it's because we think that He is in control and purposely doing all of this stuff or allowing all of this stuff, and we forget the role that Satan has to play. We forget the role that this broken world that God spent the whole Bible outlining how he is going to redeem and renew and bring us a new earth on those last pages of Revelation. So there is hope, but sometimes we think that we're living in that or we should be living in that revelation version of the earth now, and the reality is that we don't. I find that in those moments when things happen, or when things just continue to happen, and there doesn't seem to be a break, or things start to pile on, it's so hard to surrender to God. You know, some of those things maybe it happens quickly, or maybe it's happening at a distance, and it feels easy to surrender it to God, but that is not a guarantee for any of the pain in our life. Some of it does feel easier than others to surrender to God, but that doesn't mean that just because what you're facing is really, really, really, really hard to surrender to God, that you shouldn't, or that you should get an answer to why first, and then you'll surrender it. I believe that this idea of if I know why, it promises things that just are not real, but it feels so real that we go ahead and hold on to this belief that if I just know why, then I will be able to find some comfort in this situation. If I just know why, then I know a way to figure out how to explain what happened again with the goal of getting comfort because I have some explanation. If I just know why, I think of it like a like a destination on a map. Okay, if if y is the red X that I am headed towards, then I can figure out how I got there. I can see where I was before it happened, I can see the red X that I hit, and so I can start to find routes and roads and turns and choices and decisions that I took that got me to that place. Ah, there is comfort. Because what? Why do I think that that's comfort? Because I think that somehow then I understand my own motives or my own blame or somebody else's motives and where the blame goes. Because if that person hadn't done that thing and I hadn't said that thing, then there wouldn't be the pain that happened, and so now I can blame and somehow knowing who to blame or what to blame offers this empty promise of comfort. But the reality is that none of these things actually bring us comfort. In fact, knowing why is just another version of taking control of the situation. Because if I know why, then I know how to make sure that doesn't happen again. If I know why, then like I said, I know who to blame, or I know what to blame, I know what to avoid or who to avoid, and therefore I'm gonna make sure that that doesn't happen again. But the reality is that that is a move towards control, not surrender, and we've talked about this so much before, but control is an illusion, it is not something that you actually can get a grasp of. It is something that we are going to spend so much time and energy trying to get, but the reality is the best way, God's best way for living, is instead of white knuckling and gripping on and forcing the steering wheel of your life to go the way that you think is gonna cause the less the least amount of pain, that that is an illusion. We really have no control. For any of you facing any of the hard things that I've already listed off, you know that those were a slap in the face, reminding you how little control you have. I have dealt with a lot of death in the most recent years of my life, and both my best friend who died after a laundry list of chronic sickness and disease took over her body at the young age of 43, as well as losing my dad to an accident, something that happened so quick and then it was over, is a constant reminder that no matter how much control I think I have, the world is going to remind me once again, it's an illusion. It can, as the author of Ecclesiastes says, it can all be gone in a moment. Life is like a vapor or a breath. And so if I spend all my time toiling and trying to get back control, I am spending my energy and time on things that are fruitless, where God has called me to surrender and obey what He puts in front of me, and that actually brings about fruit. That actually opens the door for God to continue to bless me. In chapter three of my book, I talk a lot about Job. I used to hate this book of the Bible. I saw so many people use it as a justification to say that no matter what good you do, God can still throw you under the bus and hurt you or make you sick or take everything away so that he can teach you a lesson. And we talk about this in my book. Actually, Job confesses in the book that he opened the door to this because he says, What I greatly feared has come upon me. He was living in fear, he was not surrendered to God, he was trying to control his situation, and so what he feared was dictating what he was trying to control so that things would not happen to him, and they happened anyways. But we also see that at the end of Job, that when he finally falls on his knees and opens his hand in surrender and says, I don't have any of the answers. I was the I was wrong. I was shaking my fist at you, demanding a why, but you are God and that's all that matters. And when I surrender to you, then that is all I need to do. Because as God so beautifully answers him, he doesn't answer why. And I truly believe that one of the reasons he doesn't answer why is it would take being all-knowing, which is something that only God is, to fully be able to grasp and connect all the dots to understand the why. So instead of spending our time and our energy toiling and trying to connect the dots and figure out why, Joe finally realizes oh, the best thing to do is to fall on my knees and open my hands and surrender to God because He knows the why and He is in control and He is trustworthy, and without Him I am nothing. That is the best way to face our pain, to face our loss, to face our confusion and our hurt and our guilt and our shame, to recognize how big God is. If you need a reminder of how big God is, then I would recommend that you go to the end of the book of Job, skip through and get to Job 38. God begins to not answer Job's why, but to give him some perspective of how big and good and in control that he is. And from that, Job is able to understand. This is too big for me to understand, and that's okay because I don't need to. And once he surrenders, then God is able to move. I truly believe that for many of you listening right now, you have had a constant invitation to surrender, an invitation to stop asking why, and open your hands and trust God. And I'm here to say that, like Job, if you will take that invitation, if you will get your physical body involved, falling on your knees, opening your hands and speaking out of your mouth, God, I surrender. I'm so sorry. I'm not gonna try and control this anymore. I don't understand why, but I do know that you are good, and so I trust you to guide me through this. When you do that, like Job, you are going to see how the doors of blessing are getting opened in your life. And I'm not telling you this as a recipe, like if you do this, this, and this, then you're going to see your miracle. Because often we take that to mean that in our timing, when we do this, this, and this, then immediately or the way and the time when we expect it to happen, God is going to, like Job, bring back double the portion of what he had before. And so when we surrender and when we give it to God and we fall on our knees, we are not guaranteed that the blessing is gonna come in our time. That does not mean that we don't bother surrendering. In that surrender, we also acknowledge that God has our best interests in mind. He is our designer, and so he knows and he can help, and he knows the best time for that blessing to. To come. And so in surrendering, we're also surrendering the timing of God's response. But we know that we know that we know that God is faithful. Like I said before, I've dealt with a lot of death lately. And at the end of this chapter, I'm not gonna talk about it here in the pod because I really want once I get this book published for you to go and read it yourself. But there was a really tender moment when God revealed something really transcendent about surrender after I lost my best friend. It's a moment that I have gone back to often and I pull comfort from and I pull some encouragement to keep surrendering from. Because if I keep that in front of my eyes, both physical and spiritual, then I can remind myself, and we go back to that beautiful spiritual discipline of remembering, I can remember why. Surrender is so much more important. So as I finish up this book this summer and I start querying agents and I start reaching out to publishers, I want you to get excited because there are truths in here that I am so excited to share with you. Truths that I learned the hard way that came about through a lot of pain. And I so desperately desire for you to be able to have a chance to grasp those truths without going through the amount of pain that I went through to get to where I am today. This is the mentor joy jumping back in on this podcast. That was a replay of one of our most popular episodes, and I am back in real time to give a little personal update. But I just wanted to say real quick, I really felt that that episode was really powerful, and I hope that you can take truths from that and apply it immediately to your own lives. I know that as I have shared before, I am in the final stages of getting my book ready to publish. That chapter ended up being, as I have been submitting it to my Haverim, the close friends that I have been doing a book club with and sharing my book for them to review. That chapter stood out for all of them as well as one of the best explanations of the book of Job that they have ever heard. And I do not say that to toot my own horn, but just to give you hope. If you are in the same boat where Job has always been confusing and Job has been difficult for you to understand and to hold in tension with your faith, there are answers, there is hope, there is life, and there is consistency with God being trustworthy and full of love for you as you read through the book of Job. And I want you to be able to hold on to that. And as I mentioned in the episode, there's a part about my own journey of grief with my losing my best friend. And I really believe that that lesson will be a great reminder and encouragement for you. So get excited. We're going to be sharing this book very, very soon. And if you want to be a part of my book launch team and help me get this book out for everybody else to hear and to read, then please stay tuned and keep checking in in October as we continue to build my platform and get ready to launch this book. I also wanted to quickly remind you that we are in the season of really pushing for reviews for the podcast. You guys, I looked at it on my app and it is so easy to leave a review. I'm on Apple Podcasts, and I know a majority of you that are listening are listening through Apple Podcasts. And so let me just tell you real quick: if you hit pause right now and you scroll down to the bottom of the show notes, there's a place that says leave a review. And if you can't see it there, click on the go to show link instead of being in the individual episode link, and then scroll down and you'll see a place to leave a review. It says you can just hit five stars, but you can also write a review. And I would love for you to get on there, write a quick review, just one sentence is fantastic. I really appreciate it. And this is one of the best things that you can do to help me get the word out so that we can sell as many books as possible. 30 reviews by October 30th. I also wanted to take a minute and do a real-time personal update of what has been going on in my life. And in real time, when I am recording this, which is a few days before it's going to get released, it's interesting to me because the episode that we just replayed, the personal update at the end was all about my daughter's graduation party and graduation and all of the details and what we survived. And just I reflected for a moment and said something along the lines of it, you know, it doesn't, it still doesn't feel real. I think the feeling real will come later when we actually move her onto campus. But for right now, we're just going to cherish the summer. Well, here we are at the end of summer, and here we are specifically just a day from going back to visit my daughter this last weekend. We were able to drive and camp for the weekend and hang out with her and her friends. And I have experienced again, like I said before, when we first dropped her off, which is about a month ago at school, coming back and being in the house without her was the hardest part of all of that. And now here I am, uh after a week of being able to visit her for the first time, coming back home without her again is has been the hardest. Not even the drive home, it's just the walking into the house, looking around, seeing reminders of her, seeing things that are different because she's not here, and just again being reminded of that new I want to say tension to manage is part of it, but recent loss, and I don't mean that in a vulgar or morbid way, but just a reality that as you are launching kids, that there is a loss of the old normal, and now we are readjusting to a new normal. And that's a beautiful thing, it's exactly what my daughter needs. It's wonderful. There were moments throughout the whole weekend where I was reminded, and I really felt the Holy Spirit was kind of nudging me and saying, See, those seeds that you sowed, those are bringing about fruit now. And just hearing the things that as she is being exposed to other people who were raised with different parents and different values and different things that they prioritized or didn't prioritize, and then spiritually in her own walk with God and the ways that she was raised and encountering other people who were raised differently and the values that other families held, there was responses that she was sharing with us that really were evidence of good fruit, good seeds that were sown, and good fruit that is coming about now. And I was so encouraged and so thankful for that. I want to hold on to that and remember that, especially in the more difficult times with my two younger daughters who are still here at home. Just that if the enemy tries to come in with thoughts of discouragement, thoughts of frustration, thoughts of failure, and some evidence of how things are not going well here at home right now, I can hold on to these memories of this past weekend and seeing the fruit and knowing, you know, this is seeds, these are seeds that I'm sowing now. And a seed spends a majority of its time underground before you start to see any evidence of growth. I say a majority of the time, and that's not true in considering the seed's life. But I feel like for us as parents, when we initially put that seed into the ground, we want to see results immediately. We want to see some sort of evidence of growth immediately. Just a little, just a little sprout, just a little leaf coming up that tells us that it is working. But there is a period of time where it is underground and we don't see anything. And if we're only looking for evidence, then we're gonna get super, super discouraged because it has time underground where things are working and things are happening, and God is working on that seed in a way that we cannot see. And if we don't see evidence and our hope is based in the evidence, then we're going to get discouraged, or we could possibly do something that is counterintuitive to the health of the seed, maybe dig it back up, like, oh, is that still there? Is it working? What's going on? And slow down the process of the growth that is happening. And I just want to encourage you, if you are in a season of parenting right now where all the seeds are sown or a lot of seeds are sown and you're not seeing anything, that doesn't mean God isn't working. There's growth happening, there's really vital things happening underground that is going to ensure the health of that plant later on. And so don't put your faith in the evidence by seeing some sort of sprout, some sort of fruit. Instead, put your faith in the God who created the seed and who has gifted you this beautiful child and opportunities to sow seeds into their life and the process that He has created of sowing seeds and then reaping harvests. And you put your faith in that God instead of in the evidence that you need to see or you think you need to see right now. And I promise you that is the hope and the encouragement that you are going to need to continue pursuing and continue on in a walk of endurance, enduring the hard times, knowing that the fruit is coming. Wow, you got a whole mini-sermon at the end of this episode, apparently. I needed to share that. So, anyways, all of that to say, we had a wonderful weekend. We saw lots of fruit and evidence of the seeds that we have sown in her life. And coming home and looking around, whew, I was hit with another wave of sadness. I was sharing it with my good friend, and she was like, Oh, hello dark or sorry, hello grief, my old friend. And I was like, Oh, yep, yep, here it is again. Anyways, so while I am walking through this next wave of grief and holding it in tension with the hope that God has given me, I am not wallowing, but I am certainly feeling the feels. It's tough. This is tough. This is a season of uh like a a lot of pendulum swings where like hope feels really strong and then sadness comes in really strong and we swing kind of back and forth. And I am learning to navigate and continuing to put my trust in the God who created my daughter and believe that he has her best interests in mind, regardless of what I can see evidence of, or regardless of what I can control. Oh man, talk about last time when we were talking about how your butler comes with two invitations the invitation to control and the invitation to surrender. Whew, it when I was dealing or hanging out with my daughter, oh, the impulse I wanted so badly to grab the invitation to control and to tell her how to live her life and what choices to make and what friends to hang out with and what things she should be doing for her own spiritual walk. I was I was really strong and uh and compelled to grab that. But again, as we develop muscle memory to surrender, grabbing surrender, first of all, to be cognizant of that and to let it go was really helpful. And then the the over and again lessons and of and fruit that we have seen from before help to make that surrender muscle work a little easier and grab that surrender invitation. I know God is trustworthy and I'm holding tightly on to that. Thank you so much. Again, if you did not pause and scroll down and leave a review, can you do that right now for me, please? I would really, really, really appreciate it. As far as the mentor's table and what's you can expect for the month of October, we are going to jump in with season three. The next time that you see me come up in your feed is going to be October 21st. That's when we're gonna kick off season three. That's also when we are going to kick off our regularly scheduled weekly podcasts. I'm really excited about what we have to come. So I hope you enjoyed this replay of the best of season two. And I look forward to hanging out with you again here at the table on October 21st for the kickoff of season three. I'll see you then.