When Faith Hurts

When Faith Hurts

Have you ever wondered if it's okay to tell God exactly how you feel?

Job did.

He didn't hide his grief. He didn't pretend everything was fine. He brought his deepest pain and hardest questions before God.

In this podcast we'll discover that honest faith isn't the absence of questions; it’s choosing to bring those questions to God.

Series: Where Were You? The Book of Job

Transcript

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One of the discipleship resources that we as a church have made available to you is a free subscription to everybody in the room to RightNow Media. It's think Netflix, but Christian based, and there's no questionable content in there with Bible studies from trusted teachers that are in there. So if you haven't started your account yet, what are you waiting for? One. All right, how's that for being direct? Right. But we want to make sure you utilize that. You can check out Connection Point. Um, we've got a link that you can download that, and it's a free account for you. We have paid for that. It's a fantastic discipleship resource. Stuff for all ages. And one of the things that you'll see on our custom landing page once you sign in and create an account is that there is a Sunday morning bonus content series. Right now we're going through the book of Job. And so there's some bonus content that's in there. There's a study by Francis Chan that I've been listening to in the car because any of the Bible studies you can turn into a podcast and listen to in the car or wherever you consume your podcast or your lessons. They're all video-based series, but you can listen to the content as well. So if you're going through the book of Job with us and you want some more information and future series, we're going to be putting things there about the topics that we're dealing with together on Sunday morning. Gonna have some bonus content for you. So I encourage you to check out our Right Now media page. Last week we started in the book of Job. What happens in the book of Job is that we see in one day his entire world fell apart. He lost his possessions, he lost his servants, he lost his children. Yet when that final message arrived, Job tore his robe and shaved his head, he fell to the ground. And perhaps surprisingly, he worshiped. In the midst of the pain, in the midst of the anguish, in the midst of the suffering, Job chose to worship. There's an enormous amount of weight that comes with this story, the story of Job, so much so as we're coming into this, this is week two of four, so we have two more that we're going to cover in the book of Job. And I feel like I've been preaching Job for a month. Hopefully, last week my sermon didn't feel like a month's worth of sermons to you, but only you can talk about that. But the things, the biblical lessons and the content that we have delivered to us, when they apply to our lives in very real-felt ways, it can almost engulf us and surround us. What we learned in looking at Job's story last week in Job chapter 1 is that his sorrow didn't silence his worship. But what we also realize is as we read through Job chapter 2, where it got worse, in Job chapter 3, where we get his response to his suffering, is that his worship didn't silence his sorrow. Just because Job was faithful and he turned back to God to offer him worship and praise, it didn't make his problems go away. It didn't bring his family back and didn't bring his possessions back. What we'll see as we make our way into Job chapter 3 today is that Job is no longer standing. He's no longer actively taking a posture of worship. He's sitting in his ashes, in ashes, and his body is covered from head to toe in painful sores. His wife is beside him grieving. His friends have arrived, but when they see him, they barely recognize him because of the hardship and the pain that Job is dealing with. Some of his very best friends have a hard time going, is that really Job, man? He looks rough. He's had a bad day. And boy, did Job ever have a bad day. But the friends, they weep with Job, they tear their robes, they throw dust in the air, and they sit on the ground with him. For seven days and seven nights, once Job's friends come to him, no one speaks. That was seven seconds, alright? And we're uncomfortable with that. For seven days, they just sat there with their friend who was broken and hurting, and they were there. We often call that the ministry of presence. Being there. With them in the joys and with them in the sorrows. Sometimes when, quite honestly, there's nothing to say. Just being present. After those seven days, and no one is speaking, and they're just there in the midst of the difficulty. Job opens his mouth, and Job speaks about what is going on in his life and in his heart. What comes out of Job's mouth is not a statement of worship. It is raw and painful and difficult to hear. Job curses the day of his birth. He wishes it would be removed from the calendar. He wished that he never existed. And he wonders why God even gave him life at all. This is where the book of Job takes us next. It doesn't allow us to remain in that powerful worship service that Job did that we read about at the end of Job 1, where Job accused God of nothing wrong. And instead he was focused on worship. It brings us to the long silence and the sorrow that follows, and it lets us hear what Job really thinks. The feelings, the emotions that he is really going through when his silence breaks. For me, I'm no different than most of you. There's some things that I'm good at. It's okay for us to recognize when we're gifted and we're good in some areas, and honestly, I wish that gift was longer. There's not a lot of things that I'm good at, but there's some things I'm pretty good at. I always tended to enjoy going into school and reading, and I read relatively well, but probably not as quite as good as my tenth grade daughter who just devours books all the time. But I do pretty well. One of the things that has always been hard for me to read, and you may have heard me say this before, is like, I just don't understand poetry. I think my brain is too dense to understand the beauty and the language of everything that's happening there. So even in school, when I was supposed to read like Shakespeare, like I would read it, I put my eyes over the words and I'm like, what just happened? Anybody else feel me on that? Anybody, all right? And then others of you, you read it and you're like, that is the most beautiful thing that is ever written. I can quote it for you and give you four different translations to explain it in different ways that your simple mind can't understand, right? But I have trouble with that. I have trouble. I can make myself understand it, but it takes an awful lot of work. Where we find ourselves here in Job's response and in even the back and forth that we get between Job and his friends that show up, and then ultimately God's response, it's a lot of poetry, it's a lot of prose, it's a lot of this language that I personally have trouble understanding the depth of everything that they are talking about. So, what I'm going to do for us today, like my preferred English translation that I read from the ESV, the English Standard Version. I feel like it's reliable to the original text. It does a really good job of translating it in ways that we are able to understand. But there are times when I come across either a familiar passage that I want to make sure I'm not missing something, or other times where there's something that's maybe harder for me personally to understand, well, I'll go to another translation or another version, and I'm going to do that today. There's a pastor and writer named Eugene Peterson, and he wrote a version of the Bible called The Message. Now, if you're doing a big, in-depth, word-for-word Bible study, do not use the message. It doesn't work that way. But what it does is it helps us to understand in modern languages. And the reason that Peterson translated this is that he was going through a Bible study on Sunday with his church, and they were trying to understand that book of the Bible in language that they spoke normally. And that is how, over the course of decades, I think, they worked through that to translate that into ways that are maybe a slightly more accessible in some cases. So it helps us to understand what is going on. And I want to read Jode chapter 3 for us today. And as you hear it, listen to the pain, listen to the questions, and notice where Job takes them. And I encourage you sometime this week, go in and read an ESV or an NIV or some other version of that. But I'm going to read the way that Peterson translated this for people in his congregation to be able to understand what was going on and what Job was trying to communicate. It reads this way. Then Job broke his silence. He stood up and he cursed his fate. Obliterate the day I was born, blank out the night that I was conceived. Let it be a black hole in space. May God forget that it ever happened. Erase it from the books. May the day of my birth be buried deep in the darkness, shrouded by the fog, surrounded by the night. In the night of my conception, the devil take it. Rip that date off the calendar and delete it from the almanac. Oh, turn that night into a night of pure nothingness, no sounds of pleasure from that night ever. May those who are good at cursing, may they curse that day. Unleash the beast Leviathan on it. May its morning stars turn to black cinders, waiting for daylight that never comes, never once seeing the light of dawn. And why? Because it that day released me from my mother's room into a light womb, into a life filled with so much trouble. Why didn't I die at birth? Why wasn't my first breath? My last breath? Why were there arms to rock me and breasts for me to drink from? I could be resting in peace right now, asleep forever, feeling no pain in the company of kings and statesmen in their royal ruins, or princes with their response in their gold and silver tombs. Why wasn't I still born with all the babies who never saw the light? Were the wicked no longer trouble anyone, or bone-wearing people get a long-deserved rest? Prisoners sleep undisturbed, never again to wake up at the bark of the guards. The small and the great are all equals in that place, and the slaves are free from their masters. Why does God bother giving light to the miserable? Why bother letting bitter people keeping bitter people alive? Those who want in the worst way to die can't. And those who can't imagine anything better than death, who count the day of their death and burial as the happiest day of their life? What's the point when life doesn't make sense, when God blocks all roads to meaning? Instead of bread, I get groans for my supper and then leave the table and I vomit my anguish. The worst of my fears has come true. What I've dreaded most has happened. My repose is shattered. My peace is destroyed. No rest for me ever. Death has invaded life. Job chapter three. Perhaps some of the darkest, deepest words that we read in the Bible. And quite frankly, they make us uncomfortable. You're not supposed to talk like that. You're supposed to smile and pretend that everything's okay. Well, where did we learn that? The Bible doesn't hide difficulty from us. It goes to no great lengths to hide that. What it does is it allows Job room to speak what he is actually experiencing and feeling and dealing with. Because faith isn't only expressed through songs of worship. Sometimes faith is expressed through tears and questions and words that come from a deep place of pain. The Bible has a word for this, a literary category for this, called lament. When we lament, it means we're bringing our pain, our grief, our questions honestly before God. Let me let you in on a little secret that you only learn if you go to Bible college to be a preacher. God knows everything about you. Yeah, he does, right? See? Bible college degree. There you have it. There's nothing that you can hide from him. So don't feel like you have to hold back in your difficulty. Don't feel that you have to hold back in your sorrow or in your pain because God knows what you're dealing with. You don't have to pretend. Job chapter 3 shows us that what faith does is faith brings its deepest pain to the algorithm, to social media, to the opinions of everybody else. No. For believers, where faith brings our deepest pain is we bring that to God. Our deepest pain should be brought to God. Job worshiped in chapter one, but that worship didn't erase what had happened. His children were dead, his livelihood was gone, his livestock was gone, all of his possessions were destroyed. His body is covered with sores. And notice the pain didn't disappear because Job responded faithfully. It didn't make it all better in that moment. That matters because we can begin to realize that sincere worship should change the way that we feel. It shouldn't fix our circumstances. It should make it go away. If we pray, if we sing, if we give, if we serve, if we think of others before we think of ourselves, when we partake of communion together and actively remember what Jesus did on the cross, that should take away the pain, should take away the hurt, it should take away the difficulty. And why doesn't it? Unfortunately, that's not the way that this world works. Because sin came into the world and it changed the fabric of everything that we deal with, and it changed even the fabric of our relationship with God and how we relate to one another. Sometimes all of that grief is still waiting for us right there when we get home, sometimes worse than when we went off to spend some time with God. What that does not mean is it does not mean that your worship failed. What it doesn't mean is that your prayer was inadequate. It doesn't mean that your faith is fraudulent or a phony. What it does remind us of is that grief doesn't follow a prescribed schedule. Sure, you can study psychology and you can deal with people pastorally enough, how you go through things like that, but grief moves however grief wants to move. And that is why when we deal with difficulty and loss and struggles in this life, we deal with that differently than somebody else, even if we're going through a very similar circumstance. Because we are all individual people that stand before God that deal with pain and difficulty in different ways. There are wounds that sometimes don't close quickly. Other times in life, there are wounds that we feel like will never heal. It keeps getting irritated, or that scab gets picked off, or you mess it up again, and you feel like it's never going to go away. There's questions that don't just disappear after prayer. There's losses that permanently shape the trajectory of your life. Faith doesn't always remove the pain. But sometimes what faith does is that it can help hold us together when we're in the middle of it and when we're still hurting. After those seven days of silence, Job spoke and he said, Let the day perish on which I was born. I wish I had never been born. It would have been better never to even have life if this is what it's going to be like. He curses the day, he wishes it was removed from the record forever. Job is not calmly explaining his theology. He's telling us what suffering really feels like in the midst of the storm, not after he's out of it, but in his right smack dab in the middle. Too often we want to tie up our stories nice with a clean bow on the end of it and then tell people about it afterwards, not in the midst of it. And what the Bible continues to do through us with stories like Job of faithful people who followed after God is they tell us what it looks like to deal with the pain. You see, worship can hold us, worship can sustain us, even when it doesn't immediately heal what hurts. That is why it's important for us to come together, to worship together, to spend time with other believers, raising our voices and crying out to God in the good and in the challenging. Job's words for us become difficult to hear. He wishes that he had never been born. He says, Why didn't I die at birth? He imagines death as a place where he can finally have some relief. What Job is not doing is he's not giving us a complete theology of life and death. If you get your biggest life lessons from people who are in the midst of great, acute pain, it's going to be skewed. Because when we are hurt and when we are broken, we rarely have clear eyes to see and ears to hear. Our perspective is messed up, and we don't have ability to see rightly and clearly. Job is not teaching us that life has no value. He is not presenting death as an answer to suffering. But what he is doing is that Job is describing how life looks like for a man, that the pain has become too overwhelming for him to take, and he can't imagine ever getting past it, let alone being over it. What the Bible does is that it records this response of Job honestly and transparently and without apology. The Bible records his words here, but it doesn't mean that every outspoken cry by people is the final word of Scripture. But still the Bible allows Job time to speak. That's why the chapter is 43 verse 40. That's why the book is 43 chapters long and not four. Because it allows us time to walk with Job and his friends through the pain and through the suffering and through the anguish. The Bible doesn't interrupt Job in his first sentence, it doesn't clear up his language so that we're become more comfortable with it. It gives truth about what suffering does to us in this broken world. And as I said, the Bible has a word for that kind of honesty. It's lament. This biblical idea, this concept of lament is bringing pain, grief, and questions honestly before God. Lament does not pretend that everything is fine and everything's going to be okay. It doesn't call darkness light, and it doesn't minimize what has been lost. It tells the truth about what hurts, and it continues to bring that hurt into the presence of God. As you see, lament, crying out to God. It is not the opposite of faith, but biblical lament is pain that keeps turning to God. Nobody else. Nothing else. This is important for us because we have been taught and conditioned to learn how to speak politely about pain. We like to pretend like we're strong. We want our life to be the highlight reel that everybody sees, not the reality of what we deal with. We want to know the right answers. We want to know the verses people expect us to quote, or at the very least, to plug it into Google and to pull up what Bible verse should I quote here to make myself look like my faith is stronger than it is. We know how to smile and shake a hand and say that we're doing okay. But I told you about that secret we learned only at Bible college, right? God already knows what's going on. We're not tricking him, we're not hiding from him. He understands what is happening. God is not honored by our pretending. What God invites us to do is to do what Job did, to bring in the truth, to bring in the things that we're dealing with. Because there is a difference. There is a difference in bringing your anger to God and turning your back on God. There's a difference between asking God hard questions and then deciding that God is no longer worth seeking after. Job's words are raw, but his pain remains inside that relationship with God, who he wants to trust. He doesn't hide his pain, he speaks. What faith does, faith in God does not require us to call the darkness light. We don't have to pretend that it's okay. What faith does is faith brings its biggest, deepest, darkest pain and deals with it and it brings it to God. Have you ever had? Think about this. Have you ever had an enormous festering problem in your life that was causing great pain and you ignored it and it just got better? The answer to that is no. Alright, you have not. Maybe you're lying to yourself. Maybe you think that it did. If you want to tell me later, I'll kindly tell you you're wrong. Alright? Yeah. Okay? When we ignore pain, when we ignore the things that are broken inside of us, they eat us alive. It continues to cause problems for us. And that is the beauty and the pain that we deal with, not just in Job's story, but in so many other stories that are like Job's, that tell us how we deal with suffering and pain in this life. How we respond in ways that are honest to what we're dealing with and that can help us deal with that. The truth around our faith should shape the way that we respond when other people are hurting. Now, eventually, as you get into Job 4 through the rest of the chapters, as they're going back and forth and arguing with one another, Job's friends, they start with a really great thing. They just show up and they're there. That's what Job needed. But then they start talking about things that they don't possibly have the answers to, but they are convinced that they're right. Anybody ever been there before? Anyone else excel at fixing other people's problems they told you they didn't want your help with? Yeah, I like to solve other people's problems. Leave mine alone, but I will fix yours and I will tell you what to do. Ask my wife, all right? I will solve your problems. Even when I just need to keep my mouth shut and listen. After 20 years, after a while, you catch up on a few things. Job's friends. They accuse Job. They defend their own assumptions. They speak through suffering as if it can be reduced to a simple answer. But before they begin speaking, they do something beautiful. They sit right there with their friend who is broken. And they care for him for seven days and seven nights. They enter his grief without trying to fix it or solve it or rationalize it away. They don't offer a slogan. They don't force an explanation. They refuse to leave him alone in the ashes. And sometimes that is the most powerful thing that we can do to let other people know that we will not abandon them. We will not give up on them, even if they abandon and give up on themselves. That we will be there for them. They refuse to leave their friend by himself. Not every sentence that is spoken in grief deserves correction. Sometimes people need to know that it's that you're gonna stay and you're gonna be there with them. They need to know that someone is gonna listen, and even if they're uncomfortable, they are going to stay. Someone who's not gonna panic when the conversation becomes honest, and someone who will help them carry the weight. When someone feels like life is unbearable, we need to lean in and listen very carefully. And we take those words very seriously. We don't shame them or dismiss them or simply tell them to have more faith or follow this formula and it'll all be fixed. Instead, what we do is we stay, listen. And sometimes, just keep our mouth shut. Now, yes, there are times when we are to step in and speak and correct things that are clearly false. But when faith brings our deepest pain to God, we are reminded that we don't have to carry that alone. And God never intended for us to bear that burden on our own. And that's why we see Job and so many other people of great faith in the Bible speaking honestly about what is happening in his life. Job's words become a part of a longer conversation involving his friends and God. God will challenge some of Job's assumptions. Job doesn't see everything clearly from his pain because we rarely do. God is not frightened by the depths of Job's grief. He is not surprised by the questions, he doesn't disappear because Job's words are messy. Job's pain becomes a part of his encounter with God. Job's encounter with God becomes a part of his ultimate healing. That is what lament does. It refuses to hide the pain, but it refuses to let pain have the last word. It keeps bringing the truth into the heart of the presence of God even when there are no immediate answers. Jumping forward to an encounter we have in the New Testament in the life of Jesus. Just before he's arrested and betrayed and tried and killed on a Roman cross, he spends the night praying in a garden called Gethsemane with his disciples, and he tells them to stay awake and to stay alert. Jesus knew that was coming, what was coming. He knew about the betrayal, the arrest, the mockery of a trial and the cross were near, near, and he didn't pretend that everything was okay. He told his disciples, My soul is very sorrowful, even to death. He brought his pain to the Father and he invited people around him to pray for him, to be there with him. And Jesus even pleaded with the Father. He said, God, if there is any other way, let this suffering pass from me, but ultimately not my will be done, but yours. And Jesus shows us that honest sorrow and genuine trust can occupy the same space. He doesn't run from the Father when faith hurt. He prayed to the Father. That means that God loves us even when we feel overwhelmed. God loves us even when we are overwhelmed. You can trust God and still ask why. You can worship in chapter one and cry out in chapter three, and God can take it, and He can handle it. Because faith brings its deepest pain to God. That is where it belongs, but too often we take it to other places that don't have the capacity to work through it with us. Bring God the pain that you can't understand and can't explain. Bring him the answers and the questions that have gone unanswered for a long time. Bring him the grief that you can describe and the grief which yet you don't have words for yet. And allow other people to join you in there as well. When the darkness is too heavy to carry, tell somebody else about it. Don't do it by yourself. You can't handle it. You need other people. That is why God designed us to live together in the community with other believers and with Him. Speak to somebody who you trust. Speak to somebody who can share some faith. Speak to somebody who's been through something like that before and they can relate to you on levels in ways that other people who haven't can't quite. But allow others to care for you and allow God to work through them. Don't believe you have to carry everything that you have ever done. Job 3 does not give us a quick resolution, but it does give us a man that is being honest, deep in the midst of his pain. It reminds us that faith doesn't always sound triumphant. Sometimes faith sounds like cries, questions, weeping. And sometimes it's a prayer through clinched teeth. But it still needs to turn towards God. Last week we saw that sorrow doesn't have to silence our worship. And yet, that worship, even responding faithfully, doesn't get rid of the sorrow right away. God knows what is going on within us, and he feels that very deeply. He remains present in the silence and he listens when the faith hurts. Bring your deepest pain to God. And as if that wasn't hard enough, and it is, the hard thing is just trying to leave it there with him. And trusting him and how he handles it. Let's pray. Oh God. This world is not the way that you created it to be. Because we as people chose to sin, and sin entered into the world, and there are consequences and ramifications of that that we are going to deal with every day, this side of heaven. But Father, you have given us a different perspective, a new set of lenses through which to look at this life. And God, you don't want suffering to happen. That was never a part of your plan. But what you have given us is stories in your word, the Bible, of faithful people who have persevered, who have been refined. Father, help us to bring our pain to you and to trust you. God, you often don't heal that on our timetable and how we wish. And God, I've lived long enough to know that there are some questions in this life that I don't have good answers for. Because you care for us. Father, I thank you for your concern. For your word, and for your immense patience that you have with us. In Jesus' name.