Where is God when We Suffer

Wisdom for the Age / Job 38–41

If you are experiencing suffering and are struggling this morning, you have a hard time seeing anything but. All is suffering. But in order to heal, in order to ge through, you need someone outside of suffering, you need someone who can speak through it.

Suffering Moves Us Into Constant Changing landscapes

Maybe your suffering has had to deal with the loss of a loved one. Losing your landmarks is the process of loss. And re-learning how to navigate your life around that loss of landmarks is the process of grief. Maybe you’ve lost an expectation or a dream. And that landmark is gone. Or maybe you look into the future and can’t recognize anything, everything is a fog.

Job 23:8–9 ESV

“Behold, I go forward, but he is not there,

and backward, but I do not perceive him;

on the left hand when he is working, I do not behold him;

he turns to the right hand, but I do not see him.

Job is trying, in his suffering, to find God. But cannot see Him. This is the problem in suffering. Last week we looked at suffering as something that is uncontrollable in our lives. And that uncontrollability is maybe the most frustrating part of suffering.

Psalm 22:1–2 ESV

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning?

O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer,

and by night, but I find no rest.

This sounds like Job, and sometimes it sounds like us. This uncontrollability is agonizing. Last week we talked about suffering feeling like being swallowed and that the way through is seeing the God who suffered as well. This week we see suffering like a raging rapid, uncontrollable, that pulls us away

Even If We Are Moving, it Turns Out, God is Not

Job 30:20 ESV

I cry to you for help and you do not answer me;

I stand, and you only look at me.

See when we suffer, when we are facing uncontrollability, we actually don’t spend as much time trying to figure out why, what we do is try to figure out where we are. We want to know where we are now. What does our new landscape look like. We work to locate God, we work to locate ourselves. And what God’s answer in Job does is locate God and Job. It does the very thing that human searching actually wants.

Job 38:4–7 ESV

“Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?

Tell me, if you have understanding.

Who determined its measurements—surely you know!

Or who stretched the line upon it?

On what were its bases sunk,

or who laid its cornerstone,

when the morning stars sang together

and all the sons of God shouted for joy?

Job 38:8–11 ESV

“Or who shut in the sea with doors

when it burst out from the womb,

when I made clouds its garment

and thick darkness its swaddling band,

and prescribed limits for it

and set bars and doors,

and said, ‘Thus far shall you come, and no farther,

and here shall your proud waves be stayed’?

We Trust Christ to Reorient us In Suffering, to Redeem us Through It

The rapids and tsunami of suffering is very real and very much moves us. But at some point we have to relocate ourselves. At some point we have to look for the landmarks again. And God is more than willing to show them to us.

God will ultimately reorient us to Him. Let God reorient you.

And He will work in the middle of your suffering, giving you an address, showing you where you need to be and who He is in that.

God’s supernatural use in suffering is to first give us a focal point.

We often face suffering in our lives and we forget how to live, we just resign to the pain. But God is showing Job that even in the suffering there is a place to look, place to focus.

Hebrews 12:2 ESV

looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

And then God teaches us how to continually find that focal point

Romans 5:3–5 ESV

Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.