Reflection Guide
take the time to journal about the story you just heard. process it. let it sink in.
1. Have you ever experienced opposite intense experiences in a short period of time?
2. Where do you direct your anger when you are upset?
3. In difficult times, do you ever ask yourself where is God?
2. Where do you direct your anger when you are upset?
3. In difficult times, do you ever ask yourself where is God?
Bible study
If you’ve ever questioned how God can be all good but allow suffering, you wouldn’t be the first. This is a question that I, personally, do not understand and will continue to struggle with during my entire faith walk.
But I believe that we can learn from how God uses suffering.
Job is probably my favorite book in the Old Testament. It’s definitely not the prettiest words or the one that I can even make the most sense of. I’ll be honest, I’m not good at reading the Old Testament. But Job allows us to discuss grief and suffering in the face of faith.
Read Job 1: 13-22
Job lost everything. And how does he respond? He responds in worship, he still recognizes that God is with him and he acknowledges that He knows what is best. Job was understandably upset, but still knew that God was with him.
When faced with loss, what is your first response?
You might have responded with not believing the loss to be real. This denial is a documented stage in grief. Many scholars have looked at the book of Job through the lens of the 5 stages of grief. And this is a wonderful way to study this scripture.
However, I want to look at instead what Job’s response to loss looks like.
Read Job 2: 1-10
Satan bargains with God to allow Job’s suffering. He does this in Job 1 and 2. And so Satan brings pain directly onto Job.
The list of what Satan does to Job is long. He gives him sores, itching, intense pain, fever, nightmares, and that’s just a fraction of what Job goes through.
In this suffering, what does Satan want Job to do? How does he attempt to make him do this? If Job does this, why is it the worst Satan can do?
Read Job 7: 1-9
Job laments his condition and in this we see that the suffering runs deep. Job says that “Remember, O God, that my life is but a breath; my eyes will never see happiness again.” (v. 7) Job is depressed. He sees no hope in his suffering. He does not see the point.
How is this suffering linked with grief? How is grief a spiritual battle?
Read Job 40: 1-14, Job 42: 1-6
God responds directly to Job’s feelings towards Him starting in Job 38. In this God is present with Job in the midst of a storm. He does not calm the storm nor come gently as you may expect, instead he comes with intensity. In 40:7, God again says that He will question Job, in this God is saying that He is not finished with Job. God does not directly answer any of Job’s questions but gives hope for what He is doing with Job.
One biblical commentary says, “Once again we emphasize that if the specific and ultimate reason for his suffering had been revealed to Job - even at this point - the value of the account as a comfort to others who must suffer in ignorance would have been diminished if not cancelled.” (The Expositor's Bible Commentary)
What does Job’s story tell us about the character of God?
Read Job 29: 1-6
In the beginning of his grief, Job seemed to understand that God was still with him and that God’s will was being done. But in chapter 29, we see that Job no longer feels that God is with him. He thinks, like many or dare I say most of us, that God cannot be for us if we experience intense and prolonged suffering. The doubt Job wrestles with during this book is the same one we may struggle with when hit with grief.
This can be seen in literature throughout the ages. A Grief Observed (1961) chronicles C.S. Lewis’ struggle to reconcile an all-good God and a world with suffering. The short book comes directly from C.S. Lewis’ writings after the passing of his wife due to cancer. His main struggle is whether or not God can be good if suffering and grief are in the world. Through his writings, Lewis’ faith is re-gained and he wrestles with this idea.
In the book, Lewis reminds us that “The Incarnation (Jesus) is the supreme example; it leaves all previous ideas of the Messiah in ruins.”
How does Jesus as the Messiah not match with expectations of a Messiah?
While God is all-powerful, His Son came to earth as a helpless and low-status carpenter. He lived a perfect life, one that was blameless. When Herod and Pilate question Jesus to find if he is deserving of the worst punishment for criminals, they cannot find anything. Not even one speck of wrongdoing (Luke 23: 13-25).
But even still… Jesus goes to the cross. He suffers. Intensely. Everytime that I think of the pain He endured, I’m driven to tears.
It’s a compelling argument to say that we just do not understand God’s idea of good. After all, when we are children we think that eating our vegetables must be bad because sometimes they taste bad but our parents know that it is good for us. While this makes some sort of sense, and is true in some sense… it discounts the agony of grief and suffering.
Luther said, “A theologian of glory calls evil good and good evil. A theologian of the cross calls the thing what it actually is.” Luther is saying that those who focus on what they would expect from a powerful God minimize the power suffering has in our lives. But when we look to the cross and see a suffering servant, we know that God is right in the midst of suffering. And the cross shows us that.
In Lewis’ book The Problem of Pain he writes, “We can ignore even pleasure. But pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”
How do you attend to pain? What is God shouting in our pains?
But I believe that we can learn from how God uses suffering.
Job is probably my favorite book in the Old Testament. It’s definitely not the prettiest words or the one that I can even make the most sense of. I’ll be honest, I’m not good at reading the Old Testament. But Job allows us to discuss grief and suffering in the face of faith.
Read Job 1: 13-22
Job lost everything. And how does he respond? He responds in worship, he still recognizes that God is with him and he acknowledges that He knows what is best. Job was understandably upset, but still knew that God was with him.
When faced with loss, what is your first response?
You might have responded with not believing the loss to be real. This denial is a documented stage in grief. Many scholars have looked at the book of Job through the lens of the 5 stages of grief. And this is a wonderful way to study this scripture.
However, I want to look at instead what Job’s response to loss looks like.
Read Job 2: 1-10
Satan bargains with God to allow Job’s suffering. He does this in Job 1 and 2. And so Satan brings pain directly onto Job.
The list of what Satan does to Job is long. He gives him sores, itching, intense pain, fever, nightmares, and that’s just a fraction of what Job goes through.
In this suffering, what does Satan want Job to do? How does he attempt to make him do this? If Job does this, why is it the worst Satan can do?
Read Job 7: 1-9
Job laments his condition and in this we see that the suffering runs deep. Job says that “Remember, O God, that my life is but a breath; my eyes will never see happiness again.” (v. 7) Job is depressed. He sees no hope in his suffering. He does not see the point.
How is this suffering linked with grief? How is grief a spiritual battle?
Read Job 40: 1-14, Job 42: 1-6
God responds directly to Job’s feelings towards Him starting in Job 38. In this God is present with Job in the midst of a storm. He does not calm the storm nor come gently as you may expect, instead he comes with intensity. In 40:7, God again says that He will question Job, in this God is saying that He is not finished with Job. God does not directly answer any of Job’s questions but gives hope for what He is doing with Job.
One biblical commentary says, “Once again we emphasize that if the specific and ultimate reason for his suffering had been revealed to Job - even at this point - the value of the account as a comfort to others who must suffer in ignorance would have been diminished if not cancelled.” (The Expositor's Bible Commentary)
What does Job’s story tell us about the character of God?
Read Job 29: 1-6
In the beginning of his grief, Job seemed to understand that God was still with him and that God’s will was being done. But in chapter 29, we see that Job no longer feels that God is with him. He thinks, like many or dare I say most of us, that God cannot be for us if we experience intense and prolonged suffering. The doubt Job wrestles with during this book is the same one we may struggle with when hit with grief.
This can be seen in literature throughout the ages. A Grief Observed (1961) chronicles C.S. Lewis’ struggle to reconcile an all-good God and a world with suffering. The short book comes directly from C.S. Lewis’ writings after the passing of his wife due to cancer. His main struggle is whether or not God can be good if suffering and grief are in the world. Through his writings, Lewis’ faith is re-gained and he wrestles with this idea.
In the book, Lewis reminds us that “The Incarnation (Jesus) is the supreme example; it leaves all previous ideas of the Messiah in ruins.”
How does Jesus as the Messiah not match with expectations of a Messiah?
While God is all-powerful, His Son came to earth as a helpless and low-status carpenter. He lived a perfect life, one that was blameless. When Herod and Pilate question Jesus to find if he is deserving of the worst punishment for criminals, they cannot find anything. Not even one speck of wrongdoing (Luke 23: 13-25).
But even still… Jesus goes to the cross. He suffers. Intensely. Everytime that I think of the pain He endured, I’m driven to tears.
It’s a compelling argument to say that we just do not understand God’s idea of good. After all, when we are children we think that eating our vegetables must be bad because sometimes they taste bad but our parents know that it is good for us. While this makes some sort of sense, and is true in some sense… it discounts the agony of grief and suffering.
Luther said, “A theologian of glory calls evil good and good evil. A theologian of the cross calls the thing what it actually is.” Luther is saying that those who focus on what they would expect from a powerful God minimize the power suffering has in our lives. But when we look to the cross and see a suffering servant, we know that God is right in the midst of suffering. And the cross shows us that.
In Lewis’ book The Problem of Pain he writes, “We can ignore even pleasure. But pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”
How do you attend to pain? What is God shouting in our pains?