Suffering Blog #3
Suffering Blog # Three – God Enlarges Your Soul Through Suffering
This month, as I continue to read through the Bible over 12 months, I find myself in the Book of Job. Since I just started a Suffering Blog, I figured it was no coincidence that I find myself there.
If there were pictures of people found in Webster’s dictionary next to certain words, next to the word “suffering” we would find a picture of an Old Testament person named Job. But extreme suffering was not always his lot in life.
There was a time when he would have been considered the Elon Musk of his day. The Bible tells us his wealth was staggering owning over 11,000 livestock and other animals. He had a thriving business with a huge staff of employees. He was a married man with a large family and many servants. The bible says, “He was the greatest man among all the people of the East.”
Suddenly, in one day, all the forces of heaven and earth came against Job. Enemies invaded. Lightning struck. A tornado unleashed her fury. By the end of the afternoon, the world’s richest, most admired man had been reduced to poverty. He lost his business, his employees, his house, his servants, and possessions. All ten of his children had been killed in a terrible natural disaster. Well, at least he had his health – right?
“So, Satan left the Lord’s presence and infected Job with terrible boils from the soles of his feet to the top of his head. Then Job took a piece of broken pottery to scrape himself while he sat among the ashes. His wife said to him, ‘Are you still holding on to your integrity? Curse God and die!’ He replied, ‘You speak as a foolish woman. Should we accept only good from God and not adversity?’ Throughout all this Job did not sin in what he said.” (Job 2:7-10)
I want you to understand how much this man was suffering. He had lost everything. His body was now seized with sore boils from the soles of his feet to the top of his head. His skin darkened and shriveled. His sores became infected with worms. His eyes grew red and swollen. High fever with chills only added to his excruciating pain. Sleeplessness, delirium, and choking filled his days. Job moved outside the city walls to the town’s garbage dump, the home for the city’s outcasts. After ten funerals, his wife had had enough and tells him to curse God and die.
Don’t for a minute believe that Job was some stoic, unfeeling man who never felt the painful emotions of loss. As you read further in Job you can see that he struggled with doubting God and His sense of fairness. He felt anger. He felt discouraged and disillusioned.
Jonathan Edwards, in a famous sermon on the book of Job, noted that the story of Job is the story of us all. Job lost everything in one day: his family, his wealth, and his health. Most of us experience our losses more slowly – over the span of a lifetime – until we find ourselves on the door of death, leaving behind everything.
Catastrophic loss, by definition, precludes recovery. It will transform us or destroy us, but it will never leave us the same. There is no going back to the comforts of the past…It is not therefore true that we become less through loss – unless we allow the loss to make us less, grinding our soul down until there is nothing left…Loss can also make us more…I did not get over the loss of my loved ones; rather, I absorbed the loss into my life, until it became part of who I am. Sorrow took up permanent residence in my soul and enlarged it…One learns the pain of others by suffering one’s own pain, by turning inside oneself, by finding one’s own soul…However painful, sorrow is good for the soul…The soul is elastic, like a balloon. It can grow larger through suffering. (From the book Emotionally Healthy Spirituality).
Everything we face in life, depending on how we respond to it, leads us to becoming better people or bitter people. The Scriptures reveal there are two ways that God wants to redeem our sorrows – two things he can accomplish in our lives to make us better so that our sorrows are never wasted as we bring them to him.
1. Through our pain God purposes to deepen our faith & our character so that we might be more like Jesus in how we live and love others, until, one day, when our sorrows are fully redeemed through our resurrection life with Him in heaven where pain and loss exist no more. (Read Romans 8:28-30)
2. As we allow God to comfort us in our sorrows and redeem our pain, he enlarges our hearts by filling it with his love and compassion, making us more effective in how we care for the hurting people around us. We grow to see that one reason for the pain in our lives is to help others who suffer. (Read 2 Corinthians 1:3-5)
And quite often as we allow God to heal our wounded heart and we begin to look outward beyond our own life to the hurting lives of others, He leads us to those who are suffering just as we once had. Except now we have found healing, we have found hope to share with the hurting people of the world.
While Job repeatedly questioned God, he held tightly to his faith and so can you! Job realized that while he did not deserve suffering, he also never deserved God’s blessings in life. I guess when you hold a loose grip on the people, position, possessions, and pleasures of this world, during difficult times, you have open hands that can grab hold of God with all your might.
In his greatest time of suffering Job declared.
“The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.”
Prayer:
“Father, when I think about my pain and my losses, it can feel like I have no skin to protect me. I feel raw, scraped to the bone. Looking at Job and Jesus’ suffering helps, but I must admit that I struggle to see something new being birthed out of the old. Enlarge my soul through the trials and losses of life resulting in love and compassion for the hurting people around me. In Jesus name. Amen.” (a prayer found in the Day by Day Emotionally Healthy Spirituality devotional)
In the weeks ahead I want to share more insights from the life and suffering of Job. Stay tuned.
