A sort of classic story in my family happened after my Aunt Elvina's funeral. The preacher had been a bit long-winded and pretty heavy on the "fire and brimstone" type message. As everyone filed out of the church, my cousin Ted said, "Well boys, I don't know about you, but I think I'm good for Sunday!" Well, you may feel that way after reading this blog, so I'm going to do my best not to be too preachy, but instead to simply share what I feel like is an important message.
Last weekend at church, was had a guest speaker, Fred Zaspel, who preached on the book of Job. For those of you who are not Christians, or who may not be familiar with the story, a very brief overview is that Job was extremely faithful and righteous, and he was one of the wealthiest men in the East. One day Satan was bragging to God about all of the destruction he was causing on earth, and about how many souls Satan was winning over. God pointed to Job as a success story. The devil basically said, sure, you give him everything, he never suffers, of course he is faithful, but if you take it away, he will curse your name. So God told the devil that he could cause great suffering to Job, in order to prove to the devil that Job was faithful, even in extreme suffering.
I think that suffering is one of those issues that every Christian, and non-Christian, has questions about. I know that I certainly do, so I was excited to hear this sermon. I was not disappointed. I honestly think this was the best sermon that I have ever heard preached in my life. (And that's impressive, because my church in Stillwater had who I consider to be the best preacher in the world!)
The gist of the sermon was three-fold.
First, there are reasons for suffering that we cannot fathom, know or understand. Look at Job--we know that the reason for his suffering was because of the battle going on between God and the Devil. WE know that, but Job didn't. The same is true for our sufferings. There are likely reasons and causes that we do not understand, because we can't see them.
One of these reasons for our suffering may be to give glory to God through a worshiping sufferer. That was the purpose of Job's suffering....God used Job's faith, despite the terrible suffering that he was enduring, for God's glory. That doesn't take the pain away, but maybe it makes it easier to bear when you know that there is a purpose to it, and when you understand that your being faithful through suffering may well be to glorify God.
Second, in our suffering, God is calling us to a stronger faith. When bad things happen, we often think that God owes us an explaination. I know that's true for me. But that's not correct--God owes us know explaination, but instead, we owe him trust. It's not important that we know why, what matters is that we know that God knows why, and we trust him.
Third, unlike Job, we suffer as Christians, with our hope in Jesus. Job frequently asked where God was during his suffering, and he plead for a mediator or some sort to come and bridge the gap between himself on earth and God in heaven. We have that mediator in Jesus. This makes our faith all the more reasonable, and Job's faith all the more remarkable.
If you are interested in listening to this sermon (trust me, Pastor Zaspel is 100 times better than my attempt at explaining it here!), you can listen here. I know that these ideas touched my heart, so hopefully they will yours as well.
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