Where is God in My Suffering?

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Welcome to Grace at the Fray, a podcast that explores the many dimensions of God’s grace that we find at the frayed edges of life. Come explore how God’s grace works to renew your life and send you on mission in His kingdom.

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0:00:19.4 Jim Lovelady: Hello, beloved. Welcome to Grace at the Fray. The next three episodes are going to be heavy. And I say all the time that if the gospel is real, it’s real for every aspect of our lives, and this includes suffering and grief. So over the course of the next three episodes, I want to start a conversation about suffering, hardship and trauma and grief. And the gospel of Jesus that declares the victory of God in the midst of all of these things. For millennia humanity has been wrestling with the problem of pain and suffering in the mystery of divine hiddenness. And the book of Job has been a go-to source of wisdom for thousands of years. It’s a complex book that invites us into the conversation with our maker. When our heart cries out, where is God in my suffering? Well, this episode is an attempt to begin a conversation about something fundamental in our humanity, our suffering. Or in the words of my guest today, Marc Davis, taking his cues from the Bible, it’s a conversation about our troubles. Marc is no stranger to the podcast. He’s on staff here at Serge, and is a colleague of mine on the Renewal Team. And he just wrote a Bible study guide for our Gospel-Centered Life in the Bible series, on the book of Job. And he came into the studio to talk about it. And the first question that is raised, the question on the cover of the book, is “Where is God in my Suffering?” And the answers to this question that you find in the book of Job may surprise you, but I hope more than anything that they will comfort you and give you hope. Where is God in our suffering? Join me as I sit down with the author of this wonderful little study guide, as we tiptoe into the overwhelming mystery of God’s presence in the midst of our troubles.

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0:02:13.4 Jim Lovelady: Well, welcome.

0:02:13.9 Marc Davis: Thank you, Jim.

0:02:15.3 Jim Lovelady: I think you are tied for the most appearances on the podcast with Emily Shrader. Either you’re tied or you have taken the lead. I don’t know.

0:02:26.9 Marc Davis: Well, hopefully, a family favorite.

0:02:29.4 Jim Lovelady: Yeah. Well, so your episode about asking the question is God disappointed with me? Is one of the more popular of revisited episodes. So I’m glad to have you on again to talk about another… This one is one of the heaviest topics that humanity has ever faced. So you’ve got this little book that you just wrote, this little study on the book of Job. And I read through it and it was really good. And so I’m looking forward to talking to you about it.

0:03:12.7 Marc Davis: So you just said this is the big… This is one of the biggest questions. How are you framing the question? 

0:03:19.5 Jim Lovelady: So it’s the question of suffering. And your book is… It’s in the Gospel-Centered Life in the Bible series on the book of Job, but then the subtitle or whatever it’s called, is Where Is God in My Suffering? And so that’s a really good question, and I think it’s funny. You and I both talked about this earlier, how Job, the book of Job doesn’t give an answer to that question, but it’s a really good question. And Job invites that question. So it’s a little bit of a… It feels like a bait and switch. Right? 

0:04:00.6 Marc Davis: I was hesitant to use that subtitle because it did feel like sort of if you’re going to put that question on the cover of the book, you would think you’d be encouraging people with the idea that somewhere in these 96 pages is the answer to the question. It’s not and it’s not in the book of Job either. Though I think the book of Job invites people to engage with God in the midst of their suffering. It kind of creates space for honest hard conversations that you might not find in every other corner of the Bible. And it invites people to look for Him, to call out to Him, to seek Him. Where is He? Not far away.

0:05:08.5 Jim Lovelady: Yeah. The short answer, He’s not far away.

0:05:11.1 Marc Davis: Yeah. But in terms of, “Where are you God? What are you asking? What are you doing? What is this all about? Explain this to me. Surely, if you were nearby, this is not what I would be experiencing. So You must be far away.” There’s a whole set of questions, and if the question is, “Explain this to me, it doesn’t make sense.” I think sometimes the Bible provides insight into the nature of your suffering, what’s going on in your suffering. And sometimes it doesn’t. And in Job for the most part, it doesn’t, but in any case, the conversation is there, the seeking for God is there.

0:06:05.3 Jim Lovelady: So this sounds like, “Well, what do you want me to buy this book for?”

0:06:10.6 Marc Davis: Not to get the answer to the question.

0:06:12.2 Jim Lovelady: Well, yeah. So that’s what’s fascinating, is that no, this book takes you on a journey, just like the book of Job takes you on a journey of wrestling with God. And so it’s not a malevolent bait and switch. It’s actually what the book of Job does. Job comes with this same question. But something else happens in asking that question. So that’s what I want to explore while we’re hanging out. And here’s how I want to do it. Last year, when we were down in Florida for Sonship Week, it was beautiful week of taking these ideas about the gospel that we know, this theology that we all agree with, our union with Christ, our justification, our sanctification, the reality of our adoption, what a life of repentance looks like, all of these beautiful things in a week’s time, working them into our hearts so that we know how to connect our lived experience with this theology. So at the end of the week, we did this Q&A, and you were up there. You were on the panel discussion for this Q&A. And I was fascinated by how not a single question from the audience was there about, “Hey, could you explain to me this aspect of justification?” “Hey, could you explain to me that aspect of sanctification?” “Hey, there’s this one thing I’m just confused about with adoption.” None of the questions were that. Where the questions were, was, “Hey, I have this conflict with this other person. And I’m losing sleep at night. Hey, I’m having a really hard time forgiving this person, and I don’t know what to do about it. And I’ve been going through a lot of hardship lately in this area, and I don’t know how the gospel is real in that situation.” So if we were back on that panel, and somebody asked that question, you’re a pastor, what would be your general response to those kinds of questions? And use the book of Job, because you wrote a great book.

0:08:44.4 Marc Davis: Well, you use the language of lived experience. And I think our lived experience includes trouble. And so I’m going to make a little shift here because the word suffering appears much less frequently in my Bible than the word trouble.

0:09:10.0 Jim Lovelady: Oh, interesting.

0:09:11.0 Marc Davis: At least in my NIV. It’s a word that they landed on. And it’s a word that ends up helpfully connecting a bunch of different disparate passages. But so I’m hearing… I’m at Sonship Week. I’m hearing the gospel expressed, I’m hearing about these rich truths of salvation in Jesus. But like always, for all of us, mostly, most of the time, there’s some problem that is heavy on our minds and hearts that we’re trying to navigate, that we’re trying to get our heads around, understand to pass through. And, yeah, oftentimes, at its simplest level, my prayer in the midst of that is, “Lord, please make this go away.” And, yeah, in general, you can ask the Lord that, but there are other conversations to have with God in the midst of trouble, other than, “Please make this go away.” So yeah, those Sonship Week questions are something like what does this have to do with this? How does this help me over here in the midst of what’s going on? And I think there’s more than one angle. Part of where trouble comes from is the whole dynamic of sinful fallen people living out life in a fallen broken world. And some of my suffering is because of my own bad decisions. I bring trouble on myself because of my choices too often to turn away from the Lord and look for life somewhere else. I also experience trouble from other people as they make bad decisions in my direction. And all kinds of sort of trickle down, big picture, societal, permutations of that.

0:11:47.3 Jim Lovelady: Systemic, yeah.

0:11:50.1 Marc Davis: Right. Systemic kinds of sin and human structures tainted by sin. So there’s a lot of trouble that exists somewhere in that big stew pot of sinners bumping up against each other. So some of the categories of me as a sinner who needs Jesus, learning to live in a rhythm of daily life, that is repentance and faith, that intersects somewhere with me and my trouble, but it’s sure not comprehensive. There are other questions about can I in the midst of the experience of this trouble that I may or may not be able to sort of draw a lineage of how it even came about? Can I, in the midst of it, understand myself as a child of God, dearly loved? Ephesians 5:1, dearly loved children. Can I understand myself as that, even in the midst of this? 

0:13:02.2 Jim Lovelady: In the midst of this.

0:13:04.0 Marc Davis: And can I function in dependence on my Father? Can I trust my Father? Can I love other people in the midst of trouble? And so that too is sort of a test of the doctrine. Is this thing big enough to do that? Is this big enough to lodge in your heart in such a way that it frames your understanding of yourself, and, yeah, broadly all kinds of experience to be somebody who is loved by God in the midst of all kinds of weather? 

0:13:47.1 Jim Lovelady: In the experience of living through the troubles of life, this is where we go, “Okay, is the gospel real for this situation? Where is God in this situation? What does it look like to contend with God in this situation?” And the complexity of a life filled with troubles with much suffering is that we’re constantly grabbing for, “Well, maybe this is what’s happening or maybe this is what’s going on.” It makes me think about how often we’re searching for meaning in the midst of the troubles. And even in the book of Job, that seems to be what… Who is it? Zophar? Bildad? Who’s the first guy? 

0:14:32.4 Marc Davis: Eliphaz.

0:14:33.0 Jim Lovelady: Eliphaz. That’s right.

0:14:35.4 Marc Davis: Yeah. Eliphaz, Zophar, and the shortest man in the Bible.

0:14:38.8 Jim Lovelady: Bildad.

0:14:39.3 Marc Davis: Bildad the Shuhite.

0:14:41.0 Jim Lovelady: Before that, I thought the shortest.

0:14:44.9 Marc Davis: You might’ve thought it was Nehemiah. You felt that the Shuhite was even shorter than Nehemiah.

0:14:51.2 Jim Lovelady: These are the epic Bible dad jokes straight from Marc Davis. I love it. So these guys are like, “Okay, I got this figured out. We have principles that can help us understand because… ” Okay, well, let’s back up in case somebody doesn’t know the story of Job. Job is this righteous dude who has… he seems to be living his best life. He has everything he could ever want. Everyone looks at him and goes, “Oh, man, I want to be like this guy.”

0:15:30.2 Marc Davis: Yeah. There’s this great phrase where Job is reminiscing about his former life. And there’s a phrase he says, “My steps were washed in butter,” something like that.

0:15:46.0 Jim Lovelady: Oh, interesting.

0:15:48.0 Marc Davis: Isn’t that great? So, yeah, he’s in this life that’s washed in butter.

0:15:54.9 Jim Lovelady: Just living his best life.

0:15:57.9 Marc Davis: Yeah.

0:15:58.8 Jim Lovelady: And the accuser, Satan, comes before God in His throne room, comes up and goes, “Hey, you know what? I think your guy, Job, is living righteously and following you because he’s got all this great stuff. It’s not altruistic. He’s doing this because it, he’s following you because it benefits him.” And so there’s this whole, however you want to work it out in our modern era, it’s complicated that God would go into an agreement with Satan to test Job in this way. And we don’t like that at all, which, so that’s a thing. That’s the whole thing that’s like, “Oh, man, this book is hard.” Reason 473 this book is hard. But there’s this deal and God allows Satan to just destroy his life. So after his life just completely unravels in ways that we can only imagine, he’s sitting there with this… After seven days of weeping and being on the ash heap of his life, he goes… All right, let’s start to talk about this with his three friends. And so Eliphaz, Zophar, and Bildad, they’re like, “Oh, I got lots to say about this.” And so what would you say is… What are some of the main themes that these guys bring out as they try to figure out, “Okay, where’s God in all of this? What’s the meaning of this suffering?”

0:17:48.6 Marc Davis: So in a way, the Satan dialog at the beginning, and the dialog, the conversation with the three friends, they both kind of come at it in a similar kind of way, in that there’s this idea, there’s this very simple theology. It’s a transactional understanding of your relationship with God. If I do A, B, and C, then God will do X, Y, and Z. And so Satan comes and says, “The only reason he’s doing A, B, and C is so that you’ll do X, Y, and Z. But if you stop doing X, Y, and Z, he’ll curse you and die because it’s not working anymore.”

0:18:35.2 Jim Lovelady: It’s the presupposition that God is useful.

0:18:37.2 Marc Davis: Yeah. God is a useful tool almost for getting blessing. And so then the friends are coming after the fact from a different angle, but also the same assumption that this is how the world works, that God blesses the righteous and brings trouble on sinners. So they sit there in the ash heap for a week. And then one of them, who is it? Eliphaz is the first of the friends to talk. Well, first, Job chapter 3 is Job’s lament. And then chapter 4 you start the friends in on talking. And Eliphaz says something like this. He says… I have it in front of me. I might as well read it and not make it up. He says, “As I have observed, those who plow evil and those who sow trouble reap it.” So he’s like, “Job, you’re trying to understand what’s going on. I think I know what’s going on. As I have observed in my years of experience, yeah, those who sow trouble reap it. Just saying.” What are you saying? What are you saying Eliphaz? You think I’ve been sinning behind everyone’s back? Is that what you’re saying?”

“Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m saying. That because this is your experience, because this is what you’ve been receiving from God, that must mean that you’ve been living in a way that would bring that about, because you must have had it coming.” And it’s really, it’s this awful theology that certainly still kind of surfaces.

0:20:43.9 Jim Lovelady: Oh, yeah. We have it today.

0:20:46.0 Marc Davis: That if you’re in trouble, you must have brought it upon yourself. And there are ways of sort of distancing myself from other people’s trouble to make it less scary to me. So that if you’re in a car accident and are badly hurt, it makes me feel better to know that you were texting, because I’m not going to text while driving because I’m not the kind of person who texts while driving. Jim is the kind of person who texts while driving.

0:21:25.1 Jim Lovelady: It is true. He is that kind of person.

0:21:26.7 Marc Davis: And don’t do it. You got fans out here. You don’t want to…

0:21:30.1 Jim Lovelady: Right. You will bring trouble upon yourself.

0:21:33.2 Marc Davis: Yeah. But yeah, if I know… I can explain this away by saying you brought it on yourself, then there’s a layer of protection and I’m in this other category of person, and I can expect that that won’t happen to me. And you don’t usually sort of go very far down that road of logic, but there is definitely this don’t you think this sort of sense of I want it to be your fault.

0:22:08.8 Jim Lovelady: Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. I find meaning in that. Well, the cause and effect type of stuff. If you look at an abstract painting, immediately what you’re trying to do is go, “Well, maybe I see a fish going through a basketball hoop,” or something. You’re just trying so hard, just trying so hard to bring meaning to this abstract art. And the whole point of abstract art is, no, this is abstract. There’s no reference to this. You’re going to have a hard time finding meaning to this. And it actually points back at itself, points back at us to show just how much we desire everything to be in its place and for there to be a reason for everything. And so what they’re doing resonates deeply with what it means to be a human. These guys are just trying to bring meaning to the best of their ability.

0:23:02.1 Marc Davis: That’s right. So nothing wrong with that, with the human instinct…

0:23:08.7 Jim Lovelady: Intent. Yeah.

0:23:09.4 Marc Davis: To try to understand and interpret. So what they do… So this word kept coming to me as I was working through this book. I looked it up to make sure that it meant what I thought it meant.

0:23:33.0 Jim Lovelady: So this word means what you think it means? 

0:23:34.4 Marc Davis: That’s right. We don’t want to fall into that trap. So the word is facile, which I think means something like simplistic in a forced, clumsy kind of ham-handed way. It’s like, “Job, you have complicated experience, but I’m going to push it through this grid of understanding…

0:24:01.7 Jim Lovelady: Disregarding all the complexness.

0:24:03.6 Marc Davis: That’s right. You know the Play-Doh thing? 

0:24:07.4 Jim Lovelady: Oh, yeah. Yeah.

0:24:08.1 Marc Davis: Where you kind of stick the Play-Doh through the thing, and you turn the little crank and it comes out in that…

0:24:13.2 Jim Lovelady: Yeah. I’m always disappointed at how much stays inside the little machine.

0:24:17.9 Marc Davis: And then it’s grounded in the carpet. It’s that sort of, “I’m going to take your experience. I’m going to jam it in here and then turn the crank and I’m going to make this explanation work.” And it’s too simple. And it doesn’t actually square over the facts because… The crazy thing about the book of Job is… Well, in the first paragraph, it lays it out for you, and it never budges off this, the whole book. Job is a good man. It makes it really explicit. And so from the very beginning, the book kind of takes away this easy out to say, “Well, he’s suffering because he was a bad guy and he had it coming.”

0:25:04.9 Jim Lovelady: Yeah. Since we know behind the scenes, we were up in the throne room, we heard that conversation. We can’t join in with the three friends and be like, “Oh, yeah, they’re probably right.” No. Job is not guilty. He’s an innocent man. He’s a good man.

0:25:19.2 Marc Davis: Yeah. What does the book of Job teach? In general, yeah, I could give you a little list of things the book of Job teaches, but in a way it sounds like the wrong question. But one of the things I think it does teach is don’t be facile. Don’t be like that. Don’t be like these friends who… They kind of gaslight Job. They’ll talk again about this… So they’re not wrong. They’re not wrong that if you sow trouble you’ll reap it. That’s true. The book of Proverbs teaches that, yes, sooner or later…

0:26:10.0 Jim Lovelady: It’s going to catch up.

0:26:10.7 Marc Davis: In the long run, it’ll catch up with you. They’ll explain this at length.

0:26:15.6 Jim Lovelady: Poetically.

0:26:17.0 Marc Davis: Yeah. And then Job will say, “Don’t you think I know that? I went to Sunday school too.” It’s like, “What you’re saying is not new or novel or something I’ve never thought about before. But let me tell you my experience.” And he shares his experience, and they can’t deal with it. It’s just like poof! To suggest that sometimes the innocent suffer is just, “No, that doesn’t fit in my paradigm. I’ve got to jam the Play-Doh through the thing and turn a little crank.” And they gaslight him. They say, “No, that can’t possibly be.” And, yeah, I think one of the things the book says is, in so many words and teaches implicitly, don’t do that.

0:27:23.6 Jim Lovelady: Yeah. But if the innocent can suffer, that causes all sorts of cognitive dissonance in my heart where I’m like, “Well, what does that say about the universe that God has made? What does that say about God? How can God let the innocent suffer?” So the problem of suffering is just…

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0:27:48.4 Jim Lovelady: I’m going to pause this conversation and invite you to join us in prayer for the Serge field workers that we at the headquarters here in Philadelphia are praying for each week. We meet on Tuesday and Friday mornings to pray, and this week we’re praying for the teams in Japan and for the recruiting work of our mobilization team here in Philadelphia. Lord, we pray that you would bless these folks. Give them joy in their work in Your kingdom and the pleasure of Your joy as they follow You. Give them wisdom and let Your grace abound in their relationships with one another, with family members and children, with the people that they serve. Heal all the sicknesses, liberate the enslaved, protect them from the powers and principalities of darkness, and restore the joy of Your salvation. Let Your kingdom come and Your will be done in these places as it is in heaven. We pray all these things in Your name. Amen.

0:28:42.1 Jim Lovelady: Now, back to the conversation. And so maybe if we want to be protective of having to have conversations that might feel like we’re implicating God here, but still it’s there.

0:28:57.9 Marc Davis: Yeah, no, we’re sort of… We’re kind of walking up to the edge of a conversation that we could have, or maybe we might choose not to, that sort of bigger apologetic philosophical anguish of if God is good and if God is powerful, how can this be? 

0:29:25.5 Jim Lovelady: Right. What I love about the book of Job is all of these things, Job he comes to it where he’s like, “God, I want some answers here.” And so God comes down.

0:29:42.5 Marc Davis: Eventually.

0:29:43.7 Jim Lovelady: But those are the questions where it’s like, “Yeah, how can the innocent suffer?” Okay. God, this better be good. Because when you really want to just pause and take account of how deeply broken this world is, it is overwhelming. And what I think is interesting is how Job and the three friends… Well, the three friends go, “Yeah, we’re going to talk about this.” And Job finally goes, “I’m tired of talking to you mortals about this as if we’re kind of praying to one another to try and figure out some answers.”

0:30:27.7 Marc Davis: That’s right. “I really want to talk to God,” and he pours out. “I long to have an audience with God.” And he actually… There are places where he’ll say something, he’s  pretty confident. “If I could only get my chance to make my case, I know I would prevail because I’ve actually not done anything wrong.” It’s very legal system, kind of like, “I want my day in court so that I can be vindicated.” The desire to have an opportunity to have this conversation, one of the essays in the book is called “The Impossible Conversation,” where there’s this sense of, “I need to be able to talk with you about these things. And for Job, there’s really a sense of, “I don’t get to.” Now, on one hand, he does. What else does the book of Job teach? The book of Job teaches when you are in trouble, talk to God about it.

0:31:50.2 Jim Lovelady: Yeah. Yeah. In the midst of your trouble, in the midst of your suffering.

0:31:55.2 Marc Davis: Which is, of course, just a more specific application of a more basic principle of whatever’s going on, talk to God about it. So he does pour his heart out, but, of course, for 90% of the book, there’s no reply. Just as we don’t expect in our lives today, in the midst of my pouring my heart out to God that I’m actually going to get an audible reply.

0:32:29.1 Jim Lovelady: I actually daydream about that frequently. The question, if Jesus walked into this room right now, what would I do? What would I say? What would I do? And that is actually… There’s all sorts of answers, but probably the first one is from the depth of my soul, “Where have you been?” From the depth of my soul. And while I’m falling into His arms, while I’m weeping at His feet or something, “Where have you been?”

0:33:10.1 Marc Davis: Because it doesn’t feel like He’s been nearby.

0:33:19.3 Jim Lovelady: Right. So the life of faith and in the moment of faith being made sight, I don’t know, I fantasize about that moment a lot. That’s a question that frequents my imagination. If Jesus just walked into the studio, what would you do? 

0:33:42.9 Marc Davis: It would be a pretty good podcast.

0:33:45.4 Jim Lovelady: [laughter] It would be a great podcast. That’s right. “Hey, Jesus, get this guy a microphone.”

0:33:52.3 Marc Davis: Yeah. Job doesn’t do this as much as we would like it to do, but in a few places, I think, Job gives some amazing little flashes of insight into the one we need. Insights into Jesus. And so in that whole… That wrestling, wanting the conversation, wanting the day in court, toward the end of that Job will say something like, “I wish that there were somebody who could mediate in this conversation who could lay a hand on us both.” Meaning one hand on me and one hand on God and allow this conversation to happen. And he’s kind of vomiting throughout the book, just a lot of…[vocalization] All this stuff. And it’s just sort of thrown in there and it kinda goes by. And it’s just the faintest little thought. Wouldn’t that be good? 

0:35:12.5 Jim Lovelady: Not like that’s likely to happen with that kind of…

0:35:14.0 Marc Davis: Exactly. But he’s expressed this thing and he’s like, “Hang on, what was that again? Rewind. That part about laying a hand on us both.” And there are other other places in the book where there’s just this glimpse of like, “Oh, that,” where… Because it’s complicated because Job isn’t infallible. He says things in the book that aren’t true. But in his rambling… So, again, what does the book of Job teach us? It teaches…

[vocalization]

0:35:58.0 Marc Davis: Just talk.

0:36:00.5 Jim Lovelady: Whatever is there.

0:36:00.5 Marc Davis: Talk in the direction of God.

0:36:01.8 Jim Lovelady: That’s right. In the direction of God is a key point here.

0:36:05.1 Marc Davis: That’s right. And as he does that, the Holy Spirit, actually, leads him down some interesting trails to glimpse things that he doesn’t know. But in expressing what he needs, he, actually, expresses what turns out to be true. I’m afraid somebody’s listening who said, “Hang on, 10 minutes ago, they got pretty close to talking about how can God let the innocent suffer? And then they chickened out and they went a different way.” Right.

0:36:43.6 Jim Lovelady: Right. Yeah.

0:36:45.3 Marc Davis: We just meandered. But Job’s answer is, for starters, to acknowledge, yes, the innocent do suffer, which is a major win. But then when it comes down to it, does God give an explanation for why the innocent suffer? He doesn’t. What He does is He leads Job through this whole consideration of biology and ecology and astronomy and…

0:37:16.1 Jim Lovelady: And Leviathan and Behemoth.

0:37:21.4 Marc Davis: All the stuff. And with all the questions saying, “Job, do you know about… Do you know when the mountain goats give birth?” And this is like one of dozens of very specific questions about all these creatures and all the rest. And the upshot of it is, “No. I don’t know when the mountain goats give birth. And I don’t know these other things about sea monsters and all the rest.” And so the bottom line is, “Job, you don’t know what you’re talking about, but I do.” And you need to be led in understanding that God knows more than you do. And in the mind of God, these things hang together. And the Jesus piece, I can’t map this all out, but understanding this innocent sufferer, will be much more coherent and hopeful and redemptive in the light of this Innocent Sufferer. This one contains this one. And so, yeah, it’s an invitation to this conversation. Bring your trouble, bring your experience to this One who knows something about trouble and kind of contained in His story is your story.

0:39:13.8 Jim Lovelady: Yeah. One of the things I love about your book is every chapter… Was it eight chapters? 

0:39:18.2 Marc Davis: Yeah.

0:39:19.0 Jim Lovelady: Every chapter you have this wonderful and it’s not forced way of bringing Jesus to bear on the book of Job so that I read the book of Job… Well, okay. So when I read the book of Job, pretending that the New Testament doesn’t exist, it leaves a gigantic Jesus shaped void in my psyche where I’m deeply unsatisfied, because God’s response to Job feels just stern. Like, “hey, do you know what you’re talking about?” “No.” “Why don’t you stop talking?” “Hey, brace yourself like a man and get ready for some hard truth.” yeah. And I received that and I’m like, “Yeah, this is hard truth.” And “Oh, man. Oh, man.” So that on top of all sorts of other things like where is God in my suffering? It’s not answered. I just finished reading lots and lots of ancient Near Eastern poetry that doesn’t… It’s not easy to read looking for this answer. And, well, the beautiful thing about the book of Job is that it’s in the shape of Christ. For Him ready to fill it out in ways beyond my imagination. So Job goes to God and he says, “All right, let’s talk because I’ve got some stuff to talk with You about.” And then I fast forward to poor Thomas, who’s called the doubter, who is the first one to make a declaration of the lordship of Christ, ironically enough. So I love that story because Thomas goes, “Look, I got some stuff that we need to contend with.” And the fullness of God that is foreshadowed in Job is beautifully fulfilled when Jesus says, “Hey, come here. Touch me. Touch my wounds. Touch the Innocent Sufferer. I have wounds. Touch me. Touch me.” And so I find that imminent present Christ deeply satisfying. In the new world post resurrection of Christ world that we live in, I can look back at Job and I could go, “Okay, yeah, that’s giving me this hunger to experience Christ.” And then now I got to fast forward over to all of these stories. The story of doubting Thomas is just one of many stories where Jesus is just incredibly close. So I love that each one of these chapters you’re like, “Hey, here’s how you can contend with Jesus here. Here’s how you can meet with Jesus after having read Elihu and the three friends and Job’s response and all that.

0:42:40.8 Marc Davis: It’s not, “Give me a book that will answer all my questions.” That actually will not give you what you need. “So what do I need?” I need an encounter with God through Jesus. So we don’t want to be facile. We don’t want to shut down people’s honest questions. We don’t want to kind of avoid that conversation. But there is this sense that like, “I can give you the perfect answer. It’s not actually going to be what you need.” Because the need is not just cognitive, it’s relational. And so there’s this… Yeah, there’s the invitation to come and talk. And I think all these… If I can sort of step out of Job for a second to think a little bigger picture. Why is Serge even doing these Bible study guides? The God of the gospel is always pursuing a conversation with you. And how does He do it? He gives you His word, and He invites you to read it and talk with Him about it. And some of it is really hard. The enemy, what does he want to do? He wants to sort of do kind of smoke and mirrors to trouble you, and then make you give up on the conversation. And as long as… He doesn’t want the trouble and the question and the agitation to lead you to seek Him. He wants to shut down that whole idea.

0:44:38.3 Jim Lovelady: He wants the three friends’ conversation to just go on and on and on and on.

0:44:41.9 Marc Davis: Which it threatens to do for 42 chapters. And then at some point, it’s just like…

0:44:46.9 Jim Lovelady: I’m exhausted.

0:44:48.4 Marc Davis: They’re all exhausted. They haven’t gotten anywhere. It’s been unproductive. And so what do we do? Let’s go get a beer.

0:45:00.1 Jim Lovelady: Yeah. And that’s the moment when Jesus says, “No, ask me. Ask me.”

0:45:02.1 Marc Davis: Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. And it gets you into reading the gospels, which, ultimately, it’s going to be a better read than reading the book of Job. But Jesus, in His interactions with people, and yes, the diversity of them, all these individuals who get individual conversations, individual interactions with Jesus, who meets them where they are. And He doesn’t give everybody the same answer. It’s not the same conversation times 500. It’s individual.

0:45:46.9 Jim Lovelady: I think about the crippled man and his friends that bring the crippled man through the roof. “Let’s cut a hole in this roof.” Which is just like super rude. But these friends are doing… It’s almost like a fulfillment of what should have been happening in the book of Job, where the friends needed to pick Job up. And take him to the only place that… “Lord, you’re the only one who could do anything about this stuff. This man right here has gone through some troubles. So we’re going to bring him to you. Can you do something about this? Please.” The desperation that we all feel when we’re in the midst of whatever our trouble is. And this morning I was thinking about how I’m that guy and I need my friends, I need to be… So often I need to be carried to the presence of Christ so that He can work his healing. And He can say, “I see your brokenness. Here, look at mine. Look at my wounds.” And then suddenly we’re sharing scars.

0:47:07.7 Marc Davis: Yeah, gospel of John, upper room discourse, Jesus, “Here’s some things I want to say before I’m gone.” And one of the things He has to say is, “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart, I have overcome the world.”

0:47:28.3 Jim Lovelady: Amen.

0:47:29.0 Marc Davis: But understand this, in this world you will have trouble. Don’t let that knock you off your horse. Don’t let that kind of negate… Back to Sonship Week. That doesn’t negate all this good stuff.

0:47:45.5 Jim Lovelady: That’s right.

0:47:47.1 Marc Davis: This is true and this is true. So He wants you to know ahead of time, as that first Peter verse 2, “Do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that you are suffering,” something like that, “as if something strange were happening to you.” “It’s not strange. This is as expected. As expected, you are having trouble. I too had trouble. I came out on the other side of it. And you, if you have hitched your wagon to Me, you too will come out on the other side of it.”

0:48:28.8 Jim Lovelady: That’s right. It’s not about getting the answers, and the book of Job doesn’t give the answers, and I think that that’s because the Lord loves us too much for us to let the answers themselves be the source of greatest comfort instead of just fellowship in His presence. And so there’s this continual invitation to, “You’re not going to understand right now.” That’s where Job is super valuable, especially when God’s saying, “Look, you really can’t understand this.” And this isn’t spoken with as stern a voice as you often hear.

0:49:06.5 Marc Davis: I think that’s right. Tone is everything.

0:49:09.6 Jim Lovelady: Yeah. Yeah. And the tone shifts for me when I look at the wounds of the Innocent Sufferer. And it’s like all shall be well. And I consider the sufferings of this present time, nothing compared to the surpassing greatness of… How’s it go? 

[laughter]

0:49:35.0 Marc Davis: Consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing to…

0:49:39.0 Jim Lovelady: The glory.

0:49:40.1 Marc Davis: The glory that will be revealed.

0:49:41.5 Jim Lovelady: Yeah. There it is. I was mixing Romans and Philippians.

0:49:43.2 Marc Davis: Don’t do that. Yeah.

0:49:45.2 Jim Lovelady: And we’re going to go, “Okay,” because my heart goes, “This better be worth it, because I have a pile of regrets and a pile of disappointments and a pile of sorrow and a pile of brokenness.” And story after story of people in my life, story after story in my own life. And I look at this and I go, “Well, this isn’t as brutal as the book of Job, but, man, the pile is high. Jesus, is this going to be worth it? This better be worth it.” And He comes and he goes, “Touch me and follow me. Follow me through death into resurrection.”

0:50:27.6 Marc Davis: There’s me struggling with this for myself, but being in community with people where we’re trying to help each other get our heads around what we’re experiencing. As we talk about paradox and mystery and things like that. Yeah, we still do reform theology at Serge. I can still say, “Well, let me give you some pegs to hang things on. We can say this, we can say this, we can say this. Here are some helpful pegs. Is everything answered there? No. But it’s not nothing either. We’ve got some good solid pegs to orient you to your world. But then also it’s the relational invitation to… And let Him… Yeah, that very… What you did see here, that happens in relationship and not in…

0:51:38.1 Jim Lovelady: And that’s what every chapter in the book that you wrote is an invitation to. And I love your pastoral heart behind that, where you’re like, “I’m going set this up to the best of my ability to where you take these things that you’re reading and you’re wrestling with in the book of Job, and you bring them to Jesus.” “Hey, do it this way. Try praying this way. Try praying through this aspect,” and just the different ways in every chapter. So my prayer is that when people pick up this book, that it will turn into, not so much a study guide, but a prayer guide. That’s my hope for this book.

0:52:16.7 Marc Davis: Yeah. That’s my prayer too.

0:52:19.9 Jim Lovelady: Well, thanks for hanging out.

0:52:21.2 Marc Davis: Yeah. Thank you.

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0:52:28.9 Jim Lovelady: The question, where is God in my suffering, sets us on a journey. And in our desperation, that journey takes us on a search for God. Why do the innocent suffer? How can God be sovereign and good in all of this that’s happening in my life? Can I trust God in my suffering? Is there some way that I can just get an audience with God to talk to Him about all of these things? All these questions point to the story of Jesus. The story of Jesus makes sense of your own story. The trajectory of His life, death, resurrection, and exaltation, that’s your story too when your life is hidden in Christ. And the stories about Jesus are a source of comfort. Look at all the places in the gospels where people are desperate to get into the presence of Jesus. “If I could touch His cloak.” “If you only say a word, my daughter will be healed.” “If I could just let my hair down and wash His feet.” “Son of David, have mercy on me.” “If I could just touch His wounds.” If we could just lower our friend through the ceiling, we could get him in front of Jesus.” Desperate people long to be in the presence of this Man. And they do whatever they can because in His presence is the fullness of joy. In His presence is wholeness. One of the things I love about my job is getting to be that friend who brings a desperate person into the presence of a merciful King who knows all things and loves us. I work with Serge’s Renewal Team and we are in the business of ushering people into the joy of God’s grace. The Renewal Team offers a variety of conferences and retreats that give you space to let the work its way deeper into your life. Regardless of your circumstances, I know that you will experience a renewed sense of God’s love for you and your place in His kingdom when you go to these retreats. So I want to invite you to a few that are coming up. First, it’s in Apex, North Carolina. September 27th and 28th is our Missing Jesus retreat. Then in Washington, Missouri on Saturday, October 26th is the Gospel-Centered Life mini-retreat and I’ll be speaking at that one. Then in Columbia, South Carolina on January 24th and 25th is another Gospel-Centered Life retreat. And then finally, there’s one more GCL mini-retreat in Pittsburgh on February 8th. Lots of opportunities to steep your life in the love of God and recenter yourself around the gospel of His Kingdom. And actually, Marc will be speaking at all of these and he is one of my favorite preachers, by the way. If you haven’t heard him, go check out episode three from last season where he gives the opening talk at last year’s Sonship Conference. For more information on these conferences and retreats, go to serge.org and hover over the renewal tab and you’ll see the links to all of these. And of course, check out the show notes. I’ll leave a link where you can purchase Marc’s study on Job. My small group is about to start this study and you should do this study with a small group. I think it’s best to go through the book of Job in community. Doing this study as a group, I think it’s crucial for contending with God because that’s how Job does it. When we read this book as a group, we begin to contend with God as a group. And just maybe, one by one, the individuals in the group meet with God and have all sorts of experiences with Him that they can then bring back to the group. Try it out with your small group. Pick up this book today. But as I close this episode with my heart cry of where is God in my suffering still resonating in my soul and knowing that you too have a pile of anguish and regret and sorrow that chafes at the seeming hiddenness of God. But somewhere in there, there’s a hope, and the practice of hope brings me to this passage from Psalm 126. And I’m going to read this from the message because, man, it’s so beautiful. This is Psalm 126. “It seemed like a dream, too good to be true. When God returned Zion’s exiles, we laughed and we sang. We couldn’t believe our good fortune. We were the talk of the nations. God was wonderful to them. God was wonderful to us. And we are one happy people. And now, God, do it again. Bring rain to our drought-stricken lives, so those who planted their crops in despair will shout, ‘Yes. Yes.’ at the harvest. So those who went off with heavy hearts will come home laughing with armloads of blessing.” So as you go, go with his blessing. May the Lord bless you and keep you and may the Lord make His face to smile down on you. May the Lord be gracious to you and turn His bright eyes to you and give you His peace. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, one God, life everlasting. Amen.

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