Lesson 6: Your Suffering is Bigger Than Your Story... (Job 1:13-22).

Prayer

Reading

Job 1:13-22.

Meditation

Your suffering is bigger than your story. Satan’s aim in hurting Job was aimed at doing two things. First: he wanted to get him to deny God. Secondly: he wanted to get him to sin. If we respond to suffering by sinning, Satan gets a win. And if someone abandons their faith because of suffering, that’s Satan’s best game-plan come to life. But consider this: Whatever it is that you are suffering, there is something much bigger going on than just you.

Responding wisely to suffering is not just about you getting healthy again. It’s not just about getting a happy marriage. It’s not just about getting enough money to live comfortably. There’s always so much more at stake. It’s about God displaying his sovereign love in your life. Job knew God’s mercy. And even in his suffering, God protected him. Satan couldn’t touch his life. Because Christ suffered all loss. Christ was utterly forsaken so that Job, and you, and me could be saved.

Be ye doers of the word...

A couple of applications in follow-up to this thought. First, we must learn increasingly to: Practice Gratitude and Worship through our suffering. Job responds to the greatest pain he’s ever known with worship: “Then Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head and fell on the ground and worshiped” (Job 1:20). When you’re suffering, that is the exact time when you need to come to worship. Don’t forsake public worship, or private worship. When you get a cancer diagnosis... bless the name of the Lord. When your child dies, cry out and pour out your anguish and pain, and... bless the name of the Lord. When your marriage is full of pain... bless the name of the Lord. When the world ridicules or persecutes you: bless the name of the Lord. When your business falls apart: bless the name of the Lord. Practice gratitude and worship.

The second application here is: study the sovereignty of God. We must have a robust theology of God’s sovereignty, and a robust theology of suffering in times when we are suffering. Job is able to respond so powerfully to his suffering because he understands God’s sovereignty. The LORD gives, and the LORD takes away, Job knows who’s calling the shots. Any Christian who doesn’t understand God’s sovereignty is a baby in the faith, and they will be poorly prepared for the day of grief. Have you studied the sovereignty of God? Have you come to terms with his almighty majesty? Have you understood that he is the potentate of time? The Creator of the roll