Recently some good friends of mine have gone through an extremely challenging time. For the sake of their privacy, I will not say any more but the circumstances raise the age old questions about prayer and faith in the midst of great trouble.
When you have been praying along with someone and then things end up going so utterly differently than you had prayed for, knowing how to respond is quite difficult. In our culture the response of Job’s friends is more than a little impractical but there is something strangely appealing to tearing robes and sitting together for days on end in complete silence!
What I want to share here today is something that anybody knows who has sought out the journey of prayer for any length of time: Sometimes God’s ways are a mystery to us. Why does God so clearly answer one prayer but other times the answer is shrouded in the fog of mystery? Massive volumes have been written on these questions and while I will not seek to delve into them myself, I must recommend Philip Yancy’s classic book, Disappointment with God, to anybody who would like to read some helpful thoughts.
In the book of Job, Job’s friends start well enough by coming to sit with Job for seven days in silence, waiting for Job to speak. However after that they end up offering a lot of very unhelpful advice about the nature of God and the mystery of suffering and loss.
At the end of the book the Lord says about Job’s friends, “I am angry with you… because you have not spoken of me what is right as my servant Job has.” (Job. 42:7) This is a terrifying sentence to me. To have the God of the universe speak and declare ‘I am angry with you’ is simply terrifying! However, the other part of what God said is equally important: God says that Job did speak rightly about God. Job said many really intense things and asked some very hard questions of God. It is critical to know that because we have to know that it is legitimate to ask ‘WHY GOD?’ Even though in the end Job says to God “Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know” (Job 42:3), God is not angered by Job’s questions.
The bottom line is that many times we will encounter the mysteries of God as we pray and intercede. There are many times when we will ask ‘WHY GOD?’.
What I am left with is the deep conviction that I will not always understand the ways of God, but in the midst of the mysteries and questions I also have an equally deep conviction in the goodness and kindness of God.
Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God. -Ps 43:5
Jim
Thanks Jim, for looking at this tough question. One of the best books I’ve read on this topic is “The Gospel According to Job” by Mike Mason. It’s a devotional look at the book.
From Job we learn that there are no easy answers to suffering. That the mark of true faith is not happiness, but rather, having one’s deepest passions be engaged by the enormity of God. Ultimately, what will heal us and help us endure is a direct, transforming encounter with the living God.
Helpful post Jim.
I hurt my back moving, a bulged disk, then I developed an inner ear infection, then I had to go to the hospital because I hadn’t uuhhh “passed” anything in a week, then the inner ear infection went away and was replaced with an eye infection, then the other eye, then I was allergic to the eye drops, then I found out I’m losing my job, then my car broke down, then gums started peeling away from my teeth and bleeding. Then we found out my wife’s paycheck was under the expected size because it was a slow sales month. And that’s just been in the last month! Oh and I think someone is stealing our mail.