People who are struggling can sometimes wonder: Is God angry with me? Is He disciplining me because of some sin in my life? Did I do something to deserve this? These questions become particularly acute when people read biblical stories of God punishing places like Sodom and Gomorrah or Jericho or Babylon or even Israel because of their sin.
The prophet Amos lived during a time of spiritual depravity in Israel. This depravity was masked, however, by general political stability and economic prosperity. Because of these conditions, the Israelites were lured into believing they were experiencing God’s favor. But God called Amos to deliver a damning declaration:
This is what the LORD says: “For three sins of Israel, even for four, I will not relent. They sell the innocent for silver, and the needy for a pair of sandals. They trample on the heads of the poor as on the dust of the ground and deny justice to the oppressed. Father and son use the same girl and so profane My holy name.” (Amos 2:6-7)
God’s judgment was coming on Israel’s sin. But at the same time such a declaration may sound unsettling, it can also be comforting.
God regularly used the ancient prophets to remove ambiguity about His judgment. People did not need to guess whether God was punishing them because of their sin because the prophets clearly revealed whether God was punishing them because of their sin. In Amos’s case, God even reveals through this prophet the specific sins for which Israel was being punished.
God leaves no ambiguity when it comes to His punishment of sin. As Amos goes on to explains:
When disaster comes to a city, has not the LORD caused it? Surely the Sovereign LORD does nothing without revealing His plan to His servants the prophets. (Amos 3:6-7)
If God brings judgment, He will make known what He is doing. He renders no judgment without revealing whether it is, in fact, His judgment.
You never have to wonder, then, in the face of some struggle or suffering, whether God is angry at you. Or whether He is disciplining you. Or whether you have done something to deserve what you are experiencing. If you are left wondering, you already have your answer: He is not angry with you. He is not lobbing suffering at you out of His wrath toward you. God’s judgment is not meant to be secret or mysterious. Instead, it is designed to be clear so that it can unambiguously call people out of their sin and back to His righteousness.
If you are suffering, God is not judging you. You can know that. But you can also know this: He is with you. He does not remain aloof from you, but comes to you through Christ. If you are suffering, remember that Christ has also suffered. He knows what suffering feels like. And He knows – and cares – what you feel like. His response to your suffering is not judgment, but love.
Last week on this blog, I referenced Job and his yearning for resurrection after all the suffering he had experienced. Resurrection to new life after and apart from all the trials and pain we encounter in this life is our ultimate hope. But in the meantime, we still need strength to endure the trials and pain we encounter in this life.
At the beginning of Job’s story, Satan accuses this righteous man before God of only living for God because of what he gets from God:
Does Job fear God for nothing? Have You not put a hedge around him and his household and everything he has? You have blessed the work of his hands, so that his flocks and herds are spread throughout the land. But now stretch out Your hand and strike everything he has, and he will surely curse You to Your face. (Job 1:9-11)
In response, God, instead of striking Job, leaves it to Satan, but adds one critical caveat:
Everything he has is in your power, but on the man himself do not lay a finger. (Job 1:12)
God sets up a tension with these words. At the same time He permits suffering, He also prevents suffering. Later, when Satan wants to kill Job, God responds:
He is in your hands; but you must spare his life. (Job 2:6)
Again, God permits suffering while also preventing suffering – the ending of Job’s life.
When we suffer, this tension can give us tenacity. While we may remain confused as to why God permits some suffering, we can also rest assured that God is also preventing some suffering. The trouble we have when God prevents suffering is that we don’t know that God has prevented it because we never had to endure it. But even if we cannot immediately know or see when God has prevented suffering, we can be thankful that God does, in fact, prevent suffering. He has told us He does in Job’s story.
It is tempting for us to complain and even curse God when He permits suffering. But as with Job, when God permits suffering, He also has a purpose in suffering. In Job’s case, when he refuses to curse God amid his pain, Satan is proven wrong. His accusation against Job – that Job loves God only because of what God has given him – goes down in defeat. Thus, the suffering that Satan brings on Job is the same suffering that defeats his accusation against Job. So it is with Christ. The suffering that Satan delighted in when Jesus was in agony on a cross is the same suffering that defeated him – along with sin and death – when Christ died on the cross.
May we, in our suffering, pray for God’s purpose when God permits it and give thanks to God when He prevents it. He really does know what He’s doing.
In Judges 6, the Midianites are warring with the Israelites. The Midianites are so successful in their campaign against Israel that the Israelites head for the hills – literally:
Because the power of Midian was so oppressive, the Israelites prepared shelters for themselves in mountain clefts, caves and strongholds. (Judges 6:2)
But God is preparing to rescue the Israelites from their oppressors. He appears to a man named Gideon and greets him with a flattering title and a promise of his presence:
The LORD is with you, mighty warrior. (Judges 6:12)
Gideon, however, is not dazzled, but dubious:
If the LORD is with us, why has all this happened to us? (Judges 6:13)
Gideon’s question is a perennial one. When bad things happen to us, it is easy to assume that God has taken a leave of absence from us. But nothing could be further from the truth.
Gideon’s story opens with this setting:
The Israelites did evil in the eyes of the LORD, and for seven years He gave them into the hands of the Midianites. (Judges 6:1)
It turns out not that God was deserting the Israelites, but that the Israelites were rejecting Him. They were turning their backs on the Lord in sin. God sends suffering not because He has deserted Israel, but because He is appealing to Israel: “Repent and turn toward Me!” He wants the Israelites’ suffering to drive them into His arms.
Our suffering can be similar. People sometimes wonder if some suffering they are experiencing is a result of some sin they have committed, as is the case with the Israelites in Gideon’s time. Oftentimes, it is not. Commenting on a recent slaughter of Galileans by Pontius Pilate, Jesus asks:
Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? I tell you, no! (Luke 13:2-3)
Jesus is clear that suffering need not be connected to a specific sin. But, in the final analysis, why suffering happens is far less important than what suffering can accomplish. It can drive us to God and strengthen our faith. As Peter writes:
Now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials.These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith – of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire – may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. (1 Peter 1:6-7)
Are you suffering? Are you troubled? God’s words to Gideon are also God’s words to you:
The Lord is with you.
God walks with you in suffering. You are not alone.
There are some incredible words the Lord speaks through the prophet Jeremiah:
The people who survived the sword found grace in the wilderness. (Jeremiah 31:2)
These words are written for Israel while Israel is in crisis – when she is being defeated and decimated by the Babylonians who will carry her people into exile. While Israel is at her worst, then, God says to her, “In a place you might least expect it – the wilderness that is your exile – you will find My grace.”
God’s people have a history of finding grace in wilderness. When the Lord led the children of Israel out of slavery in Egypt, He led them into the wilderness, where they received grace upon grace. A miracle at the Red Sea. Manna and quail from the heavens. Water to drink from a rock. There was grace there in that wilderness.
When God decided it was time to send a Savior, His coming was announced in where else, but the wilderness:
In those days John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” For this is he who was spoken of by the prophet Isaiah when he said, “The voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord; make His paths straight.’” (Matthew 3:1-3)
The grace of God’s kingdom was being announced in the wilderness.
And when the Savior did arrive, where did He go to begin His public ministry? Into the wilderness, of course:
Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. (Matthew 4:1)
While Jesus may have been tempted by the devil, He did not succumb to the devil. He defeated the devil and his temptations so that there may be grace for everyone who does not fare so well under temptation.
I think sometimes we might prefer to find grace in places other than the wilderness. In the lushness of an awesome spiritual experience, perhaps, where we feel the warmth of God’s love surrounding us. Or in the comforts of an abundance of material possessions, perhaps, where we can breezily and easily praise God for the amazing things He has given to us.
God can show us grace through these things, but this does not mean He only shows us grace through these things.
Sometimes, grace comes to us in the wilderness. Like when we feel spiritually cold inside and all we can do is cling to God’s Word. Or when our pocketbooks feel strapped and our savings accounts are depleted all we have is God’s promise of daily bread.
Sometimes, grace comes to us in the wilderness.
This should not surprise us. For God’s grace was most fully expressed on some rough-hewn timbers, cut down from the wilderness of ancient Israel. Grace did not feel good to Jesus. But the grace of the cross is the greatest grace there is.
So, don’t let a time in the wilderness crush you. There is grace there because Jesus is there. If there’s one place He knows, it’s there. And if there’s one person He wants, it’s you.
The news in the wake of Hurricane Harvey just seems to get worse. 18 counties in Texas have been declared federal disaster areas. Meteorologists are calling the flooding in Houston a 500-year event, though they admit that, by the time all is said and done, the effects of this storm may be closer to a 1,000-year event, or perhaps even bigger. In Beaumont, a toddler was found was shivering in the water, clinging to her drowned mother. Scenes and stories like this are simply heartbreaking.
Of course, for every heartbreaking story, there are hundreds of heartwarming stories. The picture below shows Cathy Pham, holding her sleeping baby, being carried to safety by a member of the Houston SWAT Team.
Images like these have made many people wonder out loud: Why can’t we always act this compassionately toward each other? Why can’t we put the differences that normally divide us aside and come together like the Coastal Bend, Houston, and the Golden Triangle have?
On the one hand, it’s important to remember that the selflessness we see demonstrated in tragedies like these is not quite as universal as it can first appear. Disasters bring out the best in many. But they also bring out the worst in some. From looters looking to pillage the possessions of displaced homeowners and damaged businesses to storm chasers who run from disaster zone to disaster zone trying to turn a quick profit off of beleaguered survivors by overcharging for a service and performing it poorly, or, sometimes, even not at all, there are still plenty of slick characters who will gladly trade the virtue of altruism for a windfall from opportunism.
Humans may possess inherent goodness, but that goodness needs to be activated. Some signal has to disperse the cloud of moral Novocain around us. Some person, or fire, or flood, has got to say: now.
Ms. Waldman has serious doubts whether the goodness we see now in Texas can last beyond the storm. The selflessness we’ve seen, she says, has only been activated by the terrible trials people have had to endure. Once the trials pass, selflessness will ebb. Sadly, she might be right. But she doesn’t have to be.
One of the most compelling stories in the Bible is that of Job. Job was a man who had it all, and then lost it all – his house, his cattle, his children, and even his health. Job’s story recounts his struggle to come to terms with God’s faithfulness and providence in the midst of his suffering. Throughout his terrible ordeal, Job maintains that he has done nothing to deserve the calamities that have befallen him, even boldly demanding to speak with God to protest his circumstances: “I desire to speak to the Almighty and to argue my case with God” (Job 13:3). Throughout Jobs’ protestations, however, God remains silent – until He doesn’t.
At the end of the book, God speaks:
Then the LORD spoke to Job out of the storm. He said: “Who is this that obscures My plans with words without knowledge? Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer Me. Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell Me, if you understand. Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know! Who stretched a measuring line across it? On what were its footings set, or who laid its cornerstone – while the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy?” (Job 38:1-7)
God’s basic point to Job is that even when life feels unfair and God seems either absent or incompetent, He is neither. God really does know what He’s doing. He really does have a plan. And He really is quite competent at running the universe, for He put the universe together in the first place.
What is especially important for our purposes, however, is not only what God says to Job, but where God says it: “Then the LORD spoke to Job out of the storm” (Job 38:1). Job’s stringent sufferings have constituted a personal storm of epic proportions. But God has been there with him in the storm the whole time. Out of the storm, God speaks.
What was true of Job’s storm is true of Hurricane Harvey. With so much human suffering on display in the headlines and on our television screens, it can be tempting to think God is either absent or incompetent. But He is neither. God is in the storm. This is why, for all the suffering we see, we see even more selflessness. God is in the storm, leading people to help each other through the storm.
This is also why Ms. Waldman’s contention that when a storm subsides, selflessness wanes doesn’t have to ring true. Human selflessness in the midst of extraordinary suffering is not a result of suffering, but a gift from God. Suffering may be a vehicle through which God reveals human selflessness, but suffering itself is not the source of human selflessness. God in the storm – and not the storm itself – is the true source of our selflessness. And though God is in the storm, He is also beyond the storm. He will be there when the floods of Harvey have dried and the recovery and reconstruction projects have reached completion. Which means that the kind of selflessness that has been so beautifully on display in this storm can last long beyond this storm.
Hurricane Harvey has put on display the divine gift of human selflessness. And we have liked what we’ve seen. So let’s make sure this precious gift doesn’t go back into hiding once Harvey fades from our headlines. After all, if places like Houston can be wonderful because of people even when things are terrible because of weather, imagine what things could look like on a sunny day.
