Inward Prayer

Small Group Questions

1. Which metaphor do you find yourself going to when thinking about Christianity? And why?
   – Decision
   – Battle
   – Journey
2. Were you surprised by Job’s response in chapter 3 in comparison to chapter 1 & 2? If you were one of his friends, what would you have said to him?
3. “God is not offended by your grief, questions or doubts.”What grief, questions or doubts do you struggle to bring to God and why?
4. “Following Jesus means paying attention to God, paying attention to myself and paying attention to others, especially in times of great suffering and pain.”
   
   How does this statement actually play itself out? What can we do as a youth group to live like this?

“Prayer is not about being nice before God, it’s about being honest before God.” Eugene Peterson.

Spend some time praying honestly. This might get vulnerable but God is good with that.

Outward Prayer

Job’s Dark Night
Re-understanding suffering[Job 3]

WHAT’S THE POINT?
The invitation of the Christian life is to be brutally honest with God including with our suffering. To receive his presence and comfort. And to join with those who are suffering.

WORD UP
Job 3:1-5,11-13, 24-26

WAKE UP
Talk about last week’s message. Give a quick summary.

WHY DO I CARE?
When we face pain, depression, loneliness, grief… we neJob’s ed good theology about our faith to help us ask the question, “God where are you?”

The Dark Night of the Soul – “The sense of the absence of God.” St. John of the Cross.

We struggle often with this language of the Dark Night of the Soul, or asking “God where are you?” Or feeling a sense of absence of God because of the metaphors and language we surround Christianity with.

Christianity has metaphors which help us understand our faith. And every metaphor can be helpful but it also has its limitations.

1. Christianity is a Decision

• • I made a decision to follow Jesus and I get the benefits: forgiveness of sin, I go to heaven when I die, I get to experience the goodness of God today.
  • The limitations of only using this metaphor though is we often get confused when difficult things happen to us. “We made a decision!” “Things should be better!” “I should experience God’s goodness everyday so why am I hurting?”
  • This metaphor is a helpful metaphor but is an incomplete metaphor.

2. Christianity is a Battle

• • To see that Christianity is always about a fight that we are in. 
  • The Bible names that we have an enemy called Satan and that there is a spiritual battle going on around us in the heavenly realms (Ephesians 6:12).
  • But Christianity is not all a battle. If we see everything as a battle then every time there is a shot coming or difficult moment we blame the devil and call it a battle when in fact it may be God testing us or allowing us to go through harder moments. 
  • If we only see Christianity as a battle then we miss the gifts God may be giving us during difficult moments.
  • Christianity being a battle is a helpful image but is an incomplete image.
    

3. Christianity is a Journey

• • Probably the most helpful metaphor.
  • There is ups and downs. Moments of joyous celebration and moments of tears.
  • As part of a journey we often hit a dark night of the soul.
  • Using the journey metaphor it is easier to understand that suffering is part of the journey and we should be less surprised when it comes our way.

Job Ch 3 – A Different Response to Suffering

Chapter 1 (Job & God) – “At this, Job got up and tore his robe and shaved his head. Then he fell to the ground and worshipped.” v20

Job responded in mourning, grief, surrender, and powerlessness.

Chapter 2 (Job and his Wife) – “You speak as one of the foolish women would speak. Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?” v10

Job’s response is fascinating. He carefully listens and watches his beloved wife shrink under the weight of their shared hardships.

I imagine Job lifts his blistered hand and strokes her hair. At first, his words read like a harsh rebuke: “You speak as one of the foolish women would speak. Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?” (Job 2:10, ESV).

Yet, if you listen to Job, you almost hear admiration. “You speak as one of the foolish women.” He didn’t say his wife was foolish. He didn’t even say her words were foolish. He said, “She sounds like one of the foolish women.”

In other words, “You don’t sound like yourself.” You might read these words like this: Sweetheart, that’s not you talking. This doesn’t sound like the woman of God I know and married. That is not you talking, my wife. Let’s remember God’s promises. Let’s remember his goodness.

Such a far cry from the ringing condemnation she’s received in the centuries since. Job knew his wife’s suffering was just as acute as his. In fact, seeing the pain in her eyes may have added to Job’s great suffering.

It’s likely she was in a state of shock. Sudden loss has a way of clouding our judgment, distorting our view of reality and of God. Often those living in the thick of tragedy make contradictory statements about faith and life. Today we might even conclude Job’s wife suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder.

Apparently Job’s words were the balm his wife needed to soothe her soul, because she isn’t heard from again in the remaining chapters of the story.

Job responded in wisdom to his wife as she asked him to curse God. With deep faith he spoke truth and comfort in the middle of pain.

Job and his friends

“Then they sat on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights. No one said a word to him, because they saw how great his suffering was.”  v13

Job’s three friends come into the scene, they visibly can see Job’s great suffering and grieve with him and sit with him for 7 days not saying a word. This may have been their finest moments with Job as we will later discover.

Chapter 3 – After 7 days of silence, Job begins to speak. What would you imagine Job would say here? In light of the first 2 chapters and his incredible restraint and praise towards God. After 7 days you may imagine he would share a word of hope or praise towards God.

Job offers words that you would not expect to hear in church, or in a baptism testimony. Job offers words that would make most Christians cringe. Job speaks incredibly honest and authentically.

READ Job 3:1-5, 11-13, 24-26

Because the responses in Ch 1 & 2 are so different from Ch 3, many Scholars have wondered if it’s the same guy. It is the same guy. And this story shows us that we all respond differently to grief and it can manifest itself in different ways on different days.

 

WHAT DO I DO?

1. Job demonstrates that God is after our honesty, not our perceived notion of holiness.

Ever heard the line from your parents or grandparents “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say it.”  The tragedy is we have taken that bit of advice and applied it with our relationship with God. And we end up believing that if we have nothing nice to say to God, nothing praise-worthy then we don’t end up saying anything to him.

“Prayer is not about being nice before God, it’s about being honest before God.” Eugene Peterson.

When we misunderstand holiness (being right with God) we end up being stoic towards pain as if it doesn’t effect us or we end up being perpetually happy in the midst of life, and as a result we are not honest before God when pain comes our way.

Story of lying to ourselves and one another about pain. (Chris will share about presenting as a perfect Christian family at church even though we had moments of deep sadness at home.)

“God is not offended by your grief, questions or doubts.”

What this means is when we pray to God, we pray our grief, we pray our sadness and we pray our anxiety. God wants our honesty. His shoulders are big enough to carry our burdens.

“Scripture encourages the externalizing of grief, not the suppression of it.” Rich Villodas

2. We read Job’s story as an invitation to join those who are suffering.

We need chapter 3 because it helps us to be honest with God but also to enter into the experience of others who are suffering.

We will all suffer on different levels. Not all of us will experience the same levels of suffering. But the book of Job is not designed to give us a comparison as to our suffering versus someone else’s or to carry guilt because we’ve not experienced the same level of suffering as someone else. But the book of Job tells us that the point of the Christian life is to enter into the suffering of others and to encounter the God who suffers with us.

Following Jesus means paying attention to God, paying attention to myself and paying attention to others, especially in times of great suffering and pain. Christians are to have their understanding and view of suffering aided and moulded by our understanding of Jesus. Jesus understands suffering. He understands taking on the burden of sin on his body. What Jesus did on the cross and his resurrection was put an expiration date on our suffering that one day there will be no more pain, no more tears and no more grief.

The invitation of the Christian life is to be brutally honest with God including with our suffering. To receive his presence and comfort. And to join with those who are suffering.