The longer you live and the more people you know, the more familiar you will be with suffering and trials. It can be an unexpected diagnosis from the doctor, a long battle with illness or disease, a chronic pain, family caught in a war, or deep anxiety about the unknown. The list goes on and on with each situation bringing its own unique challenges. We’re tempted to respond in anger, resentment, withdrawal, depression, or fear. We’re tempted to give in to sin, turn to food, entertainment, or other substances to numb the pain and seek to remove ourselves from the suffering. We work to change circumstances, take control, fight or flee.
But Christians are called to something different. We realize that our circumstances might not change, we may not have control, we might not be able to fix it. Rather, we have a God who rules over circumstances and guides history to its appointed end (Isa 46:8–10). We have a God who has complete control over all things (Eph 1:11). Our God is even in control of all suffering (Lam 3:37–38), such that Job—the quintessential sufferer—would confess, “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21). It is also abundantly clear that the suffering of Christ—the most egregious of all suffering as the perfect one bore our sin and suffered the full cup of God’s wrath—was according to God’s divine design (Acts 2:23–24; 4:27–28).
This changes everything.
In our pain, we turn to God in our distress and sorrow and lament. We cry to the Lord. We pour out our souls before him as is oft-seen in the Psalms (e.g., Psalm 11, 12, 13) and from the lips of Job (Job 3). Even our Lord Jesus wept on the eve of his death and he lamented the wrath he was about to endure (Mark 15:33–36). It is not sinful to cry to God in lament.
In our distress we look to him who is sovereign over all things and take comfort. Job was ultimately comforted when he came to see God as the sovereign God of all wisdom, power, and love. He confessed, “I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted” (Job 42:2). This doctrine is a cause for much consternation among believers and unbelievers alike. We kick against the goads in rebellion to the absolute sovereignty of God. We object on the grounds of free will, on free love, and on human responsibility. Yet the Scriptures carve out no “safe-space” for this objections. Rather, Romans 9:20–23 confesses, “But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, ‘Why have you made me like this?’ Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use? What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory.” These verses would be terrifying if it were not for the rest of God’s revelation. Not that the rest of God’s revelation refute these words, but the rest of God’s revelation bears witnesses that this Potter is one who is full of love, mercy, grace, faithfulness, wisdom, and power. Our God is a God who is bigger than suffering and uses suffering—even in its ugliest and cruelest forms—to accomplish his purposes and do good to his people. “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose” (Rom 8:28). This is only possible with a God who is in absolute control. His sovereignty is our comfort in suffering—in everything.
This is where Job was brought in his distress. “I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you” (Job 42:5). He knew God was powerful, wise, and loving—at least, he knew that on paper. Through his suffering and God’s revelation of himself in the storm, he saw God in a way that brought comfort to him in his distress. He never did get an answer. And we might not get an answer for our suffering or the suffering of those who care for. But our comfort in this life and in death is God himself. His faithfulness, his power, his love, his wisdom, and his sovereign control over all things to bring his creation to its appointed end—for his glory and our good.
So in your suffering, lament and study the character of God and take comfort knowing that he can do all things and that no purpose of his can be thwarted (Job 42:2). At the end of our suffering, at the end of time, we will look back at God’s actions throughout time and say, “It is good. He does all things right.”
— Tim Stephens