Telling the Truth for Women

Jill Briscoe: Now we have talked about accepting adversity, trusting in trouble, waiting it out, praising in pain, and today we’re going to talk or begin to talk about coping with criticism. We’re going to be thinking about criticism and what it does for us or what it does to us, what it can do in us. In a sense, criticism can be a refining fire. Some of us work well accepting criticism and some of us don’t. Some of us are very good at giving criticism, and I want to start and alert you to the incredible harm that we can do as critics if that criticism is not under the grace of God, is not in the spirit of God. So we’re going to be looking at the comforters of Job who are turned into critics at this point, and we’re going to look at the three men and the different types of criticism that they hurled at Job in the middle of his suffering and see what we can learn from it.

Now there’s all sorts of types of criticism. There’s also the type of criticism when they criticize someone you love. Sometimes it’s harder when people criticize people close to you than when you take it on the chin yourself. I’m a pastor’s wife, and I want to tell you something. I have had years of learning to cope with criticism because I don’t know too many positions that open themselves up to accepting criticism more than a pastor and his wife.

It’s a little bit like a football match. There are thousands of people in the stands, and those of us in ministry are on the field playing the game. Everybody’s yelling at you and telling you how to kick the ball, and everybody in the stands seems to know better than the people playing the game how it should be accomplished. Often I feel like somebody on the football pitch with thousands of people yelling telling us how to play the game.

One of the things I’ve really struggled with down the years is people criticizing my husband. I’m used to them criticizing me, and not that I deal with that very well, I have to admit, but I don’t deal very well with people criticizing my children or my husband. Pastor’s kids, you know, when you’re raising children in front of all these people, they get a lot of criticism, mainly because when you’re here on a Sunday and your children are small, everybody wants your attention, so the kids take full advantage and run wild. You cannot be attending to them, and so I’m afraid they get into trouble, and then of course people say, "Well, that’s the pastor’s kid, you know, and that’s just what they’re like."

Let me read you something I wrote in a letter that I edit. It’s now a magazine called *Just Between Us*, and it’s for ministry wives. Perhaps you have a pastor’s wife and you’d like to give her a gift for Christmas. Have you ever given your pastor’s wife a gift for Christmas? If you haven’t, shame on you. I might recommend either something like this or just a little love gift, and I’m not asking you to do that for me. I’m asking you to do it for the people that you have as a pastor’s wife. My book is called *Renewal on the Run*, and it’s for ministry wives. Maybe that would be a nice little present.

When they criticize your husband, I wrote this in this magazine: "Shortly after becoming a pastor’s wife, I found myself in a church meeting where my husband was the object of criticism. He sat there quietly offering absolutely no defense. 'Why doesn’t he say something?' I wondered desperately. After a few more arrows aimed in his direction, I said to myself, 'Well, if he isn’t going to defend himself, I guess that is what a good Christian pastor’s wife is for.' I rose to my feet, made an impassioned one-minute speech, burst into tears, rushed from the auditorium. You know, I still remember this. My stomach starts to go over when I’m just telling you about it. Since that traumatic event, I have done a little better at handling criticism. That wouldn’t be hard, I can hear some of you say. It’s difficult when people criticize you, but it’s worse when they get after your husband. Sometimes church members don’t want to confront the pastor but feel they can pass on their complaints via the pastor’s wife because she isn’t so intimidating."

"Criticism takes many forms. 'He’s too deep,' says one. 'He’s too shallow,' says the next. 'He’s too dull. My kids are bored,' confides another. Do they expect you to say, 'Oh, I agree, Mrs. Smith, he bores me to pieces too'? Sometimes when I’m listening to someone criticizing my husband, I think to myself, 'Has this person forgotten I’m married to this man? How would she feel if I drew her aside by the coat racks to tell her I felt her husband really should smarten up his appearance?' How do we handle such encounters? Perhaps we leap to our beloved’s defense or cut the person off in mid-complaint. I usually feel quite sick or produce a migraine headache within half an hour of such an episode. I still wrestle with the unfairness of it all. They don’t know how hard he worked on that sermon, I say to the Lord. Now of course, if we find some truth in the criticism—and there is often some truth—we need to be mature enough to own that part of it, be teachable, pliable, and changeable."

Well, that’s a little insight into the way I don’t handle criticism very well in my specific area of vocation, but we all have our different reactions. I think we have no idea just how desperately destructive criticism can be. Byron, the poet Byron writing about John Keats, both well-known names—Keats is one of my favorite poets actually—says this, one poet talking about another handling criticism or the critics on their work: "John Keats who was killed off by one critique just as he really promised something great. Poor fellow, he’s won an untoward fate. Tis strange the mind, that very fiery particle, should let itself be snuffed out by an article." I like that.

One poet talking about another who had been criticized on a piece of poetry, and this man John Keats is world-famous, his name is known. And yet what critical criticism that was unloving, untoward, unasked for, and uncomplimentary on a piece of his poetry did was snuff him out in his creativity. It’s an incredible thing what criticism can do.

And Job’s friends, who started off doing it all right, soon began to do it all wrong. We talked about how they went out of their way, left their homes, their families, and they came just to be there. It costs to have real friends like that, and they were real friends. They were real comforters. They got close enough to comfort, remember? They manifested genuine shock and concern. They cried real tears of real pain, and they put themselves out to have a ministry of presence, I call it, just to be there. "No one said a word to him," 2:13 says, Job 2:13. They saw how great his suffering was. Silence is the only appropriate response. We’re so afraid of silence we feel we have to fill it with words whether we have anything to say or not.

Now we can all have a ministry of presence. Maybe you say to me, "Jill, I can’t help anyone who’s suffering." Yes, you can. Anybody can be quiet and say nothing. Every single one of us here can have a ministry of presence, just of being there. And you know, if you know that it’s better not to say anything than to say something, then that means that all of us are qualified to be a true comforter, to be a true comforter.

I was at a funeral shortly after we came here, and I noticed how many people felt they had to say something and didn’t know what to say. And as I was standing by the casket with the widow, one person came up and obviously didn’t know what to say because they looked at the body laid out there and said, "Doesn’t he look well?" And I remember thinking that is sure nervousness that’s just because people don’t know what to say. It was not the thing to say. The widow looked aghast at her, and I did too, and she looked aghast at us and ran out of the funeral parlor. And I tell you, just don’t say anything. Just get hold of the hand. Just give a hug. Just say, "I’ll pray for you." That’s enough.

And they started off doing this so well. But then for the bulk of this book, they began to criticize Job. And actually what they did, they began to accuse him. Now as soon as you use criticism in an accusatory fashion, you are doing the devil’s work. The negative side of criticism. Did you know that Satan’s name in the Hebrew, if you just were to use the pure Hebrew name, is "accuser"? That’s what Satan means: the accuser. And I’m going to just start and talk about Satan a little bit because I don’t want to give attention to him. I want to give attention to the Lord first and foremost. But I want to talk about three of his names. And the first one is accuser.

If we revisit chapter one of Job, we see him in heaven. And the Lord says in verse six, "Where have you come from?" And he says, "I’ve come from roaming through the earth and going back and forth in it." And the Lord said to Satan, "Have you considered my servant Job? There’s no one like him. He’s blameless. He’s upright. He’s a man who fears God and shuns evil." And immediately Satan begins to attack the motives, the character of Job to God. He begins to accuse him to God. "Haven’t you put a hedge around him? Does Job fear you for nothing? Does Job fear you for nothing? He knows which side his bread's buttered on. He’s buttering you up, God. He’s just being grateful because of all the things you’ve done for him." And he begins to malign the spirituality of Job. And you know the thing that’s really scary is that’s what he’s doing today in the presence of God. He is accusing you. He is accusing me. He is accusing Christians. He is attacking their motives. He’s saying this and that about us to God because he cannot help doing that. That is the essence of his nature. That is his name which speaks of his nature. That is Satan’s work.

Now if you turn for a moment with me to Revelation chapter 12. John is having a vision of what is happening in heaven, and he sees a woman and a dragon. This is very pictorial language. It’s very difficult to understand all the pictures, but there’s something very obvious here. And as we read verse seven, "There was a war in heaven, Michael who stands for Israel—he is the angel, the protector of Israel in the Scriptures, we see that in the book of Daniel—there was a war in heaven, Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, which is a depiction of Satan and evil, and the dragon and his angels fought back. But he, the dragon, wasn’t strong enough and they lost their place in heaven. The great dragon was hurled down, that ancient serpent called the devil or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth and his angels with him. And then I heard a loud voice in heaven saying, 'Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ.' Listen to this: 'For the accuser of our brothers, who accuses them before our God day and night, has been hurled down.'"

"Now they, the saints, overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony. They didn’t love their lives so much as to shrink from death. Therefore rejoice, oh heavens, you who dwell in them, but woe to the earth and the sea because the devil has gone down to you. He is filled with fury because he knows his time is short." His name is accuser. He accuses the saints, the Christians, day and night before God. He criticizes us. And here we see in Job 1 the accuser boldly accusing the man that God commends. Job is right. He’s a righteous man, and God delights in that. But Satan says, "Well, he’s just self-serving."

Dragons are used metaphorically to depict the enemies of God in Israel, and this whole picture here that we’ve just read in Revelation is talking about Satan finally being excluded from heaven. This actually is talking about the future, not the initial time that Satan was thrown out of heaven when he rebelled against God. This is talking about the end of the time, the final exclusion from heaven. But it appears that he has access, limited access, to heaven, that Satan can actually go to heaven when God summons him so to do only and make an account of himself. And when God says, "You come here and tell me what you’re doing," he has to go. He doesn’t want to go. But God still has him on control. He has a limited power.

Now I come back to that again and again. However, in the book of Revelation, we see the intense hostility against God’s people in the last days. He is intensely hostile. He is our accuser. Satan has nothing else to do but to devise evil and trouble. That’s a scary thought. He has absolutely nothing else to do but to make trouble, to devise it, to make it happen.

Now where did all this begin? In Ezekiel chapter 28, the language goes beyond the prophet’s talking of the King of Tyre, and you see the one who is behind the evil kings of this world. And it is as it was that Ezekiel doesn’t really know quite what he’s saying caught up by the spirit. He begins to talk about Satan. And in verse 14, "You were an anointed guardian cherub." Now he cannot obviously be talking about the King of Tyre. He has been talking about the King of Tyre. Now the language goes beyond the King of Tyre to the one who stands behind him. "You were an anointed guardian cherub." Where did Satan originate? Where did evil start? People ask that question all the time. In heaven. In heaven. A guardian cherub was one of the mightiest, greatest spirits that God created. Always remember Satan is a created being, therefore less than God who created him. He is an angel. He is not equal on par with our God, our King, our mighty, omnipotent one. He was an anointed guardian cherub, for so God ordained him. He was on the holy mount of God. He walked among the fiery stones. He was blameless in his ways from the day he was created till wickedness was found in him.

Then how did that first wickedness come? The essence of wickedness is independence from God. And the first independent thought, "I can live without dependence on God," was thought in heaven by a mighty guardian cherub that guarded the holiness of God with great power and authority. He was filled with violence. He sinned. "So I drove you in disgrace from the mount of God and I expelled you, oh guardian cherub, from among the fiery stones. Your heart became proud on account of your beauty. You corrupted your wisdom because of your splendor. So I threw you to the earth."

Jesus said, "I beheld Satan fall like lightning from heaven." Christ did not begin at Bethlehem. He was manifested in human form. He became a baby at Bethlehem. But he was in heaven, the second person of the Trinity, when that initial rebellion, that first independent thought which was sin and wickedness, came into the heart of the cherub. He had a free choice, to choose to be dependent on his creator, and he exercised that free choice against God. He never wanted to be the devil. He wanted to be God. Pride filled his heart, and so he was expelled from heaven.

But the book of Job tells us that when God wills, he comes whether he likes it or not to the council, the mighty council that God sets up to deal with the events of all the universes, I presume. Who knows why that council is called? And if God wants to keep the devil where he wants to keep the devil, which he does, the devil has to come and give an account of himself. He is our accuser, but he is also our common enemy. He is hostile, intensely hostile, against us.

In Matthew 13, Jesus calls him our common adversary. That’s the second word: accuser, secondly adversary. He says he is an enemy. The sons of God are the sons of God, but there are sons of the enemy, sons of the wicked one. And the Satan sows the sons of the evil one among the sons of God like tares in a field. That’s the parable that Jesus tells. And in that parable, Jesus says he is an enemy. He is there to think up mischief and evil and to corrupt the sons of God, those of us that know the Lord and that love the Lord. And he’s going to do it.

So Satan is presented as a vagabond, as a spirit that roves. And the word "rove" means roaming about, homeless. He is such a picture of lostness. He has no home. He has to keep walking. He has to keep moving. He can never be at peace. He can never know rest, which is a heavenly thought and a heavenly idea. And so he’s walking around on the earth. Peter says he’s like a lion. In 1 Peter tells us, he’s looking whom he may devour. And that’s the third word: Abaddon in the Hebrew, in the Greek Apollyon. Three A’s: the accuser, the adversary, Apollyon. And that word means the destroyer. He is the personification of evil that destroys. He is the angel—Revelation 9:11—of the bottomless pit, the angel that fell, Lucifer, son of the morning, Satan, father of the night. That’s a fall. He is the angel of the bottomless pit.

So he is intent on destroying us. Satan will never ever have a kind thought towards you, towards your children, towards those you love, towards your marriage. He is a destroyer, and he is alive and well on planet Earth. But more important than devouring Job’s life to Satan was devouring Job’s faith. In McKenna’s *Whispers of His Grace*, he says, "The wholeness of our hurt can be felt in the attacks of Satan, sometimes against our body, often against our minds, usually against our pride, and always against our faith." Always against our faith. He wants to destroy everything, but more than anything else, he wants to destroy our trust and our faith in the goodness of God. Yancey says, "God wants us to freely choose to love him even when that choice involves pain. He wants us to cleave to him as Job did even when we have every reason to hotly deny him." So he is the accuser, the chief critic. That’s why you must never do his work. When you hear yourself accusing destructively somebody else, then Satan is using you even if you’re a believer.

Do you remember when Jesus said to Peter, "Satan, get thee behind me"? He said that to Peter. Why? Because Satan was using somebody close to Jesus, just as Satan used Job’s three friends who were believing people. They were not unbelieving people. They were his close comforters, just like Peter was close to Jesus.

So how does this monster work? He sees the potential for evil in every human nature, and he exploits it. For example, in chapter one of Job, the Sabeans came, do you remember? The Sabeans came, and they came to steal the cattle. The oxen were plowing, the donkeys were grazing, and the Sabeans attacked and carried them off. They put the servants to the sword. Now then, there’s an interesting little thought here. The evil in the Sabeans' heart was the sinful human nature all of us are born with. That is the potential for evil in every son of Adam, okay? Then some of us accept the Lord, and so we have the old nature but we have the new nature, which is giving its influence over the old nature. Now the Sabeans didn’t have the new nature to temper what they were doing. I don’t know whether they intended to murder the servants or not. Maybe they just intended to carry off the cattle. But what Satan did, he saw the intent of their mind and he entered into the situation and exploited it and took it further perhaps than they were willing to go. And they ended up murdering everyone.

Now that’s what Satan does. He sees the potential for final evil and he pushes you. And what can happen just with a little tiny—give him a little foothold—he will ride it. He will power it. He will just take it up to full gear. He will take it over the precipice. And that’s what could have happened here. He will exploit the potential of evil in every human nature. Suffering opens to Satan the chance to exploit the depravity of the human heart, and specifically pain. He will exploit it. "The possibility of pain is inherent in the very existence of a world where ever souls meet," says C.S. Lewis. When souls become wicked, they will certainly use this possibility to hurt one another. And this perhaps accounts for four-fifths of the sufferings of men. Satan sees the potential for evil in every human nature and exploits it.

Yancey again says, "Job is one of those who stayed faithful to God even when his world caved in. He had a sinful nature, but Satan was trying to enter into his mind and his thoughts and he couldn’t do it. And he is an example to us of overcoming evil with good." So man can think up some pretty evil things all on his own with his sinful nature, but the sky is the limit when Satan joins in. And I have seen this over and over again. A situation that is sort of normally evil or bad suddenly takes off as if somebody is riding it like a horse, and you say, "Where’s this going? What has happened?" Satan, who is roaming around waiting for his opportunity, sees it and comes in. And never more than when we are in pain and when suffering comes.

Not only does he exploit human nature—sinful human nature, the flesh, the old nature—he exploits the accidents of nature to his own evil advantage too. Now you know as I know that often when we have a storm or a tornado or hurricane, the media and the papers and everybody else calls it an act of God. That is still the term that is used. I’m waiting for somebody to be mad about that and try and quit us calling that, but so far everybody says and everybody knows an act of God. What do they mean? They mean an act of nature. And some people mean more, an act of God. Now this is a real mind teaser, and I have been—I was very tempted to spend a lot of time on this because I’ve wrestled with this myself, and I don’t know where if I’ve been able to grasp what I’m thinking about.

Satan suggests when an act of God happens, it’s an act of a wicked God. How could God allow this hurricane to do this? So the thing that he does is he enters in as soon as that hurricane hits and he starts suggesting things to people that are suffering because of it. What sort of a God would do this? That’s Job. That’s the whole book of Job. How could he allow this to happen?

So he exploits the accident of nature. Now acts of nature are acts in a natural universe that God has created, and he’s chosen to allow those laws of nature to run their natural course. Now if Satan has some control over acts of nature or not, I don’t know. That’s an open question. People have different thoughts on that, and you need to think about this. Does Satan have any control over the acts of nature? I tend to believe he doesn’t. I tend to believe he’s certainly on the spot when they happen to exploit what people think about it, how people are reacting to it, and what he wants to happen in it. I happen to believe, I think, after reading and reading and thinking and thinking these last few weeks, that God has control. He’s creator. He can intervene in his own laws when he chooses to do so. He can protect from his own laws as he protected Job all these years, put a hedge around him. But he can also let the acts of nature run their course and take the hedge away. Just let it happen for his own permissive good reasons, his own permissive will.

However, when that happens, I believe Satan is there. He quits roving for a minute and he just takes up residence in that situation. And what Satan intended for evil, God used for good. And that’s what happens when God allows the natural course of events to happen in the universe that he made. I think it’s giving Satan too much power to believe that he can instigate acts of nature. But Satan certainly uses the effects of sin in the physical order and in the human heart for his assaults, and often he has his best results at times like these. And what he does is he stirs up trouble.

And yet the book of Job tells us that God sets limits for the powers of evil. It is God, not Satan, that sets the limits. Now in the deepest and darkest moments of our suffering, we are convinced so often that his power is unlimited and he is in control. Job teaches differently. Have you ever been right in the bottom of the pit and you look around and you say, "God, where are you?" It just appears Satan is having full reign. He is omnipotent. He is omniscient. He is omnipresent, and I cannot see you, I cannot hear you anywhere in the situation. Then what you need to do is to go to Scripture and believe it, and say the Bible teaches me and certainly here in the book of Job that this is not true and get him in the right perspective and say, "God, I believe you set the terms and that you are trusting me and you know that my faith will hold and grow under this situation. And I’m trusting you to know my limits, Lord, and you will not permit me to be tempted beyond what I can bear."

1 Corinthians 10:13: "There is no temptation taken you but such as is common to man. But God is faithful and he will not allow you to be tempted or tested or pushed beyond that you are able, but will in the temptation also make a way to escape that you may be able to bear it." Sorry, that’s King James, but that’s where I did all my memorization. But there is no temptation taken us but such as is common to man. And God will know our limits. He knows our limits. Now I’m always telling him my limits. "Now you know my limits, Lord. I’m beyond them now, so let’s get this pressure off." You do not tell God. He says, "Shall the clay say to him that made it, 'Why did you make me like this?'" He knows the limits. Just like that clay pot sits in the furnace. There’s a little peephole if you know anything about pottery, and the person making the pot knows just how long to leave that little pot sitting in the furnace before it will crumble. He knows how long to make it till it’s tough and it’s hard and it can carry what he wants it to carry, and he’ll open that little door and he’ll take you out when you’re ready, when you’re ready, because the potter knows the clay. And so we have to trust that and we have to believe that.

There is never more problem than when we are in pain. You notice in Job chapter 1 and Job chapter 2 he did so well. Satan began to use the situations that were happening and he lost everything, and he did great until his body was touched. And you know when you’re sick, when you’re physically at the bottom, everything else seems to go as well. As long as you have your health, you seem to do pretty well. Emerson said the greatest wealth is health. Emerson said the greatest wealth is health. And once our health is touched, Satan sees the opportunity and begins to exploit it. C.S. Lewis says pain is not only immediately recognizable evil, but evil impossible to ignore. Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain. He shouts in our pain.

No doubt pain is God’s megaphone. Someone else has said, Abehart Arnold, "Pain is the plow that tears up our hearts to make us open to truth." Pain is the plow that tears up our hearts to make us open to truth. Certainly was the situation in my—my case when as a student I lay in a hospital bed in pain. And pain was the plow that tore up my heart to make me open to truth. And God used my pain as a megaphone to get my attention and to open up to become a Christian and to get to know him. What Satan intended for evil, God intended for good.

Now part of the way that we overcome is that even though Satan is the criticizer, Satan is the great accuser, Jesus is our advocate. I want you to turn for a moment to Job chapter 9. Job chapter 9, verse 33. In the middle of his agony, Job says, "If only there was someone to arbitrate between us, between God and he, to lay his hand upon us both, someone to remove God’s rod from me so that his terror would frighten me no more. Then I would speak up without fear of him, but as it now stands with me, I cannot." And in other translations, he is looking for an advocate. He is looking for someone to plead his case. He is trying to plead his own case and he’s not getting very far. He’s trying to defend himself. He says, "Oh, if only there was someone who would be my advocate."

And you know the wonderful thing is the book of Hebrews tells us that Jesus is our advocate. That we have a High Priest who sat down at the right hand of God, of the throne of Majesty on high, who serves in that heavenly sanctuary for us. Hebrews is replete talking about Jesus as our great High Priest in heaven. And Hebrews 4 says we have a High Priest who is touched in all points with the feelings of our infirmities, not even with our infirmities, with the very feelings of them, because he’s been here, he’s felt them, he’s felt our pain, he ate our food, he slept in our beds, he walked our street, he—he died our death. I remember watching my mother die literally, watching her die, saying, "Jesus, you did this for me?" Never really hit me until I watched somebody die, somebody I loved.

And the process of death is horrible. And when you watch somebody die next time, say to yourself, "Jesus actually did this. He went through this act of death. He died for me." And so we have a High Priest in heaven who has felt the greatest thing that we will ever feel in the sense of suffering, and that is our death. And the Bible tells us there is one mediator between God and man now, the man Christ Jesus. There is someone. Job—he didn’t know there was someone. It was just God and him, and God was so big and God was so holy. He knew he needed somebody to be the advocate, to be the one who could take him to God, who could speak for him. Of course we know that that was Jesus.

Jesus said in John 17, "I’m praying for you. I’m not praying that God will take you out of the world. I’m praying he’ll keep you from spiritual evil, from the evil one, from what he would do to your mind and your faith." And another time he said, "Don’t fear those that can kill the body. Fear—fear him rather who’s able to cast both body and soul into hell," and that is not Satan, that’s God. "Fear me. Don’t worry about those that can kill the body. Worry about those that can take your faith away from you because that lasts forever. That’s eternal." And Jesus said, "I’m going to pray for you. Not only for you," he says in the upper room, "but for all those who will believe on me through your testimony." Jesus is praying for us, and when we are criticized, when we are accused wrongly, and we are suffering, and that is a very specific particular type of suffering, Jesus is immediately praying for us. He intends to use it for good. The devil intends to use it to destroy us. Remember he’s the destroyer. And if we are under a barrage of destructive criticism that can wreck perhaps our reputation or our lives or whatever, then know Jesus is praying. He’s an advocate. He’s the one that is speaking to God for you. He’s the one who will succor your heart. Maybe some of you say, "Well, he’s not praying hard enough. Pray harder, Jesus, because I’m not doing very well under this."

You know the worst sort of pain is emotional pain. "Though he slay me, yet will I trust him." And yet the problem was it wasn’t just his own life he was worried about. He just lost his children. He just lost his children. And there is a pain that we bear that is something else. "Though he slay me" might be all right, but "though he slay my children" is another thing. Physically, just to take a child, that is a traumatic thing. And again, the devil is there in no time flat. Amy Carmichael, who’s one of my favorite missionaries, was bearing the loss of a child and she wrote this: "The Father said, 'Art thou willing to be crucified?' and the Son answered, 'By thy grace I am willing.' His Father said, 'Art thou willing to let thy Lord choose thy cross and the nails that shall pierce thy hands and thy feet?' and the Son answered, 'My Lord shall choose what he will.' His Father said, 'Art thou willing that thy house on earth may be a little emptier, that my house in heaven may be a little fuller?' The Son was silent for a while, at last he answered, 'I am willing.' Then the Father loved the Son very dearly."

I called Jean Robinson and asked her if I might share her testimony in closing. Her husband had just died. She was out in the mission field when this happened. That was the end of November, so at Christmas she joined other people at another mission station for a party. And as she and the adults were looking at a table full of teenage boys, one of them said, "Not one of those boys has a father." There were three or four sons whose father had been martyred sitting there. There were two boys that belonged to Jean Robinson and they didn’t have a father either, for he’d just died. And there was another missionary there called Sylvia Ward who had three kids, three sons, and her husband had died shortly before Jean Robinson’s husband. And all those teenage boys were sitting at a table at this party and not one of them had a father. Jean told me on the phone that at this point she was just overcome and she got up and ran away to her room to pray. And a short-term young lady followed her and put her arms around her and took the good part of the ministry of presence, and then took out this little book and read what I just read to you. "Art thou willing that my house in heaven should be a little fuller even though your house on earth might be a little emptier?" And Jean was able to find peace and acceptance.

You know, what you don’t need at times like that is a Job’s comforter because Eliphaz came along, and you know what he said? "It’s your fault your kids are dead. It’s your fault your kids are dead." Can you hear someone’s voice? The accuser, the destroyer, the enemy. I can.

Let’s pray together. Heavenly Father, thank you for your word and thank you that you are greater than Satan, that he is a created being. And I ask, dear Lord, that you would give us the protection that you promise. And yet, if and when you allow the hedge to be removed, that we might serve you well and honor you and worship you even as Job did, even in pain, even in trouble. And Lord, I pray that you would keep our faith strong. And Lord, thank you that Satan could touch all Job had but he couldn’t touch who Job was. And he’ll not be able to do that with us either. So keep us from the evil, the spiritual evil where we lose our faith, where we curse you and die. Lord, remind us again that we can either curse God and die or trust God and grow, and we would do the latter. Thank you that you are the victor. Thank you that you sit at the right hand of God, our advocate. Thank you that you pray for us. Thank you that you provide your power to overcome and to be an overcomer. Thank you, Lord. We ask for those that are suffering in pain and that the simple truths that we are learning as we study the book of Job together may be things we can take home with us, can bring us comfort and can bring us help. And may we listen to ourselves, Lord. May we never do the devil’s work for him. We ask it for Christ's sake. Amen.