Telling the Truth for Women

Jill Briscoe: Now then, we are talking about Job. Today I want to talk about praising in pain. What a wonderful testimony to have to set the scene for this study. Chuck Swindoll has a great book, and it's called Memorable Scenes, and he says this:

"Take a drive through an average American suburb and what do you see? You might notice a natural canopy of evenly spaced trees, leaf-littered lawns, or touch football, shingled roofs with strong gutters for stormy night security, and bay windows for early morning bird watching. But that is just on the outside. Broken hearts are all around us. In the house next door, in the adjoining cubicle at work, and in the seat beside us here today. In fact, pain is one of the few things we all have in common. Maybe you are the one with the crushed spirit right now, the hidden heartache that's too deep for words and too private for prayer chains."

"Unfortunately, no easy three-step method exists for erasing pain. We can dissect it, describe it, and analyze it, but we can't make it go away. We can, however, learn to face it, to live with it, and that is just what took place down the street at Job's house." And we have been down the street at Job's house for quite a while in these studies. Job's theology allowed for the righteous to suffer. Does yours? Does mine?

His theology allowed for the righteous to suffer. And I believe that's the message of the Bible, that unless God supernaturally intervenes, which many times He chooses not to do so, then because we are part of a fallen creation and have a fallen nature, then even though God is buying His world back, this is God's world and He wants it back and He's getting it back, as that happens, He allows pain to continue and problems to continue.

But even if you have your theology right in your head, even if you say, "Yes, my theology does allow the righteous or the innocent to suffer, it isn't incompatible with the character of God as I believe He is revealed in the scriptures," when it actually comes down to it, you can believe it, but when you find yourself in it, then your theology is put to the test.

It's a little bit like diving into ice-cold water. We lived on a boat during the war years in England. That was because our house got bombed and we had to go somewhere else, and so we ran to the Lake District, which is what everybody else was doing. My father happened to be home from the war that night. I remember it very clearly as if it happened yesterday, and it happened when I was five. But I do remember it. Those sort of things you do remember.

And as we got up to Windermere, Bowness, it was just like camping time. Everyone was there, sleeping in cars, just trying to get out of the cities. Many of them couldn't stay, of course, they had to go back, but my mother and my sister and I were able to stay. My father went back to the war. And seeing there wasn't a house to buy, he bought a boat, which was very innovative and creative, and we thought was wonderful.

At five and seven, could you think of anything better than living on a little boat on beautiful Lake Windermere, one of the most beautiful lakes in the entire Lake District, like little Switzerland up there near Scotland? And so we had a very, as far as we could, happy war years living on this little boat.

And seeing it was little, very little, there was no bathroom, of course. There was a little potty on it, but there wasn't anywhere to bathe. And so over the side we'd go every single day before we got dressed for school. Mother would be cooking in the little tiny galley this bacon and eggs, I can sort of smell it now.

And it got sort of pretty hard to take a bath, and we would literally break ice half the year. Just over the side, in and out, and it really woke you up. I tell you, I've got very—we say in England "nesh." I don't know if you have that word. Do you have that word? No. It's a sort of good word. It says what you know, soft. Nesh. I've got nesh. If I go in swimming, I need it bath hot now. So that's what you've done to me coming to live in America, I think.

But I do remember the shock of getting in the water. Now, I knew it was going to be cold, and I remember just perching on the side of that little boat called Mona, M-O-N-A, and my sister would push me in or we'd fight and then we'd both fall in together or whatever it was. And the shock—now I knew it was cold, but actually when I did it, it took my breath away.

And that's what suffering's like. You know it's cold. You know it's going to hurt. You know it's painful. But when you actually are pushed in or fall in or jump in, then the shock of it takes your breath away and does something to your theology in a hurry if you're not careful.

And yet if we respond rightly to suffering as Job did, and as other people have done down the centuries, then He does bring blessing into our life. Elizabeth Elliot, in "A Path Through Suffering," says a missionary who had been a guest in our home when I was about four had her head chopped off by the Chinese Communists when I was eight.

I have never forgotten the newspaper pictures of her orphan baby peeping out of a rice basket carried by the Chinese Christians who had found her. Jesus lets missionaries be killed. Jesus lets babies lose their parents. Elizabeth, of course, goes on to tell us that that's how it is. You should really read Elizabeth Elliot's writings seeing we're studying the subject of suffering.

She is searingly honest, and some of the things as she works through her suffering are incredibly enlightening and helpful. And here is a tough lady, one tough lady, I tell you, I know her well. And yet it doesn't mean that she doesn't hurt and she doesn't cry and she doesn't feel pain like you and I do. She has an awful lot to teach us.

I remember reading her book which was—it should have been entitled "Why?" Because that was what she was asking all the way through the book. When she buried herself in another tribe and stayed there forever and just about got the language down, there was one language helper. Just one language helper that could do anything. This tribe had never heard of the Lord. They would never hear of the Lord unless Elizabeth got that language down and was able to communicate to them. And her language helper was murdered.

And that book came out of that experience, and it is a very thought-provoking book as Elizabeth walks you through what she thought about that. And talk about angry, Elizabeth was angry. And it's a very, very good book. And so there are many things that are like getting into that water with the ice on the top of it. When it actually happens to you, it literally takes your breath away.

Now, we talked about waiting it out, or learning to live with it. That would have been a better title maybe for today than "Praising in Pain." In his book, "Waiting," which is a very good book, Ben Patterson talks about this in another context than physical pain. "I went through two broken engagements over a five-year period. Same girl both times."

"After the second and final break, I went to visit my friend. I was numb and tired of hurting. I felt dead inside. We talked for a little while, and when I got up to leave, he suggested we pray together. I prayed first, mumbling to God the best theology I could think of under the circumstances. I then waited for him to begin. Nothing came for a long time. I was about to ask what was wrong when I heard something, a sob. I asked him what was wrong. All he could say was, 'It hurts so much.' 'What hurts?' I asked. 'What happened to you, stupid?' he said."

You know, we're going to begin to talk about how we can help people in pain. Not just our own pain, but how we can weep with those that weep, how we can absorb some of the hurt in a little sense. And at the beginning of Ben Patterson's book, on the flyleaf, he says this, "Second only to suffering, waiting may be the greatest teacher and trainer in godliness, maturity, and genuine spirituality most of us ever encounter."

Next to suffering, second only to suffering, waiting will do this. And so when we wonder why God doesn't hurry up and either bring us out of the pain, relieve us in the pain, help us in the pain, do something about the situation, change it, make something happen, it is because the waiting itself teaches us something, and especially in American society where we will not wait for anything.

We are the most non-waiting country in the world. It is so instant. I saw a book I could not believe. I don't know who wrote it, but I saw it advertised. "Learning to Pray in Five Minutes." I mean, this book was all about how they would—I don't know how much you paid for this seminar, there was a seminar that went with it, of course. It was all packaged beautifully. And if you went to this seminar, you could go away knowing that all you needed to do was five minutes prayer and you didn't need to waste any more time praying because you could do it all in five minutes.

Now, that is so typical of how the church is absorbing this instant, got to have it now bit. And yet in the theology of suffering, it's not going to happen like that. It's a question of waiting it out while God doesn't answer prayer. One of my favorite hymns is "Spirit of God Descend Upon My Heart." "Wean it from earth, through all its pulses move. Stoop to my weakness, mighty as thou art, and make me love thee as I ought to love."

"Teach me to feel that thou art always nigh. Teach me the struggles of the soul to bear. To check the rising doubt, the rebel sigh. Teach me the patience of unanswered prayer." We're going to have a whole session on patience and how to grow it in our lives in this series. But teach me the patience of unanswered prayer.

Now, when I sang that in church last time, I didn't sing that verse because I didn't want him to. Do you ever get to a verse in a hymn and you think, "Oh no, I don't think I'll do that"? I'll pass and go on to the nice last verse, you know, that's all victory and stuff. But if you're tempted to say, "Please teach me the patience of unanswered prayer," he's tempted to say, "I will," and then you're really in trouble.

Richard Hendrix, that was Richard Hendrix's quote about second only to suffering, waiting does that to you, and I want to give him credit for that. So if you're in God's waiting room—did you ever sit in a waiting room waiting for the doctor, and you're sort of dreading it to happen, but you sort of want to get it over? There's a sort of relief when the doctor eventually comes and says it's your turn. And yet that waiting room experience—what you do when you're sitting in the waiting room?

Oh, you read the magazines. I write up my books sitting in waiting rooms, either at an airport or doctors or wherever. It's a great place not to be passive, but to do something with the waiting time during the pain. I'm going to give you some practical ideas here. Let me finish a little quote of an article I wrote on "The Journey to Soon." I wrote this: What you do on the way to soon? Soon it will be over. Well, I'm on the way to soon. I want it to be now and I'm in the middle here.

I have learned that what you do with the journey to soon is vitally important. Waiting does not necessarily mean passivity. Waiting works us over, making us pliable in the potter's hand. He molds the wet clay. Hard waiting nearly always produces lots of moisture and forms a real grown-up person out of the child in us.

I'm learning to take action while I wait. On a plane not too long ago, I found myself looking forward to a quiet flight. But sitting next to me was a squirmy eight-year-old. Buckling his seatbelt like a veteran, which he was, he settled back for all of one and a half minutes. He anxiously looked at his watch, and after takeoff, I waited for the big question. A few more minutes of sighs, gazing out the window, a lethargic attempt to read a comic book he'd been given, passed before he turned to me.

"Are we nearly there?" he asked. "I'm afraid not," I answered apologetically, feeling almost personally responsible for this vital piece of information. "Maybe there's food on this flight," he suggested hopefully. "I think there is," I replied. "That always helps to pass the time," he said. "What are your favorite foods?" I asked.

I hit a chord and made an eight-year-old friend. We launched into a catalog of our favorite foods until we finally reached the airport of our destination. My eyes followed him as he was hurried off the plane by an air hostess. And as he disappeared into the terminal, I prayed for him and for his salvation. Maybe I mused, no one has ever cared for his soul. Maybe if we had arrived sooner, I wouldn't have gotten to know him.

When waiting for God to meet urgent needs, things can be accomplished that only God knows. I watched my mother fight to the death with cancer. I'd cried out in agony, "Lord, release her now." "Soon," He replied. And two days before she died, she put her trust in Christ. My husband called to tell me he was extending his evangelistic tour. "But it will soon be over," he said.

His absence until soon afforded me the extra time to join a missions team and lead a big fish into the kingdom net. Waiting on the Lord does not mean waiting on everything else in life until the prayer is answered, the situation redressed, or the nightmare over. Waiting on the Lord means cultivating an attitude of trust, casting the bundle of personal care on Him while we busy ourselves with whatever duties we must do.

The devil loves to slow us to a dead stop, telling us we need to wait until things are okay again before we serve, teach, preach, or take up our daily responsibilities. He would paralyze us with the pain of waiting. He would say, "It will soon be over. Wait until things are back to normal."

This week, a new problem has become resident in my life. Like the eight-year-old on the plane, I asked my Heavenly Father, "Are we nearly there?" I think I hear Him saying, "Soon." On the way to soon, what do you do while you wait? How can you help somebody else to wait? Well, the first word is routine. Okay? Get back into some routine or help the person who is in pain to get into some sort of routine.

Maybe it's not a routine that they can return to if the situation is a very serious one, but routine helps. Just like a child is helped, I believe—maybe I'm old-fashioned, but I believe a child is helped by routine—so somebody in pain or suffering is helped. Now, I'm—you're American, you're not English, otherwise you would know immediately what to do. You'd make a cup of tea.

You'd make a cup of tea. You've no idea how that helps. And it isn't the fact that you're making a cup of tea to drink—and I mean make a cup of tea. I don't mean a soggy tea bag bit. I mean make a cup of tea like cups of tea are meant to be made. And it takes at least a whole ritual. And there's relief in the ritual, in the routine, getting the tea and warming the pot and boiling the water and making, you know, it just right and waiting and steeping it and adding the water. And you've no idea what goes into make a real good English cup of tea.

But it's routine. Now, Job couldn't make tea on his ash heap, but he had to go home and pick up life's schedule, normalize. And that's what we need to do. We need to normalize. A couple of years ago, I was going through a stressful waiting time. I remember Stewart saying, "How are you doing?" And I said, "Well, not so bad, not so good." We were standing in our house. And so he said, "Well, what are you going to do? Do you want to walk around the lake?" So we walked around the lake, and then we came in.

And he said, "Now what are you going to do with yourself?" And I said, "Well, I can't study and I can't read. I know. I'm going to see to my plants." I have 47 plants. I don't have furniture, but I have plants. I do have furniture. And so I attacked my plants, and I manured them, and I repotted them, and I trimmed them. You can always tell how much stress I'm in if you visit me by how big my plants are.

At the moment, they're very small, actually. Because I trim them unmercifully. In fact, last time, Libby, my daughter-in-law, was here. She said, "What happened to that great big tree you had?" And I said, "This is it." It's a little tiny bush now. She said, "Oh, stress, hmm." I said, "Yes, stress." Because my trees really get nervous when they know I'm under stress. I hear them talking to each other. "She—oh, watch it!"

And so something normalized. There is a relief in doing what needs to be done and doing something you enjoy doing. You need to be kind to yourself in those times and do something that you enjoy doing, even if you don't feel you've time to do it, because routine really helps.

And in Job 19, we see him back home. He didn't sit on his ash heap for 42 chapters. Some of us sit on our ash heap for 42 chapters. Don't do that. He went home. And in verse 13, he says this, and he's apparently back home among his friends and brothers and whatnot. "He has alienated my brothers from me. My acquaintances are completely estranged from me. My kinsmen have all gone away. My friends have forgotten me. My guests and my maidservants count me as a stranger. They look upon me as an alien. I summon my servant, but he doesn't answer. I beg him with my own mouth."

"My breath is offensive to my wife. I'm loathsome to my brothers. Even the little boys scorn me. When I appear, they ridicule me. All my intimate friends detest me. Those I love have turned against me. I'm nothing but skin and bones. I've escaped with only the skin of my teeth." So here he is after the incredible scene on the ash heap, you have him home again.

And he's trying to keep up the relationships that he had. Now, he's not succeeding very well, but he's trying. And that's the second word: relationships. What tends to happen to us when we fall in that ice water is that we are so numb with the experience that we don't have the energy or the will or the want to continue in our relationships. Have you found that?

And yet one of the things that you must do is to keep up the relationships that you can keep up. Now, Job didn't find it very easy. He was left with four friends, and who knows whether they were real friends or enemies. We're going to look at that a little bit today. But at least he made an effort to keep up relationships and he did keep up some relationships. Suffering wrecks relationships. But you really find out who's a real friend as well.

And you make new friends. A friend of mine who has a little boy with leukemia said, "My closest friends are the parents that sit with me waiting for the treatments to be over for our children." And she said, "They're the sort of people that I would never have made friends with if we hadn't found ourselves in the same situation. But they are among my closest friends now."

So you don't need to take it personally when people back off. This is a very normal thing that happens. And it adds to your suffering, doesn't it? I mean, all you need are people, are those relationships, because there is relief and rest and encouragement in relationships. But there is a backing off. Even Christians back off when something happens to someone else. Take what you can get. Don't take it personally. They are struggling with it too.

And maybe understanding that will help. They are struggling with all sorts of things. Perhaps what's happening to you happened to them somewhere back in, and they just can't be around you because it's going to bring back all those memories. Or maybe they are not quite able or mature enough to cope with intense suffering close-up.

I remember when Stewart's mother discovered yet one more cancer when she was staying with us and it was obvious that this was the last long haul. We didn't know how long on the way to soon it was going to be for mother, but we invited her to stay and see it out with us, which was not easy. She did not have any insurance. She had come to visit for three weeks and ended up staying 18 months and five cancer operations and how many months chemotherapy without any insurance. So this was not a light decision that all of us took together.

But I do remember not wanting my children to watch this close-up. And we were in a very nice parsonage at the time, but it really wasn't big enough to get her a room. It was open-plan. It was very much everybody saw everything and there wasn't a room for mother to nurse her and all the rest of it. And that was one of the reasons we moved to that larger house.

But you know, I remember talking to my doctor, a wonderful man, Dr. Olinger. He came to Christ while we were here and ended up going out as a missionary. And I remember talking to Jack Olinger and saying, "I know you will think this absolutely dreadful, but I don't want her to stay, and I'm fighting with this, and I'm praying that God won't let her know I don't want her to stay. Pray for me."

I remember praying with my doctor, my new Christian doctor, about that. And I remember him saying, "Why don't you want her to stay?" And I said, "Well, I think I'm going to be able to do this. I think I can cope. But I don't want the children to see it close-up. I just don't want them to see this this close," because it was going to be a very, very difficult death.

I know myself how I wanted to distance myself from the worst of it. And I'm supposed to know how to do this. We professional Christians are supposed to know. We leaders, aren't we? And yet when it comes down to it, there is a withdrawing from intense gross pain. I know with my work with World Relief, I find it very difficult to go into a refugee camp.

I mean, we see that flash on the screen and then we turn away and turn it off and eat our dinner. I tell you, you can't eat your dinner when you've been there. You can't eat very much for a long time when you've seen people dying of starvation, and it's one of the things—I love the work, but I don't love that part of it because I have this revulsion for suffering. And I think this is very normal.

So please don't take it personally when people do that to you. I remember a situation in Milwaukee when we first arrived. The Deuces were a radio couple. He was the radio voice for the Bucks. And blazed all across the paper that their little boy had been diagnosed with leukemia. And we had just arrived.

And I said to Stewart, "I feel really out of my context here. If I was in England, I would have picked up the phone and called a stranger. Here I didn't know if that would be appropriate, and especially not a well-known stranger." And then I found she had an unlisted phone. Stewart said, "Well, I think we could find the number. I think you should." And so I called this stranger, Karen.

And I said, "I'm a new pastor's wife in town. We just came from England, and I was so distressed to see the news about your little boy. And I would like to ask if you have anyone praying for you because I would like to ask our church to pray for you and your little boy and your husband. Would that be alright?"

And there was dead silence at the other end of the phone. I thought, "I shouldn't have done it. Why didn't I ask somebody? Why did I bother doing this?" And then this little broken voice came over the wires. "Where do you live?" I said, "In Brookfield." She said, "I'm coming to see you. Is that alright?" Never met me. First time. Got in the car, came over, and I met who is now a very dear friend. Long, long story.

But I tell you, I didn't want to do it. I didn't want to get up close to a two-year-old dying of leukemia. It was something that none of us want to do. We do not want to be a Job's friend, and they didn't do it all wrong. We do not want to travel a distance. We do not want to go out of our way to help someone.

Now, Karen told me that when this news hit, all their friends—all their friends—backed off. And she said their very best friends—she was so lonely, she was so desperate, she was so angry, she was so upset, you can imagine. And she said it was Christmas when this happened, just before Christmas. She saw their closest friends coming up the drive with Christmas presents in their arms, and she was just crying with relief. "Here is somebody actually going to come into her house and be there."

And so she opened the door and the man said, "Hi, Karen. We're really, we're so sorry." He put the presents in the step at arms length and said, "We can't stop. We can't stop," and backed off. And I tell you, the pain of that was worse than what she was going through.

And so what we have to do is do what Job's friends did. And at the first chapter in verse 11, when Job's three friends heard about all the troubles that had come upon him, they set out from their homes and they met together by agreement to go and sympathize with him and comfort him. Now, they did it right. They really put themselves out to go, to presence themselves with him. That's what we need to do.

So Satan would paralyze us with the pain of waiting ourselves, and people are wondering what to do. We can go help them get into a routine. We can go clean their house for them. We can go do something for them. I remember when I was on my own for three months and the kids started to get sick. This was in England.

And one of them got measles, and three weeks later the next one, and then three weeks later the next one. And as soon as I was nearly better with the third one, one of them got mumps, and then the next one got mumps, and the next one got mumps. And I was literally nursing day and night for three months.

And right at the end, I was so low, I got it. I got mumps as an adult and I got it extremely badly. Stewart was in the East Europe country. I couldn't get in touch with him. He was there on some pretense doing ministry, but he had told me—I'm sorry, I start again and explain that. He was not supposed to be doing ministry at that point in that Communist area, and so he could not get in touch with me, couldn't write to me, couldn't call me or anything. And I knew that I would have to wait those long months until he came out again. So I couldn't even tell him.

And my doctor, who happened to be an atheist, came to see me and he said, "Jill, I want to hospitalize you." And I said, "Hospitalize me for mumps?" He said, "Yes, it's very dangerous. You've got it very badly. I just need you in there for a couple of days." And I said, "I can't do it." And he said, "Why not?" I said, "Well, I've got three kids here." And he said, "Where's your husband?" And I said, "Well, he's in East Germany." He said, "Well, get hold of him. I'll talk to him." I said, "I can't get hold of him."

And he said, "Well, what do you mean you can't get hold of him? He needs to come home." And I said, "Well, he can't come home." Well, we went back and forth, and he didn't understand this a bit, so off he went. As I was lying in bed the next morning, I heard some noises downstairs and I heard somebody washing up.

And I went downstairs to see who it was and it was my doctor. My good old English family doctor. Don't have that sort of thing anymore. He had my apron on and he was washing up. Dear Dr. Barry. And I said, "What are you doing, Dr. Barry?" He said, "I'm doing what your husband should be doing."

So I tried to explain Christian ministry and whatnot to this very intelligent atheist man, but it wasn't the time or the place and I said, "Oh dear, dear, dear." I said, "I'll try and get in touch with him." And he said, "You don't need to bother, I already have." And he had tracked him down and got in touch with him and Stewart was on the way home. It was a very interesting situation. But Dr. Barry, a non-believer, was doing what we should do. He was putting himself out. He was helping me to get on with my routine. He was helping me to normalize, and he was not backing off from a suffering situation, if you like.

So here we are, praising in pain. It's hard, isn't it? And yet praise brings God's presence near. He inhabits the praise of His people. Should know what Joni Eareckson said? What a woman she is. "My paralysis has drawn me close to God and given me a spiritual healing which I wouldn't trade for a hundred thousand years on my feet." Can you imagine saying that?

Paralyzed from the neck down. "My paralysis has drawn me so close to God, it's given me a spiritual healing which I wouldn't trade for a thousand years on my feet." Oh, that our trust engendered by praise would not be subjected to the trials and vicissitudes of life. When I think of what Joni does, she's an artist, she's a singer, she makes records, she writes books with her mouth.

Sometimes she draws a little bit with her toes, but mostly with her mouth. She drives a car with her shoulders on the Los Angeles freeways. She travels all over the world, all over the world. And you say, "Well, it's easy. She has these people that helps her and whatnot." I don't know what you know about somebody that's paralyzed from the neck down, but they suffer very dreadfully even though they can't feel it with sores.

And I have been with her abroad when she has been in a terrible state, dreadful state, with sitting too long because her body can't tell her when there's something wrong. And then these sores break out and they won't heal and they're like ulcers and it's all part of that. And I have seen her; she's never missed a beat. She's never missed a meeting as far as I know. Talk about an example to us, always praising. And she said to me once, "Praise brings Him near. Praise brings Him near." And I've never forgotten that.

And praise gives us peace of mind as well. Poor Job, I mean, he lost most of the partners that should have been there to help him once he arrived home. But his three friends, they didn't do it all wrong as I said. When they heard about it, they went out of their way. If you look on a map, they came an incredible distance just to be there. It costs to be a real friend. They left their homes; they left their families. They couldn't get in a plane and go. They had to travel in those days through very dangerous places.

Job lived on the outskirts of the frontiers of civilization. He had chosen to live there. He was a rancher. He was the king, the chief of that entire area of the country where nobody had ever lived before. But there were marauding bands, there were vicious people, there were the outcasts of society all around. It was frontier living. And these three people all came from different countries or right out on frontier lands as well, these three chiefs. And they traveled through great danger to get there.

Now, let me ask you and let me ask myself, do we really go out of our way to get there? I mean, for us maybe it's going to cost us a plane ticket, which means we can't go on vacation next year because we have to be there. What I find is that comfort that comforts costs. And if we're going to be a comfort to someone, it's going to cost us something. We're going to go out of our way. We're going to have to perhaps leave our homes and our families.

And of course they got close enough; their concern was genuine. Their shock was incredible. It says they could hardly recognize him. They were absolutely shocked. When they saw him from a distance, they could hardly recognize him. This was not suffering that you wanted to be too close to. The guy was covered in boils from head to foot. He got a piece of pottery and was scraping off the goop. Do you want to sit on an ash heap with someone like that?

And yet you know, I know in my own few experiences, I think all Stewart's and my parents have died hard. They've all died hard, died tough. And it's the last thing you want to be, to take the pottery and to do that. And yet they came and did it. I don't think they just sat around the ash heap. I think they did what they could. You do what you can. And if you're going to be the sort of comforter that you should be as a Christian, you need to be like that.

Don't shun the experience. You've no idea what it's going to do for you and to you and eventually through you. Concern costs. And they cried when they saw him from a distance. They began to weep aloud in their way and they tore their robes, their own cultural way of showing their great grief and sorrow with him.

And do it your way. That was their way. You do it your way. You know, I often have people say to me, "What can I say? What can I take? Give me a book, recommend this. I've got to do this. I'm going to—on a plane to this awful situation that's happened. My daughter's husband's just left her. What am I going to say?"

And you know what I've started saying to people? "Just—I'm not going to tell you. Just go and be yourself and do it your way. You know." You know, I'm saying that to young mothers now because they are so paralyzed with all this instruction they're receiving on how to raise their children. I find that they now dare not do anything.

Because there's books about this and books about that and books about what they did wrong and what they should be doing right and now the next thing, you know. And do you know what I say to young mothers? "Don't read any more books. You're a mother. You know how to do it. Do it your way. Go on, you know." Just encourage them to be themselves.

And you know, if you could really believe in yourself as much as to say to God in prayer, "I need to do it my way. I need to just do it how I would do it. Give me the idea of how I should do this, my personality." If you're not very good with words, don't try saying anything. Get somebody else to say it in a book or a card. If you are good with words and that's how God's made you, say it with words some way.

So be yourself in the situation and do it your way. And of course, just be there. You don't need to say anything. Seven days they sat and said nothing. Oh, that they had continued like that. Of course they didn't. Seven days was the customary mourning period for the dead. His friends grieved as though he was dead. Their grief was real. Their grief was real. Their camels stank, but their grief was real and their concern was real. And we're often so afraid of silence we feel we have to fill it with words, whether we have anything to say or not.

Sometimes silence is the only appropriate response, like Ben Patterson's quote of the young man just sitting sobbing and hurting, weeping with those that weep. And when he was asked, "What's the matter with you?" he said, "Well, it hurts, stupid." He was just being there and weeping.

And then, of course, the commitment. You've got to be in there for the long haul. Whatever you say about Job's comforters, they were there in chapter 42. They were there in chapter one and they were there when it was over. They had come to settle in until some closure came with this situation. And maybe you can't do that, maybe you can. But you can at least commit to be there in mind, in prayer, in touch, whether you can be there in presence or not.

It means an awful lot to stick with it. Fair-weather friends are going to fall away. So you meet it with partners. Do you have friends like that? Do you have some of these wonderful comforters? Could you be a comforter to someone in pain and trouble like that? And then we have to meet this whole suffering thing. Meet it with praise, meet it with partners, meet it with perspective.

And we're going to start now and look at Satan and get our perspective right on him, and then we're going to look at God and see what was really happening here. I want to tell you something: you might be surprised that I haven't mentioned Satan in five sessions. Not really. I mean, I sort of mention him here and there. And that has been deliberate. Because as I was praying about this, I decided I would not give him billing. I would not give him main billing.

That I would deal with him when I needed to, and I think the time has come to do that. Does Satan have the power, for example, to cause a storm, a natural disaster? Does Satan cause sickness? Now, I want you to think about that. But unless we keep him in perspective, we can really run scared. God keeps him in his place and he is limited. C.S. Lewis says you can make two mistakes with Satan: you can give him too much billing or you can give him too little. And I have probably been giving him too little.

But the time has come to deal with him. We have to meet pain with perspective and then we'll be able to praise in pain. A friend of mine said once on the mission field, she was having a terrible time. Everything had gone wrong. She'd been out there 13 years and she had three converts to show for it. One of them died, one of them moved away, and the other one fell away.

She wrote me a letter. She said, "Well, when I can't praise God for what He's allowed, I praise Him for who He is in what He's allowed. And that's all I'm left with. When I can't praise God for what He's allowed, I praise Him for who He is in what He's allowed, and that's all I'm left with." Maybe that's all you're left with. Start to praise. Find something in the situation to praise for, and you'll find it if you look hard enough.

And praise will bring peace, and praise will bring purpose, and you'll get back into some sort of routine again. And maybe you can take some of these very practical things, obvious things, and think of somebody that's in pain. What could you do? Could you go, could you go out of your way this week? Could you be yourself in that situation and ask Christ to reach out of your life and your personality and your means to relieve somebody like Job who's suffering? What is the Lord telling you? Let's pray together.

Heavenly Father, it's hard to be in God's waiting room. And yet we are all aware that waiting does to us what suffering itself does—all sorts of good things. It mightn't feel good, but the things that waiting and suffering does to us are good, in the big picture, in the greater scheme of things. And Lord, life isn't fair and life isn't easy, and yet you are there in it all.

And we do not need to praise for the problems, or praise for the leukemia, or praise for the sickness, but we do need to praise You for who You are in the middle of the sickness and the leukemia and everything else. Lord, as we try and get perspective on how much power Satan really has and what's all this about, so that we can get perhaps a little theology of pain and suffering in our heads that we might be better able to cope and to be a blessing to others.

Help us to be open to what you're saying to us. Help us to read a lot and study a lot and learn a lot and minister a lot out of our own pain into the lives of others. We ask it, Lord, that your kingdom may be extended, because we know that pain and suffering often do turn people to God as well as turn them away from Him. And we want to be part of that miracle. We ask all this for Christ's sake, Amen.