Telling the Truth

Guest (Male): Today, Jill Briscoe begins a message called "Trusting in Trouble" to show you from the story of Job how you can trust God's goodness when trouble inevitably comes knocking on your door. That message is up next.

When life's storms suddenly come your way, how do you respond? Do you doubt God's presence, questioning his concern for you? Or do you see storms as part of God's plan for your life and rest assured he cares for you and is in control of all things?

We want to help you trust in God's care and control in all the storms you face by sending you Jill Briscoe's message, "Weathering the Storms of Life," as well as a set of 12 beautifully designed scripture cards to encourage you in troubled times.

In "Weathering the Storms of Life," Jill teaches from the Gospel of Mark, examining the disciples' experience in a sudden storm to address the issues of suffering and faith, challenging you to examine your belief in God in the midst of trouble.

Her teaching and the scripture cards will encourage you as you discover how you can be sure of God's love for you and his control over every circumstance, no matter how sudden, severe, or unexpected.

"Weathering the Storms of Life" and the set of 12 scripture cards are our thanks for your gift to help more people experience life through the teaching and resources of Telling the Truth. So request your copy when you give today. 1-800-889-5388. That's 1-800-889-5388. Or give online at tellingthetruth.org. Now, here's Jill with today's message.

Jill Briscoe: None of us know what is around the corner of tomorrow, except there is someone we can know around the corner of tomorrow. We have no idea of the events that will meet us. God, in his grace, has veiled the future. We have enough problem dealing with our past. If he also gave us a full understanding of what's ahead in the future, we'd really be in trouble.

We struggle with our past, we struggle with our present, which we know. And in his grace, he waits with our future in his hands. We need each other. We need the fellowship of the believers of the body to help us when unexpected things come. One of God's names should have been the God of the surprise, because there are surprises, except, of course, he is never surprised, seeing he knows everything that's there.

In David McKenna's book, *The Whisper of His Grace*, which is an amazing book, a wonderful book on the book of Job, he begins the book by saying, "Sooner or later, each of us suffers. When we do, we will all ask the same three questions: Why me? Why this? Why now? Why me? Why this? Why now?"

And then he gives some illustrations, and I'm sure all of us could have filled a book or two for him because all of us have been in that situation where we ask those three questions. He talks about ten days before graduation from seminary, a 30-year-old student, his wife, and baby are confronted head-on by a loaded gravel truck that swerves into the lane. Spinning the wheel to save his wife and baby, Tom receives the full blow of the crash.

Crushed head and a broken body threaten his life, his mind, his ministry. While waiting and praying in the emergency room that night, we ask his questions for him: Why me? Why this? Why now? And then he finishes the little bit of introduction by saying, "A well-to-do financier reflects on the question: Why do bad things happen to good people?"

Thieves have robbed his home and escaped with his wife's jewels. In full seriousness, he reasons, "I work hard, I try to be good, and then this happens. I just don't understand it. And to tell you the truth, I'm bitter." Even the suffering of lost luxury provokes the question: Why me? Why this? Why now?

And then he says, "Only human beings can ask why, and God does not mind the asking of the question. He does intend us to hear his silence as an answer and accept it, or the answers he gives to questions that we haven't even asked that we should be asking."

As we come to this second study, I want to refresh your mind by reading a little bit of the prologue of Job from *Today's English Version* to refresh your memory of what we're talking about here—this man who, in innocence in the sense of being a victim, suffers unbelievable sorrows and troubles.

Verse 13 of chapter 1: "One day, when Job's children were having a feast at the home of their eldest brother, a messenger came running to Job. 'We were plowing the fields with the cattle,' he said, 'and the donkeys were in a nearby pasture. Suddenly, the Sabeans attacked and stole them all. They killed every one of your servants except me. I'm the only one who escaped to tell you.'"

Before he finished speaking, another servant came and said, "Lightning struck the sheep and the shepherds and killed them all, and I'm the only one who escaped to tell you." And before he finished speaking, another servant came and said, "Three bands of Chaldean raiders attacked us, took away the camels, killed all your servants except me. I'm the only one who escaped to tell you."

Before he finished speaking, another servant came and said, "Your children were having a feast at the home of your eldest son when a storm swept in from the desert, blew the house down, and killed them all. And I'm the only one who's escaped to tell you." Then Job got up, tore his clothes in grief, he shaved his head, and he threw himself facedown on the ground.

He said, "I was born with nothing, and I will die with nothing. The Lord gave, and now he's taken away. May his name be praised." In spite of everything that had happened, Job did not sin by blaming God. Job did not sin by blaming God. Now remember that Satan had not taken away Job's wife, feeling that he could well use her to make him feel more miserable still.

Her attack on Job was probably more difficult to handle than his three comforters who came along a little bit later—comforters in parentheses. Job's wife was asking a question that put doubts in his mind about God's integrity. "Why do you continue to have faith in a God who let such awful things happen to us?" she asked. "What sort of a God is he when you've lived all your life to please him, and see what he's done to you?"

This is how she brought doubt into his mind about God's integrity. Now his three friends were going to attack Job's integrity, Job's character. "You must be an awful sinner for all this awful stuff to have happened," and we will deal with that in another study. But at this shock moment, at this moment when he has received the messenger and received the bad news, she comes at him.

"What a pathetic figure you are! We've lost our kids, we've lost our money, we've lost our friends, we've lost our business. Curse God for what he's done. What a bad God he must be to send this trouble our way." And of course, his answer was, "You're talking like an infidel. Shall we receive good from the hand of God and not trouble?"

That's how infidels talk. And this lady was a believing lady. And yet, when trouble comes to us, believing though we might be, we are often in Job's wife's sandals, speaking Job's wife's words. We look at her in horror when we read this story, and yet we ourselves, I'm sure, are guilty of such things as well. If we don't say it, we think it.

Job, however, is not guilty of the defamation of the character of God. He didn't question God's character. He received the trouble as from God's hands, knowing he could trust the God to whom those hands belonged. He received the trouble. Shall we not receive trouble from God's hands? Knowing that at the end of the hands were the arms, and at the end of the arms was the person of God—the mind of God, the heart of God.

He looked up from the hands to the face of God. Even though he couldn't make reason of it, he accepted the trouble from loving hands. That's what I'm trying to say. So how can we begin to accept the unacceptable? By first believing the unacceptable has come to us with the full knowledge and permission of a God of integrity and is acceptable to him.

That's where we have to begin in our wrestling—and we must wrestle—with this subject of why do the innocent suffer. Now the messenger comes, the servant comes, another one, another one. This is a drama; the prologue is written in drama form. And the sooner we believe the bad news, the sooner we'll be able to start and cope.

Often the shock sends us into denial. We think, "If I don't believe that this has happened, or if I don't believe this is actually happening to me, then maybe it will stop happening." This is how our mind works. The mind runs away to a safe place—somewhere, any where—and we go into denial. That is a very common, usual thing.

I'm telling you simply something you know, but just so that next time it happens to you, you will know: I am in shock. I am in denial. And even knowing that you're in denial, don't deny you're in denial. Because if you can know you're in denial, then maybe you can start and do something about believing the messenger.

I have been with people in shock situations many, many times in the ministry, and I have seen people struggling with the messenger and the message that the messenger has brought. Job was able, apparently, to believe the messengers, to believe the message. "The Lord has given, the Lord has taken away," and thereby was able to begin to put some coping mechanisms into place.

I wonder where Job was when the messenger came. Perhaps in the field, perhaps in the office, perhaps at home, perhaps with the elders gathering around some problem of the community that he served as the greatest man in all of the East. Wherever he was, his reaction was written down. Some believe that an observer, maybe Elihu, who you'll meet later in the story, was the one that wrote the book of Job.

It is written as if an observer of Job's sufferings and troubles wrote it. I don't know where he was, but I do know that there were people around because somebody recorded his reaction for us. The world does judge our faith. The world does judge the Christian's faith by how we respond and react to trouble—how we cope with it, how we receive our troubles.

They might be impressed or they might not be impressed. Job's wife was not impressed. She was not impressed with Job's reaction. It is not always that your great statement of faith, your reflection of Christ at the moment of your trouble, will impress those that observe. They might get angry with your God. They might get angry with you. She certainly did.

She thought him stupid to continue to have any faith at all. Her reaction was Job may as well die without any more childish faith in a deity that had proven to be neglectful, at least, or vindictive, at worst. And so even though he is saying these incredible things—"Praise be the name of the Lord. Shall we receive good at the hand of God and not receive trouble?"—Job's wife is not impressed.

Job, however, whether she was impressed or not, maintained his faith in a God that had proved his great goodness over the years by the gifts he'd showered upon them. He believed that God was the author of good, and that's what he clung to throughout his book and throughout his lapses of faith. We all have lapses of faith.

Essentially, he never lost it. He didn't know where it was to be found for a day or two, but he never really lost his faith in the integrity of God. Now the problem was Job didn't know what had happened in heaven. The prologue is something you and I read. The prologue was written years after this event happened.

And so Job didn't know about this little thing that had gone on in heaven between Satan and God. Job's perspective was that this trouble had come from God's hands. It was a mystery, he didn't understand it, but he was going to trust God whom he knew to be a good God, even though it was all a muddle and he was very confused.

He didn't understand that God is not the author of evil, that Satan is the author of evil. Of course, he didn't know that God had permitted Satan—who is the author of evil, who is our accuser, and certainly was Job's accuser in heaven before God, and is our adversary and is our attacker—to do the work that Satan does best.

He perceived this trouble had come from God who was somehow its author. He did not grasp the permissive will of God. He did not understand that the hedge that God had protected him with had been, in God's mysterious permissive sovereign will—his mysterious permissive good sovereign will—withdrawn, and that God had allowed Satan to attack him.

Yet he received it as if God had sent it and as if God were the author of evil, and yet he still trusted God not understanding that to know what he was doing. Now that's a faith bigger than the faith that you and I possess. We know that Satan is the author of ill, and we know that God is the author of good. He did not have that knowledge.

He only had some divine revelation that we do not understand in a dream, in a personal appearance of God. Remember, this is the first book written in the canon of scripture, the first book in the Bible, before Genesis. This is the oldest book in the Bible. And so the way that Job had come to know God is not explained to us, but it is certainly not with the benefit of 2,000 years of Christianity hindsight that he faces his problem.

However, he was able to receive it. And you know, there's a step from believing it to receiving it. But it helped him to be able to do that. Elliot says in *A Path Through Suffering*: "Suffering, even in its mildest forms and inconveniences, delays, disappointments, discomfort, or anything that is not in harmony with our whims and preferences, we will not tolerate. We will reject it. We will thrust it away. We will deny it."

I find myself doing that along with you, I'm sure. And stress is the result. In acceptance lies the peace, the peace that's going to help you cope—to believe it, not to live in denial, but then to receive it as from the hand of a God, even though you do not understand why he has allowed Satan permission to do these things in your life.

I think of the places that you're at when the messenger came. Where were you when the messenger came? People often say, "Where were you when JFK was shot?" I don't know why they ask that question, but I bet you can remember. It's as if there's a time-lapse inside us like a camera in you. You get this freeze on a frame.

Somehow we remember where we are when something dreadful happens, don't we? I remember another more personal account in my own life. We had come here to buy a house, to come to immigrate. And I was to be here for two weeks and join my husband in Texas up in a beautiful area where they were having a youth camp for the Southern Baptist Convention.

Thousands of young people, and my husband was the guest speaker. I was going to join him there for a weekend, come on to Milwaukee, see the house the church had purchased for us, a parsonage, meet the church, and then go back home. That was a two-week trip. I had no sooner got here and arrived at the camp and was struggling with culture shock and trying to understand the language.

I thought I'd come to somewhere that spoke English, but I couldn't understand a word anybody was saying. I was beginning to thoroughly enjoy and get the taste of what was happening in that marvelous convention, the Southern Baptist Convention of young people. The second day, my husband came back after breakfast. I was preparing a little talk I was going to give.

He said to me, "Come and sit down." And I looked at his face and sat down, and of course, running frantically through my mind was: Who's dead? Is it David? Is it Judy? Is it Peter? Always thinking the worst. And he said, "Something has happened at home. Judy has had a bad accident." And I said, "How bad?"

He said, "Well, she's all right. She's not dead. But she's in hospital. She went through a glass window and she severed her—the whole of her arm here—tendon, right up to her elbow. She's actually been there since you left four days, but they didn't want to tell us until now." I remember where I was. I remember the color of the carpet.

It was green shag, which shows you how long ago it was. But isn't it funny the way you do that? You remember where you are when the messenger comes. I remember believing the message. That I didn't have a problem with. I was not in denial. I was not trying to pretend it hadn't happened. But I remember struggling with the next step of receiving the message.

I believed it, but I couldn't receive it as a sovereign act of a good God's knowledgeable permissive will. Stress was the result. Stuart said to me, "Now you've got about 20 minutes, half an hour, to decide what you're going to do. And it's entirely up to you. You must do what you feel you should do. I can get some tickets; you can turn around and go straight back."

I said, "But haven't I got to go and see the parsonage and meet the church?" And he said, "Well, I'm going to leave this up to you. You do what you feel you should do." I had half an hour to make decisions, and you can't make decisions when you're in such a stressed-out situation because my mind was flying around this incredible thing that I'd been told.

How could my God allow this? What was he doing while my little girl was playing? Were his guardian angels on tea break? I wanted to know. And because I was busy with that and I couldn't receive it—"Shall we receive good at the hand of God and not receive the trouble at the hands of a good God?"—I was not able to make these decisions that I had to make. Stress was the result.

What I remember doing was Stuart had to go and take the meeting, and I went back to my room and started to read where I'd left off that morning in Matthew 10. And I read, "Yet not one sparrow falls to the ground apart from the will of your Father." Funnily enough, I had said to Stuart just before I read this, "What was he doing when my little sparrow fell? What was he doing when my little sparrow fell?"

God immediately answered me directly from the scriptures, "Yet not one sparrow falls to the ground apart from the will of your Father." It was at that point I was able to say on my knees, "I receive this trouble. I accept this. I do not understand it." And peace, a measure of peace, came, and I was able to make the right decisions.

Actually, I didn't go home. I came on here to the church, which was the right decision. You know, it's an amazing thing to believe and to receive—two separate things. Years later, I wrote a little book called *Harrow Sparrow*, and it's about when a sparrow falls. I wrote it for children and I wrote it around sort of that incident that happened in Judy's life.

What I didn't know because the answers to these things never come, and maybe never, never come in our lifetime—for me it never came until years and years later when Judy was a beautiful young lady, 24 years of age or so, and we wrote our first book together, *Space to Breathe, Room to Grow*. I don't even know, I can't remember why we started to talk about this incident.

She told me, she said, "You know, Mommy, when I was in hospital, it wasn't you I wanted. It was Dad. I just wanted my earthly Dad's arms around me. And he wasn't there. I couldn't have him." But she said, "My Heavenly Father came and put his arms around me." And she said, "I don't know if that's when I was really converted or not."

She said, "I came to understand as a little girl of 12 that you would not be able to be there all my life, but when you weren't there, he was."

Guest (Male): Thanks for joining us today here on Telling the Truth. We pray today's message has helped you to experience life in all its fullness through Jesus Christ. We want you to know your partnership is helping listeners like Gordon, who writes, "I can always count on the fact, whenever listening on radio, online, or reading, that Stuart and Jill Briscoe have steady hands on the plow, clear and educated minds on the text, and willing hearts at the listen. Thank you for your faithfulness."

Thanks, Gordon. When life's storms suddenly come your way, how do you respond? Do you doubt God's presence, questioning his concern for you? Or do you see storms as part of God's plan for your life and rest assured he cares for you and is in control of all things?

We want to help you trust in God's care and control in all the storms you face by sending you Jill Briscoe's message, "Weathering the Storms of Life," as well as a set of 12 beautifully designed scripture cards to encourage you in troubled times. "Weathering the Storms of Life" and the set of 12 scripture cards are our thanks for your gift to help more people experience life through the teaching and resources of Telling the Truth.

So request your copy when you give today. 1-800-889-5388. That's 1-800-889-5388. Or give online at tellingthetruth.org. Thanks for being here today. Come back next time for more encouraging truth from God's word. Experience life here on Telling the Truth.