Telling the Truth

Guest (Male): Today, Jill is bringing us part two of her message called "Praising in Pain." It's from her series "Triumph in Trouble," which is all about learning to look at suffering in a new way. When life 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?

Guest (Female): 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 at 1-800-889-5388 or give online at tellingthetruth.org. Now, here's Jill with her message, "Praising in Pain."

Jill Briscoe: Job went home, and in verse 13, he says this, and he's apparently back home among his friends and brothers and whatnot. He says, "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. He's home again and trying to keep up the relationships that he had. He's not succeeding very well, but he's trying. "Relationship" is the second word. 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, the will, or the want to continue in our relationships.

And yet, one of the things that you must do is to keep up the relationships that you can. 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 too. 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." She said they are the sort of people that she would never have made friends with if they hadn't found themselves in the same situation, but they are among her 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. All you need are people and those relationships because there is relief, 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 and 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 the past, 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 Stuart's mother discovered yet one more cancer when she was staying with us. It was obvious that this was the last long haul. We didn't know how long it was going to be for mother, but we invited her to stay and see it out with us. It was not easy. She did not have any insurance. She had come to visit for three weeks and ended up staying 18 months.

She had five cancer operations and many months of chemotherapy without any insurance. 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. We were in a very nice parsonage at the time, but it really wasn't big enough. It was open-plan, so everyone saw everything. There wasn't a room for mother to nurse her and all the rest of it. That was one of the reasons we moved to that larger house.

But 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. I remember talking to Jack Olinger and saying, "I know you'll think this is absolutely dreadful, but I don't want her to stay. 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 new Christian doctor about that. He asked why I didn't 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 close up because it was going to be a 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. As leaders, we're supposed to know. 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.

We see that flash on the screen and then we turn away, 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. 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.

So what we have to do is do what Job's friends did. In Chapter 2, 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 and present themselves with him. And that's what we need to do.

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 and clean their house for them, we can go and do something for them. Poor Job lost most of the partners that should have been there to help him once he arrived home. But his three friends 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 frontier 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 land 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? 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 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, I know in my own few experiences, I think all Stuart'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.

Guest (Male): More powerful teaching from the Briscoes is headed your way, so don't go anywhere. We've made a wide array of resources and content available to you online for free at tellingthetruth.org and on the "Telling the Truth" app. There, you can listen, read, and watch powerful teaching from Stuart and Jill on relevant topics like the sovereignty of God, the importance of the church, and how to grow closer with Jesus Christ. You can also request this month's featured resource as thanks for your gift of support to help share the abundant life Jesus offers with more people around the world. Visit us online or download the app today and experience life with "Telling the Truth." Now, let's rejoin the program as Jill continues her message, "Praising in Pain."

Jill Briscoe: 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. Often 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 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 do you know what I've started saying to people? I'm not going to tell you.

Just go and be yourself and do it your way. Do it your way. Go on, you know. Just encourage them to be themselves. 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 somewhere. 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 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 1, 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. 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 main billing. I would not give him main billing. 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.

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.

Think of somebody that's in pain. What could you do? Could you go? Could you go out of your way this week and ask Christ to reach out of your life and your personality and your means to relieve somebody like Job who's suffering?

Guest (Male): Jill's with us now to answer a few questions about today's message. Jill, why is it sometimes a struggle to stay by our friends' sides when they are suffering?

Jill Briscoe: Well, I was talking about how Job's friends at great cost of time and money and sacrifice came to comfort Job. And they lived a long way away. There were no airplanes. They had to go the long way by camel and by taking a whole lot of supplies with them. The commentators believe for some reasons, good reasons I believe, that they were there at the end of the story, and that the story took about two years in our time.

It's a long time to go and comfort somebody and leave all your responsibilities and your loved ones behind. It costs to comfort Job. If we're really going to be able to do what we should do for people, then it's going to cost us. It could cost us in time, it could cost us in money, it could cost us in choosing to be separate from our families and from those we love, etc., etc.

So that's why it's a struggle to stay by our friend's side when they are suffering. We don't want to pay the cost. Well, that's all right, I'll visit once or I'll send a note. I don't even need to spend time that I wanted to do something else with. I can send an email these days or a tweet, etc., etc. It costs to comfort Job. That's why it's a struggle.

Guest (Male): Jill, you know it's hard, but God really does want us to be a comforter to those in pain. So how do we know the right thing to do or say?

Jill Briscoe: Well, you can never know if you have said the absolute right thing, and don't do a post-mortem on it. I used to tend to think after having a counseling session with someone or trying to help somebody, oh, I'd go over and over it. Why did I say that? Or why didn't I say the other? Or I could have given them a book that I'd read.

Why didn't I? It is absolutely no use. I mean, you could always still send the book that you suddenly thought of, or you could pay another visit, so you can redress that. But don't have a post-mortem. Just be in touch with God. Just be in touch. Read Isaiah Chapter 50 and read about the servant and the master, and how the rabbi would shake awake the pupil to wake him in the morning and basically say, "Get up and listen to me so you can go out and listen to them and take the word you learn in the morning to help the weary one along the way."

And that's the thing. Get up early in the morning to receive a word from God for yourself. Then go out into the day and look for the weary one. It won't be hard. They'll be tripping you up. Plenty of people weary of life, plenty of people weary of a marriage, plenty of people weary. And the word you have received from God in the morning will be so many times just the right thing for that weary one along the way.

And so receiving comfort and saying the right thing is often coming out of your own growing experience of the love of God in your own life and your relationship. That's why it's so important, not just for your sake but for the weary one's sake, that you spend much time with God.

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. When life 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 at 1-800-889-5388 or give online at tellingthetruth.org. Thanks for being here today. Come back again for more biblical truth to help you experience life. Join us next time on "Telling the Truth."