When I began to study for our fall series on Job I did so with great trepidation. Who in our church would be met with unexpected suffering over the course of our study? Who would say the truth from Job arrive “just in time” for them during a season of pain and hardship?

I didn’t think those questions were unrealistic. God is sovereign over His powerful word. It is never accidental that a church hears the text it hears each week it gathers together. If, after much humble prayer and meditation, a new book of the Bible is selected for study, I take it to mean God wants those people to hear that book at that time. If you agree with that statement, then a mere cursory knowledge of Job would lead you to conclude – like me – that unusual suffering might be coming our way this fall.

And it has.

A STUDY FOR THE SEASON

I walked into this series knowing that several people were already suffering with cancer; many were dealing with familial and parenting pain; others were going through hardship in the workplace. The truth of Job has been like ballast in their lifeboat, giving weight and meaning as the struggle against the storms of suffering rushing over the deck.

Then came the news that a family in our church who was close to adopting a set of siblings, were actually going to have to watch the children return home to an environment in which no children should be raised. Our church had prayed for 18 months for God to provide children for this godly couple. The wife, upon finding out the children would likely be returned to their birth mom said, “It feels as though they’ve been given a death sentence.” The husband said, “If we weren’t studying the book of Job . . . I don’t know if we’d be making it.”

Job has been a sovereign word for their season of suffering.

A few weeks later I was on the phone with a church member talking about how we could pray for his family and he asked that God would open the womb. Their life was coming to the inevitable place of beginning to try to have children and there was some fear of not being able to conceive after trying for a few months. What elation we had together when just under a week I found out they were in fact pregnant! Two months go by and I receive an email from the husband saying his wife miscarried. Just a few days later I am preaching on Job 18-19 and asking the congregation as a whole, “Will you believe God is for you when your suffering makes no sense?”

God was speaking to them in their suffering.

WEEP WITH THE WEEPING

Then I received a text message this Tuesday informing me one of the women in our church had just gone into the doctor for a sonogram and it was discovered the baby might have anencephaly. Anencephaly is the absence of a major portion of the brain, skull, and scalp that occurs during embryonic development. Another test the next day confirmed the findings. Now these precious parents face the prospect of their child either dying in the womb or, more likely, giving birth to a baby that will inevitably die within a few hours of delivery.

I know afresh what it means to weep with those who are weeping.

The father of this young child texted me and said, “We are thankful for your teaching on Job. There was never any doubt that we’d need it, we just hoped it wouldn’t be so soon.”

Me too, brother. Me too.

God’s word has prepared them for this suffering.

HE IS DOING SOMETHING

I share all this to say something quite simple, “Trust in the sovereign sufficiency of God’s Word.” Oh, how it is useful and powerful! He has decreed to bring unimaginable glory to His name and good to His people through the preached word. The Spirit will use it as a mold to conform the church into Christ’s image.

I wish the uncommon suffering hadn’t come, but oh how thankful I am that the written word tethers us to the Incarnate Word.

Our hope is build on nothing less
Than Jesus’ blood and righteousness
We dare not trust the sweetest frame
But wholly lean on Jesus’ name