Back in early June I spent a couple days at a cabin in the middle of Nowhere, TX for a period of what Spurgeon called “holy inaction and consecrated leisure.”
I’m not sure it’s a good thing to have measureables for holy inaction (is it truly “inaction” at that point?), but I nevertheless walked into the cabin with several goals in mind. One of them was settling the preaching calendar for the remainder of 2014.
CRUNCH TIME WAS COMING
At any given moment I usually have the next twelve months of sermons at IDC planned. We were due to finish the gospel of Mark at the end of June and the existing plan called for a series of summer sermons in Proverbs before turning to Genesis in the fall. For well over a year I was preparing those respective series, but as time went by I increasingly felt as though the Lord was leading elsewhere. My restlessness was largely due to shepherding conversations I’d had. Proverbs and Genesis would undoubtedly be profitable for us (cf. 2 Tim. 3:16), but I sensed they wouldn’t directly address the issues our congregation was facing at that moment.
My problem – and hence the indecision after months of pondering – was that I seemed incapable of articulating exactly what those very issues were. It was a strange place to be sure.
Clarity then came in an unexpected way.
A SOVEREIGN SURPRISE
On my second morning in the middle of Nowhere I pulled up Feedly to read the morning’s blog posts and was immediately summoned to a post from Justin Taylor entitled, “The Richest, Most Moving, Most Deeply Cross-Centered and God-Glorifying Treatment of Job I Have Ever Read.” The post simply listed the endorsements from Christopher Ash’s forthcoming commentary on Job. The smashing and superlatives statements contained in the various endorsements steeled my gaze in a most certain way: I knew Job was the next book of the Bible we needed to study.
It was one of those moments of rare, immediate, and unexpected Spirit-wrought certainty.
As I prayed and meditated on the matter I realized what those “impossible to articulate” congregational matters were: 1) the sovereignty of God and 2) the suffering of God’s people. Our congregation was (and is) full of people falling headlong into one or both of these issues. Some were learning and leaning into the application of God’s sovereignty to their lives, others were going through seasons of pronounced difficult and pain.
Studies in Proverbs and Genesis would no doubt apply to those issues, but Job confronts them with peculiar power.
And so we’ve spent the last few months studying Job and his story of suffering has indeed confronted us with peculiar power. I’ve never before received consistency of comments like, “That was exactly what I needed to hear,” and, “I can’t remember the last time I was this excited about a sermon series.” Job has been a sovereign word for multiple seasons of suffering.
And so I’m thankful for sovereign surprises.
How has God surprised you with His sovereign care this year?