Understanding the Purpose in Pain

Even when we can’t see it, God is at work beneath the pain. Let’s hold onto hope together!

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Transcript

Good morning, church. We're continuing our series Where's God? And today we're asking the question, where's God when there's suffering? Where's God when I'm in pain? And when there doesn't seem to be an end?

What we know is that when dust rises, so do the questions in our lives. And what I want to share today for all of us is a reminder of this. Asking the question, where's God? Isn't a lack of faith. It's actually the beginning of deeper faith.

It is good, it is healthy, and it is necessary for us to ask, where's God? Especially in the midst of unending pain.

I remember being 16 years old and my uncle had lost his job.

And then a couple short months later, while he still was looking for work, my parents picked me up and they said, greg, we have to go straight to the hospital because my cousin had been in school that day and had fallen and had hurt his hip. And as they were looking at things, they realized that he had a degenerative bone disease in his hip. And they told him that they weren't even sure yet if he could ever walk again. But for sure, football, baseball was over.

This 13 year old's life just was tragically altered. In his mind, his dreams, his hopes, his aspirations were put to an end. And I remember being in a hospital room and looking at my uncle sitting on the bed and him just saying, I don't understand the purpose of all this. It just keeps coming. Job loss and now loss of my child and medical bills, what's the point?

And that's so hard.

And I think we can all empathize and understand what it's like when pain happens and we don't know where the end is in sight. We don't understand what's happening. And we ask ourselves then the question, where's God?

And Nebraskans understand this as well. In the 1930s, with the dust bowl, as all of a sudden the dust rises and lives are turned upside down. Homes are lost, lives are lost, lifestyles are lost, families are lost, neighbors are lost, things happen.

And there was no end in sight. In the 1930s with the dust bowl, as a matter of fact, you can just imagine what it's like to see all the dust cover everything, all of the things that you hold near and dear, your home, your crops, everything. And it's dirty. And you and I know what it's like to have the dirt just continually around us and on us. You can taste it.

If you think about the dust bowl, you can taste the grit as you walk outside or as everything on your house is just filled with it, and there's no end in sight. But we're reminded from our God that pain isn't the end of our story, that our God is a God who always has purpose, beginning to rise. That even though the storm may hit the barn, it's not going to shake the foundation that we have in faith. And so for you and for me, we know that in the midst of our pain that God's not absent, God's not gone. God is at work.

And today I want us to be reminded that when we're asking the question, where's God? Even when we can't see it, he's at work. He's at work beneath the pain, beneath the storm, beneath all the things that we see, he's at work.

I think sometimes in the middle of our hurts and our heartaches and the major pain that we have, we feel like Job. As Christians, we come and we say, I feel like this is my job moment when I have my paint. And we hear and we think of the words that we've heard from Job. In Job, chapter 3, verse 11 and 26, it says, why didn't I perish at birth? Like, we have this moment where we get so down on ourselves, why didn't I perish at birth?

I have no peace. I have no quietness. I have no rest. I only have turmoil. And we find ourselves in the middle of that, and we say, this is my job moment.

And it gives us a little bit of comfort because we know the end of that story. But I want to actually challenge us today because I think we look at the end of the story in our context of what we know, and we're a bunch of people today in our culture, you and I live in a culture of quick fix, quick happenings, quick. As a matter of fact, this is it just got proved. I just saw this, that in 1923, do you know the average length of a dinner, a family dinner in America in 1923? Ready for it?

90 minutes. Right. Wow. You want to know the average length of a dinner in 2023? 12.

12 minutes, right. So when our spouses or our husbands, whoever, cooks the dinners, like, I worked on this for two hours and you ate it in 12 minutes. They have a right to complain. But I think what happens in our job lifestyle is we go, yes, I'm in pain. Why was I born?

This is so bad. Oh, yeah, right. Job was restored and redeemed, and everything worked out in the end. And we get through our painful moment of a week and of two weeks. When's my job restoration?

When is everything gonna be restored? When am I gonna be brought back to our fullness? Do you know how long Job was in his pain and in his suffering? The scriptures are not clear. In Job, chapter seven, there's an allusion to months.

So the best route for us to understand and know what is, is how long it could have been, is to look at Jewish tradition and history. And in the Jewish tradition, they teach that Job suffered for nine months. Nine long months.

You see, what happens is that we're reminded that God is at working. Even when we can't see it, even when it feels unending, even when we wake up and go, it's still the same. The pain is still here.

And that's why we look and know that our farmers, when they're trying to go deeper into the ground, the ground, they're digging and it's hard, and they're upturning and doing that. And then they're planting in there so that the roots can get deeper and it can build a better plant over time. And what happens in the midst of our pain while God's working is he's digging through a hard. And he's making your faith stronger, he's making your trust stronger, and he's making your hope stronger. God's at work in your pain.

Hard ground gets to deep roots, but we get it. Life doesn't get easier. It just gets real. And God meets us in the mess. Life doesn't get easier.

It just gets real. And I gotta be honest with you. I'm gonna share with you something that happens in my head all the time, constantly. And it's these verses that I look and these thoughts and these truths that I look at, and I go, ugh. Really?

Because I am a person that's always looking to say, it's gotta get easier. As I get going, it's gotta get easier. I remember as an elementary school kid, and then thinking about the next transition, the next phase, and I thought, okay, here comes high school. It's gonna be great. It's gonna get easy.

It's gonna be a blast. I'm gonna have all these sports and all these new friends and all these things and all these girls and all this stuff, and it's gonna be so easy, and I'm gonna love it. I'm gonna have independence and I'm gonna have freedom, and I'm not gonna have any more of the teachers that I've had all my life. And it's gonna be easy. And I remember sitting in high school at some point and just going, ugh, this is so hard.

It's not simple. There's emotional turmoil, the homework's harder, the life routine is more difficult. I don't seem to have more freedom. I seem to have less freedom and all that. Now, looking back as a 47 year old, I realize, God, my frontal lobe wasn't even nearly grown.

I thought I was independent and I wasn't. And then I remember as I was ending up at high school, I thought, yes, here we go. It's gonna be college, and college is gonna be awesome. I'm gonna live on my own and I don't have to eat anymore the Grape Nuts and the Total and the Raisin Bran, the disgusting cereals that my mom and dad buy. Cause they say it's healthy.

I'm going for the Fruit Loops and for the Lucky Charms and I'm gonna go ahead and get all the sugar cereals. And if I want ice cream at 8am I'm having ice cream. Cause I'm in college and it's gonna be simple and it's gonna be easy. And it wasn't. And I had no idea what it meant to be poor.

And it was hard. And then it was like, go to class. Like a 7:00am class. What? Like, how do I go to class at 7am when I've been out the night before till 2am, right?

And then what are these things, these classes that look great? Oh, it's a. Once a week you meet as a class on Monday night from 6 to 9pm What? It's miserable. It's hard.

And I thought, oh, once I'm done with college, then I'm gonna get out and I'm gonna get a job and I'm gonna get a job that I love and I'm gonna actually make money and the decimal point will have four things in front of it instead of only one or two. And it's gonna be awesome. And it was like, this is hard. And then you think you're gonna get married and marriage is gonna be easy. I know, I know, I know, I know.

And then you think I'll have kids. No, I don't know about you. I had my kids and I was like, oh my gosh, this is so difficult. Like, are they living? Have I hurt them?

What can I do? Just get them to be a toddler and then they're a toddler. And it's like, oh my, these dangerous corners and these things under my sink and Everything that's there. And then you're like, just go to school where you can be in school all day and I can just rest. And then it's like, no, there's even more.

And then you're thinking, okay, just get to be a teenager. And then they drive, and you're like, whoa, don't be driving. And you're just like, get out. And then I'm like, in my late 40s or mid 40s. I actually was told this week I'm in my mid 40s at 47.

So I'm in my mid 40s. And I don't know why you're laughing. I'm in my mid-40s. And I thought, this is when we should have financial freedom. This is when everything should be easy.

Like, all the stuff we've been doing should just now be rolling. And it's really simple, and it's just hard. I remember meeting with a woman who was 98 years old in Michigan, and I said to. Her name is Dolly. And I said, Dolly, you're 98.

I said, I don't even pretend that I'll make it to that age, because I. I love hamburgers and hot dogs, and I don't like running nearly as much as that. So I know I'm not getting there. But if I were like, can you tell me, what would you say to me as someone who's 98? And she said, oh, Greg, I tell you this.

She said, it's just hard. She said, every day I wake up and there's a new pain or a new hurt or the same pain that I was hoping when I slept it would go away. She said, I can't just do anything quickly. She said, I live in this. I can't say, oh, I want milk, and go get milk.

She's like, everything's hard. She says, here's what I know. You can't be weak and be 98. You have to be strong. And I said, well, I am not that strong.

It's hard. And, you know, I think we get caught. My mind gets caught in this trap of this thought that we should just get easier, that life should be easier, that as we walk with Jesus, it should just get easier. And the reality is, like, Jesus told us quite the opposite in John 16:33. In this world, you will have trouble.

So, like, if you're sitting here today and you're like, this is one bummer of a message, like, we just had Easter and now this, like, you're mad at Jesus, not me, right? We're gonna have Trouble. But take heart. And why do we take heart? Because in the midst of our pain, in the midst of the trouble of this world, where's God?

He's with us. And what's God doing? He's working. God's at work in the midst of all of it. I think about Paul in 2nd Corinthians 12, when Paul is dealing with his, what he calls a thorn in the flesh.

And he says, I asked you, God, three times to take this away from me. And I wonder, did Paul have the. Did Paul do what I do? Did Paul have the kind of bargain with God? Right.

Like the rational with God? I don't know. If you do this, I do this. I find myself. When I really want something from God that's not happening, I find myself sitting there going, hey, God, don't you know how much greater I can do for you if I don't have whatever this is, or I do have whatever I'm asking you for?

And I gotta wonder, did Paul say, father, Lord? Like, do you see how many people I can share the gospel with? Like, I'm just killing it in the Gentile world. Like, literally killing it. Every city I go in, like, there's a storm of people that wanna believe and people that are chasing me out.

Like, if you take this. This thorn in my flesh, and we don't know what that thorn is, many have speculated it's something about his eyesight. Cause he writes about how difficult he had seen. Some have speculated that it was his feet, that he struggled with his feet. And then there's other wild speculations, we don't know.

But we know it was enough that he said once, please take this away, twice, take this away. Three times, take this away. And he finally realized he was gonna have it. That this was just going to be his thorn. And he calls it just a torment of Satan.

And then he finishes with this. But I know your grace is sufficient for me. Even in the midst of all this pain. God, you're working. And your grace is sufficient for me.

Your grace is sufficient for me. Oh, my. In the midst of the dust storm and the dust bowl, it wasn't just about the dust. It was about the discouragement in the 1930s. The discouragement of the people that were living in the midst of this dust bowl of their lives ruined, their livestock killed, their.

And their futures destroyed. And not only their farms and their futures destroyed, but even their community, neighbors and friends who left and said, this is out. We're done. And by the way, this is my family. My grandmother grew up somewhere in north platte in the 1930s and her family moved west due to the Dust Bowl.

And those that said, we can't do this, we're gone. But those who stayed, those who continued to plant, those who continued to hope, those who continued to support, those who continued to encourage one another, those who continued to say, we're in community together, they became the backbone of the heartland. They became the backbone of what we know as Nebraska. And golly, I gotta wonder, is this what they were saying when whoever it was was deciding what is a good slogan for Nebraska? And they came up with, it's just not for everybody.

And they were like, hey, if you can't be strong, if you can't survive a Dust bowl, you're going to get out. But we who are strong will stay. It's the Nebraska way.

And you think about that pain and that hurt and that heartache and know that God's still working, right? That God's still working.

Have you prayed for rain and the drought continued?

Have you sat on the edge of a bed of a loved one who's going through pain, whether it's cancer or something, or like my uncle Ron, and seen his son and felt totally helpless?

It's a reminder to us that just because life feels barren, it doesn't mean God has abandoned you.

It's our Paul moment. It's our time, like Paul, where we say, his grace is sufficient for me even when your field looks empty. His grace is sufficient for me even when the field looks empty. God's not done working. In the midst of your pain, in the midst of the heartache, his promise is his presence not to leave you.

His promise is his presence not that he'll leave you. From hail to harvest, God is always working. From hail to harvest, God is always working. And we see this and in scriptures, we see this In Isaiah, Isaiah 43, it says, when you pass through the waters, I will be with you. Emmanuel when you walk through the fire, you will not be burned.

God is with you. He's there in the valley, he is strengthening you. Your faith is growing, your trust is growing and your hope is assured. He's there. But what about when God doesn't move the storm?

What about when God doesn't move the storm? Because sometimes God doesn't stop the pain, but he always brings purpose through it. Sometimes God doesn't stop the pain, but he always brings purpose through it. I was reading of a woman in Kearney, Nebraska, who's two year old son was diagnosed with leukemia.

And she asked the question Where's God?

She asked the question why? She had her lament and her season. And she went on to say that two years later, still dealing with this with her child, she said, the pain has never left her, but neither has her God. God is still with her. She saw it even when she couldn't see it.

She trusted it even when she didn't see it. She held hope because she knows who God is.

In the 1930s, in the dust storm, they called it the black blizzard. And it was because the dust would come and all you. You couldn't even see in front of you. You couldn't even see around you. It just was black.

And even though the sun was shining beyond it, it wasn't able to see it. And they couldn't see the future. They couldn't see how they would get out of this. They couldn't see anything better.

They couldn't see what tomorrow would bring.

But they held on.

They held on with faith. They held on with trust, and they held on with hope. And they continued to do what they knew they needed to do. They continued to plant. They continued to work.

They continued to be. And so they'd take their small kernels of corn and they would dig down and they would plant within, and they would press and they would water, and they would trust and they would hope.

And you and I continue to live in faith, trust and hope, knowing that even if we can't see it, that God is working. And we trust in the very word of God, from Romans 5, 3 and 4, that suffering produces perseverance and perseverance, character and character, hope. That suffering produces perseverance, that when the pressure gets hard, that it actually makes something happen, and that it produces something out of us, that the seeds and the kernel of faith, trust and hope begin to sprout. And it produces the character. Small steps of obedience reveal our character.

Adversity reveals character. And that character then brings about our hope to know that God is working even in the midst of our suffering. He's at work. He's still at work for you and for me. And so even though we can't see, we know that there's going to be a day that the storm goes away.

There is sun after the storm. There's sun after the storm. And even in drought, his promise holds true. That he's at work. Even in drought, his promise holds true.

And so in the 1930s, in the dust bowl, they waited for the storms to go. They waited for the sun to come through. And those who remained stayed faithful to their communities to their families to their livelihoods. And they got through them and their crops began to sprout and their livelihoods began to get restored and their communities gathered around one another. And they saw the promise of God hold true that he cared for them.

You see, God is still at work even. Even in our seasons of suffering and silence, God's still at work. He's still working in your life.

He's still working even when you don't see it, because it's his promise. And so we hold onto that because we know that your story doesn't end in despair. It ends in his glory. That God has overcome all the things of this world and his glory is yours.

His provision is yours, his protection is yours. And he's the God that only wants good for you, even when we can't see it. That's yours. So yes, even in the drought again, remember this. His promise holds true.

And there will be a day that you'll see the harvest of the seed and the production of the suffering and the perseverance and the character and the hope. You'll see the work of God that will sprout through and come out of the dust.

You'll see that he never left you and that he never stopped working within you.

And I want to wrap up with this.

In Deuteronomy 6, 6, 7, it says, impress on your children. Impress them on your children and talk about them when you sit at home. And this is really talking about the commandments of God, which are the work of God within us. But I want to kind of shape it in this way as well. I think we do a really good job of sharing with our family and with our kids all the times where we see God doing great things in our lives.

We share with them the blessings we have and all the things that God has done great within us. Our house is well and our lives are well, and all these things are good.

But I wonder what happens if we actually moms and dads start sharing with our kids how we're trusting in God in our most painful moments and how we continue to hold faith. God, even when we didn't see him working, and when we said to our children that no matter how rough it is getting and no matter how rough it is going, we will hold on to our faith, our trust and our hope.

And that we know that God is working even amidst the mess and the dust and we're going to gather with community. I think when we pass these realities on to our children, we build them up to walk through the valleys themselves because it's easy to talk about all the good things that God has done in the past and all the good things that we want God to do in the future. But when we have to talk about where we had to fully rely on him and where we have to be authentic and vulnerable to say, this is hard, this is a storm. I don't know how to get out of this, except that I know God is working. He's working in the midst of my dust, even when I can't see it.

And I'm trusting that my faith will grow, my trust will grow and my hope will grow. When we pass that on to our children, they carry that through their own storm. So I want to invite you moms and dads, no matter how old your kids are, impress on them where God walked with you in the midst of your storm as you leave today. At all campuses, there's kernels of corn, and I'll invite you to take one, tape it in your Bible, tape it on your steering wheel, put it in your cup holder, wherever it is, and just use it to remind yourself that even in the dust, God is at work. Even in the dust, God is at work today, tomorrow and forever.

God is at work even when you can't see it and watch what he does and what he grows out of it. I invite all campuses to stand as we pray. Let me pray over all of you. Heavenly Father, we thank you that you're at work even in the midst of the dust, that you are the God whose promise of presence is with us. You are the God who is here today, tomorrow and forever and will never leave us.

You are the God who is at work amidst the dirt and the dust that we can't even see, but we know it's going to pop through. And when it does, we're going to see a great harvest. So Lord God, let us see those moments. Identify with Job and his patience and his waiting and his trust. Identify with Paul to know that your grace is sufficient for us and to identify with one another as community, that we are together and you are at work in the midst of all of our storms.

Even in the dust, God is at work today, tomorrow, and forever. And all of campuses said amen and Amen.