Central Assembly
Pastor Jim Bradford | November 25, 2018
Job 1:1-3 NIV
Decide to trust God, no matter what!
Job 1:20-21 NIV
Job 2:9 NIV
Job 13:15 NIV
Job 13:15 RSV
* Faith is honest but stubborn
* Our pain can lie to us
* Pain does not change the fact that:
- God created you and loves you;
- There is nothing impossible for Him;
- He will never leave you or forsake you;
- He will finish what He has started in you.
Here is what Satan cannot do:
- He cannot touch you beyond what God allows;
- He cannot take you out of God's hand;
- He cannot change the fact that 'in Christ' you are a new creation;
- He cannot avoid his ultimate destiny - he loses and we win!
Don't isolate yourself
- Job 2:11-13
Never give up!
Job 9:32-34 NIV
* I Timothy 2:5, 6a
* Romans 5:8, 9
"The real sting of suffering is not misfortune itself, not even the pain or the injustice of it, but the apparent god-forsakenness of it. Pain is endurable, but the seeming indifference of God is not. Sometimes we picture him lounging, perhaps dozing, in some celestial deck chair, while the hungry millions starve to death . . . The Cross smashes to smithereens this terrible caricature of God. We are not to envisage him on a deck chair, but on a cross. The God who allows us to suffer, once suffered himself in Christ . . .The Cross of Christ is the proof of God's personal, loving solidarity with us in our pain." (John Stott, The Cross of Christ)
Romans 8:35, 37 NIV