PATIENCE - Champions by the Fruit of the SpiritSample

Patience vs. Sorrow

Bible story: Job suffers with patience Job 1-2

Theme Verse: Psalm 119:50

Today we are focusing on patience as it contrasts to sorrow. People all over the world suffer from discrimination, natural disasters, persecution, sickness, and death. No one on this planet can hide from inevitable suffering. Money, power, or fame cannot protect us from suffering.

For Christians, the challenge is how we will respond to it. Will we allow sorrow from our pain to grab ahold of us and pull us down? Or can we develop patience through the pain and become living examples to the world?

In the book of James (James 5:10-11), God mentions patience in the face of suffering, highlighting the life of Job as a good example. The Word says that all those who have persevered through suffering are considered blessed. The Bible account of Job is very interesting as it opens up our eyes to a full supernatural world including angels, God in heaven, and the devil who roams the earth. God brags to the devil about a wonderful man named Job. The devil says that Job behaves well because God has blessed him, and challenges God that if He were to take away all the blessings, then Job would curse God. Therefore, God gives the devil permission to attack Job, and all in one day he kills all his livestock, servants, and family! Job did not curse God, and so the devil got permission to attack Job's health as well. The devil was sure that if Job were also personally suffering, surely then he would curse God for his troubles. Job was there, on the ground covered in very painful sores, having lost all his wealth and his whole family, but he refused to curse God and blame Him for his troubles. His wife pressured him and his friends came by and blamed him. They told Job that he must have sinned in order to have all this pain and death around him. However, Job remained true to God, and continued in patience instead of letting the sorrow pull him down.

We can see from this Bible account that God wants us to honor Him in good times and bad times. We cannot only be joyful Christians when things are going well. Job said to his wife, "Should we accept good from God, and not trouble?"

Pain and death are natural. Sorrow from it is also natural and human. However, patience as we are going through a very difficult time is supernatural. It requires God working in us, and a complete trust in God. Everyone goes through hard times. However, if you can allow patience to grow in you instead of sorrow and complaints, you will develop into a mature Christian.

Questions:

1. Why does God allow us to suffer?

2. Why did our loved one have to die?

3. How could suffering possibly be a blessing?

Life Application:

Write a thank you to God over something where you suffered. Try to say as Job did, "The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. May the name of the Lord be praised." Share with others your testimony if you can.