Since Group 3:16, our combined youth group with the Neola Presbyterian church, and the lesson on faith I presented I've done a lot of thinking about how life gets in the way of and/or affects my faith. The lesson for the youth group talked a little bit about how you define faith and that faith is the belief in something that you cannot irrefutably prove. That's a pretty basic understanding of faith. Once you can put facts to something you begin to move out of the realm of faith. In my sermon on Sunday I talked a little bit about how suffering can really have an impact on our faith. A lot of times suffering can cause us to lose faith. We begin to think that our lack of faith caused our suffering, or that God doesn't care about us because if God did care we certainly wouldn't be going through the tough times. That's where the book of Job does a great job of teaching us about suffering. Job suffered for no reason, and he takes his complaint and belief that he did nothing to cause this suffering to God. Job demands God answer him as to why he was suffering so. Well, Job finally gets an answer, and God basically tells Job that he cannot understand the way the universe works and that suffering is a mystery. Job doesn't instruct as to how we can live to avoid suffering. Job doesn't tell us why suffering occurs. Job shows us that we can remain faithful through suffering because God never leaves us or abandons us.
Our faith may struggle a little bit when we suffer. We may have doubts, we will certainly have questions, and we may even be angry with God and demand answers. All are valid responses, but they can't be our only response. We may not get the answers we want as to why we're suffering, but we must never lose sight of the fact that God suffers with us. Even though we might feel that God is picking on us, or at the very least ignoring us, we must remember that God does no such thing and that the Spirit is right there with us even crying and hurting with us. Once we truly believe that God is there with us through it all we can bear the tough times a little easier. The pain won't go away magically, but our burden will be eased and our faith will grow stronger because we'll realize that connection with the Spirit was never broken. I will repeat Philip Yancey's quote about faith because I think he does a great job explaining it..“I have learned that faith means trusting in advance what will only make sense in reverse.”
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