How Can Faith Help When You’re Being Bullied?

What Job’s Meeting With God Can Teach You About Facing Your Worst Nightmare

[https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/56b23a868a65e24fb5da70bb/de7164a1-fa46-476f-81bb-c1f1dba71145/OON+m8w3+Thumbnail.png?format=1000w] What Job’s Meeting With God Can Teach You About Facing Your Worst Nightmare Paul Sadler More and more about our world feels senseless and unjust. And then when a crisis hits in our own personal circumstances, it only strengthens the doubts: Does God know what He’s doing? Is He asleep at the wheel? Is He there at all? An encounter with God pictured in the Book of Job gives us some truths to hang onto when the pain is deep, and life doesn’t make sense. 1. WE’RE NOT QUALIFIED TO CRITIQUE HOW GOD RUNS THE UNIVERSE Following Job’s terrible losses, the Book of Job records 35 chapters of questioning and debate. People make confident statements about what God has done and what His motivations were. Throughout, Job longs for a meeting with God because he’s convinced that if he could only lay out his case, he could prove that he’s in the right and God has treated him unfairly. When God finally speaks, however, all the confidence quickly disappears. In Job 38:2, God asks, “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?” He then follows this with a rapid-fire series of 45 questions, asking Job the measurements of the planet, the nature of its construction, and details about the sea, the waves, the clouds, and the stars. Today, He’d probably ask us to explain dark matter, black holes, and the direction of time or how He came up with the double helix structure of DNA and the invisible atomic particles that form everything we see. The point is that we know very little about the world that we live in, and so criticizing God is above our pay grade. Job gets the message. He finally responds, “Behold, I am of small account; what shall I answer you? I lay my hand on my mouth” (Job 40:4). He realizes that he’s like a toddler in the universe God created. And it’s not easy being a toddler. Many things don’t make sense. But toddlers can cope with the confusion when they have a good dad they can trust. When you’re tempted to criticize God, remind yourself how small you are and how little you know. 2. THE WORLD IS A DANGEROUS PLACE IN THE CONTROL OF A GOOD GOD One of the fascinating details of God’s response to Job is that it says that “the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind” (Job 38:1). Job is grieving; wouldn’t this be time for the still, small voice? Apparently not. God speaks to Job from a violent storm in order to show how dangerous the world is but also how powerfully He rules over it. The earth is a place of earthquakes, disease, violence, and uncertainty, but God is in control of all of it. He makes the same point by spending almost two chapters talking about two creatures, Behemoth and Leviathan, that thousands of years later we’re still not sure exactly what they are. Behemoth means something like “super beast,” and it sounds like a gigantic hippo with a tail like a tree. Leviathan is a threat from the sea that sounds like a crocodile on steroids, except there are sparks from its mouth and smoke from its nostrils. God created murder hornets, jellyfish, megalodons, and tarantulas. They’ve found colossal squid near Antarctica that are 12 m long and weigh 1000 lbs. If you made calamari from their tentacles, they’d be the size of tractor tires. And we don’t know all of God’s purposes, but we know that He made these creatures. They teach us that we live in a dangerous world with real threats, but they also remind us that even they are under God’s sovereign control. 3. EVENTUALLY, WE’LL ALL MEET THE GOD WE’VE ONLY HEARD ABOUT The final lesson that Job’s encounter leaves us with is a caution. We tend to talk about God and the things we say about God casually, but one day, perhaps suddenly and unexpectedly, we will meet God. And meeting God changes everything. Job says, “I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you; therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42:5-6). He had partial, incomplete, second-hand information about God. Now having met Him, he sees God in a way that he couldn’t before. Having met God, he’s overwhelmed with regret and wants to take back what he said. Job’s words are given to spare us what he felt. And the good news is that the God we will one day meet is also the God who made a way for sinners to meet Him with joy rather than regret. Through Jesus Christ, we can be forgiven, reconciled to God, and look forward to the day when we finally see Him. When your worst nightmare comes, you may not get an explanation. Job never did. But you can remember that you don’t see the whole picture, that your suffering isn’t outside God’s sovereign control, and that the God you will one day meet is the God you can trust today. You don’t have to understand everything God is doing to trust the God who does. In awe of Him, Paul

How Can Faith Help When You’re Being Bullied?

[https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/56b23a868a65e24fb5da70bb/eb701af3-7bc7-4387-a8fd-0b48dc9be05b/OON+20260729.png?format=1000w] How Can Faith Help When You’re Being Bullied? Paul Sadler When you’re being bullied, it can feel like your world is shutting down. Abusers have a way of making you feel as if there’s no escape. They make you doubt yourself, your view of reality, and your hope. Faith may not remove bullying, but it can give you solid reasons for hope when everything around you tells you to despair. Job’s example can help. He describes the brutal reality of personal rejection: * “My relatives have failed me, my close friends have forgotten me.” (Job 19:14) * “My breath is strange to my wife, and I am a stench to the children of my own mother.” (Job 19:17) * “All my intimate friends abhor me, and those whom I loved have turned against me.” (Job 19:19) It’s clear that Job understands the kinds of rejection that we face in this life. Consider how his faith helped to sustain him in his darkest days. 1. PUT YOUR HOPE IN THE JUDGE WHO OFFERS FINAL JUSTIFICATION Like many victims of abuse, Job couldn’t do anything to change the minds of the people who bullied him. With only their opinions against his own, he might have lost his mind or sunk into depression. Instead, he trusted in God’s assessment of his situation. In Job 16:19, he says, “Even now, behold, my witness is in heaven, and he who testifies for me is on high.” If people’s voices are crushing you, you need a louder and truer voice to counteract them. Job trusts in God to provide that. Can you see how it would change your perspective on people’s condemnation and judgment if you believed that there’s a God who sees you and loves you? When His words and His approval become your focus, the other voices in your life begin to lose their power. 2. PUT YOUR HOPE IN THE REDEEMER WHO WILL STAND UP FOR YOU Another statement of hope that Job gives us is in Job 19:25. It says, “For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth.” A redeemer was a close relative who stepped in when family members could not help themselves—buying back lost property, freeing relatives from slavery, or defending their rights. Even when everyone stood against him, Job believed that God would act as His Redeemer. The people who should be our redeemers often aren’t willing to pay the price. Job’s hope was that God would. Later in Scripture, God promised that He would send a Redeemer to his people (Isaiah 59:20). Those promises were realized in Jesus (Ephesians 1:7). He gave his life to redeem us. He stood up for us when no one else could. And so when we face those times when it feels like everything and everyone is against us, we can rest our hope in Him. 3. PUT YOUR HOPE IN THE GOD WHO WILL WELCOME YOU INTO HIS PRESENCE As you dig into the details of Job’s ordeal, it’s hard to imagine greater suffering. He endured it by clinging to a belief that he would one day meet God and be welcomed by Him. In Job 19:26-27, he says, “And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another.” Job was supported by a future hope that was slim on the details. God hadn’t yet revealed how it would work. Clarity came with Jesus Christ. In John 11:25, He promised, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live.” Revelation 21:4 further adds, “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” You can put up with a lot of rejection if you’re going home to someone who loves you. You can even deal with a lot of pain if you’re going home to someone who’ll comfort you. If you’ve put your trust in Jesus, that’s the homecoming that can fuel your hope. Make that your hope. Make God’s Words loud in your life. Believe that God’s on your side even when the circumstances don’t go your way. And reject the voices that would drown you in judgment or despair. In awe of Him, Paul

What the Bible Teaches About Karma

[https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/56b23a868a65e24fb5da70bb/a9872bb6-fc17-40f0-88db-ea11da215780/OON+20260715.png?format=1000w] What the Bible Teaches About Karma Paul Sadler With the popularity of Eastern religions like Hinduism and Buddhism, it’s not surprising to hear people talking more frequently about karma. The word comes from Sanskrit and just means “deed,” but it expresses the principle of cause and effect whereby a person’s actions determine what will happen to them. Understanding how the Bible introduces the concept of karma helps us see its weaknesses and where its remedy lies. KARMA IS TAUGHT BY A WISE MAN WITH A DRAMATIC VISION In the Bible, the principle of karma is first articulated by a man named Eliphaz. He’s from Teman, a city in Edom which was renowned for its wisdom. When Job faces his tragic losses, Eliphaz is one of three friends who travel to comfort him. Eliphaz always speaks first and longest, so he seems to be a leader and comes across as an authority. He describes a dramatic vision he experiences in the dead of night (Job 4:12-17), and the message he discerns from it sounds a lot like karma. KARMA SAYS, “WHERE THERE’S SMOKE, THERE’S FIRE” In Job 4:8, he says, “Remember: who that was innocent ever perished? Or where were the upright cut off? As I have seen, those who plow iniquity and sow trouble reap the same.” In Eliphaz’s logic, bad things don’t happen to good people. We’re all like farmers: we get the harvest for the crop we’ve sown. He continues in Job 5:6-7, saying, “For affliction does not come from the dust, nor does trouble sprout from the ground, but man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward.” He’s saying that we can read our circumstances and know their causes. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. Nobody suffers without having done something to deserve it. KARMA CRUSHES THE INNOCENT SUFFERER People usually like to talk about karma when everything is going well in their lives because it allows them to take credit for their circumstances. And it’s true that we can invite painful consequences through our foolish decisions. But karma can be devastating for the person whose suffering is undeserved. Eliphaz invokes karma as the explanation for Job’s tragic circumstances even though God has said of Job, “There is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil” (Job 1:8). What we realize is that the cause and effect principle of karma fails to explain much of life. KARMA FAILS TO EXPLAIN THE NUANCES OF LIFE, AND IT OFFERS NO HOPE You reap what you sow is generally true, but that’s different than saying it’s always true. Sometimes, you knock yourself out to sow seed in a field, and a flood destroys everything and leaves you with a loss. Sometimes, you study hard, and you just can’t get it. And other kids who seem to do a lot less end up with the grades and the jobs. Often, you train a child in the way they should go, and when they’re older, they don’t depart from it. But sometimes you do everything you can, and they still walk away. Or as Jesus shows us, sometimes, you can live a life perfectly pleasing to God and still end up nailed to a cross for it. Karma doesn’t account for the fact that while we often reap what we sow, sometimes we reap what Adam sowed. We face the collateral damage of a world that’s broken due to sin. It doesn’t account for grace either. The Bible teaches that we can reap what Jesus sowed. When we trust in Him, we can receive the benefits of His perfect life because He gave Himself as a substitute for us. So when your coworker tells you that “karma will get them” or you find yourself keeping score in your own life, remember Eliphaz. Remember how easily words of “you reap what you sow” can hurt hurting people. And remember that suffering isn’t always a verdict on our decisions. There are other causes for suffering and other reasons to hope. Because of Jesus, God’s grace can lift us above the consequences of our own actions. Karma has no mercy. Grace does. In awe of Him, Paul

When You're Not Supposed to Feel Like This

[https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/56b23a868a65e24fb5da70bb/1fb098f8-28fc-46f2-97e2-76077211f99d/OON+20260708.png?format=1000w] When You're Not Supposed to Feel Like This Paul Sadler Sometimes, our struggles with grief and depression are made worse by feelings of guilt. As Christopher Williams put it, “It is bad enough that I feel low or anxious. But on top of that I feel guilty: for I ought not to feel low, as a Christian. I feel that I ought to be able to cast my cares upon him, for he cares for me. And yet somehow I can’t.” Many Christians have heard the message of Philippians but not the message of Job, and so they’re unprepared when the pain of profound grief hits. There are three things I’d want people to remember when their grief is compounded with guilt. 1. THE PAIN OF GRIEF CAN BE FAR DEEPER THAN YOU IMAGINE We have a habit of selective reading when it comes to the Bible. Many people have heard Job’s amazing response to his tragic loss: “The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD” (Job 1:21). We want to be able to say, “Job suffered, but he stood strong, and so should we,” but as you read on in the book, you realize the message is closer to, “Job suffered, and it nearly destroyed him, and the same might happen to us.” The same person who worshipped God in the face of his loss is also the one who “opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth” (Job 3:1). In fact, as you read the rest of the chapter, you can’t help but ask, “How desperate do you have to be to sit down and write a poem somehow trying to wish your life out of existence?” His words are more an expression of his agony than a statement of his theology. But even his rant has limits. He wishes he had never been born, but he never considers ending his life. He questions God’s plan, but he never doubts God’s existence. He curses the day of his birth, but he never curses God. As it says in Job 2:10, “In all this Job did not sin with his lips.” The biblical word for what Job’s doing is “lament.” It’s when you complain to God and let out the pain that you’ve bottled up, but you do so in a way that’s still respectful of Him. You trust Him enough to bring Him your deepest pain without forgetting who He is. 2. THE COMFORT OF OTHER PEOPLE OFTEN FALLS SHORT If we say some things we regret when we’re feeling our worst, it probably shouldn’t surprise us that other people do as well. We desperately crave people’s comfort in our pain, but their comfort often falls short. The Book of Job expresses this through Job’s three friends. When they heard of the tragedy he had experienced, they travelled from afar to “show him sympathy and comfort him” (Job 2:11). When they saw how broken he was, “they raised their voices and wept” (Job 2:12) and sat with him in silence for seven days and nights. When you’re experiencing a terrible loss, it can be comforting to have someone just sit with you. The silence can be comforting – to an extent. But if you’ve lost as much as Job has and your friends show up and say nothing for an entire week, it might start to feel awkward. Do they just not know what to say? There’s no reassurance, no word of comfort, no sympathy, no prayer, nothing. At the end of the week, Job still wants to curse the day of his birth. Sitting with his friends for a week appeared to have done little to relieve his burden. We shouldn’t be surprised if we experience the same thing. We shouldn’t blame our friends if their comfort falls short. We probably want something more than they’re able to give. 3. YOU’RE NEVER TRULY ALONE IN THE DARKNESS As you read the Bible, it becomes clear that while Christians might be naïve about the depth of human pain in suffering, the biblical writers weren’t. David said, for instance, “Reproaches have broken my heart, so that I am in despair. I looked for pity, but there was none, and for comforters, but I found none” (Psalm 69:20). Jeremiah’s words sound similar to Job’s. “Cursed be the day on which I was born! The day when my mother bore me, let it not be blessed!” (Jeremiah 20:14). On the night when he would be betrayed, even Jesus said, “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death” (Mark 14:34). If Jesus could feel that, let’s never beat ourselves with thoughts of “I’m a good Christian. I’m not supposed to feel like this.” And let’s not assume it’s a sign that God has abandoned us or that it’ll always be like this. Job came out the other side. So did David. Jesus’ relief came on the other side of the cross. They teach us to wait on the Lord. And the saints of old remind us not to doubt in the darkness what God has revealed in the light. As C.S. Lewis observed of his own grief, “You can't see anything properly while your eyes are blurred with tears.” In awe of Him, Paul

The Question You’re Asked When Trials Come

[https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/56b23a868a65e24fb5da70bb/510bec58-4261-4e0d-bb45-79c6b579605f/OON+20260701.png?format=1000w] The Question You’re Asked When Trials Come Paul Sadler Painful circumstances often make us ask questions. Why is this happening to me? Is life even fair? Does God see what I’m going through? Darkness prompts those questions, and they can tempt us to doubt what God has already revealed in His Word. The Book of Job poses a different question. It offers a question that’s being asked of us when we face trials, and it’s an important one for us to answer. Consider the context for the question, the question itself, and how Job answered it. UNTIL IT’S YOU, YOU’LL PROBABLY UNDERESTIMATE HUMAN SUFFERING Anybody who’s heard of Job knows that he faced unimaginable tragedy. Even still, reading the details (Job 1:13-19) shocks the senses. First, Sabean invaders kill his servants and rob his massive herds of oxen and donkeys. Then, fire strikes his sheep pens and kills his sheep and the servants who were shepherding them. Next, Chaldean thieves take off with his camels and kill the servants who were guarding them. Finally, a hurricane strikes the home of his firstborn son, killing all his children. As we reflect on the gruesome tragedy, we realize how superficial a view of human pain most of us have. Often, we’d rather not admit that suffering like that is possible, so we tend to look away or downplay how bad it is. Job’s suffering forces us to prepare for our own and feel more compassion toward the suffering of others. WHEN TRAGEDY STRIKES, WE’RE ASKED WHAT MOTIVATES OUR LOVE FOR GOD We know that Satan is behind the attacks on Job’s life. What’s less understood is the question that precedes those attacks. God presents Job as a model of faith and virtue: “there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil” (Job 1:8). Satan doesn’t question Job’s moral track record, but he does challenge his motivation. In Job 1:9, he asks, “Does Job fear God for no reason?” He figures that Job’s obedience is simply a transaction to get God’s blessing. He assumes that he has a selfish, “in-it-for-what-he-can-take-from-it” relationship with God. Jesus taught that the greatest commandment is to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” (Mark 12:30). And many of us want to say, “Of course I love God like that.” But it’s only as we face loss, pain, and suffering that our love is tested. We’re asked what motivates our love: whether we love God for His gifts or because He is worthy. Are we just in it for the good times, or is our love for God “for better or for worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, till death do us part”? GRATEFUL WORSHIP IS OUR STRENGTH IN SUFFERING Job’s response to his suffering is as profound as the suffering that he faced. He tears his robe, shaves his head, falls down in worship, saying “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD” (Job 1:20-21). The tearing of his robe and shaving of his head were cultural expressions of grief that tell us that Job wasn’t just trying to keep a stiff upper lip. He feels his pain deeply. Even still, he chooses to worship. Job shows us that a trial is when we’re least likely to want to worship but also when we most need to. Because the storm pressures us to interpret God through our changing circumstances, and worship teaches us to see our circumstances in light of our unchanging God. In worship, we affirm all that we know about God and all that He’s revealed about Himself. Without worship, Job would have been tempted to say, “I earned all this, but God took it away.” Through worship, Job was able to say, “I’ve lost everything, but God is the one who gave it to me in the first place. And my tragedy doesn’t erase God’s generosity or His faithfulness.” Trials reveal what prosperity can hide. They expose whether we’ve loved God for His gifts or because He is worthy. And as we worship Him in suffering, we discover that He Himself is better than anything suffering can take away. In awe of Him, Paul