From: https://www.tiktok.com/@lthooks23/video/7663870337502776589
Can I show you why I think Job 3:11 might be the bravest thing anyone has ever said to God?
Because Job doesn’t dress it up. He doesn’t soften it. He said exactly what was in his chest, and God never turned away from it. Now listen, this is finding Job 3:11.
I used to skip right past Job’s lament and jump straight to the Restoration, but now I think the lament might be the whole point. Because Job opens chapter 3 with something that makes most church people feel real uncomfortable. He curses the day he was born. He says, let the day perish on which I was born. And then he asks the question, the question that cuts all the way to the bone. Why did I not perish at birth? Why did I not die as I came from the womb? So that means Job isn’t asking a theological question. He’s asking a survival question. He’s asking the question of a man who has lost everything, and he’s sitting in the middle of all the rubble, wondering why he’s still here to fill it.
So I want to stay right here for just a moment, because most of us have been taught that faith means you never go to that place. That a strong believer never questions their existence. That if you really trust God, you push through the pain with a smile and a scripture, and you keep moving. But see, Job dismantles all of that in one chapter, because Job was the most righteous man on earth. God himself said that there was no one like him.
And Job still ended up on the ground, scraping his wounds with broken pottery and asking why he was ever born.
See, that means suffering doesn’t skip the faithful.
It doesn’t honor your consistency.
It doesn’t check your prayer record before it shows up at your door.
And the question that Job asks from that place is not a sign of weak faith. It’s the sign of a man who trusted God enough to bring his whole broken self into the conversation.
But here’s what really got me. God never rebukes Job for his lament. When God finally speaks in chapter 38, he doesn’t say, How dare you question me? He doesn’t say your pain disqualified you from my presence. He shows up in a whirlwind and says, Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? And now that sounds like a rebuke until you realize what God is actually doing. He’s reminding Job that the same hands that built the universe are the same hands that are holding him right now. See, that means God’s answer to Job’s deepest pain is not an explanation. It’s a revelation of presence. He doesn’t tell Job why it happened, but he shows up and he tells Job who’s been there this entire time. And here’s why I want to speak directly to someone, because some of you have been in a Job season.
You lost things that you never expected to lose. The suffering came without warning and without explanation. You’re the place where you did everything right and the bottom still fell out. And somewhere in that season, in a moment you haven’t told anyone about, you ask the same question Job asks, Why am I still here? What’s the point of all of it? And I need you to hear what Job discovered on the other side of his lament. See, he didn’t get answers, but he got encountered. God showed up, not with explanations, not with a detailed breakdown of why everything happened, but with presence so overwhelming, so undeniable, so real that Job looked up from the rubble and said, My ears had heard of you, but now my eyes have seen you. That means the deepest suffering has the potential to produce the deepest encounter. The place where you hit the bottom of your own strength is the exact place where God’s presence becomes more real than it has ever been in your life.
So your lament, it doesn’t push him away, it draws him closer. So here’s what I want to leave you with. Job’s story doesn’t end in a ash heap. It ends with restoration, with more than he had before. With a testimony that has outlasted every empire that existed in his lifetime. And it started with the rawest, most honest cry he had ever lifted to heaven.
See, God can handle everything you carry, so bring it all, every question, every why, every moment you wondered if it was worth it to even keep going. Heaven has never once flinched at your honesty. Comet, I see you now. If you’ve been in a Job season and you’re ready to move from lament into encounter.
I don’t really have anything to add. I just thought this was one of the most-profound things I’ve ever heard on the subject, and it was said well and succinctly. I’m saving it here because social media accounts are NOT forever.