It may feel like God is against you, but His Word, which reveals His character, culminating in the cross of His Son, tells you otherwise. No matter what you are going through, no matter how much your heart is broken, no matter how you are feeling, this is God’s word to you: “If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” (Romans 8:31–32).

Early in my ministry, a wise pastor told me, “There is a heartache in every pew.” Many years in pastoral ministry have proved this true. God’s people are often a hurting people. Perhaps that is why you are reading this article: your heart is broken, you are hurting, and it feels like God is against you.

It may be of some comfort to know that you are not the first one to feel like this. “There is a heartache in every pew.”The Old Testament is filled with examples of believers who suffered great trials: Joseph, Moses, Naomi, David, Jeremiah, Daniel, Hosea, Jonah, Habakkuk—the list could go on. No record of Old Testament sufferers would be complete without Job. In the New Testament, James writes, “You have heard of the steadfastness of Job, and you have seen the purpose of the Lord, how the Lord is compassionate and merciful” (James 5:11).

As the leader of the church in Jerusalem, James was no stranger to trials. He saw firsthand the persecution that broke out against the church (Acts 8:1), breaking up families, tearing apart loved ones, and scattering the family of God (James 1:1). James wrote to his suffering flock, encouraging them to remain steadfast in the midst of their trials by reminding them of Job.

In the span of a minute or two, Job learned that he had lost everything: his livestock, his servants, and, most devastatingly, his children (Job 1:13–19). The news crushed him, yet in the depths of his grief, Job worshiped the Lord, saying, “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord” (v.  21). Even when Job’s health was taken from him and his wife told him to curse God and die, Job continued to turn to God, saying, “Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?” (2:10). So great was Job’s suffering that his three friends sat with him on the ground for an entire week without saying a word. Job finally broke the silence, cursing the day of his birth, saying, “Let the day perish on which I was born, and the night that said, ‘A man is conceived.’ Let that day be darkness! May God above not seek it, nor light shine upon it” (3:3–4). When his friends accused him of sin, Job asked, “How can a man be in the right before God? If one wished to contend with him, one could not answer him once in a thousand times” (9:2–3). But even then he continued to take his sorrows to the Lord. Job did not run away from the Lord in bitterness. He ran to the Lord in trust.

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