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Righteous People Suffer And God Still Refines Them - Lessons From Job · ToddTalks--Spirit By Design: Your Weekly Survival Guide

• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: What if the hardest moments in your life are not proof that God has abandoned you, but evidence that he is shaping you into something holier, something better?
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: I like to refer to that as the refiner's fire.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: I've been through it several times.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: Not always fun, but definitely worth it.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: The story of the book of Job is not just about his suffering, it's about his transformation.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: It is about faith when heaven feels silent.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's about becoming Christ's life when everything earthly is stripped away.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what we're going to talk about today.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: This is Todd Talks, where I help you design the spiritual life that you desire.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: There are moments in life where everything feels unfair.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: You pray and the heavens seem quiet.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: You obey, and your life starts to fall apart.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: You try to do what's right, and suffering still comes.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: You've been there, I've been there.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's not a fun time.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: That is why the story of Job matters.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: Job wasn't wicked.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, the scriptures describe him as perfect and upright, yet he lost nearly everything.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: He lost his wealth, his health, his children, his comfort, his social standing.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: Hardest of all, perhaps, is he lost his certainty.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: But through it all, Job discovered something deeper than comfort.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: He was always a godly man, and he discovered God in his suffering.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: That's probably one of the greatest lessons of mortality.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes God allows temporary pain to produce eternal transformation.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: So Job was righteous before his trial started.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: And the first lesson we can learn is that righteous people still suffer.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: Too often we subconsciously believe if I'm obedient, nothing bad will happen.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: You've thought that, I've thought that, but bad things still happen.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: The scriptures don't teach that.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, some of God's greatest servants endured the hardest trials.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: Joseph was sold into Egypt and into slavery.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: Nephi was tied up by his brothers.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: Alma and Amulet had to watch the believers that they murdered be burned alive.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: Joseph Smith was thrown into liberty jail.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus Christ suffered in Gethsemane.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: Job reminds us that trials are not always punishment.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: The Lord declared, there was a man in the land of Ooz whose name was Job, and that man was perfect and upright.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: Job 1.1.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: Job's suffering was not evidence of God's rejection.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: It became the setting for his refinement.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: Modern revelation teaches the same principle.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: In Doctrine and Covenants 122.7, it says, All these things shall give thee experience and shall be for thy good.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: Joseph Smith received that revelation while trapped in liberty jail after betrayal, persecution, and immense suffering.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: And he was crying out for peace, crying out for help.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: He cried out, Why hast thou forsaken me?
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: And God told him, Art thou greater than I?
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes God does not remove the furnace because the furnace is creating something eternal within us.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: The furnace is a refiner's fire.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: We all go through more one or more refinery's fires throughout our lives.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: The story of Job teaches us to trust God without full understanding.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: See, one of the most Christ-like qualities or attributes of Job that he developed was trust.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: Not conditional trust, not transactional faith, but covenant faithfulness.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: He trusted that God would deliver on his promises, no matter what Satan threw at him.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: Even after devastating loss, Job declared, The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: Blessed be the name of the Lord.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's Job 121.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: Now that is astonishing faith.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: More often we see stories of everything being taken away or something hard, and we see the or hear the stories of the person cursing God.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: Later, Job says, Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: Job 13, 15.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: That's not passive resignation, that is spiritual surrender.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: Christ himself demonstrated this same divine pattern in Gethsemane when he said, Nevertheless, not my will, but thine be done.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: To become Christ-like means learning obedience even when we do not understand the reason for our suffering.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: That is incredibly difficult, and we don't always get to understand the reason behind our suffering.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: See, mortality trains us to seek out explanations, but discipleship often requires trust before understanding, and sometimes the understanding doesn't come until much later.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: President Jeffrey R.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: Holland once thought, some blessings come soon, some come late, and some don't come until heaven.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: But for those who embrace the gospel of Jesus Christ, they come.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: That perspective changes suffering.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: Faith is not believing God prevents all storms, faith is believing he walks with us through them.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure you've heard the story of or the poem Footprints.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe not in today's generation, but earlier, my youth, a poem came out where the poet saw his life like footprints in the stand.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: Two sets of footprints, his and the Lord's.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: And he asked, Why, Lord, is there only one set of footprints during the hardest times in my life?
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: Why did you forsake me during the hardest times in my life?
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: And the Lord answered him and said, Oh my child.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: Through those hard times in your life, the single set of footprints is not when I forsook you, but that is when I carried you.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: One of the deepest transformations in the book of Job happens near the end.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: For much of the story, Job demands answers.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: And honestly, many of us do too.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: Why me?
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: Why now?
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: Why this trial?
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: Why didn't God stop this?
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: Why, why, why?
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's like we're little kids again, and we are God's children.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: But when the Lord finally speaks, he does not give Job a detailed explanation.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: Instead, instead, he reveals his majesty.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: God essentially reminds Job, you cannot yet see what I see.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: The Lord asks, Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: Job 38 4.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, Job, your vision is limited, but mine is not.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: And suddenly Job's perspective changes.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: In 42.5 he says, I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth thee.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: Job finally understood.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: Job's greatest blessing was not his restored wealth, it was his deeper knowledge of God.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: You see, God reminded him that God's perspective is much deeper and much further than ours.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: If Job hadn't gone through this, thousands of years of the children of God would not have his story to learn from, to make their lives better.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: God saw all of this.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: This is one of the greatest spiritual truths in the entire book.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes trials strip away illusions, self-sufficiency, pride, control, worldliness, and in their place we discover dependence on Jesus Christ.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: That dependence is not weakness, that is discipleship, and in fact, it is strength.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: God tells us that He will turn our weaknesses into strengths if we let him.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: Job shows us how to endure without becoming bitter.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: There is a difference between suffering and becoming hardened by suffering.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: Some people go through trials and become angry, cynical, resentful, spiritually numb.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: You've seen them, you know them.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: You know them by sight.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: Job struggled emotionally.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: He mourned, he questioned, he grieved deeply, but he kept turning towards God.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: That's a crucial lesson.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: Becoming Christ-like doesn't mean pretending pain does not hurt.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: Even the Savior wept.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: Christ-like endurance means refusing to let pain sever our relationship with God.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: Elder Neele Maxwell taught us that faith in God includes faith in his timing, not our timing.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: That's one of the hardest forms of faith.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: I know we always want what we want, we want it now.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: But sometimes that healing feels delayed.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: Quite often it feels delayed.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: Because we need the growth.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: But Job teaches us that enduring faithfully changes us internally, even before circumstances change externally.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: Job is a foreshadowing of Jesus Christ.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: A simile.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: One reason the story of Job is so powerful is because it points us towards Christ.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: Job was innocent yet afflicted, rejected by others, mocked, physically suffered, emotionally abandoned, and faithful despite agony.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: All of those are a similitude of the Savior, what he went through.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: Isaiah prophesied of Christ that he is despised and rejected of man, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: Isaiah 53, 3.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: The Savior descended below all things, not symbolically, literally.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: That means when we suffer, Christ understands betrayal, loneliness, physical pain, emotional anguish, anguish, silence, unfairness, illness, cancer, death.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: He understands all of it.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: Because he experienced all of it.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: Modern Revelation declares the Son of Man hath descended below them all.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: Art thou greater than he?
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: The answer to Job's suffering and ours is ultimately Jesus Christ, not because he prevents all pain now, but because he sanctifies our suffering and eventually redeems all pain.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: So how can we actually apply the lessons of Job and become more Christ-like through our trials?
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: 1.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: Stay faithful even when answers do not come quickly.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: How's that country song go?
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: I thank God.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: Don't mind my singing.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's pretty bad.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: But sometimes it feels like our prayers go unanswered.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: But stay faithful even when they the answers do not come quickly.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: Faith is proven most powerfully in uncertainty.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: Two, let suffering soften you, not harden you.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: Trials can increase compassion, empathy, patience, and humility.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: And if you let them, they increase your charity towards all.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: If you don't, it hardens your heart, makes you hate people, hate everything, and you see it in your face.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: Three, continue turning towards God.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: Pray anyways, worship anyways, trust anyways, because God is still there for you even when you're suffering.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: Four, remember that growth happens invisibly.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: Just like you don't see weight loss overnight, it takes months to notice when you're losing steadily.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: God may be doing his greatest work beneath the surface.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: 5.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: Anchor your identity in Christ, not in circumstances.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: Job lost possession, status, and health.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: He lost his family, but his covenant relationship mattered most.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: And because of that, he gained everything back and more.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: So let's think about the parallel of Joseph Smith in Liberty Jail.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: He was in the cold, betrayed, imprisoned, uncertain.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: He couldn't even stand up.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: I've been to Liberty Jail.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: The ceiling stands at like five feet, and he was six feet tall.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: He couldn't even stand up straight.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: It was cold.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: And he cried out, O God, where art thou?
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: Hast thou forsaken me?
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: That cry echoes Job, and maybe it echoes you too.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: But the Lord answered Joseph Smith with eternal perspective.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: He told him, Fear not what man can do, for God shall be with you forever and ever.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: DNC 122, verse 9.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: That promise applies to us.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: The Lord may not immediately remove every trial.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: But he never abandons covenant disciples.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: The story of Job is ultimately not about losing everything.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: It is about discovering that God is enough even when everything else is gone.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: Job became more Christ-like because suffering refined him, humility deepened him, faith anchored him, and trust transformed him.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: And perhaps that is what discipleship really is: learning to trust God so perfectly, so deeply that even pain draws us closer to him instead of pushing him further away from us.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: Because eventually every faithful disciple learns what Job learned.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_00: I know that my Redeemer lives.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: And when we truly know that, we can endure almost anything.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: And as I said, Job gained back everything he lost and then more.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: We are promised that if we are faithful and endure to the end, the blessings we receive, whether here or in heaven, far outstrip anything that we can get here.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: This has been Todd Thompson.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: Learn the lessons of Job and apply it in your life.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: Read the book of Job.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: Understand him.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: Trials do not mean that God has forgotten you.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes they mean he is shaping you into something holier.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the lesson and the message I want you to take away today.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: If this resonates with you, share it with your friends.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: Study it.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: Learn about it.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: And let it make you a better person.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: This is Todd Tox, Spirit by Design, where I help you prepare your spirit for the second coming of Christ.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: Have a blessed day.