Talks on Suffering
St John’s Extra: The End of Suffering
The Christian faith, including the Christian understanding of suffering, centres on the good news of Jesus: his life, death and resurrection. Last episode we discussed the amazing truth that God experiences pain and suffering in the person of Jesus. God understands our suffering, not in a merely theoretical way, but experientially. But the Christian faith offers us more than a God who has experienced our pain. That is amazing and comforting but it doesn’t solve the problem of suffering and…
When will suffering end? || Tim Johnson || Job 42
When will it end? When we’re in the midst of suffering, it seems to go on forever. But today, we’ll see the end of Job’s suffering, as we also come to the end of the book of Job, and the end of this series on the problem of suffering.
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St John’s Extra: God’s experience of Suffering
The heart of the Christian faith is the good news about Jesus: his life, death and resurrection. It is this which shapes the Christian understanding of suffering too. Perhaps the key thing that Christians can say about suffering is that God is not remote or removed from human suffering. Christians believe that God himself took on human flesh in the person of Jesus. He lived as one of us, he experienced all the highs and lows of human existence, and…
What would you ask God? || Tim Johnson || Job 38:1-21 & 40:1-14
When you get to heaven, what’s the first question you’ll ask God?
In today’s talk, we’re looking at Job’s questioning of God. Why has God allowed suffering to run rife in Job’s life, and more broadly, why is there suffering in the world at all?
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St John’s Extra: Suffering within our Story
As we wrestle with the problem of suffering, we need to think about how suffering fits within the story that we are living in. Humans are storytellers and we understand the world we live in through a ‘big story’ (the fancy name is a metanarrative) which provides a framework for understanding and interpreting reality. For Christians, our big story is contained in the bible and the first two ‘episodes’ of this story helps us understand the problem of suffering in…
Are you allowed to shout at God? || Tim Johnson || Job 30
Jesus shouted “MY GOD MY GOD, WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN ME!?” as he hung on the cross. But are we, as God’s created beings, allowed to talk to God in that way? Are we allowed to shout at God, get angry at God, lament with God?
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St John’s Extra: Taking God out of the Equation
In these episodes of St John’s Extra we are wrestling with the problem of suffering. Last week we acknowledged that suffering is a real problem but not everyone would agree with this. For an atheist suffering is not a problem at all because it is just the way things are in a materialistic universe and there is no point trying to grapple with it and explain it. This is the way that the prominent atheist Richard Dawkins puts it: ‘In…
What do you say to someone who is suffering? || Tim Johnson || Job 2:11-13 & 4:1-21
What do you say to someone who is suffering? It’s a privilege, but a hard situation to be in – to care for someone in their time of need. As we continue our series in the book of Job, exploring the problem of suffering, we’re about to meet Job’s friend…
St John’s Extra: The Problem of Suffering
We need only look at a news feed or social media to see that the world is full of suffering. Around the world there are wars, violence, sickness, and starvation. There are natural disasters such as earthquakes, floods, and tsunamis. Closer to home, we experience serious sickness and disability, relationship breakdown, and the death of people we love. Suffering is very real. The challenge for us as Christian people is how we respond to this suffering. Let’s be honest, it’s…
The Problem of Suffering || Tim Johnson || Job 1:1-2:10
You don’t have to look far to see suffering in our world. But how could an all-loving and all-powerful God allow suffering to continue?
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Where is God in Suffering? || God in the Everyday || Romans 8:18-30
Going through our daily lives, as we work, study, rest, as we disagree and face conflicts, as we go through hard times, as we interact with our natural world – God is with us in all these situations. Today we begin a new series – “God in the everyday”….
The God of Hard Times || Tim Johnson || 2 Corinthians 6:3-13
If you’ve been investigating Jesus and Christianity but find the behaviour of Christians a stumbling block, look more closely at Jesus. The only criteria of being a Christian is to admit that we’ve stuffed up, and aren’t perfect people. We are called t…
The Church On Mission || Opposition & Goodbyes || Acts 20:1-12
In this section of Acts, Paul is compelled by the Spirit to end his journey through the ancient world by returning to Jerusalem, where he doesn’t know what will happen to him, other than he has been prompted that prison and hardships are waiting for hi…
Strangers || Suffer for Doing Good || 1 Peter 3:8-22
Continuing our look through Peter’s letter to first-century Christians, scattered throughout the Roman Empire, Peter addresses a people who are beginning to be persecuted for their faith. Within a few years of this letter being written, Christianity is outlawed throughout the Roman world, and Christians are arrested for their faith.
Sam explores what happens when Christians suffer for doing good, and sees how Peter shows that they are blessed for their suffering, that suffering exercises their hope, and that Christians participate in suffering with Jesus- just as he suffered for us.