Job 42:10
And the Lord turned the captivity of Job
and restored his fortunes, when he prayed for his friends; also the Lord gave
Job twice as much as he had before. AMP
This is a
prophetic picture of what God will do in the Church as she learns to recognize
His Son, Jesus, who bought her back from sin by shedding His blood, and as she
abides with Him and in Him as her first love all over again and obeys the
principles of His Kingdom.
Job had to go
through a stripping process of everything he knew and possessed. This stripping
involved his family, his body, his finances, his friends, his emotional state, his
reputation, and most important, the fear (Job 3:25) that drove him to make many
decisions that supposedly came by instinct initially, which caused him to
stumble into his purpose, but now God was calling him to a higher place of spiritual maturity where
he was to acknowledge the Lord in all his ways that He may direct his path.
Dictionary.reference.com gives us several meanings of the
word acknowledge. Among them are:
1.
To
admit to be real or true; recognize the existence, truth, or fact of:
2.
To
show or express recognition or realization of:
3.
To
recognize the authority, validity, or claims of:
4.
To
show or express appreciation or gratitude for:
5.
To
indicate or make known the receipt of:
6.
To
take notice of or reply to:
God is saying
here that He is calling us to a higher place of spiritual maturity and in our walk with Him. Many things
were done out of instinctive behavior and by adopting the ways of the world and
of our cultures to engage in endeavors in the name of God in every area of our
lives. This was not a bad thing because God still used it to show us His
purpose for our lives. But the time has come for His Church to learn to become
His bride. The bride of Christ as a lifestyle lives by every word that comes
from the mouth of God (Deuteronomy 8:3; Matthew 4:4). She also does whatever it
takes to seek His face so He can open her eyes to see him in a new way. This
will include obeying His commands for us and those we influence. There are many implications to doing
this. There is no denial of the struggles, pain, and discomfort encountered as
we set about to endure the process that will lead us to the opening of our eyes
to see God in a new way. This will also take us to a higher dimension in the understanding of our walk with
Him that is necessary for the fulfillment of His purpose for our lives as
it happened to Job. Verses 1-6 explain,
1Then Job replied to the Lord:
2 ”I know you can do anything,
and no one can stop you.
3 You asked, ‘Who is this that questions my
wisdom with such ignorance?’
It is I—and I was talking about things I knew
nothing about,
things
far too wonderful for me.
4 You said, ‘Listen and I will speak!
I have some questions for you,
and
you must answer them.’
5 I had only heard about you before,
but now I have seen you with
my own eyes.
6
I take back everything I said,
and I sit in dust and ashes
to show my repentance.”
NLT
Surprisingly,
Job stated in chapter one something he only had head knowledge of, but it seems
that this acknowledgement of the ways of God had not made its way to his heart through
experience and for this reason, he had to go through the process that God
purposed in order for him to stop the fear that caused him to violate a key
principle of the Kingdom of God: the principle of trust and reliance on the
Lord. Job 1:21-22 says that Job understood that he had come naked from his
mother’s womb and in the same way he will leave this earth for the Lord gave
him what he had, and he had the right to take it away. When we come to this
understanding, it will keep us from murmuring and complaining whenever we are
enduring trials and temptations, and instead will lead us to praise him in a
whole new way for murmuring and complaining are a sin against God since it is
blaming God for our trials. Inclusive to this sin is also complaining about God's vessels He sends to deliver His messages to the people, slandering, and fighting against them. That also constitutes a violation of a law called touch not God's anointed and do His prophets no harm (1 Chronicles 16:22; Psalm 105:15).
In addition,
this is the same as committing the violation of not trusting God and relying on
him in all our ways as it is commanded in Proverbs 3:5-6,
5
Trust in the Lord with all your heart;
do not depend on your own
understanding.
6
Seek his will in all you do,
and he will show you which path to
take. NLT
As stated
before, this is a key principle that we must learn to abide by in order for us
to mature in the knowledge of God through His Son, Jesus. As we receive the
necessary revelations of who He is and of the ways of His Kingdom that will
help us reach our destiny, we will be able to remain and grow in a solid ground of
dominion and authority in the earth as well as in the spirit realm. That is why
Matthew 6:33 says to seek first the Kingdom of God above all else and live
doing the right thing in the eyes of God and He will give us everything we
need. The meaning of this passage is that we must seek or go after knowing God and knowing the way He does things first and foremost. By this we can learn the way He operates and the principles of His kingdom so we can obey them.This may take a process designed to take us to the place we lost with Adam's fall in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3) where the communion with God and
obedience to His ways allowed Adam to walk in the supernatural glory of God
that made everything possible in a way that only God and not man or anything else
received the glory.
Furthermore,
another reason we go through the trials and temptations that God allows for us
to endure for a sensible season is that the trials are not meant to destroy us, but are fashioned
to enlarge our capacity to receive more of Him and of the wine of His Spirit. This is necessary
to overcome the enemy at every level of our journey to our destiny in a
supernatural way. Thus, as it has been said among many believers,
there is a new devil (demon of a higher level of wickedness) at every level we
reach and we need to be capacitated to overcome it when we say yes to God at
every level. This also serves for us to be stripped of all anti-Christ
influence that entered with Adam’s fall and that we used as instinctive ways to
live our lives while we did not acknowledge God in all our ways. Doing this
caused us to remain in a place of defeat without the power and authority to
drive out the anti-Christ enemy that has oppressed us through its influence in
our lives that we thought was the normal and right thing to do for us and for
all God has entrusted to us such as our families, our children, our ministries,
our businesses, relationships, finances, our bodies, etc.
That is why in
Job 42:7-8 Job’s friends aroused the anger of God and were commanded by Him to
go to him with a gift of provision to help him be restored with a double
portion of what he had before. They had been blaming Job for the trial he was
enduring and accused him of having committed a sin that caused the trial. This
turned them into children of the devil for he is the accuser—opposer of the brethren
(John 8:44). They were also speaking out of the lack of knowledge they had of
the Lord and of His ways and also were trying to force him to go back to the
old ways (the ways they were accustomed to that were influenced with the anti-Christ
spirit and were a normal and right thing to do for them). The anti-Christ ways
are filled with the control, manipulation, and witchcraft of Jezebel, the pride
and fear of religion, and mammon worship—worshiping our possessions and the
work of our hands instead of giving that place solely to God.
But Job had
reached another place spiritually that caused him to see God in a new way and
have understanding that He rules and reigns any way He desires for the earth is
His and its fullness as well as all who live in it (Psalm 24:1). At this point
Job could pray for them so they could be restored to the power and authority
they needed to endure their process to remove the anti-Christ influence from
them by the renewing of their minds and by obeying every command that comes from
the mouth of God. To Him alone be all the glory. ■ © 2014.
Image by Google Images
Image by Google Images
No comments:
Post a Comment