Tag Archives for " Job "

Why do we look forward to summer?  Because we can imagine frolicking at the beach, practicing for baseball or soccer, picnicking in the park, biking through lush greenery, and eating ice cream.  I bet these thoughts quicken your heart with excitement and anticipation.

That is the power of an imagination.  It gets us where you want to be.  To imagine is to think without limits.  Imagination fuels our dreams.  When we stop dreaming we stop progressing beyond where we are. That is why God is always inviting us to imagine and dream big.

Ephesians 3:20 says, “Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us.”  This verse is so pregnant with promise. We see here that for God there is no limit to what He can do and is willing to do through us and to us.  As for Him everything starts with His ability – God is able and His ability is limitless. However, the only measure of what we exactly received or experience is according to the working of His power within us. When we limit the power working within us, we limit what’s available for us. 

How big is your heart for Him? That is the measure of the working of His power within us. That is the reason why unbelief within one’s heart is so potent – it clouds the faith needed to unlock the power of His Word that is released in agreement with His heart.

Many times it is what we know in the past that hinders us from knowing what we should know and agreeing with what God wants to do at present and in the future. Yet for transformation to happen consistently, we have to learn how to build wisely on what we have known with the new revelations of God.

The secret of receiving from God is to have a heart that allows Him to freely move.  A heart that can receive freely is a heart that makes room for His Presence.  When we make room for Him within, He comes in greater measures. As we learn this process, our senses develop and mature. We begin to have our spiritual eyes and ears opened to be able to see and hear more and thereby receive more from what is available to us in heaven’s resources.

The more we get this rhythm of receiving more of His Presence and releasing it to address the needs of the world around us, the more our minds become aligned to the Mind of Christ. In the process, our physiological brain functions according to its intended design and purpose before the Fall- to be used for His glory. That is why renewed thinking brought about by progressive revelations and experiences of those revelations lead to our eventual transformation from within to without. We learn to move from the ordinary into the extraordinary, from the natural to the supernatural, and from the impossible to the possible in Christ.

An encounter with God like this is surely extraordinary. Imagine pouring out your heart to God, and you suddenly hear an audible voice call out to you. I’m sure just the sound of it would jolt enough electricity through our veins and make your hair stand on end! 

So envision how Job must have felt when God not only showed Himself, but also started to give an astonishing description of His works, as though His presence wasn’t overwhelming enough. God kept elucidating the extent of His power to Job until finally Job said: 

“I had only heard about You before, but now I have seen You with my own eyes. I take back everything I said, and I sit in the dust and ashes to show my repentance.” (Job 42:5-6).

He could no longer take it. Job was so utterly besieged by the presence of God that his once vociferous claims of innocence now seemed like pitiful whimpers against the immense wisdom of God. 

He saw his life in the light of God’s infinite plan, and there his eyes were opened. 

In his previous life of bounty, Job savored the physical blessings that came from the hand of God. But it was at this lowest point of his life that he received something better – he caught a glimpse of the kind, wise, and irreproachable God first hand. As if scales had been taken from his eyes, Job realized he was not merely a recipient of God’s goodness. He was, in fact, the very object God had chosen to display His sovereignty! This newfound consciousness was more than enough to erase all his queries; this realization silenced all his apprehensions. 

Like what He did to Job, God sometimes brings us into situations that we do not understand. Many times these problems are so overwhelming that they cloud our vision. Everything we do is seen in the light of these trials, and because we hurt, everything that happens to us seems like salt rubbed in our wounds. 

Job’s story clearly tells us that God’s ways are higher than our own. In His preeminence, the answer that He provides us does not always come in the form of a solution or an end to our problems. Sometimes, God answers by showing us the bigger picture and giving us an avenue through which our faith can grow. 

[Excerpt from The Mark book]

The book of Job is one of the most difficult portions of the Scriptures to read. It talks about affliction, or what we would call the dark night of the soul. While it wasn’t God who caused the misery of Job (it was the devil), but in His sovereign wisdom, He used it to be the platform to unveil Who He is to Job. In a very personal way, in the midst of pain, anguish, confusion, and doubt, God gave Job the greatest gift of life, that is to see His Face, and not die.

Job’s excruciating pain in his heart was deeper than the boils all over his body or the loss of his loved ones and the destruction of his possessions and his people. It was deeper because it was God’s Presence that seemed to be absent amidst all these. Questions and reasons and complaints and doubts flooded his mind and drowned his heart to numbness.

Where is God? I have been faithfully following Him and believed in Him fully and have given my offerings without fail. 

I have been good to the people around me so why is God punishing me? 

Where can I find refuge and comfort and healing and rest to my soul? 

Job’s anguish pierces through our hearts. His words are raw but God understood him completely. It wasn’t his articulation that captured God’s ears but his desperation and intention. Perhaps, at some points in our lives, we have asked these questions. These are questions that reveal our humanity before Him and our frailty without Him. And like Job, it is during these moments of brokenness, humiliation, nakedness, and sorrows that He comes and reveals Who He really is to us.

Job had moments of revelations and realizations in the midst of his pain that eventually brought him to a place of hope, deliverance, freedom, and restoration. Responding to the searing accusations and crushing words of one of his friends he said:

“Oh, that my words were written! Oh that they were inscribed in a book! 

That with an iron stylus and lead they were engraved in the rock forever!

As for me, I know that my Redeemer (Vindicator, Defender) lives, and 

at the last, He will take His stand on the earth.

Even after my skin is destroyed, yet from my flesh I shall see God.

Whom I myself shall behold, and whom my eyes will see and not another.’ 

Job 19: 23-27 NASB

God is doing a deeper work within our hearts during the dark seasons of our soul. There is an unveiling of God’s face in the most painful stripping of our hearts. There’s a gift to behold and to embrace when we walk with our Shepherd through the valley of the shadow of death – His Presence. The deep works He is doing in us today is the key to the greater works He will do to us and through us in the next season.