Round 6

ROUND 6 Continued…

What do you do when what you experience seems to contradict what you believe about God?  [Job 13:3] This is not a one-directional question. It could be that you had some false beliefs about who God is and His feeling toward you – such as that for some reason you thought that He did not love you. Then, you could receive a more clear revelation when He makes His awesome love known to you. There could also be a situation like that of Job, when it seems God is absent, though His word says that God neither slumbers nor sleeps, and that He is here, there, and everywhere at once.

Job had a struggle to go through. It was beyond what he experienced in the physical world. After Satan touched Job’s family and wealth, and then Job’s own body, there was yet another battle ground. Job was in a battle for his mind.

Job had been weakened in His physical body. When you get tired, it is not just your body that may need rest. Renewal of your mind is both commanded and necessary to keep you in sync with the mind of Christ. When Job’s physical body was weak, the enemy took the opportunity to attack Job’s mind. A weak mind even in a strong body is a highly unstable condition. However, Job made a connection with the God who’s strength is made perfect in human weakness.

Job had to know himself better than his friends knew him – which is sometimes the opposite of a person’s self-actualization. Some people do not know themselves as well as their friends do. This can happen when you spend more time trying to fulfill what others think and or require or expect of you, than you do getting to know yourself. God desires for you to understand who you are and what your life means in relationship to Him. If you do not know who you are and whose you are (you are not your own, but you belong to God), you can be superimposed with the will of another person or other external influence. You can lose your identity in relationship to your destiny. Such a loss usually leads to wandering. This is what happened to the Children of Israel in the wilderness. They forgot who they were – children of The Most High God.

After much speaking by Job’s friends, Job must have thought, “Wait a minute. Your opinion of me does not line up with I know.” What they THINK does not line up with what Job KNOWS about himself. Though Job’s friends tried to give him some tough love, Job called them physicians with no remedy [Job 13:4]. After this, the mild-mannered Job who was too kind to tell his friends to be silent, finally said if they would just shut their mouths, then they might at least look like wise men [Job 13:5]

Now here is a point of juxtaposition. Though Job was a perfect man whom heretofore did not rail on God in all that had befallen him, AFTER his mind  was attacked (even though he had just rebuked tongues that rose up against him), Job began to say to God that what he was experiencing did not line up with he thought he knew about God. The problem was that Job had been set up.

Job’s losses were a setup. The verbal rounds he endured with his friends were a setup. The bruising of his body was a setup. Job had no idea that he had entered a twilight zone, where the enemy was given leave to afflict him, that his patience and commitment would be tried. But Satan made a mistake. When Job’s body got weak, he did question God. He did get angry. He did say, “This is messed up!” But he also showed something in his character that contradicted the illusion that Satan was creating around him. Job reached inside of his emptiness and pulled out the full power of overcoming. He said, “Though God slay me I will trust Him.”

If you’ll keep trusting God, when the enemy comes in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord will lift up a standard against him. The standard stands where you lay down – not to surrender to the enemy, but to get out of God’s way and let Him get His glory. When Satan orchestrates a setup, God knows how to add steps in a ladder that was made with only one rung. It was fashioned for your fall, but all things are working together for your good. God knows how to put people in position who will throw out a lifeline when the enemy says you are the last man standing. God knows how to subdue all his enemies. When God gets in the mix, ITS ALREADY DONE.

When you speak peace and the words you hear in return cannot be fitly joined to your speech because they are full of complaints and void of thanks, the enemy is trying to set up a mind mine. If your spouse, your friends, the books you read, the movies you watch, or anything else that can plant in your mind a “word,” is negative and you’re in a battle for your mind, get your mind out of there. It’s a setup. The enemy is trying to put your thoughts between a cliff and a quicksand – on the one hand there will be temptation and other hand depression will try to reel you in. BUT THE DEVIL IS A LIAR.

You are here on purpose – and even in a Job night, there is a morning after awhile.

COMMENTARY

All too often, when a person makes a negative statement clothed in “friendship,” the recipient says, “That’s true” or “I do agree, but” … NO. You don’t have to agree with something just because it makes itself known. If you don’t agree and you can’t dissent out loud for whatever reason, take a stand in your mind. When you stand in your mind, your eyes will start standing (like changing the things you subject your mind to through your visual sense in order to program the good and displace evil thinking).

Your years will start standing (like when you start avoiding the water cooler break down, I mean chat session, in order to stop hearing and contributing to the gossip grapevine). Your words will start standing (like speaking well (it is well) and knowing when to be silent if you can’t speak the good openly *your mind can even when your lips can’t). Your deeds will start standing (like doing all the good you can). And having done all to stand (you didn’t survive this test to go silently into the night), STAND THEREFORE.

You might be in a setup, but God will take over the show exactly when He turns up the spotlight. And when His glory gets downstage, Satan will be upstaged, and the setback will be over because your comeback has begun!

For I know the thoughts and plans that I have for you, says the Lord, thoughts and plans for welfare and peace and not for evil, to give you hope in your final outcome. Jeremiah 29:11 AMP