You Win!!!

Background: At the end of it all I found a very important lesson from the book of Job, as Job himself declares in Job 42:2 "I know that you can do all things; no plan of yours can be thwarted."

Lessons

• Enduring the Unexplained-Sometimes we just face situations in life that are unwanted, unnecessary and you can't explain where it came from. You don't know what you've got to learn from it and you can't find the reason why. Times like these Job's experience encourages us to keep on going strong. Just living life exactly like God would have us live and come out victorious
• God's unchangeable plan-This is what encouraged me most from Job's experience.In the end, after all the pain, after all the heartache when no one, not even his friends could understand his situation, Job understood it well-God's plans cannot be thwarted. This is a good thing, for His plans for us are to prosper us and NEVER to harm us.

Conclusion-If you are going through a situation you don't understand, and more than that when you look for people to comfort you, you find none who is able to know what you are going through, then take heart, God our Living Almighty Father knows and understands you and your circumstances very well. He knows how much you can endure. At the end of it all, when you've stood your ground, YOU WIN!!! for He who called us is Faithful and True to do what He has promised.

Winning All Trials

Background:Trials are a part of a believer's life, how we come out from it determines our stand and the next round. I guess its almost like writing a GMAT exam where the more you answer correctly the more difficult the next question gets, thereby assessing your actual ability to perform not just how much you know or can memorise. GMAT assesses your ability to take on the curriculum. Life's trials determine your faithfulness in stewardship, whether you can handle the responsibility of carrying God's glorious power and how much of it.

Here I list some lessons I learnt from Job which guides us the way to take when trials come our way and how to come out of top.

Lessons

1. Honoring Sovereignty- "Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?" Job 2:10 I believe Job understood "Who God is" and knew there would definitely be a meaning in all the trouble he was going through in spite of his faithfulness


2. Knowing your stand with God-Job did not condemn himself when bad things happened to him. He knew his position before God, he knew that he had been faithful in his stand with God and would not let even a shadow of a doubt from his friends come between him and God. He was confident of his relationship with God. "19This then is how we know that we belong to the truth, and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence 20whenever our hearts condemn us. For God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. 21Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God " 1 John 3:19-21


3. Knowing God -When we have fellowship with God day by day by day everyday. We start understanding His ways and His methods, we start knowing God and that builds confidence in us regarding all that God does in our lives and we can believe in Him without a shadow of a doubt through all ups and downs. As David says in Psalm 25:9 "He guides the humble in what is right and teaches them his way".

Conclusion: As in our earthly relationships, the more we spend time with someone the more we understand them, and the closer you are with that person you even think and act like them. You will understand that person so well, that you can even guess their reactions to various situations and how they will deal with it. So also with our God, He called us friend,John 15:15, so that we may know Him. What other God gives that kind of an invitation? No other. When we know God as friend we will learn to trust Him in everything that happens in our lives and trials will no longer be a boulder, but a stepping stone in developing a deeper relationship with Him.

A Serious "JOB"

Background: Job, a righteous man in the sight of God. One whom God recommended satan to look at. One whom God boasted about, wow, being boasted by God!!!. This is a man's painful story I have read and heard many times since my childhood, but it had never spoken to me the way it did, this time I read it. So here I present the precious lessons I learnt from the book of Job.



Lessons

1. Diligent devotion to God-v5"This was Job's regular custom." If you'd like to make a ritualistic religion out of christianity, here is one to follow, which is even commended by God. "To fear God and shun evil." He was so devoted to God he might have looked like a fanatic before people, but he made God proud.


2. Serious Responsibility-Job is a perfect example of a good overseer, a good and faithful servant. He took his responsibility for his children very seriously, so that until they put their faith in God themselves, he was willing to carry their faith for them. I think he was responsible in everything, no wonder he was living an abundant life, which we are still trying to achieve. When we take our responsibilities seriously, whatever has been given by God in our hands, our families, our children, our jobs, our friends, our loved ones, our property, we are sure to become good and faithful servants. We want to save children in some remote part of the world by throwing in some money at some charity, yet unwilling to pray and uphold the faith for our children, our loved ones who don't know the Lord!!!


3. Audacity to Honour Sovereignty-v20"20 At this, Job got up and tore his robe and shaved his head. Then he fell to the ground in worship ". Say what!!! Fell to the ground in worship!!! Unbelievable!! This guy is seriously crazy, he should have stood up and rebuked the devil and bound things in heaven and earth and all the jazz, but chose to worship. Here's why-- I believe the more he had spent time with God, Job had developed a "divine ear". He knew God is not the One Who comes to steal, kill and destroy. I believe he also knew that God is able to protect him. Yet he knew if God didn't save him from this disaster, it must have been within his control and God chose not to do so and he respected that Sovereignty of God. As modern Christians we've now turned the Bible upside down, to mean "what we say is what we get???" Nuh-huh...What He says is what we get. I am sure we will not be able to digest the fact that God is Sovereign, we are people who want to change God's mind and run our own lives the way we choose, with our kind of prosperity. Now this man showed us true Sovereignty. The REAL FACT IS the devil cannot lay even his tiny finger on any one of God's children and if there is something he is able to touch , don't you dare think that it happened without the knowledge of a Sovereign God. God knows, and if He still let that happen, worship Him, for He is Sovereign. He knows His business better than we do, He's been running it since eternity, can we, who lived a mere fraction of God's time tell Him what to do??? Think about it.

Conclusion:This man Job has stolen my spiritual heart and showed me things I had seen and ignored and tried my own ways to please God. I wanted, not that God would be my God, but that God would be "my kind of God". Well the fact is He's not my kind, I am His kind. So if my life has to be the one up in line for His recommendation to the devil, I'd better be the seriously His kind of a gal. A God's gal who is serious about His Sovereignty who will have the audacity to worship His Sovereignty in her life no matter what. Isn't that what Paul teaches us, the guy who was flogged, shipwrecked, imprisoned and yet had the audacity to say "4Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!" Philippians 4:4 from a prison cell. So when will we be serious about our job?