God Rules in The Affairs of Men (part 2)

This topic seems to be coming up on a frequent basis so I thought I would take another look at this subject and attempt to shed some more scriptural light on a controversial topic.

First, I would like to take a look at a few comments made by the popular Bible teacher John Bevere in his latest video series entitled ‘Relentless’(no.5 in the series). Quite frankly I was a little troubled as he made the point that “a person cannot really pray or fight (spiritually) if he or she believes that God is behind their suffering.” (This is not the actual quote) I am not really sure how someone can come to such a conclusion especially if that person has taken a serious look at the stories of the individuals in the Bible. The other point which he made was,  ”  if we recognize that whatever we are going through carries with it aspects of stealing, killing and destroying than they cannot be God and must be rejected and fought against as being of the devil.”(Again this is not an actual quote) Sometimes I am not sure where to start to unravel these teachings , they are the popular Christian thought on this continent, any serious Bible student should be able to identify the inaccuracy of this kind of teaching and realize that these again fall into the North American feel good, never anything bad Gospel  so prevalent here on this continent.

First I will remind us all of David the anointed King of Israel, this is a good place to begin however we could choose any individual in the Bible and read of God’s dealings with them to see this same pattern throughout.

Let me back up here a little to re emphasize that God rules in the affairs of men and women everywhere saved and unsaved, we need to keep this perspective in mind, it is the true and only reality taught in scripture. The moment we forget that God is God and He does whatever He wants on earth as it is in Heaven than our theology might be somewhat skewed by our present circumstances, our current understanding of scripture and the prevalent highlighting of certain scripture disregarding  the main body of biblical teaching that prove otherwise.

Back to David, in 1 Samuel we find Samuel the prophet visiting the house of Jesse for the sole purpose of anointing another King in place of Saul who had turned from following the specific commands of God. He had his own version of what he wanted to do, and was thus rejected by God as King of Israel. Now how does this stand up to teaching that tells us to reject anything with aspects of stealing, killing and destroying. I am sure that God was in the process of destroying Saul’s exclusive ‘right’ to the throne by God’s own former decree, not to mention Saul’s son Jonathan chances of ever becoming King. Someone might venture to say that it was Saul’s fault because he sinned, and so he himself aborted his future. Let me ask you, which one of us has not sinned .If this be the measure of what does or what does not come through the door of injurious things coming our way than we all need to fasten our seat belts because we all fall into that category of having sinned and in no small way. Now, let me ask you, who removed Saul from being King, God or the devil? (1Samuel 13:13)

Let’s put Saul aside for now because of his sin, he had it coming right. Let’s look at David the beloved of God the anointed psalmist and shepherd. We find this future King running for his life through the hills and deserts of Judea trying to evade the jealous and murderous rants of a mad King(Saul).       Everything we have read so far about David has been good and wonderful however here he is running for his life not for a week or a month but anywhere from thirteen to seventeen years. I wonder if David prayed for help and deliverance, I am sure He did (Ps.18 ;Ps61; and others) however none came soon enough for him, was this God’s will or was the devil running violently out of control wreaking havoc while God was out of town or on vacation or was the devil in control at this point. Wasn’t God able to reel the devil in if he was involved here and make him  stop.(Was it not an evil spirit from God that afflicted King Saul and thus provoked Saul to want to kill David in the first place?)David could have expressed that he was being robbed of life and liberty, valuable family time and this running for your life and trying to stay ahead of King Saul and his troops was killing his health not to mention his social life.

Could we not say that this has all the earmarks of killing, stealing and destroying, the very trademarks of the devil himself? How about the incident when David’s wife and family as well as all the other noble men in David’s army were captured by the Amalekites, ( 1 Sam.30) their city was burned and all their valuables were stolen. Was this the act of the devil that ravaged the anointed of God without God being aware of it or giving consent? This idea of an all powerful devil is what seems to be heralded across the land. He is the whipping boy of the Church, someone to blame all our woes on. The Church cannot bring itself to admit that God does not only allow but also plans some very negative things for the lives of His saints to conform them into His image. (And all the Amen’s went out the back door)

We have connected all the dots and  concluded that if God is good he can only do good things and the devil being the evil bad guy, well he does all the evil bad stuff. So we wrap up our arguments with ‘anything bad or evil in my life is from the devil.’ This is the prism many in the Western Church want to view scripture with even though it does not fit a true Biblical pattern.

This is not to say that the devil is of no threat to us, we are told by Peter that ‘the devil goes about as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour.’(1 Peter 5:8)  Let me ask you this, which saint of God do you think the devil can devour outside of the will and purpose of God. Can the devil just attack us at will? If he can where do we find refuge and if God cannot prevent him from doing so it would make God inferior to the devil, which gives the devil free admission of the planet and more specifically to the Saints (us) unrestrained.

In part one of ‘God rules in the affairs of men’ I take a look at Job and his sufferings. His whole ordeal was instigated by God; you cannot come to any other conclusion. God brought up the good character of Job knowing full well  what was to transpire, the devil knew full well that he could not afflict Job with boils and destroy his family and livelihood without the express permission of God(remember the hedge of protection)which makes God an accessory to the fact after granting the devil permission, period! King Saul was not dethroned by the devil, God removed him, and David was not being hounded by a mad King by permission of the devil but by God.

I will use one more illustration here although I could go on quite extensively with every person in the Bible God used in one way or the other.

Joseph, an innocent young man loved by his father, a dreamer whose world was turned upside down when his brothers took it upon themselves to throw him into a pit out of their jealousy of him, I’m sure only after they had beat him and taunted him severely .Then they sold him to a caravan of traders to be later sold again as a slave to an Egyptian official who bought him for his own personal household. The story goes on to tell us that Potiphar’s wife falsely accused him of trying to rape her which landed Joseph in prison for thirteen years. Now how can this happen to a beloved child of God anyway. To be torn from his home and his father’s love, to be the brunt of such hatred and animosity from his own brothers then to be sold to strangers as a slave, think of the horror and emotional distress. After all of this he ends up in a strange land with strange customs and gods to be then falsely accused of raping his master’s wife. We just skim over such stories at times not taking much thought of the endless fears, hardship and suffering he underwent as a young man. In jail, Joseph spends the next thirteen years of his life; imagine thirteen years in a dirty rat infested prison for something he did not do. How can this happen? This is the height of all travesties of justice especially to a God fearing person. WHERE WAS GOD?

Where was God anyway? In our own North American mindset we would rebuke the devil and begin a spiritual warfare campaign against the demonic realms to try to free the captive from his bonds and all the lies that have been aimed at him to destroy his young life and we would be wrong and would miss the purpose of God in this story. We seem to ignore or overlook the deeper lessons God is trying to work into us when allowing us to go through suffering and adversity. Shouldn’t we pray then for people undergoing trials and adversity? Yes of course, but are our prayers wrapped in self preservation led by our desires to be comfortable and care free. Or are they led by the Holy Spirit, do we recognize God’s hand in our present conditions, do we discern and accept the fact that what I am experiencing right now may be for my growth and maturity for purposes far beyond my present comprehension. Did the devil somehow sneak by God to afflict me or my family with some ailment?

Let’s settle the matter; is God in control and rules over all or does the devil have free run in our lives as he pleases.

We rehearse a few well known scriptures that to be sure are for our well being in the face of such adversity believing that we have the mind of God in our situation. We are under stress and pressure and there is no way in our theology that God would ever want to inconvenience us by allowing us to experience anything harmful. Joseph in jail would have loved to buy into our belief system and confessed his way out; Job covered in boils could have used our three keys to divine healing and a prosperity message to deliver his family from destruction. We could mention Daniel a captive in a far away country under the divine judgement of God at the hands of a heathen king administering the justice of God Himself upon His own people.

When will we Christians here in the West ever get it, we are not our own we have been bought with a price. He guides my path in righteousness for his name sake, He makes me lie down in green pastures He leads me besides still waters. Where did this doctrine of an all powerful devil ever come from is beyond me but it is not scriptural. The devil is not God’s rival nor God’s enemy he is but an instrument in God’s hand. The devils power is pretty much contained in the ‘ground’ that we give him in our thought life as this spiritual war which concerns us for the most part is fought between our ears. Jesus Himself said that “the devil comes but he finds no ground in me”( John 14:30). None of us can make that claim, we give him lots of ground and he is right at home in areas of our thought life where he has taken up residence within our mindsets and attitudes that are much like his own.

Our eternal perspective is based on our limited and skewed thinking, how then can we really know the thoughts and will of God that are so high above our own. (Isaiah 55:9)We read a few scriptures on a subject and we feel that we have the whole counsel of God on the subject, how naive we are at times.

God rebuked Job for this very reason; Job did not understand God’s ways. He tried to take God to task for afflicting him, I’ll credit Job for this, at least he knew from which hand the adversity came from unlike some of us who tend to want to blame the devil for everything. I believe the underlying issue for waging this kind of fight at the devil is that it tends to tribute the saint for his or her tenacity and fighting ability however on the other hand it robs God of the praise that is due Him for the grace and keeping power He gives us all in the midst of every wilderness He walks us through.

The bottom line is that it is a misdirected fight against the devil that is either following God’s command or is waging his war against the saints within God given parameters. The flip side is that we fail at times to humble ourselves under God’s overall purpose, where we could receive wisdom, grace or direction. We are so busy fighting a devil exercising ‘our dynamic faith’ and missing out on the generous supply of God’s staying power to walk through the storms or whatever else Hell has to throw at us finding a way of escape in Christ through His grace to endure. (1Cor. 10:13)We do not need to endure what we can escape from, Christ is our escape to be able to endure.

Again, this is not to say that we never wage war with hell and its minions, what I am saying is that we certainly need to be led by the Holy Spirit in our assaults against demonic entities. Where we will do most of our fighting will be in the area of ‘taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ’. As someone so accurately put it “the battlefield is our mind.”

God allows Satan and his hosts to wage a limited war against mankind and especially the saints of God chiefly in the realms of our thoughts, imaginations and speculations which influence man to become independent, self willed and rebellious thus opening up doors of Divine judgment and affliction and yes  that includes us, saints of God. This is done all for the purpose of turning us from our sin and selfish ambitions to a place of humility, brokenness and Christ likeness.

Does God rule in the affairs of men? Yes and more than we will ever appreciate.

Finally to fully understand or at least to attempt to fully understand Gods purposes in our suffering and adversity we need to begin to examine what is eternally important from God’s point of view. We will never embrace trials based on our temporal analysis of them; it is only through God’s eyes that we can gain perspective and encouragement to press on. Most Christians in the West have a very hard time accepting the fact that God not only allows trials tribulation and hardships He has put them into the script that will form our lives. We think that certain scriptures contradict that God would do things to Christians that we would describe as harmful yet the Bible is replete with the stories of men and women who have undergone tremendous hardships at the very hands of a loving Father and they knew exactly that it was from their good heavenly Father. We are neither perfect nor mature dear saints of God and that is why our Heavenly Father will take us in hand to instruct and correct us with many measures we might feel are unfavourable however Father knows best.

Hard to believe, read your Bible as though you were reading it for the first time without any preconceived or predisposition in your bias to certain indoctrination we have all been exposed to and conditioned to over so many years. Read the stories of modern day Christians suffering in other countries for multiple reasons and not just for persecution sake. Why do we accept that we should suffer persecution but all other areas of suffering are demonic, there is an inconsistency here.

God is ‘not’ so much concerned with our momentary comforts as if comfort was all there was to the Christian life. The Christian life has been marked by sacrifice and suffering over the last two thousand years, it is really only in the last thirty years that has awakened a new success and entitlement gospel that rejects all suffering and adversity except for persecution sake.

God has placed our eternal character far above the blessings He would bestow upon us in the here and now and in our maturity and child rearing will see to it that like Jesus, we will all learn obedience through the things we suffer. Many oppose a God who afflicts His children yet how can we come away from reading stories like Job or Joseph or the children of Israel in the wilderness without embracing a God who can bless and also certainly lay us low, yes because of our disobedience and yes for His purposes which at the time we are not always able to distinguish because of the hardships we are going through.  We might pray for God’s quick deliverance, however as in the case of Joseph God will turned a deaf ear to our cries until His purposes are accomplished in our suffering and we come forth in the image of Jesus Himself. Our suffering at the hands of God is not in vain dear saints.

I’ll end with Joseph, in Psalms 105:16-22 we read that Joseph feet were laid in iron fetters until the word of the Lord tested him, and then the King released him. Joseph whole life has been appointed by God to shape and test this young man in the fires of prison, false accusation, hatred, animosity all the things if left up to us, we would avoid like a plaque. Yet God’s divine intention for this future Prince of Egypt was set in motion from before the foundations of the world that he should undergo many harsh and inhumane things that many of us would prefer to believe God had no part in. The godly character that was being fashioned in him was forged in the fires of God’s affliction and not the devils.

What has God destined for us, that we all should be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ.      (Romans 8:29; Colossians 3:10). How do we think this will happen, by drifting upon a ‘blessing cloud’ floating over all the obstacles and hurdles in our lives, I don’t think so? Like Jesus who has gone before us, we also will learn the obedience He did as He surrendered His life to the Father, His very privilege of equal power and authority He left behind, he humbled Himself to be conformed to a servant  to take the cross to its appointed place in the will of God and not His own.

In Christian Churches around the world people suffer from disease, live in terrible conditions, in one way or another we all have multiple areas of infirmity in our lives and in our families. Yet we continue to seek God for healing and deliverance and sometimes it comes and most times it does not. We are so often told it’s because we lack faith and have doubt in our hearts, for those who say such things we should let them pray for the sick and infirmed. Should we blame the devil for all our infirmities or should we not bring the blame closer to home since we all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. A fallen world with sinful people is not Paradise nor is it Heaven. Christians die from sickness as well as those who make no profession of any faith. Yes we have multiple promises in the Bible that tell us that Christ paid the debt in full for all sickness and disease yet for the most part those promises are not realized in the lives of Christians .Is the sickness or trial bigger and stronger than God, of course not. Doesn’t God hear the prayers of those who suffer? Yes of course He does, maybe we are sinful and until we clean up our act things won’t change; some healing is conditional on people having to confess sin and get things right with God and others.

We certainly have more questions than answers, is there a secret formula for healing and being free of trials and adversity? I don’t think there is, I believe the secret to whatever affliction we go through is a humble heart that bows itself low before God and waits on Him until He sends His ‘Rhema” word,  a specific time sensitive word filled with God’s power and the full measure of healing we may need. In either case we learn to abide in Him, He alone has the power to heal and deliver if He so chooses. Are we at rest with the idea of a God fully in charge and yes over anything that is afflicting my spirit, mind and body? I have no power to change one iota about my own life I am at the will and mercy of God, usually trials and suffering make that abundantly clear. Is God good, does He know what I am going through, did He not promise that the trials that I would go through would have all sufficient grace and a way of escape that I would be able to endure it?  (1 Cor. 10:13) Can I let go of my doctrines that  torment me because the answer I think I should get, do not arrive in the time frame I think I should get it in, thus adding to my frustration and confusion.

Is the Western Church willing to come to a place of rest in an all powerful God who rules in the affairs of men?  Are we able to entrust our lives and our present condition to God entirely; if we can or at least if we are willing than we are in good company and we can say with Paul “therefore I am content with weakness, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions with difficulties, for Christ sake; for when I am weak I am strong.” (2 Cor.12:7-10)

Here a few scriptures to study related to this topic;

2Corinthians 1:5 “…the sufferings of Christ are ours in abundance…”

Philippians 3:10 “…the fellowship of His sufferings…”

2 Tim. 2:3 “ suffer hardship with me…”

1 Peter 2:21 “… called for this purpose…”

Jeremiah 2:30 “ In vain have I struck your sons, they accepted no chastening.”

Deut. 32:39 “ It is I who put to death and give life. I have wounded, and it is I who heal.

Isaiah 30:26 “…heals the bruise He has inflicted.”

Isaiah 30:26 “…the Lord binds up the fracture of His people and heals the bruise which He has inflicted”.

Hosea 6: 1 “Come and let us return to the Lord. For He has torn us, but He will heal us. He has wounded us, but He will bandage us”.

For further consideration look at Adam and Eve in the Garden knowing the eternal ramifications that would follow , why did God allow the ‘serpent ‘ to whisper his poisonous thoughts into their heads? God could have stopped all the suffering and dying over these thousands of years but He chose not to. Man was ‘free’ to choose with blessings to follow or consequences. Does anyone think it strange that God cast Satan down to earth where God’s most beloved creation would be placed? Actually this was no accident or fate but in the eternity to come God will show all mankind His divine purpose for all who have suffered on this earth, how high and wonderful His ‘ways’ are in His everlasting plan to redeem and conform us to Christ by means of the furnaces of life’s trials He specifically custom ordered for each one of us by name.

 

God Rules in The Affairs of Men (part 2)

This topic seems to be coming up on a frequent basis so I thought I would take another look at this subject and attempt to shed some more scriptural light on a controversial topic.

First, I would like to take a look at a few comments made by the popular Bible teacher John Bevere in his latest video series entitled ‘Relentless’(no.5 in the series). Quite frankly I was a little troubled as he made the point that “a person cannot really pray or fight (spiritually) if he or she believes that God is behind their suffering.” (This is not the actual quote) I am not really sure how someone can come to such a conclusion especially if that person has taken a serious look at the stories of the individuals in the Bible. The other point which he made was,  ”  if we recognize that whatever we are going through carries with it aspects of stealing, killing and destroying than they cannot be God and must be rejected and fought against as being of the devil.”(Again this is not an actual quote) Sometimes I am not sure where to start to unravel these teachings , they are the popular Christian thought on this continent, any serious Bible student should be able to identify the inaccuracy of this kind of teaching and realize that these again fall into the North American feel good, never anything bad Gospel  so prevalent here on this continent.

First I will remind us all of David the anointed King of Israel, this is a good place to begin however we could choose any individual in the Bible and read of God’s dealings with them to see this same pattern throughout.

Let me back up here a little to re emphasize that God rules in the affairs of men and women everywhere saved and unsaved, we need to keep this perspective in mind, it is the true and only reality taught in scripture. The moment we forget that God is God and He does whatever He wants on earth as it is in Heaven than our theology might be somewhat skewed by our present circumstances, our current understanding of scripture and the prevalent highlighting of certain scripture disregarding  the main body of biblical teaching that prove otherwise.

Back to David, in 1 Samuel we find Samuel the prophet visiting the house of Jesse for the sole purpose of anointing another King in place of Saul who had turned from following the specific commands of God. He had his own version of what he wanted to do, and was thus rejected by God as King of Israel. Now how does this stand up to teaching that tells us to reject anything with aspects of stealing, killing and destroying. I am sure that God was in the process of destroying Saul’s exclusive ‘right’ to the throne by God’s own former decree, not to mention Saul’s son Jonathan chances of ever becoming King. Someone might venture to say that it was Saul’s fault because he sinned, and so he himself aborted his future. Let me ask you, which one of us has not sinned .If this be the measure of what does or what does not come through the door of injurious things coming our way than we all need to fasten our seat belts because we all fall into that category of having sinned and in no small way. Now, let me ask you, who removed Saul from being King, God or the devil? (1Samuel 13:13)

Let’s put Saul aside for now because of his sin, he had it coming right. Let’s look at David the beloved of God the anointed psalmist and shepherd. We find this future King running for his life through the hills and deserts of Judea trying to evade the jealous and murderous rants of a mad King(Saul).       Everything we have read so far about David has been good and wonderful however here he is running for his life not for a week or a month but anywhere from thirteen to seventeen years. I wonder if David prayed for help and deliverance, I am sure He did (Ps.18 ;Ps61; and others) however none came soon enough for him, was this God’s will or was the devil running violently out of control wreaking havoc while God was out of town or on vacation or was the devil in control at this point. Wasn’t God able to reel the devil in if he was involved here and make him  stop.(Was it not an evil spirit from God that afflicted King Saul and thus provoked Saul to want to kill David in the first place?)David could have expressed that he was being robbed of life and liberty, valuable family time and this running for your life and trying to stay ahead of King Saul and his troops was killing his health not to mention his social life.

Could we not say that this has all the earmarks of killing, stealing and destroying, the very trademarks of the devil himself? How about the incident when David’s wife and family as well as all the other noble men in David’s army were captured by the Amalekites, ( 1 Sam.30) their city was burned and all their valuables were stolen. Was this the act of the devil that ravaged the anointed of God without God being aware of it or giving consent? This idea of an all powerful devil is what seems to be heralded across the land. He is the whipping boy of the Church, someone to blame all our woes on. The Church cannot bring itself to admit that God does not only allow but also plans some very negative things for the lives of His saints to conform them into His image. (And all the Amen’s went out the back door)

We have connected all the dots and  concluded that if God is good he can only do good things and the devil being the evil bad guy, well he does all the evil bad stuff. So we wrap up our arguments with ‘anything bad or evil in my life is from the devil.’ This is the prism many in the Western Church want to view scripture with even though it does not fit a true Biblical pattern.

This is not to say that the devil is of no threat to us, we are told by Peter that ‘the devil goes about as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour.’(1 Peter 5:8)  Let me ask you this, which saint of God do you think the devil can devour outside of the will and purpose of God. Can the devil just attack us at will? If he can where do we find refuge and if God cannot prevent him from doing so it would make God inferior to the devil, which gives the devil free admission of the planet and more specifically to the Saints (us) unrestrained.

In part one of ‘God rules in the affairs of men’ I take a look at Job and his sufferings. His whole ordeal was instigated by God; you cannot come to any other conclusion. God brought up the good character of Job knowing full well  what was to transpire, the devil knew full well that he could not afflict Job with boils and destroy his family and livelihood without the express permission of God(remember the hedge of protection)which makes God an accessory to the fact after granting the devil permission, period! King Saul was not dethroned by the devil, God removed him, and David was not being hounded by a mad King by permission of the devil but by God.

I will use one more illustration here although I could go on quite extensively with every person in the Bible God used in one way or the other.

Joseph, an innocent young man loved by his father, a dreamer whose world was turned upside down when his brothers took it upon themselves to throw him into a pit out of their jealousy of him, I’m sure only after they had beat him and taunted him severely .Then they sold him to a caravan of traders to be later sold again as a slave to an Egyptian official who bought him for his own personal household. The story goes on to tell us that Potiphar’s wife falsely accused him of trying to rape her which landed Joseph in prison for thirteen years. Now how can this happen to a beloved child of God anyway. To be torn from his home and his father’s love, to be the brunt of such hatred and animosity from his own brothers then to be sold to strangers as a slave, think of the horror and emotional distress. After all of this he ends up in a strange land with strange customs and gods to be then falsely accused of raping his master’s wife. We just skim over such stories at times not taking much thought of the endless fears, hardship and suffering he underwent as a young man. In jail, Joseph spends the next thirteen years of his life; imagine thirteen years in a dirty rat infested prison for something he did not do. How can this happen? This is the height of all travesties of justice especially to a God fearing person. WHERE WAS GOD?

Where was God anyway? In our own North American mindset we would rebuke the devil and begin a spiritual warfare campaign against the demonic realms to try to free the captive from his bonds and all the lies that have been aimed at him to destroy his young life and we would be wrong and would miss the purpose of God in this story. We seem to ignore or overlook the deeper lessons God is trying to work into us when allowing us to go through suffering and adversity. Shouldn’t we pray then for people undergoing trials and adversity? Yes of course, but are our prayers wrapped in self preservation led by our desires to be comfortable and care free. Or are they led by the Holy Spirit, do we recognize God’s hand in our present conditions, do we discern and accept the fact that what I am experiencing right now may be for my growth and maturity for purposes far beyond my present comprehension. Did the devil somehow sneak by God to afflict me or my family with some ailment?

Let’s settle the matter; is God in control and rules over all or does the devil have free run in our lives as he pleases.

We rehearse a few well known scriptures that to be sure are for our well being in the face of such adversity believing that we have the mind of God in our situation. We are under stress and pressure and there is no way in our theology that God would ever want to inconvenience us by allowing us to experience anything harmful. Joseph in jail would have loved to buy into our belief system and confessed his way out; Job covered in boils could have used our three keys to divine healing and a prosperity message to deliver his family from destruction. We could mention Daniel a captive in a far away country under the divine judgement of God at the hands of a heathen king administering the justice of God Himself upon His own people.

When will we Christians here in the West ever get it, we are not our own we have been bought with a price. He guides my path in righteousness for his name sake, He makes me lie down in green pastures He leads me besides still waters. Where did this doctrine of an all powerful devil ever come from is beyond me but it is not scriptural. The devil is not God’s rival nor God’s enemy he is but an instrument in God’s hand. The devils power is pretty much contained in the ‘ground’ that we give him in our thought life as this spiritual war which concerns us for the most part is fought between our ears. Jesus Himself said that “the devil comes but he finds no ground in me”( John 14:30). None of us can make that claim, we give him lots of ground and he is right at home in areas of our thought life where he has taken up residence within our mindsets and attitudes that are much like his own.

Our eternal perspective is based on our limited and skewed thinking, how then can we really know the thoughts and will of God that are so high above our own. (Isaiah 55:9)We read a few scriptures on a subject and we feel that we have the whole counsel of God on the subject, how naive we are at times.

God rebuked Job for this very reason; Job did not understand God’s ways. He tried to take God to task for afflicting him, I’ll credit Job for this, at least he knew from which hand the adversity came from unlike some of us who tend to want to blame the devil for everything. I believe the underlying issue for waging this kind of fight at the devil is that it tends to tribute the saint for his or her tenacity and fighting ability however on the other hand it robs God of the praise that is due Him for the grace and keeping power He gives us all in the midst of every wilderness He walks us through.

The bottom line is that it is a misdirected fight against the devil that is either following God’s command or is waging his war against the saints within God given parameters. The flip side is that we fail at times to humble ourselves under God’s overall purpose, where we could receive wisdom, grace or direction. We are so busy fighting a devil exercising ‘our dynamic faith’ and missing out on the generous supply of God’s staying power to walk through the storms or whatever else Hell has to throw at us finding a way of escape in Christ through His grace to endure. (1Cor. 10:13)We do not need to endure what we can escape from, Christ is our escape to be able to endure.

Again, this is not to say that we never wage war with hell and its minions, what I am saying is that we certainly need to be led by the Holy Spirit in our assaults against demonic entities. Where we will do most of our fighting will be in the area of ‘taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ’. As someone so accurately put it “the battlefield is our mind.”

God allows Satan and his hosts to wage a limited war against mankind and especially the saints of God chiefly in the realms of our thoughts, imaginations and speculations which influence man to become independent, self willed and rebellious thus opening up doors of Divine judgment and affliction and yes  that includes us, saints of God. This is done all for the purpose of turning us from our sin and selfish ambitions to a place of humility, brokenness and Christ likeness.

Does God rule in the affairs of men? Yes and more than we will ever appreciate.

Finally to fully understand or at least to attempt to fully understand Gods purposes in our suffering and adversity we need to begin to examine what is eternally important from God’s point of view. We will never embrace trials based on our temporal analysis of them; it is only through God’s eyes that we can gain perspective and encouragement to press on. Most Christians in the West have a very hard time accepting the fact that God not only allows trials tribulation and hardships He has put them into the script that will form our lives. We think that certain scriptures contradict that God would do things to Christians that we would describe as harmful yet the Bible is replete with the stories of men and women who have undergone tremendous hardships at the very hands of a loving Father and they knew exactly that it was from their good heavenly Father. We are neither perfect nor mature dear saints of God and that is why our Heavenly Father will take us in hand to instruct and correct us with many measures we might feel are unfavourable however Father knows best.

Hard to believe, read your Bible as though you were reading it for the first time without any preconceived or predisposition in your bias to certain indoctrination we have all been exposed to and conditioned to over so many years. Read the stories of modern day Christians suffering in other countries for multiple reasons and not just for persecution sake. Why do we accept that we should suffer persecution but all other areas of suffering are demonic, there is an inconsistency here.

God is ‘not’ so much concerned with our momentary comforts as if comfort was all there was to the Christian life. The Christian life has been marked by sacrifice and suffering over the last two thousand years, it is really only in the last thirty years that has awakened a new success and entitlement gospel that rejects all suffering and adversity except for persecution sake.

God has placed our eternal character far above the blessings He would bestow upon us in the here and now and in our maturity and child rearing will see to it that like Jesus, we will all learn obedience through the things we suffer. Many oppose a God who afflicts His children yet how can we come away from reading stories like Job or Joseph or the children of Israel in the wilderness without embracing a God who can bless and also certainly lay us low, yes because of our disobedience and yes for His purposes which at the time we are not always able to distinguish because of the hardships we are going through.  We might pray for God’s quick deliverance, however as in the case of Joseph God will turned a deaf ear to our cries until His purposes are accomplished in our suffering and we come forth in the image of Jesus Himself. Our suffering at the hands of God is not in vain dear saints.

I’ll end with Joseph, in Psalms 105:16-22 we read that Joseph feet were laid in iron fetters until the word of the Lord tested him, and then the King released him. Joseph whole life has been appointed by God to shape and test this young man in the fires of prison, false accusation, hatred, animosity all the things if left up to us, we would avoid like a plaque. Yet God’s divine intention for this future Prince of Egypt was set in motion from before the foundations of the world that he should undergo many harsh and inhumane things that many of us would prefer to believe God had no part in. The godly character that was being fashioned in him was forged in the fires of God’s affliction and not the devils.

What has God destined for us, that we all should be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ.      (Romans 8:29; Colossians 3:10). How do we think this will happen, by drifting upon a ‘blessing cloud’ floating over all the obstacles and hurdles in our lives, I don’t think so? Like Jesus who has gone before us, we also will learn the obedience He did as He surrendered His life to the Father, His very privilege of equal power and authority He left behind, he humbled Himself to be conformed to a servant  to take the cross to its appointed place in the will of God and not His own.

In Christian Churches around the world people suffer from disease, live in terrible conditions, in one way or another we all have multiple areas of infirmity in our lives and in our families. Yet we continue to seek God for healing and deliverance and sometimes it comes and most times it does not. We are so often told it’s because we lack faith and have doubt in our hearts, for those who say such things we should let them pray for the sick and infirmed. Should we blame the devil for all our infirmities or should we not bring the blame closer to home since we all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. A fallen world with sinful people is not Paradise nor is it Heaven. Christians die from sickness as well as those who make no profession of any faith. Yes we have multiple promises in the Bible that tell us that Christ paid the debt in full for all sickness and disease yet for the most part those promises are not realized in the lives of Christians .Is the sickness or trial bigger and stronger than God, of course not. Doesn’t God hear the prayers of those who suffer? Yes of course He does, maybe we are sinful and until we clean up our act things won’t change; some healing is conditional on people having to confess sin and get things right with God and others.

We certainly have more questions than answers, is there a secret formula for healing and being free of trials and adversity? I don’t think there is, I believe the secret to whatever affliction we go through is a humble heart that bows itself low before God and waits on Him until He sends His ‘Rhema” word,  a specific time sensitive word filled with God’s power and the full measure of healing we may need. In either case we learn to abide in Him, He alone has the power to heal and deliver if He so chooses. Are we at rest with the idea of a God fully in charge and yes over anything that is afflicting my spirit, mind and body? I have no power to change one iota about my own life I am at the will and mercy of God, usually trials and suffering make that abundantly clear. Is God good, does He know what I am going through, did He not promise that the trials that I would go through would have all sufficient grace and a way of escape that I would be able to endure it?  (1 Cor. 10:13) Can I let go of my doctrines that  torment me because the answer I think I should get, do not arrive in the time frame I think I should get it in, thus adding to my frustration and confusion.

Is the Western Church willing to come to a place of rest in an all powerful God who rules in the affairs of men?  Are we able to entrust our lives and our present condition to God entirely; if we can or at least if we are willing than we are in good company and we can say with Paul “therefore I am content with weakness, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions with difficulties, for Christ sake; for when I am weak I am strong.” (2 Cor.12:7-10)

Here a few scriptures to study related to this topic;

2Corinthians 1:5 “…the sufferings of Christ are ours in abundance…”

Philippians 3:10 “…the fellowship of His sufferings…”

2 Tim. 2:3 “ suffer hardship with me…”

1 Peter 2:21 “… called for this purpose…”

Jeremiah 2:30 “ In vain have I struck your sons, they accepted no chastening.”

Deut. 32:39 “ It is I who put to death and give life. I have wounded, and it is I who heal.

Isaiah 30:26 “…heals the bruise He has inflicted.”

Isaiah 30:26 “…the Lord binds up the fracture of His people and heals the bruise which He has inflicted”.

Hosea 6: 1 “Come and let us return to the Lord. For He has torn us, but He will heal us. He has wounded us, but He will bandage us”.

For further consideration look at Adam and Eve in the Garden knowing the eternal ramifications that would follow , why did God allow the ‘serpent ‘ to whisper his poisonous thoughts into their heads? God could have stopped all the suffering and dying over these thousands of years but He chose not to. Man was ‘free’ to choose with blessings to follow or consequences. Does anyone think it strange that God cast Satan down to earth where God’s most beloved creation would be placed? Actually this was no accident or fate but in the eternity to come God will show all mankind His divine purpose for all who have suffered on this earth, how high and wonderful His ‘ways’ are in His everlasting plan to redeem and conform us to Christ by means of the furnaces of life’s trials He specifically custom ordered for each one of us by name.

 

God Rules in The Affairs of Men (part 2)

This topic seems to be coming up on a frequent basis so I thought I would take another look at this subject and attempt to shed some more scriptural light on a controversial topic.

First, I would like to take a look at a few comments made by the popular Bible teacher John Bevere in his latest video series entitled ‘Relentless’(no.5 in the series). Quite frankly I was a little troubled as he made the point that “a person cannot really pray or fight (spiritually) if he or she believes that God is behind their suffering.” (This is not the actual quote) I am not really sure how someone can come to such a conclusion especially if that person has taken a serious look at the stories of the individuals in the Bible. The other point which he made was,  ”  if we recognize that whatever we are going through carries with it aspects of stealing, killing and destroying than they cannot be God and must be rejected and fought against as being of the devil.”(Again this is not an actual quote) Sometimes I am not sure where to start to unravel these teachings , they are the popular Christian thought on this continent, any serious Bible student should be able to identify the inaccuracy of this kind of teaching and realize that these again fall into the North American feel good, never anything bad Gospel  so prevalent here on this continent.

First I will remind us all of David the anointed King of Israel, this is a good place to begin however we could choose any individual in the Bible and read of God’s dealings with them to see this same pattern throughout.

Let me back up here a little to re emphasize that God rules in the affairs of men and women everywhere saved and unsaved, we need to keep this perspective in mind, it is the true and only reality taught in scripture. The moment we forget that God is God and He does whatever He wants on earth as it is in Heaven than our theology might be somewhat skewed by our present circumstances, our current understanding of scripture and the prevalent highlighting of certain scripture disregarding  the main body of biblical teaching that prove otherwise.

Back to David, in 1 Samuel we find Samuel the prophet visiting the house of Jesse for the sole purpose of anointing another King in place of Saul who had turned from following the specific commands of God. He had his own version of what he wanted to do, and was thus rejected by God as King of Israel. Now how does this stand up to teaching that tells us to reject anything with aspects of stealing, killing and destroying. I am sure that God was in the process of destroying Saul’s exclusive ‘right’ to the throne by God’s own former decree, not to mention Saul’s son Jonathan chances of ever becoming King. Someone might venture to say that it was Saul’s fault because he sinned, and so he himself aborted his future. Let me ask you, which one of us has not sinned .If this be the measure of what does or what does not come through the door of injurious things coming our way than we all need to fasten our seat belts because we all fall into that category of having sinned and in no small way. Now, let me ask you, who removed Saul from being King, God or the devil? (1Samuel 13:13)

Let’s put Saul aside for now because of his sin, he had it coming right. Let’s look at David the beloved of God the anointed psalmist and shepherd. We find this future King running for his life through the hills and deserts of Judea trying to evade the jealous and murderous rants of a mad King(Saul).       Everything we have read so far about David has been good and wonderful however here he is running for his life not for a week or a month but anywhere from thirteen to seventeen years. I wonder if David prayed for help and deliverance, I am sure He did (Ps.18 ;Ps61; and others) however none came soon enough for him, was this God’s will or was the devil running violently out of control wreaking havoc while God was out of town or on vacation or was the devil in control at this point. Wasn’t God able to reel the devil in if he was involved here and make him  stop.(Was it not an evil spirit from God that afflicted King Saul and thus provoked Saul to want to kill David in the first place?)David could have expressed that he was being robbed of life and liberty, valuable family time and this running for your life and trying to stay ahead of King Saul and his troops was killing his health not to mention his social life.

Could we not say that this has all the earmarks of killing, stealing and destroying, the very trademarks of the devil himself? How about the incident when David’s wife and family as well as all the other noble men in David’s army were captured by the Amalekites, ( 1 Sam.30) their city was burned and all their valuables were stolen. Was this the act of the devil that ravaged the anointed of God without God being aware of it or giving consent? This idea of an all powerful devil is what seems to be heralded across the land. He is the whipping boy of the Church, someone to blame all our woes on. The Church cannot bring itself to admit that God does not only allow but also plans some very negative things for the lives of His saints to conform them into His image. (And all the Amen’s went out the back door)

We have connected all the dots and  concluded that if God is good he can only do good things and the devil being the evil bad guy, well he does all the evil bad stuff. So we wrap up our arguments with ‘anything bad or evil in my life is from the devil.’ This is the prism many in the Western Church want to view scripture with even though it does not fit a true Biblical pattern.

This is not to say that the devil is of no threat to us, we are told by Peter that ‘the devil goes about as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour.’(1 Peter 5:8)  Let me ask you this, which saint of God do you think the devil can devour outside of the will and purpose of God. Can the devil just attack us at will? If he can where do we find refuge and if God cannot prevent him from doing so it would make God inferior to the devil, which gives the devil free admission of the planet and more specifically to the Saints (us) unrestrained.

In part one of ‘God rules in the affairs of men’ I take a look at Job and his sufferings. His whole ordeal was instigated by God; you cannot come to any other conclusion. God brought up the good character of Job knowing full well  what was to transpire, the devil knew full well that he could not afflict Job with boils and destroy his family and livelihood without the express permission of God(remember the hedge of protection)which makes God an accessory to the fact after granting the devil permission, period! King Saul was not dethroned by the devil, God removed him, and David was not being hounded by a mad King by permission of the devil but by God.

I will use one more illustration here although I could go on quite extensively with every person in the Bible God used in one way or the other.

Joseph, an innocent young man loved by his father, a dreamer whose world was turned upside down when his brothers took it upon themselves to throw him into a pit out of their jealousy of him, I’m sure only after they had beat him and taunted him severely .Then they sold him to a caravan of traders to be later sold again as a slave to an Egyptian official who bought him for his own personal household. The story goes on to tell us that Potiphar’s wife falsely accused him of trying to rape her which landed Joseph in prison for thirteen years. Now how can this happen to a beloved child of God anyway. To be torn from his home and his father’s love, to be the brunt of such hatred and animosity from his own brothers then to be sold to strangers as a slave, think of the horror and emotional distress. After all of this he ends up in a strange land with strange customs and gods to be then falsely accused of raping his master’s wife. We just skim over such stories at times not taking much thought of the endless fears, hardship and suffering he underwent as a young man. In jail, Joseph spends the next thirteen years of his life; imagine thirteen years in a dirty rat infested prison for something he did not do. How can this happen? This is the height of all travesties of justice especially to a God fearing person. WHERE WAS GOD?

Where was God anyway? In our own North American mindset we would rebuke the devil and begin a spiritual warfare campaign against the demonic realms to try to free the captive from his bonds and all the lies that have been aimed at him to destroy his young life and we would be wrong and would miss the purpose of God in this story. We seem to ignore or overlook the deeper lessons God is trying to work into us when allowing us to go through suffering and adversity. Shouldn’t we pray then for people undergoing trials and adversity? Yes of course, but are our prayers wrapped in self preservation led by our desires to be comfortable and care free. Or are they led by the Holy Spirit, do we recognize God’s hand in our present conditions, do we discern and accept the fact that what I am experiencing right now may be for my growth and maturity for purposes far beyond my present comprehension. Did the devil somehow sneak by God to afflict me or my family with some ailment?

Let’s settle the matter; is God in control and rules over all or does the devil have free run in our lives as he pleases.

We rehearse a few well known scriptures that to be sure are for our well being in the face of such adversity believing that we have the mind of God in our situation. We are under stress and pressure and there is no way in our theology that God would ever want to inconvenience us by allowing us to experience anything harmful. Joseph in jail would have loved to buy into our belief system and confessed his way out; Job covered in boils could have used our three keys to divine healing and a prosperity message to deliver his family from destruction. We could mention Daniel a captive in a far away country under the divine judgement of God at the hands of a heathen king administering the justice of God Himself upon His own people.

When will we Christians here in the West ever get it, we are not our own we have been bought with a price. He guides my path in righteousness for his name sake, He makes me lie down in green pastures He leads me besides still waters. Where did this doctrine of an all powerful devil ever come from is beyond me but it is not scriptural. The devil is not God’s rival nor God’s enemy he is but an instrument in God’s hand. The devils power is pretty much contained in the ‘ground’ that we give him in our thought life as this spiritual war which concerns us for the most part is fought between our ears. Jesus Himself said that “the devil comes but he finds no ground in me”( John 14:30). None of us can make that claim, we give him lots of ground and he is right at home in areas of our thought life where he has taken up residence within our mindsets and attitudes that are much like his own.

Our eternal perspective is based on our limited and skewed thinking, how then can we really know the thoughts and will of God that are so high above our own. (Isaiah 55:9)We read a few scriptures on a subject and we feel that we have the whole counsel of God on the subject, how naive we are at times.

God rebuked Job for this very reason; Job did not understand God’s ways. He tried to take God to task for afflicting him, I’ll credit Job for this, at least he knew from which hand the adversity came from unlike some of us who tend to want to blame the devil for everything. I believe the underlying issue for waging this kind of fight at the devil is that it tends to tribute the saint for his or her tenacity and fighting ability however on the other hand it robs God of the praise that is due Him for the grace and keeping power He gives us all in the midst of every wilderness He walks us through.

The bottom line is that it is a misdirected fight against the devil that is either following God’s command or is waging his war against the saints within God given parameters. The flip side is that we fail at times to humble ourselves under God’s overall purpose, where we could receive wisdom, grace or direction. We are so busy fighting a devil exercising ‘our dynamic faith’ and missing out on the generous supply of God’s staying power to walk through the storms or whatever else Hell has to throw at us finding a way of escape in Christ through His grace to endure. (1Cor. 10:13)We do not need to endure what we can escape from, Christ is our escape to be able to endure.

Again, this is not to say that we never wage war with hell and its minions, what I am saying is that we certainly need to be led by the Holy Spirit in our assaults against demonic entities. Where we will do most of our fighting will be in the area of ‘taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ’. As someone so accurately put it “the battlefield is our mind.”

God allows Satan and his hosts to wage a limited war against mankind and especially the saints of God chiefly in the realms of our thoughts, imaginations and speculations which influence man to become independent, self willed and rebellious thus opening up doors of Divine judgment and affliction and yes  that includes us, saints of God. This is done all for the purpose of turning us from our sin and selfish ambitions to a place of humility, brokenness and Christ likeness.

Does God rule in the affairs of men? Yes and more than we will ever appreciate.

Finally to fully understand or at least to attempt to fully understand Gods purposes in our suffering and adversity we need to begin to examine what is eternally important from God’s point of view. We will never embrace trials based on our temporal analysis of them; it is only through God’s eyes that we can gain perspective and encouragement to press on. Most Christians in the West have a very hard time accepting the fact that God not only allows trials tribulation and hardships He has put them into the script that will form our lives. We think that certain scriptures contradict that God would do things to Christians that we would describe as harmful yet the Bible is replete with the stories of men and women who have undergone tremendous hardships at the very hands of a loving Father and they knew exactly that it was from their good heavenly Father. We are neither perfect nor mature dear saints of God and that is why our Heavenly Father will take us in hand to instruct and correct us with many measures we might feel are unfavourable however Father knows best.

Hard to believe, read your Bible as though you were reading it for the first time without any preconceived or predisposition in your bias to certain indoctrination we have all been exposed to and conditioned to over so many years. Read the stories of modern day Christians suffering in other countries for multiple reasons and not just for persecution sake. Why do we accept that we should suffer persecution but all other areas of suffering are demonic, there is an inconsistency here.

God is ‘not’ so much concerned with our momentary comforts as if comfort was all there was to the Christian life. The Christian life has been marked by sacrifice and suffering over the last two thousand years, it is really only in the last thirty years that has awakened a new success and entitlement gospel that rejects all suffering and adversity except for persecution sake.

God has placed our eternal character far above the blessings He would bestow upon us in the here and now and in our maturity and child rearing will see to it that like Jesus, we will all learn obedience through the things we suffer. Many oppose a God who afflicts His children yet how can we come away from reading stories like Job or Joseph or the children of Israel in the wilderness without embracing a God who can bless and also certainly lay us low, yes because of our disobedience and yes for His purposes which at the time we are not always able to distinguish because of the hardships we are going through.  We might pray for God’s quick deliverance, however as in the case of Joseph God will turned a deaf ear to our cries until His purposes are accomplished in our suffering and we come forth in the image of Jesus Himself. Our suffering at the hands of God is not in vain dear saints.

I’ll end with Joseph, in Psalms 105:16-22 we read that Joseph feet were laid in iron fetters until the word of the Lord tested him, and then the King released him. Joseph whole life has been appointed by God to shape and test this young man in the fires of prison, false accusation, hatred, animosity all the things if left up to us, we would avoid like a plaque. Yet God’s divine intention for this future Prince of Egypt was set in motion from before the foundations of the world that he should undergo many harsh and inhumane things that many of us would prefer to believe God had no part in. The godly character that was being fashioned in him was forged in the fires of God’s affliction and not the devils.

What has God destined for us, that we all should be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ.      (Romans 8:29; Colossians 3:10). How do we think this will happen, by drifting upon a ‘blessing cloud’ floating over all the obstacles and hurdles in our lives, I don’t think so? Like Jesus who has gone before us, we also will learn the obedience He did as He surrendered His life to the Father, His very privilege of equal power and authority He left behind, he humbled Himself to be conformed to a servant  to take the cross to its appointed place in the will of God and not His own.

In Christian Churches around the world people suffer from disease, live in terrible conditions, in one way or another we all have multiple areas of infirmity in our lives and in our families. Yet we continue to seek God for healing and deliverance and sometimes it comes and most times it does not. We are so often told it’s because we lack faith and have doubt in our hearts, for those who say such things we should let them pray for the sick and infirmed. Should we blame the devil for all our infirmities or should we not bring the blame closer to home since we all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. A fallen world with sinful people is not Paradise nor is it Heaven. Christians die from sickness as well as those who make no profession of any faith. Yes we have multiple promises in the Bible that tell us that Christ paid the debt in full for all sickness and disease yet for the most part those promises are not realized in the lives of Christians .Is the sickness or trial bigger and stronger than God, of course not. Doesn’t God hear the prayers of those who suffer? Yes of course He does, maybe we are sinful and until we clean up our act things won’t change; some healing is conditional on people having to confess sin and get things right with God and others.

We certainly have more questions than answers, is there a secret formula for healing and being free of trials and adversity? I don’t think there is, I believe the secret to whatever affliction we go through is a humble heart that bows itself low before God and waits on Him until He sends His ‘Rhema” word,  a specific time sensitive word filled with God’s power and the full measure of healing we may need. In either case we learn to abide in Him, He alone has the power to heal and deliver if He so chooses. Are we at rest with the idea of a God fully in charge and yes over anything that is afflicting my spirit, mind and body? I have no power to change one iota about my own life I am at the will and mercy of God, usually trials and suffering make that abundantly clear. Is God good, does He know what I am going through, did He not promise that the trials that I would go through would have all sufficient grace and a way of escape that I would be able to endure it?  (1 Cor. 10:13) Can I let go of my doctrines that  torment me because the answer I think I should get, do not arrive in the time frame I think I should get it in, thus adding to my frustration and confusion.

Is the Western Church willing to come to a place of rest in an all powerful God who rules in the affairs of men?  Are we able to entrust our lives and our present condition to God entirely; if we can or at least if we are willing than we are in good company and we can say with Paul “therefore I am content with weakness, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions with difficulties, for Christ sake; for when I am weak I am strong.” (2 Cor.12:7-10)

Here a few scriptures to study related to this topic;

2Corinthians 1:5 “…the sufferings of Christ are ours in abundance…”

Philippians 3:10 “…the fellowship of His sufferings…”

2 Tim. 2:3 “ suffer hardship with me…”

1 Peter 2:21 “… called for this purpose…”

Jeremiah 2:30 “ In vain have I struck your sons, they accepted no chastening.”

Deut. 32:39 “ It is I who put to death and give life. I have wounded, and it is I who heal.

Isaiah 30:26 “…heals the bruise He has inflicted.”

Isaiah 30:26 “…the Lord binds up the fracture of His people and heals the bruise which He has inflicted”.

Hosea 6: 1 “Come and let us return to the Lord. For He has torn us, but He will heal us. He has wounded us, but He will bandage us”.

For further consideration look at Adam and Eve in the Garden knowing the eternal ramifications that would follow , why did God allow the ‘serpent ‘ to whisper his poisonous thoughts into their heads? God could have stopped all the suffering and dying over these thousands of years but He chose not to. Man was ‘free’ to choose with blessings to follow or consequences. Does anyone think it strange that God cast Satan down to earth where God’s most beloved creation would be placed? Actually this was no accident or fate but in the eternity to come God will show all mankind His divine purpose for all who have suffered on this earth, how high and wonderful His ‘ways’ are in His everlasting plan to redeem and conform us to Christ by means of the furnaces of life’s trials He specifically custom ordered for each one of us by name.

 

God Rules in The Affairs of Men (part 2)

This topic seems to be coming up on a frequent basis so I thought I would take another look at this subject and attempt to shed some more scriptural light on a controversial topic.

First, I would like to take a look at a few comments made by the popular Bible teacher John Bevere in his latest video series entitled ‘Relentless’(no.5 in the series). Quite frankly I was a little troubled as he made the point that “a person cannot really pray or fight (spiritually) if he or she believes that God is behind their suffering.” (This is not the actual quote) I am not really sure how someone can come to such a conclusion especially if that person has taken a serious look at the stories of the individuals in the Bible. The other point which he made was,  ”  if we recognize that whatever we are going through carries with it aspects of stealing, killing and destroying than they cannot be God and must be rejected and fought against as being of the devil.”(Again this is not an actual quote) Sometimes I am not sure where to start to unravel these teachings , they are the popular Christian thought on this continent, any serious Bible student should be able to identify the inaccuracy of this kind of teaching and realize that these again fall into the North American feel good, never anything bad Gospel  so prevalent here on this continent.

First I will remind us all of David the anointed King of Israel, this is a good place to begin however we could choose any individual in the Bible and read of God’s dealings with them to see this same pattern throughout.

Let me back up here a little to re emphasize that God rules in the affairs of men and women everywhere saved and unsaved, we need to keep this perspective in mind, it is the true and only reality taught in scripture. The moment we forget that God is God and He does whatever He wants on earth as it is in Heaven than our theology might be somewhat skewed by our present circumstances, our current understanding of scripture and the prevalent highlighting of certain scripture disregarding  the main body of biblical teaching that prove otherwise.

Back to David, in 1 Samuel we find Samuel the prophet visiting the house of Jesse for the sole purpose of anointing another King in place of Saul who had turned from following the specific commands of God. He had his own version of what he wanted to do, and was thus rejected by God as King of Israel. Now how does this stand up to teaching that tells us to reject anything with aspects of stealing, killing and destroying. I am sure that God was in the process of destroying Saul’s exclusive ‘right’ to the throne by God’s own former decree, not to mention Saul’s son Jonathan chances of ever becoming King. Someone might venture to say that it was Saul’s fault because he sinned, and so he himself aborted his future. Let me ask you, which one of us has not sinned .If this be the measure of what does or what does not come through the door of injurious things coming our way than we all need to fasten our seat belts because we all fall into that category of having sinned and in no small way. Now, let me ask you, who removed Saul from being King, God or the devil? (1Samuel 13:13)

Let’s put Saul aside for now because of his sin, he had it coming right. Let’s look at David the beloved of God the anointed psalmist and shepherd. We find this future King running for his life through the hills and deserts of Judea trying to evade the jealous and murderous rants of a mad King(Saul).       Everything we have read so far about David has been good and wonderful however here he is running for his life not for a week or a month but anywhere from thirteen to seventeen years. I wonder if David prayed for help and deliverance, I am sure He did (Ps.18 ;Ps61; and others) however none came soon enough for him, was this God’s will or was the devil running violently out of control wreaking havoc while God was out of town or on vacation or was the devil in control at this point. Wasn’t God able to reel the devil in if he was involved here and make him  stop.(Was it not an evil spirit from God that afflicted King Saul and thus provoked Saul to want to kill David in the first place?)David could have expressed that he was being robbed of life and liberty, valuable family time and this running for your life and trying to stay ahead of King Saul and his troops was killing his health not to mention his social life.

Could we not say that this has all the earmarks of killing, stealing and destroying, the very trademarks of the devil himself? How about the incident when David’s wife and family as well as all the other noble men in David’s army were captured by the Amalekites, ( 1 Sam.30) their city was burned and all their valuables were stolen. Was this the act of the devil that ravaged the anointed of God without God being aware of it or giving consent? This idea of an all powerful devil is what seems to be heralded across the land. He is the whipping boy of the Church, someone to blame all our woes on. The Church cannot bring itself to admit that God does not only allow but also plans some very negative things for the lives of His saints to conform them into His image. (And all the Amen’s went out the back door)

We have connected all the dots and  concluded that if God is good he can only do good things and the devil being the evil bad guy, well he does all the evil bad stuff. So we wrap up our arguments with ‘anything bad or evil in my life is from the devil.’ This is the prism many in the Western Church want to view scripture with even though it does not fit a true Biblical pattern.

This is not to say that the devil is of no threat to us, we are told by Peter that ‘the devil goes about as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour.’(1 Peter 5:8)  Let me ask you this, which saint of God do you think the devil can devour outside of the will and purpose of God. Can the devil just attack us at will? If he can where do we find refuge and if God cannot prevent him from doing so it would make God inferior to the devil, which gives the devil free admission of the planet and more specifically to the Saints (us) unrestrained.

In part one of ‘God rules in the affairs of men’ I take a look at Job and his sufferings. His whole ordeal was instigated by God; you cannot come to any other conclusion. God brought up the good character of Job knowing full well  what was to transpire, the devil knew full well that he could not afflict Job with boils and destroy his family and livelihood without the express permission of God(remember the hedge of protection)which makes God an accessory to the fact after granting the devil permission, period! King Saul was not dethroned by the devil, God removed him, and David was not being hounded by a mad King by permission of the devil but by God.

I will use one more illustration here although I could go on quite extensively with every person in the Bible God used in one way or the other.

Joseph, an innocent young man loved by his father, a dreamer whose world was turned upside down when his brothers took it upon themselves to throw him into a pit out of their jealousy of him, I’m sure only after they had beat him and taunted him severely .Then they sold him to a caravan of traders to be later sold again as a slave to an Egyptian official who bought him for his own personal household. The story goes on to tell us that Potiphar’s wife falsely accused him of trying to rape her which landed Joseph in prison for thirteen years. Now how can this happen to a beloved child of God anyway. To be torn from his home and his father’s love, to be the brunt of such hatred and animosity from his own brothers then to be sold to strangers as a slave, think of the horror and emotional distress. After all of this he ends up in a strange land with strange customs and gods to be then falsely accused of raping his master’s wife. We just skim over such stories at times not taking much thought of the endless fears, hardship and suffering he underwent as a young man. In jail, Joseph spends the next thirteen years of his life; imagine thirteen years in a dirty rat infested prison for something he did not do. How can this happen? This is the height of all travesties of justice especially to a God fearing person. WHERE WAS GOD?

Where was God anyway? In our own North American mindset we would rebuke the devil and begin a spiritual warfare campaign against the demonic realms to try to free the captive from his bonds and all the lies that have been aimed at him to destroy his young life and we would be wrong and would miss the purpose of God in this story. We seem to ignore or overlook the deeper lessons God is trying to work into us when allowing us to go through suffering and adversity. Shouldn’t we pray then for people undergoing trials and adversity? Yes of course, but are our prayers wrapped in self preservation led by our desires to be comfortable and care free. Or are they led by the Holy Spirit, do we recognize God’s hand in our present conditions, do we discern and accept the fact that what I am experiencing right now may be for my growth and maturity for purposes far beyond my present comprehension. Did the devil somehow sneak by God to afflict me or my family with some ailment?

Let’s settle the matter; is God in control and rules over all or does the devil have free run in our lives as he pleases.

We rehearse a few well known scriptures that to be sure are for our well being in the face of such adversity believing that we have the mind of God in our situation. We are under stress and pressure and there is no way in our theology that God would ever want to inconvenience us by allowing us to experience anything harmful. Joseph in jail would have loved to buy into our belief system and confessed his way out; Job covered in boils could have used our three keys to divine healing and a prosperity message to deliver his family from destruction. We could mention Daniel a captive in a far away country under the divine judgement of God at the hands of a heathen king administering the justice of God Himself upon His own people.

When will we Christians here in the West ever get it, we are not our own we have been bought with a price. He guides my path in righteousness for his name sake, He makes me lie down in green pastures He leads me besides still waters. Where did this doctrine of an all powerful devil ever come from is beyond me but it is not scriptural. The devil is not God’s rival nor God’s enemy he is but an instrument in God’s hand. The devils power is pretty much contained in the ‘ground’ that we give him in our thought life as this spiritual war which concerns us for the most part is fought between our ears. Jesus Himself said that “the devil comes but he finds no ground in me”( John 14:30). None of us can make that claim, we give him lots of ground and he is right at home in areas of our thought life where he has taken up residence within our mindsets and attitudes that are much like his own.

Our eternal perspective is based on our limited and skewed thinking, how then can we really know the thoughts and will of God that are so high above our own. (Isaiah 55:9)We read a few scriptures on a subject and we feel that we have the whole counsel of God on the subject, how naive we are at times.

God rebuked Job for this very reason; Job did not understand God’s ways. He tried to take God to task for afflicting him, I’ll credit Job for this, at least he knew from which hand the adversity came from unlike some of us who tend to want to blame the devil for everything. I believe the underlying issue for waging this kind of fight at the devil is that it tends to tribute the saint for his or her tenacity and fighting ability however on the other hand it robs God of the praise that is due Him for the grace and keeping power He gives us all in the midst of every wilderness He walks us through.

The bottom line is that it is a misdirected fight against the devil that is either following God’s command or is waging his war against the saints within God given parameters. The flip side is that we fail at times to humble ourselves under God’s overall purpose, where we could receive wisdom, grace or direction. We are so busy fighting a devil exercising ‘our dynamic faith’ and missing out on the generous supply of God’s staying power to walk through the storms or whatever else Hell has to throw at us finding a way of escape in Christ through His grace to endure. (1Cor. 10:13)We do not need to endure what we can escape from, Christ is our escape to be able to endure.

Again, this is not to say that we never wage war with hell and its minions, what I am saying is that we certainly need to be led by the Holy Spirit in our assaults against demonic entities. Where we will do most of our fighting will be in the area of ‘taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ’. As someone so accurately put it “the battlefield is our mind.”

God allows Satan and his hosts to wage a limited war against mankind and especially the saints of God chiefly in the realms of our thoughts, imaginations and speculations which influence man to become independent, self willed and rebellious thus opening up doors of Divine judgment and affliction and yes  that includes us, saints of God. This is done all for the purpose of turning us from our sin and selfish ambitions to a place of humility, brokenness and Christ likeness.

Does God rule in the affairs of men? Yes and more than we will ever appreciate.

Finally to fully understand or at least to attempt to fully understand Gods purposes in our suffering and adversity we need to begin to examine what is eternally important from God’s point of view. We will never embrace trials based on our temporal analysis of them; it is only through God’s eyes that we can gain perspective and encouragement to press on. Most Christians in the West have a very hard time accepting the fact that God not only allows trials tribulation and hardships He has put them into the script that will form our lives. We think that certain scriptures contradict that God would do things to Christians that we would describe as harmful yet the Bible is replete with the stories of men and women who have undergone tremendous hardships at the very hands of a loving Father and they knew exactly that it was from their good heavenly Father. We are neither perfect nor mature dear saints of God and that is why our Heavenly Father will take us in hand to instruct and correct us with many measures we might feel are unfavourable however Father knows best.

Hard to believe, read your Bible as though you were reading it for the first time without any preconceived or predisposition in your bias to certain indoctrination we have all been exposed to and conditioned to over so many years. Read the stories of modern day Christians suffering in other countries for multiple reasons and not just for persecution sake. Why do we accept that we should suffer persecution but all other areas of suffering are demonic, there is an inconsistency here.

God is ‘not’ so much concerned with our momentary comforts as if comfort was all there was to the Christian life. The Christian life has been marked by sacrifice and suffering over the last two thousand years, it is really only in the last thirty years that has awakened a new success and entitlement gospel that rejects all suffering and adversity except for persecution sake.

God has placed our eternal character far above the blessings He would bestow upon us in the here and now and in our maturity and child rearing will see to it that like Jesus, we will all learn obedience through the things we suffer. Many oppose a God who afflicts His children yet how can we come away from reading stories like Job or Joseph or the children of Israel in the wilderness without embracing a God who can bless and also certainly lay us low, yes because of our disobedience and yes for His purposes which at the time we are not always able to distinguish because of the hardships we are going through.  We might pray for God’s quick deliverance, however as in the case of Joseph God will turned a deaf ear to our cries until His purposes are accomplished in our suffering and we come forth in the image of Jesus Himself. Our suffering at the hands of God is not in vain dear saints.

I’ll end with Joseph, in Psalms 105:16-22 we read that Joseph feet were laid in iron fetters until the word of the Lord tested him, and then the King released him. Joseph whole life has been appointed by God to shape and test this young man in the fires of prison, false accusation, hatred, animosity all the things if left up to us, we would avoid like a plaque. Yet God’s divine intention for this future Prince of Egypt was set in motion from before the foundations of the world that he should undergo many harsh and inhumane things that many of us would prefer to believe God had no part in. The godly character that was being fashioned in him was forged in the fires of God’s affliction and not the devils.

What has God destined for us, that we all should be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ.      (Romans 8:29; Colossians 3:10). How do we think this will happen, by drifting upon a ‘blessing cloud’ floating over all the obstacles and hurdles in our lives, I don’t think so? Like Jesus who has gone before us, we also will learn the obedience He did as He surrendered His life to the Father, His very privilege of equal power and authority He left behind, he humbled Himself to be conformed to a servant  to take the cross to its appointed place in the will of God and not His own.

In Christian Churches around the world people suffer from disease, live in terrible conditions, in one way or another we all have multiple areas of infirmity in our lives and in our families. Yet we continue to seek God for healing and deliverance and sometimes it comes and most times it does not. We are so often told it’s because we lack faith and have doubt in our hearts, for those who say such things we should let them pray for the sick and infirmed. Should we blame the devil for all our infirmities or should we not bring the blame closer to home since we all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. A fallen world with sinful people is not Paradise nor is it Heaven. Christians die from sickness as well as those who make no profession of any faith. Yes we have multiple promises in the Bible that tell us that Christ paid the debt in full for all sickness and disease yet for the most part those promises are not realized in the lives of Christians .Is the sickness or trial bigger and stronger than God, of course not. Doesn’t God hear the prayers of those who suffer? Yes of course He does, maybe we are sinful and until we clean up our act things won’t change; some healing is conditional on people having to confess sin and get things right with God and others.

We certainly have more questions than answers, is there a secret formula for healing and being free of trials and adversity? I don’t think there is, I believe the secret to whatever affliction we go through is a humble heart that bows itself low before God and waits on Him until He sends His ‘Rhema” word,  a specific time sensitive word filled with God’s power and the full measure of healing we may need. In either case we learn to abide in Him, He alone has the power to heal and deliver if He so chooses. Are we at rest with the idea of a God fully in charge and yes over anything that is afflicting my spirit, mind and body? I have no power to change one iota about my own life I am at the will and mercy of God, usually trials and suffering make that abundantly clear. Is God good, does He know what I am going through, did He not promise that the trials that I would go through would have all sufficient grace and a way of escape that I would be able to endure it?  (1 Cor. 10:13) Can I let go of my doctrines that  torment me because the answer I think I should get, do not arrive in the time frame I think I should get it in, thus adding to my frustration and confusion.

Is the Western Church willing to come to a place of rest in an all powerful God who rules in the affairs of men?  Are we able to entrust our lives and our present condition to God entirely; if we can or at least if we are willing than we are in good company and we can say with Paul “therefore I am content with weakness, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions with difficulties, for Christ sake; for when I am weak I am strong.” (2 Cor.12:7-10)

Here a few scriptures to study related to this topic;

2Corinthians 1:5 “…the sufferings of Christ are ours in abundance…”

Philippians 3:10 “…the fellowship of His sufferings…”

2 Tim. 2:3 “ suffer hardship with me…”

1 Peter 2:21 “… called for this purpose…”

Jeremiah 2:30 “ In vain have I struck your sons, they accepted no chastening.”

Deut. 32:39 “ It is I who put to death and give life. I have wounded, and it is I who heal.

Isaiah 30:26 “…heals the bruise He has inflicted.”

Isaiah 30:26 “…the Lord binds up the fracture of His people and heals the bruise which He has inflicted”.

Hosea 6: 1 “Come and let us return to the Lord. For He has torn us, but He will heal us. He has wounded us, but He will bandage us”.

For further consideration look at Adam and Eve in the Garden knowing the eternal ramifications that would follow , why did God allow the ‘serpent ‘ to whisper his poisonous thoughts into their heads? God could have stopped all the suffering and dying over these thousands of years but He chose not to. Man was ‘free’ to choose with blessings to follow or consequences. Does anyone think it strange that God cast Satan down to earth where God’s most beloved creation would be placed? Actually this was no accident or fate but in the eternity to come God will show all mankind His divine purpose for all who have suffered on this earth, how high and wonderful His ‘ways’ are in His everlasting plan to redeem and conform us to Christ by means of the furnaces of life’s trials He specifically custom ordered for each one of us by name.

 

God Rules in The Affairs of Men (part 2)

This topic seems to be coming up on a frequent basis so I thought I would take another look at this subject and attempt to shed some more scriptural light on a controversial topic.

First, I would like to take a look at a few comments made by the popular Bible teacher John Bevere in his latest video series entitled ‘Relentless’(no.5 in the series). Quite frankly I was a little troubled as he made the point that “a person cannot really pray or fight (spiritually) if he or she believes that God is behind their suffering.” (This is not the actual quote) I am not really sure how someone can come to such a conclusion especially if that person has taken a serious look at the stories of the individuals in the Bible. The other point which he made was,  ”  if we recognize that whatever we are going through carries with it aspects of stealing, killing and destroying than they cannot be God and must be rejected and fought against as being of the devil.”(Again this is not an actual quote) Sometimes I am not sure where to start to unravel these teachings , they are the popular Christian thought on this continent, any serious Bible student should be able to identify the inaccuracy of this kind of teaching and realize that these again fall into the North American feel good, never anything bad Gospel  so prevalent here on this continent.

First I will remind us all of David the anointed King of Israel, this is a good place to begin however we could choose any individual in the Bible and read of God’s dealings with them to see this same pattern throughout.

Let me back up here a little to re emphasize that God rules in the affairs of men and women everywhere saved and unsaved, we need to keep this perspective in mind, it is the true and only reality taught in scripture. The moment we forget that God is God and He does whatever He wants on earth as it is in Heaven than our theology might be somewhat skewed by our present circumstances, our current understanding of scripture and the prevalent highlighting of certain scripture disregarding  the main body of biblical teaching that prove otherwise.

Back to David, in 1 Samuel we find Samuel the prophet visiting the house of Jesse for the sole purpose of anointing another King in place of Saul who had turned from following the specific commands of God. He had his own version of what he wanted to do, and was thus rejected by God as King of Israel. Now how does this stand up to teaching that tells us to reject anything with aspects of stealing, killing and destroying. I am sure that God was in the process of destroying Saul’s exclusive ‘right’ to the throne by God’s own former decree, not to mention Saul’s son Jonathan chances of ever becoming King. Someone might venture to say that it was Saul’s fault because he sinned, and so he himself aborted his future. Let me ask you, which one of us has not sinned .If this be the measure of what does or what does not come through the door of injurious things coming our way than we all need to fasten our seat belts because we all fall into that category of having sinned and in no small way. Now, let me ask you, who removed Saul from being King, God or the devil? (1Samuel 13:13)

Let’s put Saul aside for now because of his sin, he had it coming right. Let’s look at David the beloved of God the anointed psalmist and shepherd. We find this future King running for his life through the hills and deserts of Judea trying to evade the jealous and murderous rants of a mad King(Saul).       Everything we have read so far about David has been good and wonderful however here he is running for his life not for a week or a month but anywhere from thirteen to seventeen years. I wonder if David prayed for help and deliverance, I am sure He did (Ps.18 ;Ps61; and others) however none came soon enough for him, was this God’s will or was the devil running violently out of control wreaking havoc while God was out of town or on vacation or was the devil in control at this point. Wasn’t God able to reel the devil in if he was involved here and make him  stop.(Was it not an evil spirit from God that afflicted King Saul and thus provoked Saul to want to kill David in the first place?)David could have expressed that he was being robbed of life and liberty, valuable family time and this running for your life and trying to stay ahead of King Saul and his troops was killing his health not to mention his social life.

Could we not say that this has all the earmarks of killing, stealing and destroying, the very trademarks of the devil himself? How about the incident when David’s wife and family as well as all the other noble men in David’s army were captured by the Amalekites, ( 1 Sam.30) their city was burned and all their valuables were stolen. Was this the act of the devil that ravaged the anointed of God without God being aware of it or giving consent? This idea of an all powerful devil is what seems to be heralded across the land. He is the whipping boy of the Church, someone to blame all our woes on. The Church cannot bring itself to admit that God does not only allow but also plans some very negative things for the lives of His saints to conform them into His image. (And all the Amen’s went out the back door)

We have connected all the dots and  concluded that if God is good he can only do good things and the devil being the evil bad guy, well he does all the evil bad stuff. So we wrap up our arguments with ‘anything bad or evil in my life is from the devil.’ This is the prism many in the Western Church want to view scripture with even though it does not fit a true Biblical pattern.

This is not to say that the devil is of no threat to us, we are told by Peter that ‘the devil goes about as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour.’(1 Peter 5:8)  Let me ask you this, which saint of God do you think the devil can devour outside of the will and purpose of God. Can the devil just attack us at will? If he can where do we find refuge and if God cannot prevent him from doing so it would make God inferior to the devil, which gives the devil free admission of the planet and more specifically to the Saints (us) unrestrained.

In part one of ‘God rules in the affairs of men’ I take a look at Job and his sufferings. His whole ordeal was instigated by God; you cannot come to any other conclusion. God brought up the good character of Job knowing full well  what was to transpire, the devil knew full well that he could not afflict Job with boils and destroy his family and livelihood without the express permission of God(remember the hedge of protection)which makes God an accessory to the fact after granting the devil permission, period! King Saul was not dethroned by the devil, God removed him, and David was not being hounded by a mad King by permission of the devil but by God.

I will use one more illustration here although I could go on quite extensively with every person in the Bible God used in one way or the other.

Joseph, an innocent young man loved by his father, a dreamer whose world was turned upside down when his brothers took it upon themselves to throw him into a pit out of their jealousy of him, I’m sure only after they had beat him and taunted him severely .Then they sold him to a caravan of traders to be later sold again as a slave to an Egyptian official who bought him for his own personal household. The story goes on to tell us that Potiphar’s wife falsely accused him of trying to rape her which landed Joseph in prison for thirteen years. Now how can this happen to a beloved child of God anyway. To be torn from his home and his father’s love, to be the brunt of such hatred and animosity from his own brothers then to be sold to strangers as a slave, think of the horror and emotional distress. After all of this he ends up in a strange land with strange customs and gods to be then falsely accused of raping his master’s wife. We just skim over such stories at times not taking much thought of the endless fears, hardship and suffering he underwent as a young man. In jail, Joseph spends the next thirteen years of his life; imagine thirteen years in a dirty rat infested prison for something he did not do. How can this happen? This is the height of all travesties of justice especially to a God fearing person. WHERE WAS GOD?

Where was God anyway? In our own North American mindset we would rebuke the devil and begin a spiritual warfare campaign against the demonic realms to try to free the captive from his bonds and all the lies that have been aimed at him to destroy his young life and we would be wrong and would miss the purpose of God in this story. We seem to ignore or overlook the deeper lessons God is trying to work into us when allowing us to go through suffering and adversity. Shouldn’t we pray then for people undergoing trials and adversity? Yes of course, but are our prayers wrapped in self preservation led by our desires to be comfortable and care free. Or are they led by the Holy Spirit, do we recognize God’s hand in our present conditions, do we discern and accept the fact that what I am experiencing right now may be for my growth and maturity for purposes far beyond my present comprehension. Did the devil somehow sneak by God to afflict me or my family with some ailment?

Let’s settle the matter; is God in control and rules over all or does the devil have free run in our lives as he pleases.

We rehearse a few well known scriptures that to be sure are for our well being in the face of such adversity believing that we have the mind of God in our situation. We are under stress and pressure and there is no way in our theology that God would ever want to inconvenience us by allowing us to experience anything harmful. Joseph in jail would have loved to buy into our belief system and confessed his way out; Job covered in boils could have used our three keys to divine healing and a prosperity message to deliver his family from destruction. We could mention Daniel a captive in a far away country under the divine judgement of God at the hands of a heathen king administering the justice of God Himself upon His own people.

When will we Christians here in the West ever get it, we are not our own we have been bought with a price. He guides my path in righteousness for his name sake, He makes me lie down in green pastures He leads me besides still waters. Where did this doctrine of an all powerful devil ever come from is beyond me but it is not scriptural. The devil is not God’s rival nor God’s enemy he is but an instrument in God’s hand. The devils power is pretty much contained in the ‘ground’ that we give him in our thought life as this spiritual war which concerns us for the most part is fought between our ears. Jesus Himself said that “the devil comes but he finds no ground in me”( John 14:30). None of us can make that claim, we give him lots of ground and he is right at home in areas of our thought life where he has taken up residence within our mindsets and attitudes that are much like his own.

Our eternal perspective is based on our limited and skewed thinking, how then can we really know the thoughts and will of God that are so high above our own. (Isaiah 55:9)We read a few scriptures on a subject and we feel that we have the whole counsel of God on the subject, how naive we are at times.

God rebuked Job for this very reason; Job did not understand God’s ways. He tried to take God to task for afflicting him, I’ll credit Job for this, at least he knew from which hand the adversity came from unlike some of us who tend to want to blame the devil for everything. I believe the underlying issue for waging this kind of fight at the devil is that it tends to tribute the saint for his or her tenacity and fighting ability however on the other hand it robs God of the praise that is due Him for the grace and keeping power He gives us all in the midst of every wilderness He walks us through.

The bottom line is that it is a misdirected fight against the devil that is either following God’s command or is waging his war against the saints within God given parameters. The flip side is that we fail at times to humble ourselves under God’s overall purpose, where we could receive wisdom, grace or direction. We are so busy fighting a devil exercising ‘our dynamic faith’ and missing out on the generous supply of God’s staying power to walk through the storms or whatever else Hell has to throw at us finding a way of escape in Christ through His grace to endure. (1Cor. 10:13)We do not need to endure what we can escape from, Christ is our escape to be able to endure.

Again, this is not to say that we never wage war with hell and its minions, what I am saying is that we certainly need to be led by the Holy Spirit in our assaults against demonic entities. Where we will do most of our fighting will be in the area of ‘taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ’. As someone so accurately put it “the battlefield is our mind.”

God allows Satan and his hosts to wage a limited war against mankind and especially the saints of God chiefly in the realms of our thoughts, imaginations and speculations which influence man to become independent, self willed and rebellious thus opening up doors of Divine judgment and affliction and yes  that includes us, saints of God. This is done all for the purpose of turning us from our sin and selfish ambitions to a place of humility, brokenness and Christ likeness.

Does God rule in the affairs of men? Yes and more than we will ever appreciate.

Finally to fully understand or at least to attempt to fully understand Gods purposes in our suffering and adversity we need to begin to examine what is eternally important from God’s point of view. We will never embrace trials based on our temporal analysis of them; it is only through God’s eyes that we can gain perspective and encouragement to press on. Most Christians in the West have a very hard time accepting the fact that God not only allows trials tribulation and hardships He has put them into the script that will form our lives. We think that certain scriptures contradict that God would do things to Christians that we would describe as harmful yet the Bible is replete with the stories of men and women who have undergone tremendous hardships at the very hands of a loving Father and they knew exactly that it was from their good heavenly Father. We are neither perfect nor mature dear saints of God and that is why our Heavenly Father will take us in hand to instruct and correct us with many measures we might feel are unfavourable however Father knows best.

Hard to believe, read your Bible as though you were reading it for the first time without any preconceived or predisposition in your bias to certain indoctrination we have all been exposed to and conditioned to over so many years. Read the stories of modern day Christians suffering in other countries for multiple reasons and not just for persecution sake. Why do we accept that we should suffer persecution but all other areas of suffering are demonic, there is an inconsistency here.

God is ‘not’ so much concerned with our momentary comforts as if comfort was all there was to the Christian life. The Christian life has been marked by sacrifice and suffering over the last two thousand years, it is really only in the last thirty years that has awakened a new success and entitlement gospel that rejects all suffering and adversity except for persecution sake.

God has placed our eternal character far above the blessings He would bestow upon us in the here and now and in our maturity and child rearing will see to it that like Jesus, we will all learn obedience through the things we suffer. Many oppose a God who afflicts His children yet how can we come away from reading stories like Job or Joseph or the children of Israel in the wilderness without embracing a God who can bless and also certainly lay us low, yes because of our disobedience and yes for His purposes which at the time we are not always able to distinguish because of the hardships we are going through.  We might pray for God’s quick deliverance, however as in the case of Joseph God will turned a deaf ear to our cries until His purposes are accomplished in our suffering and we come forth in the image of Jesus Himself. Our suffering at the hands of God is not in vain dear saints.

I’ll end with Joseph, in Psalms 105:16-22 we read that Joseph feet were laid in iron fetters until the word of the Lord tested him, and then the King released him. Joseph whole life has been appointed by God to shape and test this young man in the fires of prison, false accusation, hatred, animosity all the things if left up to us, we would avoid like a plaque. Yet God’s divine intention for this future Prince of Egypt was set in motion from before the foundations of the world that he should undergo many harsh and inhumane things that many of us would prefer to believe God had no part in. The godly character that was being fashioned in him was forged in the fires of God’s affliction and not the devils.

What has God destined for us, that we all should be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ.      (Romans 8:29; Colossians 3:10). How do we think this will happen, by drifting upon a ‘blessing cloud’ floating over all the obstacles and hurdles in our lives, I don’t think so? Like Jesus who has gone before us, we also will learn the obedience He did as He surrendered His life to the Father, His very privilege of equal power and authority He left behind, he humbled Himself to be conformed to a servant  to take the cross to its appointed place in the will of God and not His own.

In Christian Churches around the world people suffer from disease, live in terrible conditions, in one way or another we all have multiple areas of infirmity in our lives and in our families. Yet we continue to seek God for healing and deliverance and sometimes it comes and most times it does not. We are so often told it’s because we lack faith and have doubt in our hearts, for those who say such things we should let them pray for the sick and infirmed. Should we blame the devil for all our infirmities or should we not bring the blame closer to home since we all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. A fallen world with sinful people is not Paradise nor is it Heaven. Christians die from sickness as well as those who make no profession of any faith. Yes we have multiple promises in the Bible that tell us that Christ paid the debt in full for all sickness and disease yet for the most part those promises are not realized in the lives of Christians .Is the sickness or trial bigger and stronger than God, of course not. Doesn’t God hear the prayers of those who suffer? Yes of course He does, maybe we are sinful and until we clean up our act things won’t change; some healing is conditional on people having to confess sin and get things right with God and others.

We certainly have more questions than answers, is there a secret formula for healing and being free of trials and adversity? I don’t think there is, I believe the secret to whatever affliction we go through is a humble heart that bows itself low before God and waits on Him until He sends His ‘Rhema” word,  a specific time sensitive word filled with God’s power and the full measure of healing we may need. In either case we learn to abide in Him, He alone has the power to heal and deliver if He so chooses. Are we at rest with the idea of a God fully in charge and yes over anything that is afflicting my spirit, mind and body? I have no power to change one iota about my own life I am at the will and mercy of God, usually trials and suffering make that abundantly clear. Is God good, does He know what I am going through, did He not promise that the trials that I would go through would have all sufficient grace and a way of escape that I would be able to endure it?  (1 Cor. 10:13) Can I let go of my doctrines that  torment me because the answer I think I should get, do not arrive in the time frame I think I should get it in, thus adding to my frustration and confusion.

Is the Western Church willing to come to a place of rest in an all powerful God who rules in the affairs of men?  Are we able to entrust our lives and our present condition to God entirely; if we can or at least if we are willing than we are in good company and we can say with Paul “therefore I am content with weakness, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions with difficulties, for Christ sake; for when I am weak I am strong.” (2 Cor.12:7-10)

Here a few scriptures to study related to this topic;

2Corinthians 1:5 “…the sufferings of Christ are ours in abundance…”

Philippians 3:10 “…the fellowship of His sufferings…”

2 Tim. 2:3 “ suffer hardship with me…”

1 Peter 2:21 “… called for this purpose…”

Jeremiah 2:30 “ In vain have I struck your sons, they accepted no chastening.”

Deut. 32:39 “ It is I who put to death and give life. I have wounded, and it is I who heal.

Isaiah 30:26 “…heals the bruise He has inflicted.”

Isaiah 30:26 “…the Lord binds up the fracture of His people and heals the bruise which He has inflicted”.

Hosea 6: 1 “Come and let us return to the Lord. For He has torn us, but He will heal us. He has wounded us, but He will bandage us”.

For further consideration look at Adam and Eve in the Garden knowing the eternal ramifications that would follow , why did God allow the ‘serpent ‘ to whisper his poisonous thoughts into their heads? God could have stopped all the suffering and dying over these thousands of years but He chose not to. Man was ‘free’ to choose with blessings to follow or consequences. Does anyone think it strange that God cast Satan down to earth where God’s most beloved creation would be placed? Actually this was no accident or fate but in the eternity to come God will show all mankind His divine purpose for all who have suffered on this earth, how high and wonderful His ‘ways’ are in His everlasting plan to redeem and conform us to Christ by means of the furnaces of life’s trials He specifically custom ordered for each one of us by name.