Lessons from Job
I sat in the doctor’s office awaiting the results for some blood work.
“Mono is negative. Epstein Barr numbers are low. White blood cell count is normal.”
For someone with CFS (Chronic Fatigue Syndrome), that is superb news. Trouble is, I still had a virus. It lingered for two weeks and caused a ripple effect in some other CFS symptoms which included my mental outlook. I turned to the woe-is-me syndrome for a few days on and off. And I turned to the book of the Bible that is best for those sorts of days- Job.
God wasn’t having any part of the pity party and He opened my eyes to some other truths in Job that I just hadn’t paid attention to. I am pretty familiar with the book of Job, the Guire family went through its own Job syndrome (but, that’s another post) at one point. All those readings of Job and I hadn’t seen three prominent spiritual and physical truths.
Have You not put a hedge about him and his house and all that he has, on every side? You have conferred prosperity and happiness upon him in the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land.- Job 1:10
- God places a hedge of protection around His people.
I have prayed a hedge of protection around my family many times. I’m not ignorant to the fact that it exists, but at this reading, it became so clear, so evident. God has our best interest at heart. Maybe, like me, you doubt that sometimes, especially when you or your family is sick, or your loved ones die. It’s tough to hold onto that truth then, but it is true. God does want the best for us. He want to protect us.
A few weeks ago, the night my granddaughter Moira Lynn was born, daughter Ania wrecked my car (totalled). She was unharmed. Shaken up, but physically fine. I could look at the negative and say, Satan won. My car is totalled. Instead, with this Scripture in mind. I see the hedge of protection. What satan intended was averted. That is not to say that none of my loved ones ever die or get hurt, I have too much life experience to believe that and that is not the promise of God. Those of my family that have died have a greater hedge of protection, heaven.
2. God confers the prosperity and happiness upon us in the work of our hands.
Prosperity has become the word we do not speak of in the church. Prosperity preachers are the modern-day heretics of the body of Christ. I’m not a prosperity preacher (or preacher at all for that matter), but I do know that God likes to bless His children. He is Jehovah-Jireh, our provider. He gives us good gifts. Every good and perfect gift comes down from the Father of Lights. We like to bless our children, how much more does He want to bless us. I’m not talking about cars and huge houses (although He does bless some that way), I’m talking about the happiness that comes through the work of our hands.
I have a new perspective on this blessing of prosperity, it just occurred to me this week through talking my husband about the Job syndrome we journeyed through. I realised that through season of financial difficulty, I still did the same things, I still lived the same lifestyle and that was such a blessing to me. The lifestyle I’m referring to is homeschooling my children, preparing meals and eating together as a family, playing board games together, having squirt gun battles in the front yard, hiking trails and finding treasures, celebrating birthdays with family dinners, reading books aloud. Those events were my happiness and prosperity. It didn’t take money in the bank to do them, it took the work of my hands. The getting out of bed and saying, “this is the day that the Lord has made, I will rejoice and be glad in it!”
3. God increases our possessions in the land.
Another touchy truth. The new generation of the church sometimes likes to throw into the Gospel some self-imposed suffering. The poverty Gospel. I don’t agree with it, just as much as I don’t agree with the pursuit of prosperity. God doesn’t get these out of balance, we do. We want to have control of our surroundings and if our here and now doesn’t line up with our beliefs, we change them. We can’t rewrite the truth that God loves us and wants to bless us. The Word is true. What I needed to re-examine is what that blessing meant.
Blessings can come in the form of new belongings. They can also come in the form of new children, new friends, new opportunities to reach out and help others. It can be as simple and wonderful as two apples trees in the yard of a home you purchased or a pool in the back yard that entertains your children for hours on end when you don’t have extra cash to do anything else.
Job isn’t just a lesson about difficulty. It’s an eye-opening story about what really goes on in the spiritual realm, satan, at the throne, asking to sift us like wheat, the Father bragging about His children, offering us a hedge of protection, prosperity, happiness and increase. Remember, at the end of Job’s life, He had double what the enemy had taken.