He ain't nevva lied on that one.
The healing process can be deceiving because the healing can be so painful that
it makes you think that the opposite is happening. But the Lord has had to remind me of
something He said to me years ago, "The whole time you're hurting, you're
healing. Whatever is squeezing you, squeeze it back until you squeeze your
blessing out of it". Like in childbirth, it's not easy to bear down on the
same pain that's so unbearable. But you've got a baby in there trying to come
out. The pain means, HE/SHE IS COMING! So you have to COOPERATE with the pain,
TEAM UP with the pain, in order to birth what's in you trying desperately to
get out and that the enemy is trying just as desperately to kill before it gets
out.
It's not so much YOU that he's
trying to kill. It's what's IN you. I'm reminded of Job when the devil went to
God for permission to attack him. God told him, "Just don't touch his
LIFE". In other words, you can kill everybody close to him. Kill
everything that belongs to him. But you CAN'T KILL HIM.
It's the same with you
and I. He's not trying to kill YOU, because He knows He can't get that kind of
permission from God. Honestly, he doesn't have as much a problem with you being alive as he does with you being effective, productive, relevant, encouraged. So if he can kill what's IN you, your drive, determination, passion and your very faith, by killing everything around
you, what belongs to you, getting in as many relationships as possible and
killing those, that's what he's after anyway. He wants to convince you that you are left with nothing to live for, and he wants you to blame God for it.
What did Job's wife say to him?
That it would be better for him to CURSE GOD and DIE. Why not just die? Because
the enemy didn't go to God and tell him that if he allowed him to take away
everything from him he would die. He said he would curse God. THAT'S what that
whole book was about, getting Job, or trying to get Job to curse God. But Job
passed the test. Yes, he cursed the day he was born, but that brother didn't
curse his GOD. Instead he BLESSED HIM. Even when the ONE person close to him
who survived all the calamities, was the one who offered the so called solution
to his problem: Curse God and die. Even when his friends came and sat with him
and pretty much accused him of being unrighteous, or hiding some kind
of sin which brought all this upon himself. He passed the test. With all
they claimed to know about God, they didn't know that sometimes God will turn
the devil loose on you. They didn't know that some storms of life, some trials
can't be rebuked away because even though they came from the devil, they came with God's specific signature of approval and instructions. They didn't understand that sometimes, some things only happen so that God will have a stage on which to perform. Even with a bit
of rebuke from God like, "Hold on Job. Who you think you talkin to
bruh?", he still passed the test. Because he didn't curse his HELP. The
Lord Himself became Job's "cheat sheet", and helped him to NOT do the
very thing that satan wanted him to do. With the passing of the test came
double everything he'd lost.
But don't think that in the mean
time Job didn't have to go through the healing. Those sores had to HEAL. The
bible doesn't talk about "immediately" or "straightway" his
sores were healed. So it's safe to believe that his physical healing was a
process. A painful, uncomfortable, inconvenient, itchy (because when sores heal
they ITCH) process. The twice as many cattle didn't just magically appear. He
had to start somewhere and mate animals and wait for them to be birthed, with
each mama animal experiencing the discomfort of those births.
Somebody had to give birth to all
those children who replaced the ones he lost. Nobody carried all of those
babies at once. Unless there was a multiple birth in there somewhere, each of
those babies was carried separately, birthed individually, each with their own
pain to the mom.
I've never really known of a
preacher/teacher who likes to talk about Job.
There seems to always be this behind-the-scenes fear that if they preach
about him they'll end up suffering on another level because of it. But we're so silly. We're
suffering anyway! A brother like Job can help us to understand better what's
happening, and why it's REALLY happening and the kind of outcome we can look
forward to.
There's something about the
severity of pain that can distract you to the point of blindness and deafness,
where you can't see the hand of God in the situation, or hear Him as clearly as
you would without the pain. But by the time that same pain begins to subside, it can also HELP you see and hear
God more clearly than you would have without the pain. Imagine that! There's something about the
severity of pain that will make you go from cursing the day you(or someone
else) were born to being eternally thankful and grateful that God saw fit
collaborate with the devil to rip your heart out. But you have to past the tests first, and there are two of them: The
pain of the injury, AND the pain of recovery.
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