This year, it is my goal to come into His Word in quietness and meekness, as a child listening as I did the first time I heard the story of say, when my brother fell out of the hay mow and missed the horns of the cows, or when I watched a calf being born or discovered that there is a blood/brain barrier;  tiny little pumps that allow some things in to the brain, but close other substances off..

I want to sit at His feet. I want to sit by the lake and listen to the Words of Jesus. I want to experience how the Holy Spirit applies Gods’ Word to me, so that my life, like Jobs’, will be exemplary.
 

 

 

American Standard Version Job 1:1

There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job; and that man was perfect and upright, and one that feared God, and turned away from evil.

As I read the Bible this year, there are some topics that I want to grow in understanding of..

The first verse in the book of Job touches on five of those issues in the first five verses.

1. What does it mean to be perfect
2. What does it mean to be upright. And are those two different.
3. What does it mean to fear God?
4. What exactly is evil now…today
5. How to pray, what prayer is, how we should pray, when the answer is NO, etc..

      Some of my friends and I have finally admitted to each other that we have these questions and many more.  It was very freeing to realize that these questions that we hid with shame, are common, and perhaps essential to revisit occasionally in our lives, much as our offspring do as they come ’of age’ and we label them rebellious.

      Of course we now Know that we know, and have lived and seen Gods’ personal reality and His involvement in our lives, but the nature of change around us, the Super Grace theories, the ridicule and rejection of everything that speaks of authority and absolutes, even in the Church, sometimes leaves our heads spinning and sometimes our hearts wondering.*

 

      I was excited to read this first verse about this man,  because I am thinking that if God himself used these very words to draw a picture of Job for us to take an example from,… “a perfect and an upright man, one that fears God, and turns away from evil,” then Jobs’ life will be very helpful to us as an example as we study it.

It is apparent that Job was not just talking about being perfect, upright, fearing God and shunning evil…..he had actually been doing it.  God could see too...imagine that! 

American Standard Version Job 1:8
And Jehovah said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job? for there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and turneth away from evil.

 

 

Perfect

and an

upright

man

one that

fears God

and

turns away from evil.

 

 

And here is the beginning of a search for application of that state to our lives.

You where you are, in the ministry you are in, with the personality and strengths and giftings that are yours;  and I where I am, in the ministry I have, with the personality, strengths and giftings….and weaknesses that are mine.

And this is where we humble ourselves and pray for His Word to be made alive in us.

There are so many devotionals, so many words of instruction, suggestions, exhortations, (and here I write even more) that we can easily depend on the Word God gave to someone else, as good as that was for them, to fit us.

I would love to generate comments and discussion after this posting; that would appeal to my ego frankly, but I truly prefer that you are encouraged, and maybe even exhorted to pick up your Bible, and after sitting quietly in His presence, ask the Holy Spirit to make the Word of God alive to you…Alive, to YOU.

This would mean then, that you might find an example to follow in a persons life, you might be encouraged to get outside by reading Davids’ words:

 

. The heavens are telling of the glory of God;

 

And their expanse is declaring the work of His hands.

2Day to day pours forth speech,

 

And night to night reveals knowledge.

Ps.19:2

And you will say to yourself…”It is?, well then, I am just gonna go outside and look and listen…”

And your life is renewed because the Holy Spirit made the word of God Alive…to You.

Some of you might be excited to look up the historical time frame of the events in Jobs’ life. You might suddenly understand a different thing about the personality of God. Or the personality of Job.

 

For instance…and totally unspiritual and unsanctified, is my amusement at the art of sarcasm, (which art I have perfected on my dear husband,) that Job employs on his ‘encouragers.’ I am working on destroying my accomplishments in the sarcasm department though, because other scripture came alive to me, and I heard the pleas of my beloved hubby finally.

So there are many ways the Word can come alive to us....

As I go on...I do get sidetracked, I am looking up information on the meaning of these words and descriptive phrases, I am finding that each one is a complete study in itself.

I will be continuing that search as we go on with this study, but the one that I think surprises and relieves us the most is the intended meaning of the word

 

PERFECT:

complete,

entire,

not wanting in any respect

I have known this for some time, this meaning, and when I first became aware, I was so ingrained by ages of misinformation, that I actually thought my friend had gone off the deep end into apostasy. So, I did a little research in an attempt to save his soul, and was surprised by joy to discover that completeness, lack of want, were all things that the life of Jesus in me provides.

 

Rom. 8:11

American Standard Version But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwelleth in you, he that raised up Christ Jesus from the dead shall give life also to your mortal bodies through his Spirit that dwelleth in you.

　

Col 2:8-9
American Standard Version Take heed lest there shall be any one that maketh spoil of you through his philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ: for in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily,

Col. 1:27
American Standard Version
to whom God was pleased to make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory:

 

Is not fullness and completeness the same?

I read in a commentary…I myself being no scholar…that…the area in which Job lived was not anything like the Bible Belt to say the least. It would not have been easy for Job to practice his faith there. I have used the reckoning myself that it would be easier to live ‘right’ if my circumstances were different.

The statement that spoke to me was…..

”…and though it might be distressing and afflicting to the good man to live in such a country, as it was to Lot to live in Sodom, yet it was an honor to him, or rather it was to the glory of the grace of God that he was religious here,…

”Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

 I would substitute the word Christian,…or even more descriptive of our ultimate goal…Christlike for the word religious.

 

There is so much more to these subjects, but I sat down to do this study alone, then decided to share, and now, 6 hours later…I need to close and finish up. But first I just wanted to identify number 5 a little more completely.

Talking about prayer…faith…communion:

American Standard Version Job 1:5 And it was so, when the days of their feasting were gone about, (his seven sons and 3 daughters) that Job sent and sanctified them, and rose up early in the morning, and offered burnt-offerings according to the number of them all: for Job said, It may be that my sons have sinned, and renounced God in their hearts. Thus did Job continually.

 

 

Job apparently, even during prosperous, busy, productive days, took his parental fears and concerns and placed them on the alter. They were burnt there. Gone…given to God.

I am pretty sure that he stoutly presented, and stoutly believed that as he came to God with this physical offering for the possible sins of his family, that his God looked down on his children with renewed favor. Because they were now clean…by the shedding of that blood. Because Daddy Job believed God.

How much more…..

…when we anguish now, in 2014 AD, because our offering is the real, spilled blood of sinless Jesus Christ, perhaps we would do well to stoutly bring that offering to God, sometime during our day, and stoutly walk away.

This would be a working relationship with God. We, doing what we can (handing our concerns to Him)….Him doing the rest.(saving, changing, renewing, drawing, comforting…etc.)

　Thanks God for including the Book of Job in our Bible...

I was going to look into these attributes of Job that were of so much value that all heaven and earth became involved in their proving.

　
Let’s try tomorrow... 

Say goodnight Charlene

Nite..