God's Immutable Sovereignty

The Holy One calls to me this morning.   Life has taken some serious turns of late, and I realize a new season is upon me.  Things and people in life that I have held near and dear to my heart have suddenly been removed or resolved in a way that represents forms of closure to past seasons, relationships, and even my life lessons journaled, now turned to ashes.  

I cannot help but wonder, "What's next?"  Holiness speaks to the deepest thoughts in my mind regarding circumstantial decisions I am preparing to make:  "Apart from Me you can do nothing".  I realize that any plans I might make or even desire to make, in and of myself is destined to fail unless He enables and provides. 

Knowing this, I have been asking the Lord for a promise out of His Word that is personal to me and one that I can take claim to in this upcoming season.  The Holy One has been teaching me about His Sovereignty for some time now.  Today, in answer to my request, and judging by the promise I have received, I know the lessons will continue.

God's immutable Sovereignty is a deep dark mystery.  It is the least understood and most questioned Characteristic of our Creator God.  God's Sovereignty seems to end every discussion, and it goes far beyond our quest to understand Him.

All the "why" questions do seem to go back unanswered to the mystery of His Sovereignty:

Why do bad things happen to good people?

Why are the innocent taken and evil ones left to thrive?

Why are some people healed while others suffer the same infirmities unto flesh death?

Questions abound for things we cannot control or explain, and each one takes us back to God's Sovereignty.

As a person of faith and in a deeply personal relationship with Jesus, the Christ, the issue of God's Sovereignty comes up over and over during my journey here on earth. 

Trusting in His Goodness is always challenged by the enemy of my soul.  Nothing has changed since Eve was approached by a serpent with a lying tongue suggesting the Creator's motives and His rules for successful living were not in her best interests.

If we are settled in a belief that this temporal life is all there is, the reason for our hope dims as the circumstances overwhelm our desperate need for resolutions here.

However, if, as the Word of our Creator God teaches, and there is a life after this one; another place far and away from the things that cause our pain on earth, then the subject of His Sovereignty can actually draw us closer in fellowship and not repel us away from His Presence.

Who do I trust in any situation in life?  Who did I trust when death and divorce knocked at my door and took someone I loved?    Humanity will never have all the answers and at some point, we all will have to just trust that God's Sovereignty is ultimately good. 

The story of Job has helped me resolve this issue in my own heart and mind.  The ancient account of his life and trials have given us a look past the temporal into the Spirit Realm where God resides. It gives us a picture of dark created beings that also exist past all the human senses of sight, sound and touch. 

This unseen realm and those dark beings must be factored into our understanding of God's Sovereignty as the Creator of everything even those things that we cannot see or explain in human terms.

This earth and all that may seem permanent due to its age is really just a temporary setting in light of eternity.  The mystery and some of the "why" questions in our minds may just have to wait for God's purpose in our eternity to be revealed.

The important point I register today about Job's life and trial was the humbling fact that Job had to wait, amid all the discomfort of his losses, until God chose to speak and bring relief to his pain.  Job was powerless to protect himself in or from the hard things that were brought to him.  He truly suffered and, in every way, we might also suffer, but in his multiplied agonies, he chose NOT to judge THE Judge.

Job began in the human way of trusting in his own righteousness but in the end, he trusted only in the Sovereignty he learned of his Creator and saw that it was good.

The Promise I have been given for this new season in my life is out of Isaiah 55: 8-13

Isaiah 55:8-13

8 “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the LORD.

9 “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.

10 As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the Sower and bread for the eater,

11 so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.

12 You will go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and hills will burst into song before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands.

13 Instead of the thornbush will grow the juniper, and instead of briers the myrtle will grow. This will be for the LORD’s renown, for an everlasting sign, that will endure forever.”

Have you asked the Lord for a personal promise to hold onto in this month, year, day or season?  Growing in intimacy with The GREAT I AM, requires surrender so why not ask for a promise to make that a delight? 

The Holy Spirit is Calling.  Can you hear Him?

The Real Test of Job's Life

The Holy One calls to me this morning.  Trust has been the subject and issue between the Lord and me for some time.  Maybe even longer than my conscious awareness has registered.

His voice pierces the darkness in my room and removes the last sleepy covering off my mind.  I hear Him almost proclaim "God trusts His creation!"  I cannot help but think, "What a bizarre twist of the trust we have been discussing lately I.E. mine in Him."

The crazy world we live in and the circumstances we have to deal with, are not only upside down, but way too out of control to imagine a potential fix. They seem to be pressing down and onto all believers these days.  At every corner and every turn humanity seems to be on a track to do evil and flesh is driving the train.  Despair is a knee-jerk reaction for all who hope for a better life.

Since the account of Job has had my attention lately, it's not surprising that the Holy One wants me to return to his story.  I have read about the enemy identified as "Satan" and know the part he played in all that Job suffered.  Today the Lord calls me to re-read the exchange between God and Satan.

I notice that God initiated the conversation, so I can be assured He understood what was going to happen next.   The Eternal One does nothing and allows nothing without knowing what every player in the scenario will do.  Our education calls for things that will teach us about ourselves and the Master...things that He already knows. 

The first important thing I saw is that Satan is a created being just like the human, but with a little greater power that he must gain permission to exert.  That eliminates the feeling of being a "victim" of his evil, so long as I am trusting my God.

Back to the conversation in Job 1:8 NIV.  God's assessment of Job was reflected in His delight for Job's heart of reverence.  "Have you considered my servant Job?  There is none on earth like him.  He is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil".

God was bragging on His Creation.  Job appears to have lived before Israel was a Nation, and before the law that provided for his right standing in God's eyes.  In many ways, Job was a man like Adam who, while tempted on earth and not perfect, kept himself above reproach in his flesh life.

The opening statements about Job reveal that he had temptations like "fear" but took his fears to God and by making a sacrifice for his children, he acted as the priest of his household and family.  We have no indication that he acted out of anything other than an inward desire to please the Creator God.

We read in Roman 1:20 NIV, that what may be known about God is plain, "For since the creation of the world, God's invisible qualities, His eternal power and Divine Nature have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse." Job lived in that knowledge and acted according to his faith before the law was introduced. 

Job was, therefore, a man who, like Abraham, looked up, understood Someone created the Heavens and the earth and chose to live his life to please that Someone.  Even the concept of sacrifice must have been instilled in the hearts of men since the fall and therefore, Job made sacrifices according to his faith.

For me, today, the most fascinating part of this account is God's "trust" in His creation. God trusted that Job's Divine DNA would hold and prove God's Sovereign wisdom in the creation of man and the free will Job had to worship and love the Creator. 

Remembering the rebellion of the Heavenly Host, Satan's game is to alienate the created from the Creator, man from God and God from man.

While the Law and the Prophets teach us how God dealt with a nation, a society of His people, Job reveals the personal one-on-one intimate relationship the Creator looks for with His Beloved.

God's delight in Job, reveals the challenge that evil takes up to defeat God each and every day here on earth through our human trials and tribulations.

As the conversation between God and Satan continues, we can see that Job didn't even know the high stakes that were on his humility in the furnace of his afflictions.  God's creative genius and wisdom that speaks in Proverbs 8:30 NIV, was being challenged by Satan through Job's trial. 

Personified Wisdom speaks, "I was filled with delight day after day, rejoicing in the whole world and delighting in mankind".

Satan's argument suggested that Job was loyal and "feared" God in his reverent life only because of a love for God's temporal blessings.  Permission was granted by God to test Job's loyalty to Himself through the obliteration of God's blessings and beyond His hand of Divine protection.

God's confidence in the man He created was put to the ultimate test.  Would job fail and the enemy's accusation be proven right? Or would Job stand firm in his loyalty and vindicate God's delight in him? 

Through many agonizing chapters, we read of the pain of his losses and the human assessments of his suffering.  Thankfully we who study God's Word have a completed picture of Job's life and struggle. 

In a sense we have been given God's perspective and in this instance, we can see and know the end from the beginning.  We can even come to understand the bigger picture of the epic struggle between the great (although created) adversary, Satan and God the almighty and all powerful Creator.

God trusted his Beloved Creation and Job through his trial vindicated God's wisdom in our design.  God has created humanity for more than the days and experiences we have and focus on here in the temporal lives that we live.

While we have limited knowledge through God's Word, of what lies ahead or of His Eternal plans for man, the challenge Satan puts forth in an effort to destroy us, makes me believe it is so much greater than I can even begin to hope or  imagine.

Satan's accusations were very apparently to try to use Job to bring universal humiliation to God and His Creation.  Satan, we must remember was created to worship God and, in his pride, refused.  Man, now has that privilege and role.  Satan was cast out for his rebellion and awaits his final banishment.  His obvious goal is to denigrate man, whom God created in His own Image 

This greater understanding of what we are suffering on earth at Satan's hand should give us all hope and courage to persevere. 

God's delight is in us

God's vindication is through us

God's restoration is upon us

God Himself initiate the Sacred Romance with us

The devil is defeated when, through the hard times we face on temporal earth, we stand firm in the reverence and worship for our God.  Seeing the end from the beginning of Job's life, I know God will restore his Beloved. 

In the matter of our Eternity, God already has restored and redeemed His beloved through His Son, Jesus the Christ, but the personal trials on earth will continue until we shed the flesh and are given a glorified body beyond the inescapable decay and temptation to sin. 

The real test to Job's life was the delight that God had in him.  Keeping his reverence for the Creator, Job learned more about His love.  I have to ask myself,  "in all my trials, like those of Job, will God be vindicated"?  

Worship is the only way, in the furnace of our afflictions, to make sure that His is.  Will my worship of Him hold when my life goes haywire?  Will yours? 

The Holy Spirit is calling.  Can you hear Him?  

Box Canyon or the Red Sea?

The Holy One calls me this morning.  I have been in a heated debate with myself over the subject of persecution or Divine discipline. I have come to the personal conclusion that both serve the same purpose:  The refinement of our souls.

Even as the circumstances heat up and both may seem the same, it is important that we properly assess our lives and the situations to ascertain what is happening.  While both are used to refine us, and God is in absolute Sovereign control of each, the lessons to be gleaned are quite different because one calls for repentance and the other calls for rejoicing.

The Holy One quietly enters into the debate with, "So you are trying to decide if this is a box canyon or the Red Sea."

That's an interesting way to put it, as both seem quite inescapable.  He reminded me of past performance issues, which is a polite way of identifying my gross sin. He brings to my mind one such situation whereby He spoke clearly to me through His Word in Hosea 14:1. "Return, Oh Israel, to the Lord your God. Your sins have been your downfall.  Take words with you and return to the Lord. Say to Him, forgive all our sins and receive us graciously that we may offer the fruit of our lips."

When we are in a box canyon, we get there by our own will.  There is one way in and one way out.  The way out is to find how we entered, confess the sin that brought us into that place of the box.  Repentance is the exit from the box that willful sin was the entrance into.

The Red Sea is a different place entirely.  We find ourselves at the shores of the Red Sea by God's ordained will.  We are usually persecuted to the Red Sea, chased there by the enemy of our God. There is no repentance that will change our position when at the shores of the Red Sea.  We are going to be delivered or die.  Here we find the Living God armed and ready to show His great and majestic power in and over our lives unto our rescue.

Sometimes under the heat of the circumstances, we don't stop to assess and therefore we don't understand how to react.  Persecution or Divine Discipline? When the Hand that governs all things feels heavy on our lives, we need to stop and assess whether it's time to repent or rejoice.

Sometimes, we settle into life in a box canyon.  High walls, no escape.  Could it be that we remain there because we do not feel the need to repent?  Could it be that we live less than victorious lives because we have assumed that all our sins are covered under the blood of the Jesus and there is no need to repent daily for the failures of our flesh?

The "sin" that Jesus died for is not just the sins that we and all have committed before we came to know the Saving Grace of our Savior.  The sin that Jesus paid the price and redeemed us from is the "sin-nature" that everyone was born with after the fall. 

The sin nature is at the core of the myriad of "sins" that we all commit, even after our salvation.  Jesus's death provided a "new nature" possibility and when we are "born again", we are the recipients of that new nature.  At the moment of our salvation, we are infused with the Holy Spirit who is to rule over the flesh man/woman representing our soul.  We are still stuck with the flesh and its lusts until the physical death of the flesh body, at which time we will get a glorified body that we will inhabit for the rest of eternity.

Until the day we exit our earthy flesh body, the potential to commit sins is present.  As we repent for these sins and allow the Holy Spirit to have more and more control of our lives, Holiness within flourishes.  The Holy Spirit within is our power over the daily temptations we face in our flesh.

The box canyon life is usually lived by those who don't find the need to repent.  One way in and one way out whether for issues of pride, as in, "I am already forgiven so why repent?"  Or ignorance as in "I wonder why the walls are so high with no escape...guess it's just God's will".

We are exhorted in Phil 2:12 to "Continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling."

Holiness will not be found without effort on our part.  We must cooperate with the Holy Spirit of Christ and that means allowing Him to scrutinize us, correct us, lead us and guide us into all truth.

We are challenged in every day that we live, to make our choices and decisions based on the influence of Holiness in our lives.  Sometimes we fail and sometimes we prevail.  Divine Discipline comes in various forms as does persecution.  Wisdom gives the discernment we need to assess and the Holy One stands ready to show me the difference even if, at any time, they both "feel" the same.

As we process where we are and the decisions, we made to get there, is it a box canyon or the Red Sea?

The Holy Spirit is calling.  Can you hear Him?

Devil's Works are "Illusions"

The Holy Spirit calls to me in the watches of the night.  He has different ways of waking me up.  Sometimes with a hard question designed to draw me into a conversation at first light, such as today.  

"Why are you not fighting harder for your own kind?  This is human genocide you are witnessing?"  

A while back, the Lord began a series of conversations about His call on my life as an intercessor. 

He brought me to a passage in Ezekiel 22:30, "I sought for a man who could build a barricade or stand in the gap, to oppose Me on behalf of the land so I would not destroy it.  But I found no one.  Therefore, I am pouring out my fury on their own ways, on their own heads."

Upon reading this I came to cry out, "Here I am Lord. Please stay your hand and give me the worthy words and heart of intercession to plead: Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done here on earth (in this land) as it is in Heaven. In Yeshua's Name.  Please let the intercessor's voices reach your Throne and grant our petitions. 

This was shortly answered with Divine instructions and a strategy for defeating the enemies of our Kingdom and our King.  Adonai took me back to the account of the children of Israel in Egypt.  He had me read His plagues unleashed upon the Land of many gods.  In the court of the Pharoah, there were "magicians" who operated in magic arts, under a witchcraft "spirit" and they were able to duplicate the first 3 plagues Adonai brought through Moses upon the land.

But then, on the 4th plague, these "magicians" confessed they could not duplicate the plague of Yahweh.  They confessed "This is the very finger of God", and from that point on the entire stage belonged to Yahweh and His servant Moses.  

The Lord broke down the account and revealed some things about the devil and how to do battle against the ancient principalities.  

First, He told me, "All the devil's works are an "illusion".  Explaining, it's not that they are not "reality in the moment" but that they are illusions that support the false narrative (lie)that Satan controls events and is beyond the Power (or will) of Yahweh to stop his attack on humanity. (as in Job's trials). 

Then, He directed me to get into and destroy the devil's illusions.  I was confused and wondered how to do that.  He explained that evil always telegraphs what he is about to do.  Read the headlines and then counter them with the power of His Word and promises.  

The spoken word has power in the spirit realm, and we have been commissioned to use our words to change what we recognize as wrong/ungodly in our circumstances. This was a lesson in exercising our Divine dominion, through our declared words of our power and delegated authority that Yeshua provided us by and through His death and resurrection.  

To restate it again:  Get into the illusion to destroy it.  Read the headlines when interceding for the land and people of America and proclaim Heaven's will to break and cancel and condemn the wicked agenda of the evil ones.  Recognize the lies and illusions that support that false narrative of sickness and disease and other ungodly attacks on the ecclesia of Yeshua, cancel the curse and speak life and healing.    We reject the works of the devils and proclaim the true narrative: Yahweh, NOT the evil one, is in control.  

Evil cannot read our mind or thoughts.  However, He can introduce situations that cause us to ponder lies about Yahweh, ourselves, or others. Satan did not speak to Job but brought things to bear that caused him to wrestle his understanding of God, with a little help from his faithless friends and their "counsel".  

 Satan has a strategy, and it is to destroy the character of our Creator God in our perception so we will hate Him and reject that He exists or believe that He is full of angry wrath and is to be avoided and not sought out.  The adversary's rebel followers bring chaos and disorder to keep his agenda of lies oppressing humanity, that say YAHWEH is not in control.  

Lies are the strongest weapon the adversary uses against YAHWEH in the minds of His beloved. This gives us an important clue about the importance of renewing our mind and focusing on God's Word.

The Word tells us that our battle is not against flesh and blood but against the powers in the unseen realm governing the darkness in the world, and that we have weapons to fight with that are not "carnal" but mighty in God to the bringing down strongholds.  Paul tells us in

2 Corinthians 10:3-6

3 For although we do live in the world, we do not wage war in a worldly way;

4 because the weapons we use to wage war are not worldly. On the contrary, they have God's power for demolishing strongholds. We demolish arguments

5 and every arrogance that raises itself up against the knowledge of God; we take every thought captive and make it obey the Messiah.

6 And when you have become completely obedient, then we will be ready to punish every act of disobedience.

A stronghold is a power grip on the mind; otherwise known as a lie (false narrative) we choose to believe. The true battlefield is the mind. We are susceptible to wrong thinking and then "power" is surrendered to the evil one who can manipulate circumstances that follow our stinkin' thinking. Remember Job's trial and there was a point where he declared, "What I feared has come upon me". This is a clue for us as to how Satan works, but also a clue as to how to defeat his attempted assaults on us and others. Our weapon is the truth of God's Word, and the spoken word of truth is the power we have to defeat the darkness. Surrendering to and proclaiming the Word of God in trust (faith) destroys the illusion that the devil is in control. We demolish every argument or pretension that sets itself up against the truth of Yahweh, God and bring every thought into the captivity of Christ. To be crystal clear: It is not OUR words or OUR declarations in and of ourselves that carry the power, it is according to the Ultimate Sovereignty of Yahweh Elohim, God of all Creation whose Word spoken from our lips and trusted in our hearts that defeats the enemy of our Kingdom and our King. When the Word tells us that GOD SO LOVES THE WORLD, that He sacrificed His only begotten Son so that those who trust Him and His plan for our rescue, will not perish but have eternal life, we must accept the truth that He does love us, and reject the lie that He doesn't. Today, I purpose to follow the early morning conviction brought by the Holy Spirit and fight harder for my own kind who are facing such devastating circumstances in the world that touches my life. In the love of Yeshua for my friends, and those whose life circumstances reveal struggles, even as headlines from around the world that Yahweh brings across my path, I will declare His Word according to His will, as His co-laborer in the Kingdom Battle we are in. The Holy Spirit is calling. Can you hear Him?