The Book of Job introduces Job as a perfect and upright man who feared God and eschewed evil. In a generation of men whose imagination constantly churned out evil, Job was God’s Quintessential Man. Yet, for years, I struggled with the notion that the innocent Job had to suffer so much hurt and pain. At that time, it seemed to me that Job was caught up within a ‘power tussle’ between God and the devil. It looked so unfair that Job was treated as the proverbial grass that suffered while two elephants were at war. The picture I had in my mind was that Job was so helpless….
Or was he?
Upon a closer examination of the story from a pair of unbiased, non-religious eyes, we’d find that neither God, nor satan was the primitive cause of Job’s predicament!
As it were, Job was the unwitting designer who took up the thankless job of orchestrating his own misery.
How?
Well, to understand the ‘how’, we have to appreciate the reality that all our actions have spritual significances. All through Job 1 and 2, we can observe the narrative seamlessly switching from Job’s actions and activities in the physical realm; and the spiritual realities of God, angels and the devil. This is because Job was doing some things in the physical realm that was having spiritual implications.
You see, the causal realm is the spiritual realm. That’s the Ultimate reality that gives rise to our individual apparent realities. 2 Corinthians 4:18 tells us that the seen physical realm is temporal, time-bound, while the unseen spiritual realm is eternal.
While it is true that the unseen gives rise to the seen, our actions in the physical realm trigger events in the spiritual realm that would ultimately determine the quality of our next experiences in the physical realm. These experiences, in turn would cause us to take further actions and decisions in the physical realm that have spiritual significances which would in turn determine the quality of our next experiences, and the cycle repeats itself again and again for the rest of our lives.
This is why Romans 6:16a tells us this:
“Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey….”
God is Love. And that’s why He has given us our Freewill. He would never, ever force Himself on you. Revelations 3:20 shows man’s Owner and Creator, at the door of man’s heart, saying, almost respectfully, ‘Behold, I…knock…’
If you decide to use the freewill God has given you to choose to yield yourself to Him through your thoughts, decisions and actions, it would cause a series of spiritual events that would ‘allow’ God the right of way to make your next experience in the physical and prosperous one.
Conversely, if you choose to yield your members to the devil, you’d give him the right of way to make your next experiences in the natural to be deleterious!
Job’s story is included in the Bible, so that we can profit from his experiences and not repeat the same mistakes (1 Corinthians 10:6). I’ve shared one thing that Job didn’t understand, there are still others I’d like to share in the continuation of this truth in the next post.
Remain blessed.
