BIG IDEA: When we put our trust in the Lord during hard times, what the enemy meant for evil God uses for our good and His Glory!
CHILD OF GOD: It’s important to know that every hardship the enemy sends your way is to ultimately draw you away from God. Knowing this helps us to stand strong in Christ when life gets difficult.
Just like Job who endured traumatic life events one after another, he was targeted by satan to see if he would curse God in his hardship.
It might be surprising to us that Job was the righteous and upright, and yet God allowed the hardships to happen so that Job could see what was within his own heart. Job’s faith was sifted, until every last drop was purified, over and over again.. until all that remained in his heart was purified.
Just like Job, when we trust God in hard times, we too will come out of the fire looking like PURE GOLD!!
Job went through some hard real-life trials that could have crushed his faith and stole his joy. Yet, he chose to PUT HIS TRUST FULLY IN THE LORD HIS GOD, the Maker of heaven and earth!!
God met with Job in His pain and showed Him that He is sovereign over all these things have happen in this life. No matter what our situation looks like, God is still in control.
Throughout the story of Job, we see the character of a faithful God who holds all things together, and whose thoughts are so far above our own thoughts.
What we see as an enemy attack, God saw as a set-up for Job, to bless him even more than in the beginning.
What the enemy meant for evil God used for good!
In the end, God ANSWERED Job, He RESTORED and REBUILT all that Job had, and then the Lord gave him DIVINE FAVOR IN ABUNDANCE! Everything lost and stolen was EXPONENTIALLY MULTIPLIED to him! Because he was righteous in God’s sight!
What an amazing testimony it is to say that through the hardest part of your life, you could trust God and found Him to be faithful!
God is close to the broken hearted, Psalm 34:17-19 gives us this wonderful promise!
17 The righteous cry out, and the Lord hears,
And delivers them out of all their troubles.
18 The Lord is near to those who have a broken heart,
And saves such as have a contrite spirit.19 Many are the afflictions of the righteous,
Psalm 34:17-19 NKJV
But the Lord delivers him out of them all.
When hardships come after God gives a promise..
Years ago, God gave me a vision, and confirmed it in many ways.
While I dedicated myself to “pray into it”, as I desired God to prepare me for it and lead me to it. I realized God was asking me to pray some pretty convicting prayers, such as, “Lord, give me a heart that is desperate for you.”
I will be honest, I was surprised when I heard my own mouth pray that, and knowing I needed to submit to those words with all my heart. So I did. I submitted to the Holy Spirit’s leading, and of course, God answered that prayer.
The next 3 years of my life were… tough to say the least. Many things seemed unfair and I felt alone. For many seasons I had a lot of hard questions to ask God.
“Where are You in this, Lord?”
“Did I do something wrong? Why do I feel so alone?”
“Why promise me something amazing, and then lead me to a wilderness?”
“Did I hear You correctly?”
“Where are You leading me.”
God-sized dreams require preparation.
This has brought me to consider the story of Joseph and glean from the wisdom shared in Genesis 37-40. Joseph endured unfair treatment after he had been given a dream from the Lord.
When Joseph shared his “God-dream”, his brothers were overcome with jealousy and anger. Together plotted against him to sell him into slavery.
What the enemy meant for evil towards Joseph, God was using to purify him and prepare him to be promoted. Unfortunately, for Joseph that looked like a lot of pruning and character development. It was not an easy journey for Joeseph.
Even as Joseph grew in relationship with God and grew in integrity, he was still mistreated. Yet, because he was faithful in the pit, God was with Him, and He found the faithfulness of God.
Joeseph found out that what the enemy meant for evil God was not only going to turn around, but it was going to catapult him into the exalted position that would allow him to save his family and many lives.
God’s goodness was able to be seen through Joeseph because he trusted God in the hard times.
Remain faithful in hard times.
So standfast in the good news of Jesus Christ, and the PROMISES OF GOD that do not return void! What God spoke into your heart in secret, He will fulfill and complete in due time. Because it is impossible for God’s words to fail!!
When God speaks, HIS Words have NO CHOICE but to produce zΓ³Γ© LIFE!! Taken from the concordance, zΓ³Γ© only comes from God. In the original Greek language, zΓ³Γ© means to be “sustained by God’s self-existent life”. This is the importance of hearing God for yourself, my friends. We need the self-existent One to speak ‘zΓ³Γ© life’ into our situations.
GOD’S WORDS CANNOT FAIL! God promises in Isaiah 55:10-11 that His Word Would accomplish what it was been sent out to do!
So shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth;
Isaiah 55:10-11 NKJV
It shall not return to Me void,
But it shall accomplish what I please,
And it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it.
Every.Single.Thing the enemy has used against us and our families will be turned around and BLESSED in abundance, in the mighty name of JESUS CHRIST!! Every last attack… we surrender to the Maker of heaven and earth, submitting our hearts hurts to HIM, and He lifts our heads. In the end, he lifts our lives. (according to James 4:10)
Jesus was exalted through death.
Just like satan thought he has Jesus at the cross, he didn’t realize that he was playing his part to EXAULT THE KING OF GLORY to be SAVIOR OF THE WORLD… because when Jesus died on the cross, that was for your sins, and my sins, and the sins of the whole world!! (Past, present, and future sins!)
1 Corinthians 2:7-8 tells us that if satan had known God’s plan of redemption through Jesus, he would have never crucified the Lord of glory!
Darkness could not perceive Jesus.
That means that the devil did not know the plans of God to exalt Jesus to the highest place and to redeem mankind.
Likewise, the enemy of our souls cannot perceive Christ in us, and therefore, cannot know the “expected end” stated in Jeremiah 29:11, that God has promised those who believe!
The enemy of our souls come against us in many ways, but yet he doesn’t know the plan of God for our lives, and powerful ways God plans to work through us. Darkness does not have the power to stop Gods plans from being fulfilled either!!
JESUS IS LORD, and all of the enemy’s assignments have to bow to the name that is above all names!! Jesus Christ, the Righteous One, who WAS and IS, and IS TO COME!! He is WORTHY!
A word for those who God is bringing you through some things:
You are going to come out on the other side stronger than you knew you ever could be! And with a personal testimony of the love and comfort of an ever-present, Faithful Father and Forever Friend!!
I would like to encourage you, friend, that you’re going to make it through! And one day, somehow.. you will look back and whole heartedly cherish those hard moments that your desperate heart called on the name of the Lord – and He met you right where you were without delay.
That is a testimony that NOBODY can take from you!! And it is worth every uncertain moment we reached out for God’s comforting hand.
I thank God that He is bringing you through, because of His great love for you! You are coming out to the other side stronger, wiser, and bolder in your faith than ever.
When life gets hard, we know we can put our trust in the Lord, because what the enemy meant for evil God uses for our good and His Glory!
