Job's Trust

My four times rewritten Friday night bible study. I started this one an hour and a half before youth, and I finished ten minutes before I had to be there. Sadly enough, this quickly compiled version is the one that says it the best.

Job's Trust

There's a man in the bible named Job, who the bible says was perfect and had a good reputation. He respected God, and avoided evil. He had ten kids, and thousands of livestock. It says that he was the greatest of all men in the east.

Job 1:8-12

So, the devil made sort of a wager with God, if he did this, then Job would curse him, and Satan would be right. Let me tell you now, Satan is never right. 

Job 1:14-19

The bible says that Job then tore his clothes and worshipped. He worshipped! After all of that. 

Job 1:22

God : 1 — Satan : 0

Job 2:3-7

Satan tries again.

Job 2:9-10

God : 2 — Satan... Still zero...

The rest of the book of Job is pretty much a conversation between him and his friends.

Job 13:15-16 in reply to one of his friends, Job had said

Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him. Even so, I will defend my own ways before Him. He also  shall  be my salvation, For a hypocrite could not come before Him. 

Job chose to trust God. He chose not to listen to his friends' advice. He also knew that he couldn't just say that and then not believe it. He chose to believe that God could bring him through. 

Because Job never bad mouthed God, and his friends had, God told them to go get prayed for by Job, because he had been better than they, even though he was the one with all the bad stuff happening to him.

Job 42:11-13

Job did good, and he was rewarded for it. 

Job 13:15

Though he slay me, yet will I trust him.

We don't know why sometimes bad things happen, and sometimes it's really hard to trust God.  But it's always worth it in the end. If you trust Him, He'll always come through for you in the end. Just like with Job. 

Job hadn't done anything wrong, but the devil was trying to prove a point. And it still didn't work. Even without God's protection, Job still trusted Him and he never cursed him. Even when his wife wanted him to. His friends wanted to. And he probably did. But he didn't. He resisted the temptation to curse God and die. 

Goodness knows it would have been a whole lot easier. Granted, he would have been dead, but he wouldn't be missing his kids or be poor or sick.

Because he resisted that temptation, he was rewarded double what he'd had before. He lived for another 140 years and saw four generations that came after him.

Trust isn't something you just say you're going to do or already do. Trust is a decision to make, and something you have to work at continuing to do.

I know that when my mom was diagnosed with cancer 3 1/2 years ago, I was scared out of my mind. I didn't want to lose her. I didn't want her to be sick. I felt helpless and I guess angry because there was nothing I could do about it. There was nothing I could do to help her. I was probably even a little a mad at God. And I asked the same question over and over, "why?"

You know, He never did give me an answer. But He taught me how to trust. He showed me that everything was going to be okay. He showed me that I didn't need to be afraid. If I would only trust. Because if I hadn't trusted Him, I would have had no reason for Him to prove to me that He could. Not that He should have needed to, but because I needed Him to.

Trusting isn't always easy, but in the end, it's worth a lot more than holding on to the fear that everything won't be alright.   

Psalm 34:22

The Lord redeems the soul of His servants, and none of those who trust in Him shall be condemned.

Sometimes, when things are really hard, stepping back and letting God take over doesn't solve everything, but it does make it... better.

Volunteering - My First (real) Bible Lesson

Friday night at youth service, before I really knew what I was doing, I went up to my youth pastor and asked if I could teach sometime. I've got about three weeks to prepare a lesson and hopefully mentally prepare myself enough so I'm not extremely nervous. Right now, I'm leaning toward teaching on fear and worry and how we can avoid those two things by trusting God -- one of my favorite topics. Next to His peace, of course. But really that's tied in with it too. I should try and tie that in there. I think I will. So, fear, worry, trust, and the outcome of trust, peace. Awesome. I totally can't sleep right now because I've been wanting to work on this all day. And I've been working it for over an hour. But I just typed house instead of hour so I'm going to head the bed. I'll (hopefully remember to) post a copy of my lesson/study notes here once it's finished. =)

Just a Thought

I do and say things like my dad does. I've never been conscious to them, but as soon as I headed to the midwest to visit family, my grandmother picked up on them. It makes sense that I should act like him though, because I've been raised by him. Doesn't it stand then that we should speak and act like our Father in heaven? The One who created us to be like Him? That if we went to visit family, say our church family, would they see and hear Him through us? If they could see it, then would the world?

The Fourth Generation

Based from a revival service preached by Sis. Nancy Renner--

"The first generation grew; the second, peaked; the third, declined. Then there's the fourth generation. The fourth generation had revival."

"The second generation served the God of their fathers. They were never dedicated to their parents' God, they were never dedicated to their lifestyle. If you want to live for God, you've got to do it for yourself."

"The third generations of Israel served other idols. You've got to have more than what mom or dad had. You've got to have you're own experience with God. That experience has got to come from the heart. Israel's third generation had no experience with God. Their parents had served the God of their parents. They didn't pass down the dedication. The third generation rationalized everything--the more you rationalize, the farther you get from God."

"The fourth generation is a generation of revival. It is a personal, dedicated life to God. Only you can make the choice. Only you can be what God wants you to be, what He created you to be."

"We make the time to have fun, to do what we need to do, but when it comes to the church, we limit our availability. The church should never be last on your list." God, wanting His presence in your life, working for Him, should be first. "Make sure you have your priorities straight in your heart. Want to be at church, long to be in His presence. The first priority of your life should be to put God first and bring the lost to Him. Have an experience with God that will never leave you alone. Be dedicated to your lifestyle, not your mom's or your dad's. We have got to have a relationship, if we don't have it, we won't make it. The only thing that's important is what God wants us to be. We'll either be what God wants us to be, or we'll be what we want to be."

Without our own experience, something to fall back on when we're going through a storm, we will doubt God has ever been there for us. With our own, personal experience with God, we will not be able to doubt Him, because we'll doubt our doubt.

Get an experience, trust me, it's a good thing to have. When the relationship with God falters, the experience is there to remind you--He. Will. Never. Falter.

We've got to be the fourth generation. We've got to have an experience with God SO strong that we pass the experience down to our kids, and they pass it on to theirs, and them to theirs. We've got to have revival, we have to BE the revival.

Heaven is for Real

I just finished reading this book last night. It was extremely interesting, though there were a few parts when the boy described Heaven that I wasn't sure were based on scripture. What I mean by that is just the way he described it and his dad interpreted it. You could tell it was written by man and not God, but overall a very good book, one I'd recommend.



I still haven't worked on the bible study I want to do, instead I've been working on writing out my testimony. With help from my friend Amanda, I've written it out in six pages. The first few are the story and the last two or three are poems/songs that I wrote during that time and fit extremely well. I didn't even realize until I was looking at them in the same document how well they fit together. The way they fit, they practically tell the story themselves.


It's late and I should be sleeping so I'll go now, God Bless.

As For Today

I've been thinking of what I'd like for my next post to be about. I'd like to do a bible study or something on a passage of scripture in Matthew, my favorite in the bible (or what I've read of it so far), Matthew 6:24-34. It's sort of a long passage, and I haven't found a topic to focus on yet. I'm trying to figure out if there's a way I can use the lilies mentioned in verse 28 as an analogy for, well, being provided for. That's my basic thought anyway, I'm not even sure what I'll come up with. We'll have to see.

Until next time, farewell and God bless =)

Good Idea, But Would It Work?

So I'm thinking about making this blog about things I want to share from church or prayer or bible reading. I'm thinking it may be a good idea because no one is very likely to read it, and if they did they might appreciate it. I doubt these entries will be very long, but hopefully they'll be worthwhile...

So the mid-week service of the church I attend was tonight, and the pastor taught on Separation from the World. I'm just going to touch on a few points he made in his introduction.

On Separation from the World:

"Separation from the world brings the opportunity" for a relationship with God.

2 Corinthians 6:11-18, firstly focusing on 17,

"Therefore "Come out from among them And be separate, says the Lord. Do not touch what is unclean, And I will receive you,"

It doesn't say not to hug or grasp or hold onto the unclean thing, it says don't even touch it.

Then in 2 Corinthians 7:1 it says

"Therefore, having these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God."

Every once in a while we have to purge from ourselves the things that slip in, the things that we make excuses for. "It's not that bad," "It's okay," if we have to make excuses, then we probably shouldn't be doing it in the first place.

We need to be separate from the world, not going back and forth over the line we draw and the boundaries we make. They're there for a reason.