Knowing God More

These past few months I have found myself in a challenge of understanding God's intentions. I know we will never fully understand an infinite being, but He does ask us to learn of Him and His character. In the Fall I had started a Bible study with our ladies at Emmanuel Baptist Church on the book of Job, Grace for Every Trial. I learned that "blessing" from God is not physical, but rather it is a growing knowledge of Him. I also discovered that we ought to live in principle as though God has promised it, realizing that "grace" is given only as we obey His Word. God cannot give us wisdom in a situation, or the power to overcome sin, unless we are allowing Him to work in our lives through obedience. Job was known as a perfect and upright man, meaning that his life was an overall testimony of obedience. Yet, God allowed Satan to have his hand in destroying much of what Job had physically. It shakes our faith to realize that God could do the same with us, allowing bad things to happen to us. But we are reminded that God is "good." In the book of Job we are continually reminded of God's listening ear, though He is silent. We are also reminded of God's presence, though Job feels God is not there. What we "feel" about God cannot be trusted, but rather what He says about Himself...because He cannot lie. God does not promise physical good or wealth and health, but He does promise His presence and His listening ear. He promises victory and greatness, but not necessarily in this life.

One of my questions after the study commenced was whether God really kept His promises. Does God really keep His promise as David mentions in Psalm 37:25 "not to forsake His saints" and to keep him from "begging bread?" I wasn't so sure I could say that this was true. What about all those people who suffer as martyrs or those who died in famine and cold in the early days of America as they sought a country that would allow freedom of religion? Either the promise was not what I thought, or these people were not true believers. Was this psalm as well as many others only principles and not promises?

Then I began to learn that we ought to live these verses as promises (even "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it."). Abraham did. He lived as though what God had said were promises that would come to pass. They became principles to His life, yet He clung to the promise. Did they happen? Yes! The principle is how we live this physical life and the promise is sometimes physical as well, but always fulfilled spiritually.

So were the saints mentioned earlier delivered from famine or from being forsaken? In Hebrews 12 it talks of the Hall of Faith, men and women who lived looking to a promise, but not always receiving it here in this life. Abraham found a city whose maker and builder was God, though he traveled without ever seeing the fulfillment in his lifetime. Many Christians were martyred and tortured looking to the promise of God's deliverance and He did deliver...they were freed to the glories of Heaven. God stood by Job and listened to His complaint through his misery fulfilling His promise of goodness and power during it as well as after and in the future still as Job sits in Heavenly places!

I do not understand God's full intentions, but I do know I can trust His goodness and His power. I can trust that He will always be there, though He may "seem" to me to be distant, and He will always listen to me as His child, though He may "seem" silent. God is faithful and He can be trusted...and I will trust Him till the day I die and enter His promise of Eternal Life!

LORD, teach me more!