Job 2
9 Then his wife said to him, “Do you still hold fast your integrity? Curse God and die!”
10 But he said to her, “You speak as one of the foolish women speaks. Shall we indeed accept good from God and not accept adversity?” In all this Job did not sin with his lips.
It’s popular among Charismatics who love to cherry pick their scripture, to believe that adversity shows a lack to faith because according to these, faith in God is a Shangri-La where no sorrow is allowed to touch them. We however understand from Phil1:29, that we who have received Jesus as Lord over our lives, are given to strive for His righteousness in this world, to this extent is righteous suffering on our part, that it showcases our devotion unto Him in Spirit and truth (Jn4:24), which He is absolutely worthy of (Rev5:9-14). The lives of the Godly thereby exhibits how we live for the Lord Jesus Christ.
Rom 14
7 For not one of us lives for himself, and not one dies for himself;
8 for if we live, we live for the Lord, or if we die, we die for the Lord; therefore whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s.
9 For to this end Christ died and lived again, that He might be Lord both of the dead and of the living.
If we look at Gen32:28 & Mat16:18, we know the Angel of Lord is the Old Testament Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who is known to swear by His own name (Gen22:10-17) because He is God and bring things to pass by His own power (Gen22:17-18). What’s most interesting is God’s promise to the children of Abraham in Gen22:17 is “…and your seed shall possess the gate of their enemies” while in Mat16:18 Jesus’ promise to those who believe in Him is “…and the gates of Hades will not overpower His Church.” This truth is so essential to the Christian faith that it is echoed again by Paul in Gal3:16 because Jesus is the victory God promised us from sin. In Him is God’s Salvation and victory over our enemies and even death (1Cor15:54-57). From the above we also realize that the Church did not begin with Pentecost, as many are given to believe but the Church began with Adam because the promise of Christ redeeming His people is sited in Gen3:15 when God righteously judges Adam and Eve for their disobedience.
Hebrews 12
3 For consider Jesus who has endured such hostility by sinners against Himself, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.
4 You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood in your striving against sin;
5 and you have forgotten the exhortation which is addressed to you as sons, “My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, Nor faint when you are reproved by Him;
6 For those whom the Lord loves He disciplines, And He scourges every son whom He receives.”
7 It is for discipline that you endure; God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline?
I’d like you to see Job2:9-10 which I mentioned in the beginning of this post in the light of Hebrews12:6-7 mentioned above. Unlike the Prosperity Gospel heretics whose doctrine emerges from the choicest picking of scripture while having no harmony with rest of the Bible, the Bible on the contrary, holistically teaches that there is such a thing as righteous suffering (1Pet3:13-16) because we who are His sheep are the New Testament Israel. Biblically, Israel is defined in Gen32:28 as those who strive with God and men and prevail. Now, this definition ought to be seen from the perspective of God’s unconditional sovereignty because in sanctifying His people, God subjects His Church to affliction from the world (as though it were a controlled environment – 1Cor10:13), while the redeeming power of Christ sustains us through these fiery trials. This is beautifully picturized in Dan3:8-28. Look at it as a silver smith who fans the fire in a furnace while holding the silver in a crucible, the silver from which the dross is to burned out (Job23:10).
Ps 119
73 Your hands made me and fashioned me; Give me understanding, that I may learn Your commandments.
74 May those who fear You see me and be glad, Because I wait for Your word.
75 I know, O LORD, that Your judgments are righteous, And that in faithfulness You have afflicted me.
Take a look at the above scripture. In the context Jn 1:18 & 14:13-15 we see verses 73-74 above offers us a lot of spiritual meat because Prov9:19 teaches us that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom unto an understanding of His commandments (Moral Law). For you see, who David waited on in his moments of trial was Jesus Christ (Jn1:1), in whom God and His Salvation is revealed to all mankind. So to what effect is the Moral Law you may ask! Well, the question is what would you cling to when you are tried by the Lord our God. Would you hold to God & His righteous in the midst of trial as Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego did in Dan3:16-18 or as Paul did so in prison by writing joyous letter to the Churches (Plmn1:1,7). The Lord Jesus teaches us in Mat22:36-40 that the Moral Law requires you to love the Lord your God first and above all things even yourself and next to love and be concerned about those around you as you are about yourself. This sums up the Ten Commandments for us. So the question is would we hold to Jesus’ Commandments (the Moral Law → 2Jn1:5) in the midst of trial?
John 8
31 So Jesus was saying to those Jews who had believed Him, “If you continue in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine;
32 and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”
John 15
16 “You did not choose Me but I chose you, and appointed you that you would go and bear fruit, and that your fruit would remain, so that whatever you ask of the Father in My name He may give to you.
Well, unlike the humanist approach to Christianity, which discounts the Sovereign will of God for the free will of men as though they were mutually exclusive, the Bible teaches us that Salvation is 100% by the power of God because you see the living Spirit granted us (Ezek36:26-27/Jn3:3,16), is by the merit of Christ who overcomes our hostility and damn indifference towards God and propitiates our sinful nature unto the righteousness of God (Rom3:9-26). It is He, who has begun this work of Salvation is us (who truly belong to Him – Jn10:14,26) and it is He who shall bring it to completion (Phil1:6).
Rom 8
28 And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.
To conclude, while the world excuses its unbelief with the suffering present in the world, most of which is its own handiwork, the godly are given not to complain through the wilderness but to pray and ask God to see life from the perspective to faith and not sight (2Cor5:7) because we are not living to serve ourselves but God (Jn12:24-26). The world is filled with people living for themselves and this is where they err because the truth is only God is God and so unlike sin which we propagate in serving nothing more than ourselves, the righteousness of God on the contrary transcends all, in bringing creation to serve God, who righteously serves Himself in His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ (Col1:16-20).
Making known the Defeated Dragon 