From the Life-Study of Job - What was God's Intention with Job?

     If you look at the book of Job, you can see that it took a really long time for all of his friends to run out of things to say! Then it was God's turn. He obviously wasn't too impressed with how the conversation was going because the first thing He asked Job was:  "Who is this who darkens counsel by words without knowledge?" (Job 38:2) It's obvious that nobody got what God was doing in Job's heart and life through all the devastating losses that God had permitted.

Hiking with my daughter

     I've always loved reading chapters 38 and 39 of Job. God asks Job question after question concerning the mysteries of creation with the specific purpose of showing Job how little he really knew. And because of that could he really be so sure that he knew why God had allowed so many unusual sufferings to befall him? It's almost like God was whittling him down to size--so you think you can tell Me not to do something?  God knew the whole time what He was doing. 

     I really like chapter 31 of the Life-Study of Job where Witness Lee points out God's intention in appearing to Job; this excerpt is on pages 161-163:

"God's intention in appearing to Job was to expose him, to show him that he really was nothing....Thus, God questioned Job again and again in order to silence him....Job was in the realm of building up something that was wrong. He was building up himself in his perfection, uprightness, and integrity. He thought that he was absolutely right....God in His eternal economy has no desire to build up these things. Rather, He considers all these things as frustrations and intends to strip them away from us, consuming them bit by bit. When everything is stripped away, then you will see God, and He will attract you to receive Him....As a result of this transformation, you will be a person reflecting God, that is expressing Him and dispensing Him to others. This was God's intention with Job, and this is His intention with us today" (Lee, Witness. Life-Study of Job. Anaheim: Living Stream Ministry, Print 1993).

     In this chapter Witness Lee also explains that Job's seeing God (Job 42:5) transformed him, and that this is similar to the truth Paul brings out in 2 Corinthians 3:18. In these chapters he states that because the divine revelation is progressive, God couldn't explain too much to Job.   To really get the book of Job he said you have to couple it with what the Lord and the apostles taught in the New Testament such as 2 Corinthians 4:8-11, 16:  

We are pressed on every side, yet not straightened;

perplexed, yet not unto despair;

 pursued, yet not forsaken;

 smitten down, yet not destroyed;

 always bearing about in the body the dying of Jesus

 that the life also of Jesus may be manifested in our body.

 For we who live are always delivered unto death

[figuratively like hard situations] for Jesus' sake

that the life also of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh.

...Wherefore we faint not; but though our outward man is decaying,

yet our inward man is renewed day by day.

For our light affliction, which is for the moment,

works for us more and more exceedingly an

eternal weight of glory:
 

 ~1901 American Standard Version

 

 You can listen to excerpts of Witness Lee's speaking the Life-Study of Job on the  Life Study of the Bible with Witness Lee.   You can also read the online Life-Studies of Job and check out other resources available to enhance your study of the Bible on Living Stream Ministry's website.

From the Life-Study of Job - Have you Ever Asked God Why?

From the Life-Study of Job - Have You Ever Asked God Why?

     Have you ever asked yourself what's really going on in the book of Job?  Is it just about a man who loses almost everything and a God who seems a bit detached and uncaring when calamities strike?  On the surface, the book of Job may look like that. This book may cause you to  question God's motives with His people. And you're on the right track if you do!  Keep reading, and you'll find out what God was really up to with Job. 

     I'm on my sixth time reading through the Life-Study of Job, and it is one of my very favorites!  Here's the reason--if you don't understand what God is doing when heart-rending situations hit you, it could cause catastrophic damage to your Christian life. 

     I know what I'm talking about here, and if you're not careful you become like one of Job's friends thinking maybe God's angry with you, or maybe you didn't do something you were supposed to  do and God is punishing you for it. I've been there, I've done that, and sometimes I still fall back into that thought pattern!  And the Life-Study of Job has been like a life-line to me, and that's why I've read it so many times. 

    If you remotely know what I'm talking about here, and you've gotten stuck asking God why, you have to read this Life-Study--it will encourage you so much!!!  Whenever I read these opening chapters, I'm in awe at what Witness Lee saw in this book.  The following excerpts come from pages 7, 10-11, 34-35:

The subject of the book of Job is the purpose of God's dealing with His holy one. Ethically speaking Job was very good....Only God knew that Job had a need, that he was short of God.  Because of His loving concern for Job, God held a council in the heavens to talk about Job....The book of Job shows us that God, through Satan as an ugly tool, was tearing Job down by two ways: stripping and consuming....God's stripping and consuming were exercised over Job to tear Job down that God might have a base and a way to rebuild Job with God Himself that He might become a God-man (Lee, Witness. Life-Study of Job. Anaheim: Living Stream Ministry, 1993).

So although God does bait Satan to take a closer look at Job, it's not because God is playing with him like a pawn. Job was so humanly perfect and upright, but it didn't have anything to do with God. 

And God couldn't let that situation persist because all men were created to contain and express God. It has helped me so much to see that God touches our lives because we are SHORT of His expression.  And it is because of His love that He does touch us.  He can't leave us like that. 

     God lovingly arranges environments and situations that may or may not devastate us just like He did with Job.  And when we're screaming why and unloading all our angst, God is accomplishing His stripping and consuming work.  Have you seen it in your own life?  I know I have. Through all these talks with God, He gets the crack that He was after so He can seep more of His divine life into us.  Over and over things happen and sometimes just like with Job they come one after another.  But this Life-Study has helped me to see we have to  compare the book of Job with what the New Testament says so we know where God is going with everything. 

      In Romans 8:29 and 2 Corinthians 3:18 we get a window of what God is doing in our lives--He's conforming us to the image of His Son!!!  This is important because God has to fulfill His initial purpose in creating man that He stated in Genesis 1:26.  God needs to get a people who express Him and represent Him on this earth. Not always easy or pretty because God is working with people who have been wrecked by the fall.  But because He's God, He knows how to accomplish His purpose! 

Here's a song that has ministered to my heart many times when I've been in situations asking God Why.  It's called There are Times (click on the song title) and it's on a CD put out by New York City Young People.

    And far from being detached from our lives, God is actually lovingly overseeing everything that comes into our lives, and He's working like Romans 8:28 says everything together for our ultimate good and that good in God's eyes is that we express His Son! 

 You can listen to excerpts of Witness Lee's speaking the Life-Study of Job on the  Life Study of the Bible with Witness Lee.   You can also read the online Life-Studies of Job and check out other resources available to enhance your study of the Bible on Living Stream Ministry's website.

From the Life-Study of Job - Have you Ever Asked God Why?
From the Life-Study of Job - What Was God's Intention With Job?