Christian Podcast The Book of Job hearing the voice of God when you ask why the conclusion

Welcome to episode 259, In the Beginning Was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Spending time in the Word of God is the best way to spend time with God. Welcome to No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe podcast, where we will encourage, inspire, and empower you to live your best life in Christ. Here's Greg.

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, I want to continue with our talk, and I think it's going to be a conclusion. I'm pretty confident I'm going to conclude this today, but we are going to, we're going to start off by talking about Job again one more time. But I just want to remind you that if you have not gone and read Job 1 and 2, chapters 1 and 2, and then Job chapters 38 1 through 42. I want to encourage you that this is going to make this lesson a whole lot better if you get into that Bible. Again, here, this soapbox— this is early for the soapbox moment. You've got to get into that Bible and then allow the Bible to start getting into you, and you start slowing down and pondering. And I know I've told you this story before, but I was driving, and you know I have a little bit of a struggle with driving, but I'm driving and somebody just cut me off, and I was gripping the steering wheel, and I'm going crazy in my car, me and the Holy Spirit. You know, sometimes I forget the Holy Spirit's there, but I'm going crazy, and I'm blasting this guy, and I'm trying to get to the next appointment, and it's a frustrating time, and I'm just blasting this. Why is this roadway not clear? Because I'm on it., and I need to get from point A to point B. I'm driving and still in my mind, I'm just going crazy. And I hear this thought. And again, I have 3 voices going on in my head, and we've talked about this before, but if this is your first time to join me, there's 3 voices I believe that go on in your head. I don't know about all the time. In my head, I hear 2 voices a lot. And one of them's the punk. One of them is just that condemning, that negative, that voice that's just always gonna bring me down, always gonna be discouraging, always gonna be condemning. That's the punk. If it's something nasty, gnarly, condemning, bringing me down, you can almost guarantee that that is Satan or one of his imps talking to you. I wanna just encourage you to just drown that out. And the only real way to drown that out is with the Word of God. You just got to shut him up and you got to tell him to leave. You got to submit yourself to God. That's Romans 12:1 where Paul says, I beseech you, brethren, by the mercies of God, present yourself to God a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable, which is your reasonable service. And so when you do that, then you kick in— again, I've gone over this multiple times— but you kick in James 4:7 where it says to submit yourself therefore to God, resist the devil and he will flee from you. When you submit yourself to God and then you have the ability to resist the devil and he has got, it doesn't say that he might go and it doesn't say that he may stick around for a minute, he has to flee from you. And so he has got to get away from you and this is not, dear devil, I'm so sorry that I'm going to ask you to leave. No, you tell him to get out of your life, and you bind him up and cast him out in Jesus' name. He hates that name. He hates you. And I just want to remind you that we are in a battle here, and we have got to fight like it— our life depends on it, because it does. I want to encourage you to get into Job. As I was reading, and with all of this angst going on and all of this anxiety, nervousness with the world system and all of the battles and with Russia and Ukraine and the high gas prices, everything that's going on in our world today, if you just settle down and get into the word, and I wanna finish my story, and I'm sorry, I went and chased a rabbit. I'm sitting there just driving, gripping the steering wheel, and I hear this voice, and it's not a voice, it's not like, Greg, this is God. I mean, it's nothing like that. It's my own vernacular. It's me talking to me, and I've talked about this before, but if I'm working out when I used to work out, I don't work out as much anymore, I would get heavier weights and then I would talk to myself, "Come on, you can do this." And I wasn't one of those screamers in the gym where I'm just, "Ahh!" You know, if you've ever worked out in the gym, you've got some of those guys that just scream and holler and make a scene. I wasn't that guy, but I would talk to myself in my head and I would say, "Come on, you big sissy, get this. This is lightweight." And so I would, to push myself, I would talk to myself in my head. And so I just wanna encourage you, you've got like a little voice box, and I don't know where yours is, mine is right back in here, I can kinda hear myself thinking. When I start talking to myself, I can't tell sometimes if it's me, if it's the punk, or if it's God, because it sounds just like me talking to me. And I don't wanna beat this dead horse, beat a dead horse any more than I have. I wanna tell you this, how I deal with this and how this story relates to Job maybe. But I'm driving down the road and I'm blasting my existence or the people in front of me, I guess, is existence, because they're making me late to my appointment. It wasn't because I didn't leave on time, it was a lot of traffic and I'm just all nervous and anxious, and I get this voice inside my head. It stopped me. It said, Greg, why are you in such a hurry all the time? That's nowhere near where I was in my mind, because I'm just, I'm anxious, and it just kind of stopped me, and I was like, well, you know, I mean, I've got to get to that next appointment. You know, I'm late. I made a 3 o'clock appointment, and it's 2:55, and I'm 8 to 10 minutes away right now. So I was a little bit nervous, and he he— I'm giving God the credit because this wasn't Greg talking to Greg. I then had this thought, and I'd never thought this before, so I— that's why I think it was from God. I had this thought that said, Greg, you realize when I was here, I walked almost everywhere I went. I just stopped. And I know I've probably told this story before, but it had such a significant impact on me that it just stopped me. And that's kind of where I feel like when God talks to me in— with his Holy Spirit, or when I get thoughts, or when I get in the Bible and the Bible just— when I'm reading something and it just stops me, that's when I, I feel like the Holy Spirit is telling me, hey, slow down, slow down right here, this, this is important. Because we get in such a hurry, you know, I'm trying to read through the Bible. I know a lot of you are reading through the Bible in a year A lot of us get those Bibles. I'm making up some bookmarks. It's important that we get the word of God into us, but it's also important when the Holy Spirit is bringing something to our attention that we slow down, that we don't get in such a big hurry. And I, I sometimes think of myself way too highly, and I think that I'm so important all the traffic needs to part so I can get to my appointment. And I don't really mean to think like that, but I just do. And I think when we go to Job and we read Job 1 and 2, and we think that our, our goodness, or our reading the Bible, or our going to church, or our being nice to our family and our spouses and our— all of our friends, that somehow that rates in God's eye, and so that nothing bad should happen to us. And that's not how this thing works down here. We are gonna have persecutions. We're going to have trials. We're going to have challenges. Some of it comes from God wanting to get us stronger in his word. And I think sometimes that he allows the enemy to kind of push us a little bit so that we can fight. All we're doing is just sitting around reading the Bible, you know. And if you're not helping somebody, if you're not worshiping God, and you're not doing something for his kingdom, I mean, I don't know that it's doing us a whole lot of good. It says to be a doer of the word and not a hearer only. So we need to actually hear it. We need to also go out and then apply it to our lives. And that's what I'm talking about with Job right here, is that he was fearing God and shunning evil. He was doing everything he knew to do, and Satan comes in and challenges God. I don't think this really had anything to do with Job. But it had to do with Satan challenging God, and then God saying, well, go do that, because God already knows the end from the beginning, and God knew that Job was gonna be okay. God knew his character. God knew that he had some— I was gonna say crap in his neck, but I mean, I know I'm not supposed to say crap. Job was a fighter. You know, sometimes the battle comes to you and overwhelms you, and that's Satan. Satan does not just give you one thing, he just piles on. He is a punk, we hate him, we're told to hate evil. And I wanna conclude this lesson on Job. God tells Job, and we've talked about this in the previous episode, but when he said, "Brace yourself like a man because I have some questions for you and you shall answer me." He said that twice. He said that in Job 38:3, 40, verse 5, but he said it twice. And then God goes on a tear about all of the things that God has— and not all of the things that God done, but some of the things that God did when he created the earth and when he set these things in motion. And he starts asking Job, well, were you there? I mean, if you were there, then, you know, surely I will answer to you then. And so God, I think he's got a little smart aleck in him And I don't know, he's got to because he made me and I've got some in me. So we are created in his image. And I'm not saying that, you know, that God's like me, I'm like him. That's for a different episode. And that's a different rabbit I'm not gonna chase. But I wanna try to land this plane here. And in Job 42, Job answers God. And I wanna read this. I just want you to hear how Job is humbled and how when I talk about, one of the things that you just need to have in your arsenal is being humble and humility. And Job is humbled by God. And it's Job 42:3, you asked, who is this who hides counsel without knowledge? Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me which I did not know. Listen please and let me speak. You said, I will question you and you shall answer me. I have heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you. Therefore I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes. And so it was after the Lord had spoken these words to Job, then he turns on, on these other four bubbas who he didn't much care for how they were talking to him either. And I'm going to let you read that because some of those names, I'm— I don't know that I pronounce those names right. And then he told him, now therefore take yourself 7 bulls and 7 rams and go to my servant Job, and offer up yourselves a burnt offering, and my servant Job shall pray for you, for I will accept him, lest I deal with you according to your folly, because you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has. And then I want to go to verse 10, and this will be the last one. And the Lord restored Job's losses when he prayed for his friends. Indeed, the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before. And I want to concentrate on that last verse, and the Lord restored Job's losses when he prayed for his friends. And I want to make sure that you read that. I want to make sure that you heard that. And I don't know if you've ever had this experience. I have it all the time. One of the reasons why I end every episode with prayer. Now, it's not because I enjoy praying, because Jesus said hypocrites love to pray. I don't enjoy praying, but what I have found when I pray is my prayers are answered when I pray for someone else a lot quicker than when I pray for myself. And when I beg and plead God and ask him and all this stuff, I get a lot less answered prayers when I'm doing a bless me prayer. But when I pray to bless you, and when I pray for you as a listener, and you as a brother or sister in Christ, that's when I see the most power, is when I pray for others. And I think Job is restored, and it doesn't say that God just restored him. You know, they had to bring all these sacrifices and all that. That's Old Testament, not a rabbit I'm gonna chase. It is when Job prayed for his friends. When he prayed for them, then it was restored. And I want to stop there. I think that's a great place to stop. Job was humbled. Job repented. He changed his mind. This was a bad deal, and it was a bad deal all the way around. And God never answered Job one time why it happened and why he allowed this to happen. And I think that's on purpose, and I think it's an example God's not going to answer why to you. I just want to— I don't want to be the bearer of bad news, but you probably already know that if you've lived life as long as I've lived life. And just as an encouragement, you don't need why. If you know that Father God loves you and you know that you are saved and you are part of the family, what difference does it make? Because we're not God. We don't know all the ins and outs. We don't see the end from the beginning. Not near as well as he does. You know, you can look out and see that this may not end well. I just want to encourage you that when you are in the battle and when you are getting after it, there's going to be 3 voices. And I may talk about this in the next episode. We're going to move on off of Job. I may come back and use him as an example, but I just want to pray. God, I thank you so much for your word. I thank you for the example that Job gives us. Lord, how he humbled himself and he asked for forgiveness, and he said that he used to hear about you, but now he saw you. God, help us to see you in your word. And God, I pray that the listener would just be encouraged by your word, God, and the words that I help to get into your word. Lord, this is what helps me the most, is when I spend time in your word. Lord, we thank you for your word. Lord, we thank you, we love you, we ask it all in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, thank you for being a part of this, and I look forward to visiting with you in the next episode.

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