Written by,
Robert Johnson
I wanted to close this years last blog on the subject spiritual warfare, “why does satan want you.” Allow me to start with the sentence, Satan wants Gods value he is not interested in the commonality of truth he wants those that walk in the truth of God’s revelation. The Apostle Paul is an example of this reality. Merry Christmas Jesus loves you, the greatest gift not under a tree but in your heart.
Satan wants nothing more than to enter certain areas of your life so he can gain a stronghold. He’ll try anything to throw you off center, distract you from your focus, and render you ineffective for the Kingdom of God.
Today’s blogs central characters will be a great prophet by the name of Elijah and Job Gods called. I tell you I am learning so much from God’s word. There is a great lack of knowledge in the areas of “spiritual warfare.” Gods kingdom has already been established but many will not enter. Not because of sinful acts, but more because of the lack of knowledge. God never said that he would destroy those without knowledge, his declaration says ” my people are destroyed for the lack of knowledge.” Job is a great example until God revealed himself to Job in characters 38-42 KJV. Jobs life was in total destruction because of his lack of knowledge in-regards to Gods word which revealed the gospel, the life, the death, the burial, and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Pray as you read the later chapters in this prose it will come to you as God reveals.
Lack by definition…> “Lack, want, need, require as verbs all stress the absence of something desirable, important, or necessary. Lack means to be without or to have less than a desirable quantity of something: to lack courage, sufficient money, enough members to make a quorum.”
The life of the believer is written in the prose of Job if God reveals it to you.
My observation
- Job in chapter 1 was perfect and upright – there is none righteous but God/his word.
- Job walked in religion – not being a priest he offered sacrifice for his children – in all that is descriptive about Job he never mentions God!
- Jobs friends automatically come and suggest that his suffering was the consequences of sin, they could only declare this because they too did not a have a relationship with God based on spirit insight.
- Friends and saints respond to situations differently. Friends talk saints pray.
- There are no friends in the kingdom only brothers and sisters bound by the same blood, that of Jesus.
- Matthew 12:47-50 King James Version (KJV)
- “47 Then one said unto him, Behold, thy mother and thy brethren stand without, desiring to speak with thee.
- 48 But he answered and said unto him that told him, Who is my mother? and who are my brethren?
- 49 And he stretched forth his hand toward his disciples, and said, Behold my mother and my brethren!
- 50 For whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother.”
- The writer separates friends from family in the text be using the words, “For whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother.” Friends are not daughters or Sons…
- In no way is Jesus suggesting that the believer is not to have friends, what he is stating those who become Recipients of the eternal inheritance must be born of the blood of Jesus. The water and the spirit based on the word of God. The gospel of John chapter 3. “You must be born again.”
- God separated Job from everything that represents the flesh, even his friends. 40 chapters after God removes everything out the life of Job he cannot use in the spirit He restored Joel check everything spiritually that represents the kingdom of God if you reading chapter 42 Jobs daughters which never happened in the old covenant receives and inheritance based on Joel chapter 2:28-29.
- God had to remove everything that Jobs flesh produced. Then we see God’s will revealed in spirit in chapters 41&42!
- The most misinterpreted scripture – curse God and die! Job tells his wife she sounds like a foolish women. Here’s why, if we interpret the word “curse” in the original language it means …> “to bless God” this is critical to text understanding. She was not telling him to go against God, she was telling him to do what you have always done in the time of trouble, bless God. Job did this with his Sons and daughters when there were wrong. He called himself blessing God for their iniquities. This understanding sheds light to the transition within Gods heart. His wife was standing faithful seeing what the head had done and provided but Job at this point realized what he was doing was not working. In other words “baby” are you crazy, that has not worked.
In the later chapter of the book of Job God answer Job through and east wind, the same spirit/wind that parted the Red Sea.
Job 38:1-18 KJV
The Lord Answers Job – So from chapter 1-38 God never talked directly to Job! (A lack of knowledge!) how was Job operating? For 37 chapters
38 Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind:
2 Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? These are those that Satan are after they are easy prey not having the revelation of Gods purpose or will.
3 Gird up your loins like a man,
I will question you, and you shall declare to me. This blew me out of the water!!!
4 Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
Tell me, if you have understanding.
5 Who determined its measurements—surely you know!
Or who stretched the line upon it?
6 On what were its bases sunk,
or who laid its cornerstone
7 when the morning stars sang together
and all the heavenly beings* shouted for joy?
8 ‘Or who shut in the sea with doors
when it burst out from the womb?—
9 when I made the clouds its garment,
and thick darkness its swaddling band,
10 and prescribed bounds for it,
and set bars and doors,
11 and said, “Thus far shall you come, and no farther,
and here shall your proud waves be stopped”?
12 ‘Have you commanded the morning since your days began,
and caused the dawn to know its place,
13 so that it might take hold of the skirts of the earth,
and the wicked be shaken out of it?
14 It is changed like clay under the seal,
and it is dyed* like a garment.
15 Light is withheld from the wicked,
and their uplifted arm is broken.
16 ‘Have you entered into the springs of the sea,
or walked in the recesses of the deep?
17 Have the gates of death been revealed to you,
or have you seen the gates of deep darkness?
18 Have you comprehended the expanse of the earth?
Declare, if you know all this. Job did not have a revelation of Gods will or word. Anything you can’t answer will cause you to desire the truth.
These are areas of your life Satan wants to enter – the greatest is the heart because the heart reacts to the mind causing the emotions of the heart to flow through the mouth, that produces life or death.
- Your heart – so it’s not God’s alone.
There’s a reason God’s Word tells us: “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it” (Proverbs 4:23). Satan knows he has an entry point into your life if God is not first in our hearts. God’s first commandment, set forth under the Old Covenant, was: “You shall have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:3). And Jesus restated that under the New Covenant when He was asked what is the greatest commandment and responded by saying “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’…” (Luke 10:27). Satan’s greatest desire is to prevent you from giving God all of your heart so he will constantly dangle people, things, and desires in front of you – anything to distract you so he can erect a false god in front of you that you don’t even realize you have.
Our second example is the “prophet Elijah” a man called by the will of God.
The prophet Elijah is one of the most interesting and colorful people in the Bible, and God used him during an important time in Israel’s history to oppose a wicked king and bring revival to the land. Elijah’s ministry marked the beginning of the end of Baal worship in Israel. Elijah’s life was filled with turmoil. At times he was bold and decisive, and at other times fearful and tentative. He alternately demonstrates victory and defeat, followed by recovery. Elijah knew both the power of God and the depths of depression.
This man life points to the areas to where only Gods power can take you and keep you.
Elijah, a prophet of God whose name means “my God is the Lord,” came from Tishbeh in Gilead, but nothing is known of his family or birth. We first meet Elijah in 1 Kings 17:1 when he suddenly appears to challenge Ahab, an evil king who ruled the northern kingdom with a wife who was not a Jew but a Phoenician who desired the kingdom of her husband Israel.
My observation of The prophet Elijah
- We next see Elijah as the central character in a face-off with the prophets of the false god Baal on Mount Carmel (1 Kings 18:17-40). The prophets of Baal call upon their god all day long to rain fire from heaven to no avail. Then Elijah builds an altar of stones, digs a ditch around it, puts the sacrifice on the top of wood and calls for water to be poured over his sacrifice three times. Elijah calls upon God, and God sends fire down from heaven, burns the sacrifice, the wood, and the stones and licks up the water in the ditch. God proved He was more powerful than false gods. It was then that Elijah and the people killed all of the false prophets of Baal, in compliance with God’s command in Deuteronomy 13:5.
- After the great victory over the false prophets, rain once again fell on the land (1 Kings 18:41-46). However, in spite of victory, Elijah entered a period of wavering faith and depression (1 Kings 19:1-18). Ahab had told his wife, Jezebel, of God’s display of power. Rather than turn to God, Jezebel vowed to kill Elijah. Hearing of this, Elijah fled to the wilderness, where he prayed for God to take his life. But God refreshed Elijah with food, drink, and sleep instead. Then Elijah took a forty-day journey to Mount Horeb. There Elijah hid in a cave, still feeling sorry for himself and even confessing his belief that he alone was left of the prophets of God. It is then that the LORD instructed Elijah to stand on the mountain as the LORD passed by. There was a great wind, an earthquake, and then fire, but God was not in any of those.
- Then came a still, small voice in which Elijah heard God and understood Him. God gave Elijah instructions for what to do next, including anointing Elisha to take his place as prophet and assuring Elijah that there were still 7,000 in Israel who had not bowed to Baal. Elijah obeyed God’s commands. Elisha became Elijah’s assistant for some time, and the two continued to deal with Ahab and Jezebel, as well as Ahab’s son and successor, Ahaziah. Rather than die a natural death, Elijah was taken up to heaven in a whirlwind (2 Kings 2:1-11).
- John the Baptist’s ministry was marked by “the spirit and power of Elijah” (Luke 1:17), fulfilling the prophecy of Malachi 4:5–6. James uses Elijah as an example of prayer in James 5:17–18. He says that Elijah “was a human being, even as we are,” yet he prayed that it would not rain, and it did not. Then he prayed that it would rain, and it did. The power of prayer is in God, not in our own human nature. Satan wanted Elijah in the face of adversity to doubt God, this doubt would call Israel not to hear from God. Even though Elisha is now on the seen, God is not done with Elijah.
In Conclusion, Satan has no power over Gods will for the life of the believer, but it is important to know that God can do anything but fail. The two Godly examples are witnesses to the power of God over Satan’s desire for your life. As was true for Elijah, when we focus on the tumult of life in this world, we can get our eyes off of the LORD and become discouraged. God does display Himself in mighty works of power and judgment such as wind, fire, and earthquakes. But He also relates with us intimately and personally, such as in the quiet whisper. God meets our physical needs, encourages us to examine our own thoughts and behaviors, instructs us in how to proceed, and assures us that we are not alone. When we are attentive to God’s voice and walking in obedience to His Word, we can find encouragement, victory, and reward. Elijah struggled with typical human frailties, yet he was used mightily of God. It may not be through such obviously miraculous displays of might, but, if we are yielded to Him, God can use us powerfully for His kingdom purposes, too.
If you can’t appreciate where God has you, you will never see where He is taking you.
The opinions of this blog are those of its author and in no way suggest that you have to read. “Preach the word.” We can’t convert anyone but the truth of the word can.
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