Have you ever wondered if God was the one who made your life difficult? If you have, you are not alone. Millions of people in the body of Christ have wrestled with this thought. They feel that God, who is Almighty and Sovereign, is the one who sends hardship and affliction into our life. They believe that if they haven't been acting right or if they have a calling on their life, God has to break them in order to use them. Why do people think this? I believe it is because they don't know who God really is.
I believe God is Sovereign but not the way most Christian define it. Did you know that Sovereign was not a word used in the original manuscripts? Whenever the Kings James Version of the Bible says, "LORD God", newer translations of the Bible have translated it to "Sovereign LORD." People have taken the word "Sovereign" out of context and say that God can just do whatever He wants and He is in control of everything. If that were true then God is the one who is forcing me to tell you these things. He's controlling me, whatever happens, is because God's forcing me to say it. Not only is that not biblical, but it's also not even logical. I believe God is Sovereign by the way the dictionary defines it: self-governing; independent: a sovereign state, having supreme rank or power, paramount; supreme. God is all of those things. He is the highest on the food chain. Nothing and no one can come even close to His power. The United State of America is a sovereign country. We operate independently of any other country. No one can tell us what to do, we are sovereign. I believe that is how the Bible describes God as being Sovereign.
Many people relate to God through the Old Testament. They see that God sent the flood of Noah to wipe out humans for being sinful and how He sent fire and brimstone to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah because of their iniquity and since that was God who did that then, it must mean God still does that today. They are trying to understand God but they are holding on to old wineskins.
“...Nor do people put new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the wineskins burst, and the wine pours out and the wineskins are ruined; but they put new wine into fresh wineskins, and both are preserved.”
Matthew 9:17 NASB
We need to throw away the old wineskins in our minds and embrace God with a new way of thinking. Jesus was explaining that the Old Testament wineskin was used as much as it could be used and when He came to offer righteousness through salvation we needed to use a new wineskin. The Old Testament couldn't contain what Jesus came to bring us. This is why He brought us the New Covenant through His blood (1 Corinthians 11:25).
Satan is a master of disguise. He comes around "as a roaring lion...seeking whom he may devour" (1 Peter 5:8). One of the main ways he devours Christians is by making them think God is the author of hardship. Unless you are rooted in God's Word, Satan will use it to deceive you. The way he got Adam and Eve to sin and give up their God-given authority, he used God's Word and twisted it (Genesis 3). This is important to know because the Bible tells us that we need to "submit [ourselves] therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you." (James 4:7, brackets mine). Resisting the devil is actively fighting against him. How do you resist the devil when you think his attacks are from our Heavenly Father? This is why you need to know God's true nature.
God is not out to get you and harm you, rather, He is out to bless you and give you life. Satan is the one who comes to steal, to kill, and to destroy but Jesus came to give you life more abundantly (John 10:10).
What about Job? If God doesn't author hardship, why did He allow Satan to destroy his life? If you get my book, you will get a more in-depth answer to this common question. In short, Job lived before the Abrahamic Covenant which promised protection from your enemies (including Satan). God had no legal right to bless him because Job had no covenant with God. When Adam and Eve sinned, they handed their authority to rule the earth over to Satan (Genesis 3). Because of this, Satan was the legal ruler of this earth. God is such a perfect and just God that He couldn't intervene and strip Satan of his power because He will never go back on His Word (Psalm 89:34). He told mankind to rule this earth and to subdue everything on it––including Satan. He gave mankind free will to follow His commands or chose the pleasure of sin. When we choose to submit to the flesh and sin, we give Satan a direct inroad to our life to do whatever he wants to do. On the contrary, when we submit to the Spirit (which is life and peace) we are under the protection of our Heavenly Father. I'm not talking about when you stumble once in a while into sin, but when you consciously choose not to follow the Word of God, you are choosing to yield yourself to sin and corruption. We have what Adam and Eve didn't have and that was the redemption of Christ through grace. Adam and Eve had one chance and they blew it. We have been extended grace like none other so if you accidentally sin, you are still under God's protection. But when you choose to live however you want and not follow the Word, you are choosing to leave the protection of the Lord. Job didn't have this umbrella of protection even through a covenant. Satan simply took advantage of the fact that Job was rightfully his and God had to allow it because He keeps His Word.
God is your best friend and He wants to bless you like no other. The way He blessed Job without a right to, He wants to bless you even more. We are now heirs to His blessings, unlike Job. We have a new covenant that was established through the blood of Jesus (1 Corinthians 11:25). He wants you to prosper above all things and be in good health (3 John 1:2). God isn't the God of the Old Testament but of the New. The Old Testament was just a shadow of things to come. It wasn't the real deal. God's nature in the Old Testament was incomplete and when Jesus came, He fulfilled the law and completed the picture of God's nature.
Jesus only did what He saw His Heavenly Father do.
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, 19 To preach the acceptable year of the Lord.”
Luke 4:18-19
This is what the true nature of God looks like. Jesus was a spit image of the Father. Jesus never made someone blind just to heal them. He never humiliated anyone to remind them He is God and they weren't. He did correct His disciples when they needed correction, but only by His Words and not through hardship. If you want to know who God really is at the center of His being, look at Jesus. Don't look at the Law of Moses, look at the Grace of Jesus.
Jesus came to do good works and He only did what He saw God the Father do which means, everything Jesus did in scripture is a direct representation of God’s heart towards you. God wants you healed (Matthew 15:20), He wants you to lack nothing (Luke 6:38), He gives you great things (Matthew 7:11), He has compassion on you (John 4) and above all, He wants you to have abundant life.
“The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.”
John 10:10
If you take this scripture into its proper context, a few verses ago, Jesus was talking about the Pharisees and how they are the thieves He was referring to. He told them that “all that ever came before me are thieves and robbers.” Everyone that came before Him preached the law and justification through works. So, according to Jesus, the law came to steal, kill, and destroy but He came to give life. If He came to do good and only did what He saw His Father do, then that must mean the God of the Old Testament was not the complete, full nature of His character. Jesus came to give us abundant life through grace. God wants you to have abundant life!
The truths that I have shared with you in this book are not that hard to grasp. Unfortunately, not many will accept these as absolute truth and because of it, they will miss out. This book was intended to reposition your heart towards God so that you could receive everything He has for you.
“My son, attend to my words; incline thine ear unto my sayings. 21 Let them not depart from thine eyes; keep them in the midst of thine heart. 22 For they are life unto those that find them, and health to all their flesh.”
Proverbs 4:20-22
God’s Words are life and health to you. If you have been experiencing anything other than life and health, I want you to know that those things are not from God. God is for you, not against you (Romans 8:31). He wants you to prosper in all things (3 John 1:2). He has a plan for your life (Jeremiah 29:11).
God’s true nature is misrepresented when we begin to put our faith in what we can do for God, instead of what God has done for us through His Son, Jesus. When we strive to get God to move through pleading and begging, we will begin to think that God doesn’t hear us. Jesus Christ was the purest example of God’s heart that we have in Scripture. He showed us everything we need to know about the Father’s love towards us.
You are God’s favorite child. Out of the billions of people on this earth, God loves you. He knew you by name before you were even born. He calls you righteous and invites you to sit at His throne. He doesn’t withhold His blessings from us, which means if you aren’t seeing them, it isn’t God’s fault. We have to be responsible for how we perceive God and where we put our faith.
I encourage you to order this book today to understand who God really is and how much He loves you.
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