Covering of protection
Have you ever considered what your breaking point would be in life? How much you could take? What could you handle, but what is too much? Severe sickness of you, or of the ones you love the most? Losing your entire net worth? Being abandoned by the very ones you thought cared the most about you?
“And the Lord said to Satan, Have you considered My servant Job?” Satan replied, “Have You not put a hedge (a covering) about him and his house and all that he has, on every side?” (Job 1:8 & 10 AMP)
God, because of Job’s relationship with him, had put a covering over him, or had his hand over him, so the results of a fallen, sinful, world could not affect Job, his family, or his possessions. Once I got really angry at one of my neighbors. I was so mad, I wanted to harm her, but I didn’t. Instead I prayed and asked God to take revenge on her for hurting me, After all, “Don’t insist on getting even; that’s not for you to do. “I’ll do the judging,” says God. “I’ll take care of it.” (Rom. 12:19 MSG) One day I asked God what happens when he gets vengeance on someone. He whispered back, “I slowly remove my hand from their life.”
I shuttered! As time went on, I witnessed my neighbor losing her job, experiencing vandalism, and worst yet, the death of her oldest daughter. I prayed for her. I know God was hoping she would stop resisting him, and in turn, run to him. She finally did.
Job resisted the temptation to blame God for his troubles and die, but eventually repented of his prideful way of thinking. Then God restored everything back to him and doubled what he had lost. Could you have handled such loss? Or perhaps the better question is this, would God ever say to Satan, “Have you considered my servant: __________?“ (fill in blank with your name)
Copyright © 2018 Mark Brady, All rights reserved
Mankind’s first address was inside Garden Grove Estates. God gave Adam and Eve a home there, but they wanted more. They wanted to know what God knew, even though he told them that kind of knowledge wasn’t for them. They disobeyed, and got evicted.
“Look, I’m not hurting anything. I just want to sit here and rest,” he said. To his right my church had a sign that stated, “No Loitering”
P ersonal
My daughter once said, “Squirrels are God’s little speed bumps.” I’m not saying I agree. I realized something this past week as I talked to some people. They were telling me of the trouble they are currently having in their lives. I felt bad for them. Then I thought it seems as if there is always so much drama in their lives that they don’t have time to focus on the important things in their life. Maybe another way to say it is this; they are so busy putting out fires, they never spend time preventing them.
You listen as they describe their current pain, despair, nightmare of a life. They go on and on without the slightest glimmer of hope on their face, or in their voice. They want relief, they want out, they want something so different then what they have. Like a blind man looking for his glasses, their searching is in vain.
He laid as still as he could. Any movement reminded him of the flogging his back took. The soldier placed the nail with the tip pressing his palm. He saw the other soldier rear back with the hammer. He turned his head. Bam! The nail drove through his flesh pinning him to the cross. That nail represented the times I took something that wasn’t mine.
You try so hard to do what is right. You even think you are doing what Jesus would do. You’re honest, you’re loyal, you’re trust worthy. Yet you are misunderstood, mistreated, not trusted. You feel picked on. Whenever something happens you are the one people turn to first to find out what “you” had done. It’s not right, it’s not fair, but it continues to happen to you over and over again, and it hurts, and you just don’t understand.
brady, mark a. 