Announcements

Job. 42:5-6

5 I had heard of You by the hearing of the ear, But now my eye has seen You;
6 Therefore I abhor myself, and I repent In dust and ashes.

Matt. 5:8

8 Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

2 Tim 1:6-7

6 For which cause I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands.

7 For God has not given us a spirit of cowardice, but of power and of love and of sobermindedness.

2 Tim 4:22

22 The Lord be with your spirit. Grace be with you.

Phil. 3:7-8

7 But what things were gains to me, these I have counted as loss on account of Christ.

8 But moreover I also count all things to be loss on account of the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, on account of whom I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as refuse that I may gain Christ

Rom. 12:11-12

11 Do not be slothful in zeal, but be burning in spirit, serving the Lord.

12 Rejoice in hope; endure in tribulation; persevere in prayer.

Suggested Reading

Job did not understand the reason for his sufferings, but today we know the reason. It was true that Job suffered, but his suffering was allowed by God for a purpose. God wanted to take away all his successes. Job was very successful, both materially and ethically. He had attained to a very high degree of perfection and uprightness. That was his integrity, integrity, and he was proud of it….However, God took these away in order that Job would pursue God Himself instead of other things.

Eventually, Job recognized that he had known God only “by the hearing of the ear” (Job 42:5a). He had heard about God and he had believed in God, but he had never seen God. However, through all the strippings and consumings, the time came when Job saw God (42:5b).

[In Matthew 5:8] seeing God is a great reward in the kingdom. According to the clear view in the New Testament, to see God is to receive God into us. If seeing God is merely an objective seeing of God and nothing else, that means very little. But seeing God is to receive God, and this means that God comes into us as our element to renew us, to transform us, because God’s coming in adds the divine element into our being. This divine element works on us and in us to renew us, discharging all our old element. Eventually, our entire being becomes new. This is transformation. (Life-study of Job, pp. 116-117)

—–

[According to 2 Corinthians 3:18], first we behold God, that is, see God; then we reflect Him and are transformed. In our seeing God we are being transformed into His glorious image, from one degree of glory to another. This is from the Lord Spirit.

The God whom Job saw was also the Spirit, but at that time God was still in His original state. God had His divine element with His divine attributes, but He did not have anything related to incarnation, humanity, and human living….The God whom we are looking at today is different, for He is much richer in His ingredients [cf. 2 Cor. 3:18]. Hence, the more we look at Him, the more we receive His ingredients into our being as our inner supply to work on us, to discharge the old, and to make us new. This is to transform us into God’s image.

Our way of looking at God today is altogether a matter in the spirit. The God whom we may look at is the consummated Spirit, and we can look at Him in our spirit. Sometimes we are too busy or too careless to take the opportunity to look at the Lord. In our morning watch, even if only for fifteen or twenty minutes, we have time to be with the Lord, time to remain in the Spirit. At such a time we may pray-read His word, talk to Him, or pray to Him with short prayers. Then we will have the sense that we are receiving something of God’s element, that we are absorbing the riches of God into our being. In this way we are under the divine transformation day by day.

Our Christian life is a life not of changing outwardly but of being transformed from within by having the divine element added into our inner being to replace our old element. This is altogether by our looking at the processed and consummated God, who is the all-inclusive Spirit.

By reading Job’s final word in Job 30, we can realize that Job and his friends were walking on the way of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They were not in the realm of endeavoring to see God in order to learn of Him and especially to receive Him so that they could be transformed with His element and essence to be made the same as God in life and in nature. We all need to see a clear comparison between the way taken by Job and his friends and the way revealed in the New Testament. (Life-study of Job, pp. 117-118)

Further Reading: HWMR Crystallization-Study of Job Proverbs Ecclesiastes – Week 1, Day 6