Hello my dear brother,

I am overwhelmed at the effort you put into the Revelation study, finally completed. God bless you.

Now I know you don’t seek the praises of men, but as your brother I commend you in the Lord because you did, after all, have to physicallysit in front of your keyboard for countless long hours, obeying God and being enabled by Him to complete that monumental task. Well done, brother!

I know the sorrow you feel, in the flesh, over the death of your Dad. That is never easy to cope with, but as God’s children, we know that the next time we see our loved ones, they will be in their glorified bodies, clothed in righteousness, and our fellowship with them will be unhindered by the limitations of the flesh.

I am delighted to see that you are now doing a commentary on the book of Job. Because we must live by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God, every event in the scriptures happened as examples for us and they were written for our understanding, and every character described in the scriptures are all in Adam and are allin us.

Having said that, I must admit that I can probably relate to the character of Job more than any of the others. Not only because of the severe trials and losses he had to endure, but also because I spent most of my life contending with the Almighty and pleading my case before Him (“You owe me because of my good works, so why are you doing all of this awful stuff to me?”). And then came that wonderful day when the Lord shook me out of my self- righteousness…

“Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?”

… and I came to realize that I was, in my current flesh and blood form, only a piece of worthless dust, and I had to “lay my hand over my mouth” because I was uttering “things too wonderful for me, which I knew not. “Today, I am glad that these painful trials are mostly behind me, and I can feel the Lord turning my captivity. And I can understand why Job’s experience has to be our experience. Without it, we can never know who our God is, and we would never be able to voice the ultimate testimony that will be confessed by the tongues of every person who has ever lived:

“In the Lord is all righteousness and strength” (Isa 45:24).

May God bless you and your family abundantly, my good friend.

R____

Hi R____,

Thank you for your very encouraging words, and thank you for your comments on the studies in the book of Job.
I feel exactly as you do. Although I would never have admitted it at the time, I too, contended with God for many years while I lived under the law that I thought made me righteous. It certainly was not “the law of Christ”, and I certainly was not righteous, but of course I didn’t see that at that time.

Your brother in Christ,
Mike