Here’s the thing, I have one teenager and a each of the next 3 years I will have another kid aging into the teens. We have dealt with a few notes being passed in the last 6 months and I’ve started to realize I basically have 4 teenagers now. We also have one that is almost school aged, 3 boys and 2 girls, the youngest 2 are the girls… So it is no surprise that God would begin to reveal my heart to me at this time.
I dreamed that some boy was trying to date my daughter. We went and spent time with his family, they were very different from us. They like get togethers and sporting events and they weren’t paying attention to this boy of theirs. So I went down the hallway to make sure everything was on the up and up with my little girl. They had just walked into his room and they were just awkwardly saying 3 word sentences like they should be. But I went ahead and barged in, set some rules and stole some of the kid’s stuff just to let him know he wasn’t going to get a long leash with me. I took his favorite hat and when I got back to the tv room with the dads, they were all talking about how they had the same hat but different teams.
After that I drive to another place. It was a mall parking lot and I went in the side door. As I got there everything was set up for Covid and everyone was separated except of course in the lines where everyone jammed together on the way in. I headed towards the food court and met guess who? The girl that liked my son… She was cute and kind and we joked around. I offered to buy her lunch and maybe even a pony… Then Jimmy Kimmel came in and was doing stand up for the line except instead of being funny it was just political harassment, so just like real life I guess. Then I started cracking back at him and me the girl that liked my son bonded and laughed and joked.
It was pretty funny to see the clear difference in how I treat boys and girls in dream form. While I told the boy what to do and was more than a little assertive with him, I absolutely treated the girl better than she could have ever earned. It was interesting that God would take the time to point this out to me. Maybe there’s something in there that I need to fix in the next generation. I was taught to treat women better than men all of my life, it was the way good men behave. God has some of that doesn’t He? It pleased Him to bruise the Son so that the Son would be able to love His wife. Jesus laid down His life for people as a man is supposed to treat a woman. Maybe it was only weird because our culture doesn’t believe it anymore. But treating women well does prophecy of the sacrifice of Christ in it’s own little way doesn’t it?
Now into Job, let’s see if we can find Jesus in today’s reading. Job get’s pretty sarcastic with his friend here and drops some science telling us how God hangs the earth on nothing, which turns out to be accurate. Job speaks about God’s power and wisdom and it all points to Jesus. But here we see something amazing. Job says “The fear of the Lord is true wisdom; to forsake evil is real understanding.”
That phrase tells the entire life and teachings of Jesus. That was His message in the sermon on the mount. That was His message to the pharisees. That was the call of His life! Healing the sick, freeing those oppressed by the devil, preaching to the poor, forgiving sin, and on and on it goes. He completely followed God’s ways, forsaking evil. Never using His power to punish sin but pointing people to good and rescuing them from evil like freeing them from a trap.
In chapter 31 Job goes through sin after sin and challenges anyone to accuse him even God. He accepts the natural consequences of those actions. We can easily put these words right in the mouth of Jesus after His death. This is why after 3 days in the ground He was given the keys and took His life back up again. There was no accusation that could keep Him in death and it proved the accuser to be a liar and deserving of death himself. It opened the rights to judgement against death itself.
Elihu jumps into one of my favorite scriptures about dreams in chapter 33 and it deserves mentioning. “For God speaks again and again, though people do not recognize it. He speaks in dreams, in vision of the night, when deep sleep falls on people as they lie in their beds. He whispers in their ears and terrifies them with warnings. He makes them turn from doing wrong; he keeps them from pride. He protects them from eh grave, from crossing over the river of death.” They won’t be teaching that in school anytime soon. There is a war to make people believe that dreams and visions and hearing or seeing strange things is just the mind, or it’s spiritualism or any number of false explanations to keep us from hearing God’s voice. Jesus says that when he word of God reaching the ears of people who’s hearts are a rocky soil, that the birds or evil spirits come and steal God’s word from them. This is how that works. The evil one is always trying to harden your heart into a rock that can’t accept God’s voice. This is the an attack against all man kind and it is the root of millions of deceptions and lies. When people believe these lies, they can no longer hear God speaking in that area and when His word comes to them the demons can easily peck it away so that they never know God is talking to them.
May our hearts be made fertile soil by believing truth! May your heart be softened by exposing your mind to the possibility of God’s ways! May you learn His ways one by one until the lies of the enemy can no longer steal away the words of God directed at you! Today’s reading is from Job 25-41, I hope that you are able to read along with us. May the Lord speak loudest where your heart is most fertile. May He place truth in front of the lies of this world and transform your mind in every area of your understanding and may God bless all y’all.
Practice Outlaw 