I Know That My Redeemer Lives!

We can learn today from the powerful words of the man of God called Job, when he declared “I know that my redeemer lives!

When we consider Job, this one powerful statement sustained him through it all.  Job KNEW by faith that His Redeemer lives and that as His Redeemer was raised from the dead, Job too would be raised.  In her book called “The Story of Job,” Jessie Penn Lewis says it all:

“Every advancing soul must come sooner or later to the place where it can trust God, the bare God, if I may be allowed the expression, simply because of what He is in Himself, and not because of His promises or His gifts.  It must learn to have its joy in Him alone, and to rejoice in Him when all else in Heaven and earth shall seem to fail.

The only way in which this place can be reached, I believe, is by the soul being compelled to face in its own experience the loss of all things, both inward and outward.  I do not mean necessarily that all one’s friends must die, or all one’s money be lost; but I DO mean that the soul must find itself, from either inward or outward causes, desolate, and bereft, and empty of all consolation.  It must come to the end of everything that is NOT God; and must have nothing else left to rest on within or without.  It must wade through the slough, and fall off the precipice, and be swamped by the ocean, and at last find in the midst of them, and at the bottom of them, and behind them, the present, living, loving, omnipotent God!”

In “Come Out of Her, God’s People,” I present  my spiritual walk from the time I was sent to church by 3 dreams in Sept 1979, until I was led out of the church in June 2004, a period of 25 years in ministry. As of today, I have live one year  longer saved, then unsaved.  Thirty four years in Christ has set me on three spiritual pathways, each one different from the other:

The first path is travelled by beginners—a path filled with sensual experiences that are exciting and emotional, with several secret manifestations of God..  The second path is a wilderness, characterized by trials, tribulations, troubles, and conflict.  The sensual manifestations, though fewer, are stronger and deeper, as they seem to be what carries you through the dryness, the darkness and the distress.  So the sensual,supernatural experiences, the dreams, hopes and aspirations are the rock of your survival.

However, the third path is a the place of rest in Him.  It is a rather strange place.  It is a region of mountaintop solitude, where you rarely come down.  With uninterrupted communion with God, setting a time aside for prayer is unnecessary because His presence is felt practically 24-7.

You ask for nothing, need nothing, because you experience a strange detachment from everything of the world. You feel complete satisfaction with your lot in life and you  are in “no hurry” to do  anything or be anything because you are content with the Lord’s will, whatever it may be.I believe that only in  such a place can  we actually be transformed into the image of Christ.

Ending with Jessie’s words, “The soul’s pathway is always through death to
life.  The caterpillar cannot in the nature of things become the butterfly in any other way than by dying to the one life in order to live in the other.  And neither can we.  Therefore,  it may well be that this region of death and desolation must needs be passed through, if we would reach the calm mountain heights beyond.  And when we know this, we can walk triumphantly through the darkest experience, sure that all is well, SINCE GOD IS GOOD!!!!