Tag Archives: Satan

A Beautiful Restoration

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We’re hanging out with Job, and we mentioned last post,

“Job actually was right.  And they are wrong.”

I want to delve into that a little more deeply…

Job’s friends were not just wrong – they were really, really wrong!!  The Lord called their perceptions of Job and his relationship with the Lord ‘folly’ and expressed that he was ‘angry’ with them.  So he asks them to make a sacrifice,

“So now take seven bulls and seven rams and go to my servant Job and sacrifice a burnt offering for yourselves. My servant Job will pray for you, and I will accept his prayer and not deal with you according to your folly.”  ~ Job 42:8

There are two things that I just love about how God commands this restoration.  The first is about the dynamics of the offering…

God asks the friends to sacrifice a burnt offering:

“A burnt offering was the complete destruction of the animal (except for the hide) in an effort to renew the relationship between the Holy God and sinful man.”

Note it is *the friends* who need to renew their relationship with the Lord.  They thought Job was in the wrong for dozens of chapters… but really, it was their perception of Job and the Lord that was wrong.  So much so that they need to offer a sacrifice and renew their relationship with God.

“[A burnt offering] was a sacrifice of general atonement—an acknowledgement of the sin nature and a request for renewed relationship with God.”

It is interesting that a burnt offering is described in Leviticus 1 as a single animal — ‘a’ male or ‘the’ bull.  At the important celebration of Passover, the burnt offering is two bulls, one ram, and seven lambs (Numbers 28:19).  Now we can’t pretend to know God’s thinking behind the number of animals, but I do find it intriguing that Job’s friends were told to sacrifice more than that.  Not just ‘a’ burnt offering.  And more than what is sacrificed at Passover.  They were told to sacrifice 14 animals in total!

I also find it interesting that they were told to go ‘to my servant Job’ to sacrifice the animals.  The Lord doesn’t say just to sacrifice them.  He doesn’t offer another person to serve as the priest.  Instead, he tells them to go to Job to sacrifice the animals!  After Job’s repentance, it seems that the Lord may be either affirming Job as a high priest-type role (cf Job 1:5), or He is emphasizing the importance of the friends’ repentance both to Job and to the Lord, or both.  The Lord affirms Job and seeks to restore all the relationships – between friends and with their God.

So that’s the first thing I love: the picture of the friends’ sacrifice to the Lord being offered to Job.  It seems to offer such a beautiful illustration of forgiving the friends just as God forgives them!  It conveys such a tight depiction of the relational dynamics: restoring the Job-friends relationship just as God will restore the God-friends relationship.

Here’s the second thing I love…

Job also has an important role in all of this:

“My servant Job will pray for you, and I will accept his prayer and not deal with you according to your folly.”  ~ Job 42:8

Humility of all humility, God chooses not to treat the friends ‘according to their folly’ because Job will pray for them.  The one they’ve been critiquing, the one to whom they’ve been saying false things about him and his perception of God – he will intervene for them – he will be obedient to the Lord – so that the Lord will not deal with his false accusers according to their folly.

This is likely valuable for Job as well.  I love that the Lord seems to account for what He instructs millennia later:

Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.  ~ Ephesians 4:31-32

I just love this!  Job has a role in the friends’ repentance: praying for them.  If it were me, this role would help me be sure to rid of any bitterness that is there, may be unbeknownst there, or that may creep in.  It would help me act with compassion towards my friends and be sure I have forgiven them.

I just love the restoration dynamics that the Lord puts together.  What a beautiful illustration of forgiving friends just as God forgives them!

If you’re in a similar Job-friends struggle in your life, may I encourage you that you are not alone.  In fact, you are in company throughout the ages. Job was a contemporary of Abraham - the book of Job takes place chronologically in Genesis!  We’ve got the creation of the world, Adam and Eve, Noah and the flood, Tower of Babel, then Abraham and Job.  So early human history is filled with chapters of friends falsely characterizing a godly person and his motives.  This is not new territory.

So maybe it should be all the more poignant for us.  We see from early in history what Satan does and the destruction he causes.  We see from early on whose team we can choose to help as a person’s friends.  That choice is an age-old question.  As is its answer!

A special thanks to lightharmony.com for today’s fantastic picture!

What I would love to change

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I so wish I could change it.

I so wish I could change one of the recurring themes in interactions involving judging.  I just love thinking about how much cheerier the world would be if it were different!

This is what I wish we wouldn’t miss out on ~

Judging misses an opportunity to care.

Take this story, for example…

Mindy is hanging out in the church lobby waiting for service to start.  Oh yeah!  she thinks.  Here comes Sarah, my small group leader! 

Um… but wait. 

Sarah races by Mindy with her hand up covering her face.

Um, really?  Mindy thinks.  How rude!  She’s my small group leader, and she didn’t even have the common courtesy to say hi.  And then she put her hand up to cover her face?!  I’m not two years old.  I know you’re still there.  If you don’t want to talk to me, then just tell me.  If you don’t want to be friends, there are more mature ways to let me know than to pretend like you don’t see me and that I can’t see you in the church lobby.  You clearly don’t want me in your small group. 

And on top of all that, Mindy thinks, you’re my small group leader!  This is no way for a small group leader to act.  I should find a staff person and let them know how rude my small group leader is being.  She is certainly not reflecting Christ’s love.

So that’s what Mindy thinks.  Now this is what’s going on in Sarah’s world…

Sarah is on her way to church.  She’s putzing along in traffic, all the while praying for the girls in her group.  She adores those ladies.

As she walks into church, she greets the guy cleaning the windows.  He gets startled, and oops!  Window cleaner spray goes right in her eye.  She jerks and rubs her eye… but apparently too harshly.  Her contact lens scratches her eye, and as she’s rubbing, it goes who-knows-where on her eyeball.  Ouch!  Her eye is on fire from the combination of the chemicals, the scratch, and now the super awkward – and painful – location of her contact lens.  With her hand clutching her eye, she races towards the bathroom hoping to get some relief by flushing her eye out with water.  It’s kind of hard to see and navigate through the crowd.  She prays, Lord, it would be nice if someone saw me and could come help.

Yikes, right?

Mindy feels like she has quite the case.  But does she?  When she runs her thoughts through Philippians 4:8, how will she fare?

Now what if Mindy – instead of judging and critiquing – chose instead to take captive her thoughts?  What if she chose to consider palliating circumstances?  What if she chose to not let judging and critiquing distract – or usurp – her love for her sister?  What if she had chosen instead of judging to care?

We have such a powerful opportunity as believers for our love for one another to be a testimony of Christ.  Yet judging or critiquing often causes us to miss an opportunity to care.  It can be such a sinful distraction from Christ’s call in our lives to love one another!

Simply being aware of this can keep us watchful for sin and Satan’s sneaky ways!  It can be a reminder when a judgmental thought enters our mind to ask, “Is there a way I could show love here?  Is my judging causing me to miss an opportunity to care?”

The Lord was gracious to use this in a powerfully humbling way in my life recently.  I can’t wait to tell you about it next time!

Whose team are you playing for?

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The answer may not be as obvious as you think!

In my seven years of seminary, there is one moment I remember so clearly.  It was one of the most poignant gems.

I mean, it was a gem in the sense that it was a treasure – a phenomenally helpful paradigm for my relationship with others, our thoughts about one another, and our reflection of the Lord.

But I must say, my initial reaction was a bit incredulous.

At first, it seemed so strong that my natural, sort of knee-jerk reaction was to want to think it wasn’t true.  To try to think of a way it couldn’t be true.  Or perhaps, it was to *desire* that it wasn’t true.

But I kind of think it is.

I was sitting in a counseling class.  In a very average spot – middle desk in the middle row.  The professor was talking and teaching, and we were discussing and note taking. It seemed like a normal class on a normal day. And then, in the midst of the ordinary, he asked an intriguing question,

Do you know why it is such a heinous sin to falsely accuse your brother or sister in Christ?

Wow.  That really got my attention.  If I’d been daydreaming, I certainly wasn’t anymore.

Heinous sin?  Wow.

Now granted, any good philosophy student or any good logic student would have a heyday with that question.  Yes, it is a loaded question.   It carries very loaded assumptions.

The question first assumes that people falsely accuse fellow believers.  Maybe it’s not as egregious as a total, out-of-the-blue, radical sin – I don’t know many of us who walk around falsely accusing people of murder.  Maybe the false accusations are more subtle: “You were selfish when you did this.” “You acted entitled when you did that.” “You expect us to serve you.”  “You were arrogant when you made that comment.”  I mean, those things might be true.  But they might also be false.  There are many reasons why a person may have done what they did or said what they said.  And to presume to know the motive of a man’s heart – Yikes.  That’s way above all our pay grades!

So maybe such ‘false accusations’ are simply just mistakes.  Maybe they’re really just mistaken accusations.  Or misperceptions, perhaps.  Should we really be calling them heinous sins?  I was intrigued to see how my professor was going to answer it.

We all sat there sort of like deer in headlights processing this hugely loaded question.  Would the response justify its wording?

And this was his answer:

Because that’s what Satan does.

Um, yikes.

That had to sink in a bit.

The devil is the false accuser of the brethren.

Wow.

I mean, that’s true.  I can’t argue with that.  That’s how he’s described in Revelation 12:10.  In fact, that is what his name means: devil means ‘false accuser.’  He attacks people’s character as he did in Job 1-2.

But the implication?  Wow.

So the devil is the false accuser of the brethren.  That’s true.  He attacks character.  And as the rest of the chapters in Job illustrate, others can quickly follow suit.

When they do… when they join in being a false accuser of fellow believers… um, whose team does that most resemble?

  • Christ’s – our advocate before the Father
  • Or Satan – the accuser of the brethren

It’s a bit stunning.

I must say that I think my professor’s question is merited.  It seems indeed to be a sin if we’re rallying on the wrong team.  But ‘heinous’?  Oh yikes.  Yet I think even this word is merited.  Playing for the wrong team is indeed dangerous – and has potentially been called worse.  Traitors – whether intentionally or unintentionally – give a path for the enemy to advance.

Such a stunning question with such convicting implications.

And such revealing implications as well. Committing to a singular conviction of challenging people according to God and His Word – not speculated motives – is a huge threat to the devil.  He likes it when he can trick us into taking jabs at other believers.  He loves the help.

So whose team will you play on?  You may get a little pushback from the weakening devil.  But squashing heinous sin is worth it - Amen?

I’m not a dreg runner!

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Do you know what I especially love about this water bottle analogy that we’ve been on?  It’s this: I think it so accurately captures a very common confusion in conflicts.

Here’s our scenario…

Gene tells Bob that he won’t be able to join him for the movies. Bob reads into it that Gene is selfish – that he isn’t willing to give of his time to see the movie that Bob wants to see.  Gene is totally confused; he simply had prior plans.  There is no larger message or motive.  He simply is not available to go to the movies.  Yet Bob blames Gene for being selfish and wants Gene to own his selfishness.

Wow – that’s no fun.

Now what really happened?

Gene did a normal, non-moral action.  Given the invitation of going to the movies, he regretfully declines.  He has the right to say yes or no.  But Bob read motive into it – that Gene is selfish.  Bob had an impure thought, created a dreg, and then blamed Gene for that dreg.  He wants Gene to own the dreg.

But Gene’s water bottle is clear.  Why would Gene take Bob’s dreg?  If Bob wants to rid himself of the dreg, he can try to give it to Gene, but why would Gene own Bob’s impure thought?  Why would Gene be dregged down by it?  Why would Gene be a ‘dreg runner’? : )

This is why I love this illustration:

The water bottles offer such a clear picture of boundaries.  Bob created his own dreg, but he wants Gene to own it.  Look at the two pictures – how crazy is that?

Make no mistake – Satan loves to confuse us about our water bottles!

Satan is the great distorter of reality.  Recall in the garden when he tempted Eve to question God’s boundaries and his truth.  The consequences were disastrous. (Boundaries, 35)

If Satan can cause a rift by convincing us that our impure thought – our sin – belongs to another, oh how happy he can be!  If he can get us to accuse each other, oh how much easier that makes his job!  We then start taking each other out, and he can move on to creating other chaos.  All he has to do is get us confused about our boundaries.

Another way Bob can rid himself of the dreg is to purify it.  That rids of the dreg.  It gets it out of the water bottle – out of both water bottles!  Ahhh… back to a pure friendship!

So do you see what I love this illustration?  My dreg in my water bottle is my responsibility.  Another person’s dreg in their water bottle is not my dreg.  It is not my responsibility to own and confess their dreg.  In fact, it doesn’t even make sense!  I can’t confess another person’s sin for them. I can’t purify their dreg.  Only they can.

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. ~ 1 John 1:9

So our dregs are our responsibility.  We must own our dregs before the Lord.  Not blame another for them.

Ok, enough with the water bottles? : )  But may they help us remember…

Relational jostles are inevitable.  It isn’t the jostle that messes up the relationship; it’s the dregs.  May we commit to distilling our dregs!

‘They’ let Satan

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It was so intriguing.

Just a seemingly slight adjustment in my thinking totally changed my outlook.  From ‘they let Satan get a foothold’ to ‘Satan is responsible for getting a foothold.’  They don’t seem very far apart… but it made a world of difference. (See post for full story.)

What is it about the difference that is so significant?

I’ve been pondering…and this is my best understanding so far.

What am I really sending to the place with the {double hockey sticks}?

‘They let Satan get a foothold’ is focused on ‘they.’  My anger is directed towards ‘them.’  If I let it get out of hand enough, I’d be headed towards thinking they should go to the place with the {double hockey sticks}.  Yikes.

But ‘Satan is responsible for getting a foothold’ directs my anger at Satan. If I let that get out of hand – or even if I don’t! – I end up thinking that Satan should go to the place with the {double hockey sticks}.

Well, that’s kind of the natural order, right?  I mean, let’s send Satan and sin to the place with the {double hockey sticks}.  There’s peace in that because that’s where they belong – that’s God’s design.

But if my anger is at ‘them’ (fellow believers), then there is anger and discord and disharmony in Christ’s body.  But God’s design is for unity in Christ’s Body (John 17).  It does not follow God’s natural order when I’m angry with fellow believers – instead, it creates a tension at odds with the unity Christ so desires in His body. It can’t rest, our relationship can’t be in harmony, and I can’t be at peace.

Ironically, it is as if ‘I’ am then letting Satan get a foothold in our relationship.

Someone has got to stop this crazy cycle!

When I redirect my anger towards sin and Satan, I refocus on what should really be sent to the place with the {double hockey sticks}.  I take pressure and tension off of my relationship with my fellow believer because I am no longer fighting God’s desire for unity by figuratively sending them to the place with the {double hockey sticks}.  I am reunited in harmony with my fellow believer.

It’s amazing what can happen next!  An almost instant compassion wells up for them. My perspective is reframed, and I feel compassion and sorrow for how sin and Satan got a foothold.

So Satan and sin are condemned, Christ’s body is unified, our fellow believers receive compassion, and we experience freedom.

And it. is. glorious.

The enemy, he has to leave
At the sound of Your great name

The enemy, he has to leave!

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I was so frustrated one morning.  I was frustrated with the defeating words of others that kept going through my head.  I was exhausted with the amount of energy, effort, brain power, and prayer that I’d invested in trying to overcome them.  Those suckers were not willing to be taken captive.  I was not winning.

Then … in his steady, wise, loving, thoughtful, spot-on way … my husband chimed in,

“Don’t you think at some point we need to acknowledge Satan’s role in all of this?”

I thought I had.  “Yes,” I said in my not-so-steady, wise, loving, thoughtful way.  “That’s why I’m mad.  I’m mad that they allowed him to get a foothold.”  I thought I was acknowledging Satan’s role.

My husband’s next words had a surprising effect.  “At some point we need to direct our anger towards Satan.  He’s the responsible party.”

Wow.

It was as if a switch had flipped.

I suddenly was no longer angry.

I felt free.

It. was. weird.

Then the whole day, the song “Your Great Name” kept going through my head.


I didn’t sing very much of the song, just one little phrase:

The enemy, he has to leave
At the sound of Your great name

And then I’d sing those lines again.  And again.  And again.  The whole day.  And I smiled.  The whole day.  It was glorious.

Gloriously crazy!  One comment, and I was free.