Devil You Want a Piece of Me?

My grandson's great grandfather used to wrestle with him and he taught him to say when he was 5-6 years old, "You Want a Piece of Me?" I can't help but think if Job in the Bible was alive today, he would say this to the devil. Back then, the religious leaders ( his friends) blamed trials on the person who was going through the trial ---that Job had done something wrong.

I had the same thing happen to me when I joined a Christian full time ministry at 19 years old, I had the elders in that ministry blaming me for sin in my life when bad things happened to me at first. I knew it was Satan trying to get me to leave that full time street evangelistic ministry. That was the "purpose" of the trials back then.

When Jesus talked about Satan's hour of darkness was coming as far as him going to the cross -- he had no alliance with Satan for him to take anything.

I will not say much more to you, for the prince of this world is coming. He has no hold over me, John 14:30

Joseph Prince said that he prays that his family and him won't go through trials like Jesus prayed, "Lead us not into temptation (trials/testing), and deliver us from the evil one."

Joyce Meyer talks about going "through" the trials (the deliverance from the evil one.)

I laughed when I heard her say that we could say that our life stinks. I laughed because I had been saying every morning when I woke up the last few years, "I am blessed with all spiritual blessings in the heavenly places" to little avail, but one day when I thanked God my life stinks at the top of my lungs, I had the greatest victory.

There is a difference from saying our life stinks and thanking God our life stinks.  Anyway, I had an answer from God in a week and he said that I am a sweet fragrance to him. It's so cool to know that God was telling me in his nostrils, my life does not stink.

Our lives are a Christ-like fragrance rising up to God. But this fragrance is perceived differently by those who are being saved and by those who are perishing. 2 Cor. 2:15

I was listening to a minister who said he went through three years of trials and he could find no apparent reason. I met a married man at Bible study who said he was battling depression for 18 months. When I lost my husband, the Lord told me it was going to be 7 years. It's not something I "wanted" to hear, but he told me like in Egypt there was seven years of plenty and then seven years of famine. Joseph warned that the seven years of famine would be so severe that it would swallow up any remembrance of the years of plenty. The grief and trials would swallow up any remembrance of the joy with my husband.

Seven years of tribulation is going to come on this world. 

In the past, I only had seasons of troubles and at most three years like Elijah had of famine.

Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations: 1 Peter 1:6

It says that we are "count it all joy" when we go through trials so like counting, 1, 2, 3, it's not something natural, but it is an act of our will. It's the same with forgiveness. Forgiveness is not something that we feel but it's an act of our will.

Consider it (count it) pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. James 1:2-3

I've had a boat load of trials all my life, in fact, getting married with having step-children full time was a trial in itself, my husband would tell you the same thing. Many times our love for someone is tested and my love to stay with my husband was tested over and over through his children. When I meet men who lost their wife who don't have children, they did not have these type of trials (trouble) but they had a wife with a chronic illness so that was their struggle.

Jesus warned us that we are going to have trouble in this world, but that he had overcome it. ("I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world." John 16:33)

Its the same way with my love for the Lord. It is tested by the battles I've experienced in life, but it's actually my faith in a loving God.

for everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith. 1 John 5:4

David said in Psalm 23 that he believed he would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living (not wait till he got to heaven).

I've always been an idealist --Joel Osteen reminds me so much of my younger days. I always look to the future, and did not live for today. What happened to my husband forced me to live in the here and now. My husband lived for now, because he had chronic asthma. It forced me to face my mortality early in life.

One thing that helped me is realizing that Jesus did not heal his own earthly caretaker and father Joseph, he let him die and Mary was an early widow. Someone said to me, "Maybe Jesus knew it was his time to go." It's hard to deal with untimely deaths --those are people who go before their time and that is what happened to Job -- he lost all his children. Cain killed Abel before his time. It was the same thing for me it was a sense of being robbed from my future with my husband. When I talk to older widows they don't have that because they tell me they feel they lived a good full life with their former husband.  It said in Eccl. 3 -- there is a "time" to die.

It was a battle that happens in the spiritual realm and its out of our control at times. It says that the trial off our faith is more "precious" than gold. Gold is still precious in our society but the trial of our faith is more precious.

That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ: 1 Peter 1:7

For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. 2 Cor. 4:17