I can see that people are not going to agree with me on Pauls Thorn in the flesh..That is ok!
The thing I have a hard time with is people believing that God uses the devil in our lives to teach and train us. They use the book of Job all the time and that is one book that people have so misread and misunderstood that it has been the scape goat for christians to justify God uses the devil to bring teaching and calamity into Christians lives.
First of all that is not true, and if you read Job, you will discover that there are things that Job truly stated about God in the story, but they are not true about God. In fact if you read the last chapter he repents by saying I have rashly uttered things I did not understand. In other words, he blamed God for what Satan brought into his life.
When God said to Satan, behold all that he has is in your hands, He was not giving permission to the devil to afflict Job, he was stating the fact that due to Adam, the earth was under the dominion of Satan until a mediator could be found. At that time there was no one to stand up for Job.
If you go into Job 1: 8 there is a statement that God says to satan, have you considered my Servant Job that he is blameless etc,etc.. The word considered means, Have you set your heart on my servant Job. In other words, have you come to attack him? If you read the book of Job and understand that it is a book about how men in their wisdom tried to figure out what Job was going through and that they used Mens wisdom instead of Gods, then you begin to understand that the book is a book of victory, God is a good God and satan is evil..But that is another post.
God is a good God, he does not use satan to teach us anything in life, he does not bring destruction into your life, especially under the new covenant. Has anyone read Isaiah 54: verse 9-10 speaking of the New Covenant?
Everything we read must be read through the lens of what Jesus accomplished for us in his death, burial and resurrection. You must understand that God is not using evil to teach and train you. Besides that he already knows what you are going to do anyway.
I have to grudgedly admire people who still serve a God who kills, steals and destroys to teach and train you, who uses sickness as a tool to train you and the whole other myriad of things our supposed loving Father does to us in his effort to persuade us of his love. ( please read with sarcasm)
So, end this post with this simple fact:
God is for you, the devil is against you.. Really simple!
I know this, trials come to all of us, that in trials, we have the choice to rest in Gods promises of rest and escape, or his Grace to empower us to endure when needed and his unfailing love for us by saying I will never leave or forsake you.
We even make bad choices and yet again, God is there to walk us through them. But the key is, he is not the author of the problems. Yes we face persecution, sickness, calamity, loss of loved ones, financial woes and many other things life due to the fall or our own wrong choices bring. But never is God the one who brings this on us. Heck, even James tells us that God does not use evil against us and not to be deceived.
Many of us have had bad Father images, so it is hard to see God in a good light unless you have a revelation of his Goodness. As long as you see God as the one who comes along side of the devil to train you, you are in for a miserable Christian life.
