Life, Favor and His Visitation - This Sums Everything Up

Job 10:12

"Thou hast granted me life and favour, and thy visitation hath preserved my spirit."

"Thou hast granted me life..." Although we see life all around us, life itself is intangeable. Life is spiritual and it is what allows these vessels we are housed in to move and live and breathe. Take away life and there is just a dead container. Life produces awareness, thought processes, decisions are made because of life; it is obvious that a corpse has none of these because a corpse though it is real it has not life (the spark within). Therefore, what we observe as real and tangeable is not life but rather the result of life. The scriptures say this: Act 17:28 KJV "For in him we live, and move, and have our being..." We live and move and have our being; it does not even mention the body just the spirit and soul "Our being". Life comes from the breath of God, even the wicked who blaspheme His name owe their life to him. One who is born without life is considered still born, something happened that a vessel was born without life, a tragic reality. Life is something that is deposited by God into the vessel being birthed and it is not an organic act it is a spiritual act.

Then there is something every bit as important as life itself, it s Gods favor or loving kindness. In fact David said it is better than life itself: Psa 63:3 KJV "Because thy lovingkindness is better than life, my lips shall praise thee." This is certainly true because we can have our being, the spark of life and yet without His favor and loving kindness we can be miserable in life. It is His favor Job acknowledges because at one time he walked in the light of Gods countenance in favor and blessing. All of that has been apparently removed (at least from Jobs perspective) and yet, in reality, it has not left him at all because God is actually putting Job into a posture which will release Gods blessing as never before. It is what we are within and without (how we think and how we behave) that determine His favor on our lives. If we please Him we enjoy life, displease Him and it is death. And so God is, through this trial, altering how Job thinks and acts so He can pour out His loving kindness in ways He never could before.

"...And thy visitation hath preserved my spirit." I want to say something about Gods visitation; sometimes He comes to us as the latter rain and we blossom and grow under the light of His countenance as He shines upon us. But lest we forget the entire picture God is visiting Job right now; he is in the midst of Gods visitation here in this trial. I know that is not what Job is referring to, he is referring to the blessing of God and yet God is still visiting him all the same. We need to be careful in this area to not attribute to Satan what is actually Gods working. Evil circumstances do not mean God is not in it! I have know His visitation to bring great light and I have known His visitation to bring great darkness (and we are not talking about His visitation to the wicked but to those He loves and seeks to perfect). We have reviewed this verse before and we will not doubt interject it again but we must always bear in mind God visits with darkness as well as light (But the outcome will be good if your are His child):

Isa 50:10-11 KJV 10 "Who is among you that feareth the LORD, that obeyeth the voice of his servant, that walketh in darkness, and hath no light? let him trust in the name of the LORD, and stay upon his God. 11 Behold, all ye that kindle a fire, that compass yourselves about with sparks: walk in the light of your fire, and in the sparks that ye have kindled. This shall ye have of mine hand; ye shall lie down in sorrow."

Has God visited you in darkness and in sorrow? Remember what Job said; "His visitation hath preserved my spirit" We must always fall upon Romans 8:28 - "All things work together for good..." In life and in death, in joy and in sorrow Gods visitation touches something in us and that work will ultimately preserve us in some way and so there is no need to be overcome, God is on our side.