Exhaustive

"Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came among them. And the Lord said to Satan, "From where do you come?" So Satan answered the Lord and said, "From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking back and forth on it." Then the Lord said to Satan, "Have you considered My servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, one who fears God and shuns evil?" - Job 1:6-8

30 seconds to read, 6 hours of discussion. I wish my buddy Luke read my blogs he would be the first to attest to the LATE night we spent going over these 3 versus in the middle of the Bible. My studies that night quickly brought me to the conclusion that Satan is under our feet. The funny part is that I already knew that. However, his reason for existence surprised the heck out of me and has, 7 years later continued to unfold in my mind. So 3 versus, 6 hours, 7 years of peeled back layers going about as deep as the mind will allow. Let me explain...

Have you ever taken 5 minutes just to try and fathom a God that has no beginning? The fact that he has no end is daunting enough, but seriously think about no creator for a creator. Infinitely existing both in the past and the future. Deep right? When you break it down, the only way to try to come to grasp with it is to understand that time itself was created. God doesn't work in the parameters of time he is outside of it. Even the "Matrix" couldn't go that deep. Now to get back on track, in my peeling back the layers of Satan and trying to understand that throughout my upbringing in the church I was told that Satan could never come before God after the fall, how on earth was he upstairs having this conversation before the throne of God? Well, it's easy really. Satan is defined in Websters dictionary as, "adversary" other translations say "opposition." All those hard times, trials, tribulation... we think of those situations as evil and they have nothing but a negative condentation. The truth is we need these stumbling blocks in our lives. Ezekiel 3:20 says, "When a righteous man turns from his righteousness and commits iniquity, and I (God) lay a stumbling block before him, he shall die." In Jude 1:24, Jude says, "Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling, And to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy, to God our Savior, who alone is wise, be Glory and Majesty,dominion and power, both now and forever."

Satan was and is used by God as a stumbling block; God's adversary and opposition to bring true love out of us. It had to happen this way. His plan is so infinitely perfect that we fail to grasp the length he had to go just to conceive love within his children. First we are tempted to sin, then we have a choice to partake or to abstain, by abstaining we defeat the enemy and show God that a Father's will is our will too. When my earthly father set a curfew for me when I was younger and I came home on time, I know my dad felt love in that moment rather than disappointment by me knowingly disobeying him. It is the same with God, these "stumbling blocks" are here to refine us and furthermore when we are obedient to his word we are showing God that we are irrevocably in love with him.

I get a kick out of my posts, mainly because of the tangents. I could literally write 15,000 words on these 3 versus and not even scratch the surface. My point is this... The Bible can be read in 77 hours, cover to cover. But even with some of the books in the Bible being written several thousand years ago and theologians, Pharisees, priests, pastors, evangelists, scientists, presidents, fathers, and the billions of other people who have read the bible... we still have not unlocked even half of what God laid out through his word.

This book was not created for your entertainment, it was not professed by men who later became martyrs due to their "spreading of the gospel", to be your instruction manual. This book was carefully pieced together to give POWER, AUTHORITY, and show example after example of God's perfect and infinitely beautiful LOVE though his many sacrifices.