31 May 2021

WE CAN AND MUST KEEP MOVING FORWARD

By John Ollis

Job reminds us in Job 17:9 NLT The righteous keep moving forward, and those with clean hands become stronger and stronger.

MESSAGE

“But principled people hold tight, keep a firm grip on life,
sure that their clean, pure hands will get stronger and stronger!

There are times in our Christian walk that we seem to speed ahead and see many victories and breakthroughs, at other times our steps can feel so miniscule and so tiny we can feel like a mouse in a treadmill, but here Job reminds us that the righteous KEEP MOVING FORWARD.

It is interesting that Job places a relationship between moving forward and pure clean hands.

I would suggest that Job is saying, that if we want to move forward we need to develop and maintain a mindset of REPENTANCE, I don’t think in many Evangelical and Pentecostal circles there is sufficient emphasis on the need and importance that repentance must be a constant attitude in the life of the believer.

Just as there is a bias in a grass bowls ball, so we have a bias within called a sinful nature, and our daily prayer must be like that of Kind David in Psalm 139:23 NKJV

Search me, O God, and know my heart;
Try me, and know my anxieties;
And see if there is any wicked way in me,
And lead me in the way everlasting.

Jeremiah tells us in 17:9-10 NKJV

The heart is deceitful above all things,
And desperately wicked;
Who can know it?
I, the Lord, search the heart,
I test the mind,
Even to give every man according to his ways,
According to the fruit of his doings.

Not only do we have to contend with the evil one who is the “Master Deceiver” we also have a deceitful heart, so we need to ask the Lord often to search our hearts, so there is no “mixture” or “alloy” manifesting itself.

I believe I have mentioned in a past blog a Lutheran nun Mother Basilea Schlink who wrote a book on this important topic entitled “Repentance-the Joy filled life”.

We sure know it is one thing to be sorry for our sins, but repent/ance means to turn around and away from that sin that so often can beset us, we have to cry out to the Lord for His grace and enabling, to seek to walk in righteousness and holiness and purity.

Let me encourage you to spend more time “reading the will” (The Word of God) and ask the Lord to quicken THE TRUTHS OF THE EVERY BELIEVER’S INHERITANCE NOW, so it becomes in your hand a SWORD OF THE SPIRIT WHICH IS THE RHEMA OF GOD. Ephesians 6:17 NKJV the sword of the Spirit, which is the rhema word of God:

let us keep moving ever onward and upward amen