ENJOYING ALL THINGS RICHLY BY SUFFERING 2
(week 07/10)
OLUBI JOHNSON
In our last article we saw that God wants us to enjoy all things richly after we have learned obedience by the things which we suffer: self-denial, persecutions and afflictions. After we have suffered a while, God then perfects, establishes, strengthens and settles us (1 Pet. 5:10). God wants our years of glory to out-number our years of sufferings.
Job 36:11-12 AMP: If they obey and serve Him, they shall spend their days in prosperity and their years in pleasantness and joy. (12) But if they obey not, they shall perish by the sword [of God’s destructive judgments], and they shall die in ignorance of true knowledge.
We will see how to do this in this article.
Joseph’s life exemplifies this truth: He suffered slavery and imprisonment for only about 13 years and enjoyed all things richly for about 80 years (age 30 (Gen. 41:46) to 110 (Gen. 50:26)).
Generally, we are promised 70-80 years (Ps. 90:10). Years of training into spiritual maturity should take about 20 years (using Christ as a pattern from 12-30 years (Lk. 2:42, 3:23); So you can have about 40 years of glory and enjoying all things richly if you start walking with God in your late teens or early twenties, like Joseph, David, Daniel and Jesus did.
This is why the scripture says in
Ecclesiastes 12:1 ESV: Remember also your Creator in the days of your youth, before the evil days come and the years draw near of which you will say, “I have no pleasure in them”;
And
Psalms 91:16 ESV: With long life I will satisfy him and show him my salvation.”
So, we should not die until we are satisfied that we have seen the fullness of our salvation: the perfection and fullness of Christ while enjoying all things richly!
So, we should get born-again as quickly as possible and then grow spiritually as quickly as possible by, like the Lord Jesus, learning obedience by the things we suffer.
Furthermore, we can even start experiencing years of glory much earlier by operating a borrowed anointing under covering before we come into full spiritual maturity and so increase the number of our years of glory!
This will be particularly useful for those who did not get born-again during their youth (say from about 12-21) or have wasted many years not growing up spiritually: God will use these extra years of glory by the borrowed anointing under covering to restore the wasted years the cankerworm has eaten (Joel 2:25).
Now, this is not to say we will not experience attacks of persecution and affliction even during our years of glory, but we would have been sufficiently trained and empowered to easily overcome them and shorten their duration.
We see this exemplified in Daniel in the lion’s den (Dan. 6:1-28); Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego (Dan. 2:48-49; 3:1-30) in the furnace of fire: they suffered great attacks of persecution and affliction even during their years of glory and enjoying all things richly but the persecutions and afflictions were easily and speedily overcome.
This is God’s pattern of how we should enjoy all things richly by suffering self-denial, persecutions and afflictions during our lifetime on earth in Christ Jesus!
