God’s Ways in How He Deals with Us
JEREMIAH 29:10-13
10 For thus saith the LORD, That after seventy years be accomplished at Babylon I will visit you, and perform my good word toward you, in causing you to return to this place.
11 For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end. (expected = things hoped for, the outcome that we have hoped in)
12 Then shall ye call upon me, and ye shall go and pray unto me, and I will hearken unto you.
13 And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart.
ISAIAH 55:6-13
6 ¶ Seek ye the LORD while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is near:
7 Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the LORD, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.
8 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD.
9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.
10 For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater:
11 So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.
12 For ye shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace: the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.
13 Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree, and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree: and it shall be to the LORD for a name, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.
God’s Ways in How He Deals with Us
If we do not know the ways of God, then it will often be very hard to see him at work in our lives – but he is at work none the less.
Opening scripture
ISAIAH 55:9
9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.
Our thoughts and ways of how to bring a person to maturity is to educate them in a classroom, but God has a much higher form of training by his own ways and methods.
BROKEN.CISTERNS_ PHOENIX.AZ V-19 N-4 SATURDAY_ 65-0123
82 Education can never bring Life. It takes the Spirit of God to bring Life, and that Life must not come out of just the intellectual revival. It's got to come out of the Bible, Word revival, and that Word is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
The bible is a book that reveals the ways of how God deals with mankind. And in His dealing with man, it also reveals the wisdom and the grace, and the love of God in that it is his desire and purpose to bring us into peace and joy.
And the way that God deals with man in this lifetime is not for the purpose of destroying him, but to bring him into the full potential of what he intended for him to be, because God’s thoughts toward us are thoughts of peace, and to give us an expected end in that we will come into the reality of all of our hopes and dreams in the life that is to come in the great here afters.
And so when we study how God deals with his children in the bible, He must always act and train his children in the same manner because God never improves on how he does things. The first way God does something will always be the way he does it, because God can never improve on his original thought.
We know that the rain falling doesn’t change the seed, and we know that the rain is the baptism of the Holy Ghost, but it is the word of God that is the seed of eternal life. Life isn’t in the rain it is in the seed – the seed needs the rain, but the life is in the seed.
That is why the baptism of the Holy Ghost made a way for the person himself, and the person of Christ is the word.
That is why Brother Branham makes statements like this…
LEADERSHIP_ COVINA.CA V-7 N-7 TUESDAY_ 65-1207
162 ... Many of you think, "I got the baptism of the Holy Ghost, I'm going to Heaven." That don't mean one thing that you're going to Heaven. No, sir. You can have the baptism of the Holy Ghost every hour in your life, and still be lost and go to hell. The Bible says so. Uh-huh, that's exactly right.
167 And when a man has been borned again by the Word of God, predestinated to Eternal Life, called "The Elected," it'll be Word of God on top of Word, Word on Word! Not a denominational creed and then a Word, and a creed; and it won't work. You can't have that leaven in It! Only one Eternal Life, Jesus Christ the Word:
**So the way that God deals with his elect in this age is to bring them into the revelation of the word for this age.
He may still deal with the Pentecostals with signs and wonders and many other things that appear supernatural, but when it comes to the bride – he is dealing with her in the experiences of her life in order to bring her into the full revelation of the word which is the person of Christ Himself.
**If you study brother Branham’s life and how God dealt with him in all the troubles of his life, you will find that the whole sum and purpose of it was to bring him into the revelation of Himself for this hour.
So God also has this same purpose in His ways in dealing with us as his elect – and that is to bring us into a greater revelation of himself, but much of our purpose centres around becoming financially secure, but God’s purpose and way for us is centred around revealing himself to us and his ways are higher than our ways – so we need to get our vision and comprehension out of this temporal earthly level and see the work of God in our lives in accordance with his great eternal purpose concerning us.
We know that God doesn’t change his ways, nor does he change the way that he deals with man.
***So if we want to know how God deals with us, then we need to see how he has dealt in the lives of others that have gone on before us, and only then will we be able to understand how he is at work in our own lives, because He doesn’t change his pattern of doing things.
**God’s purpose for us is to have the preeminence and leadership in our lives, because that is the only thing that will bring us into true peace and into our full potential – power lays in the marriage covenant, when you and God become one and he has the preeminence, then you are the most powerful being on earth outside of God himself.
- Esther was the most powerful woman in the kingdom because of her marriage to the king.
- Ruth was the most powerful woman in Elimelech’s restored inheritance because of her marriage to Boaz.
You leading yourself is man over man, and that will cause you to live a life of poverty and sorrow, because you are trying yourself to bring yourself into peace by your own ways and means, but God’s desire is also to bring you into peace, and the only way that he can do that for you is by His way and leadership, because his leadership is much higher than your leadership – but you have to surrender to his leadership, because your own leadership just won’t work, because at the best you are just a blind man trying to find his way in the dark.
So you can be a denomination all on your own by being a self-government, a know it all.
LIFE_ JEFF.IN SUNDAY_ 57-0602
E-16 ... Always God deals with men just according to the way that their minds run.
God will deal with you the way that you think – because he knows your inner language and your makeup and your fears and your troubles and your complexes. And so he will work with all those things because that is how your mind runs.
A.SUPER.SIGN_ JEFF.IN V-15 N-7 SUNDAY_ 59-1227M
55 Man trying to do big big things; but when God gave a sign, it was a little thing. Man try to deal with big affairs; God deals with small affair. Man tries to say, "Because everyone goes this a-way, let us do like they do in Hollywood." God wants the minority. He wants to--to omit all the big things to receive the little ones.
"A Baby will be born, little Immanuel will be born." God of the creation become part of His own creation. God, the Creator of the heavens and earth, Who made the dust and the trees, and all the things that is, become part of them. That'll be a sign, He will come through the way by a human being.
This is why we miss seeing God dealing in our own life, because we fail to understand his ways in the smallest details of our own everyday human walk.
In order to see and understand how God is at work in our personal lives, we must understand that he is hiding in what would appear to us to be the humblest things of our ordinary life – God is right there in all those things.
So God did not design man with the ability to lead himself, and that is why man leading man is the spirit of denomination whether it be in politics, or in the church, or in the life of an individual. So we are to “come out of her my people” – not just out of organised religion, but also out of our own organisation of our own leadership and self-will.
**Man’s self-leadership disperses the leadership of the Holy Ghost.
***So God is dealing with you in your life to bring you from your own leadership to his leadership – from you leading yourself, to Him leading you as a husband and wife relationship – God and man in oneness together.
294-3 PHILADELPHIAN.CHURCH.AGE - CHURCH.AGE.BOOK CPT.8
Now it says in Isaiah 22:22,
"And the key of the house of David will I lay upon His shoulder; so He shall open, and none shall shut; and He shall shut, and none shall open."
The Spirit uses this Old Testament reference concerning the Lord Jesus Christ and His ministry in the church. What the key of David signified at that time is mere shadow, which is now fulfilled in Jesus standing in the midst of the lampstands. It has to do with our Lord AFTER His resurrection and not His earthly pilgrimage. But what does this key signify? The answer lies in the POSITION of the key. It is NOT in His hand. It is not worn around His neck. It is not placed in the hands of other men, or the verse could not be saying that HE ALONE HAS THE USE OF THAT KEY--FOR HE ALONE OPENS AND SHUTS, AND NO MAN has that right but Jesus Himself. Isn't that right? But where is the key? IT IS ON HIS SHOULDER. But what does SHOULDER have to do with it?
Read Isaiah 9:6,
"And the government shall be upon His shoulder."
But what does this mean? The answer is this. The phrase, "government upon His shoulder" comes from the wedding ceremony of the East. When the bride has been committed to the groom she takes off her veil and places it over the groom's shoulders, signifying that not only is she under his dominion--that she has transferred her rights to him--that he is the head--but also that he bears the responsibility and the care and that HE AND HE ALONE--NO ONE ELSE--NO OTHER MAN--NO OTHER POWER--HAS ANY RIGHT AND RESPONSIBILITY. And that, beloved, is the KEY of David. God being Sovereign, He foreknew by Divine decree exactly who would be in His bride. He chose her. She did not choose Him. He called her. She did not come on her own. He died for her. He washed her in His own blood. He paid the price for her. She belongs to Him and to Him alone. She is wholly committed to Him and He accepts the obligation. He is her head, for Christ is the head of His church. As Sarah called Abraham, Lord, even so the bride is happy that He is her Lord. He speaks and she obeys for that is her delight.
Last week – Journey from fear to faith
Gideon began his journey in fear, but his journey ended in faith – and we see how God dealt with him in his experiences to bring him out of his own personal fears and into the faith of what the angel had declared him to be.
**In this age, we have also had an angel declare to us that we are the bride of Christ, but then it takes God to deal with us in a specific way in the experiences of our lives to bring us into the actual position of that in reality.
JUDGES 6:11-12
11 ¶ And there came an angel of the LORD, and sat under an oak which was in Ophrah, that pertained unto Joash the Abiezrite: and his son Gideon threshed wheat by the winepress, to hide it from the Midianites.
12 And the angel of the LORD appeared unto him, and said unto him, The LORD is with thee, thou mighty man of valour.
The angel wasn’t lying to Gideon, but Gideon had yet to come to know this truth about himself – so there had to be events take place to bring Gideon from doubt to faith, God had to deal with Gideon in the way that Gideon’s mind ran.
*Thinking of himself as a weakling was a lie that he believed about himself.
The fact was that he was a mighty man of valour, because the angel didn’t tell a lie about him, but Gideon didn’t know that about himself yet – so God had to deal with him in a way in order to bring him out of this lie that he believed about what he was, and into faith of what he actually was.
So God dealt with his life in certain experiences according to the way his mind ran in order to bring him into that faith of what He had actually purposed for Gideon - and so God must also deal with us after the same manner because he doesn’t change his ways – so this is God’s way.
Esther began her journey in fear of her husband the king, but she ended in faith
ESTHER 2:16-17
16 So Esther was taken unto king Ahasuerus into his house royal in the tenth month, which is the month Tebeth, in the seventh year of his reign.
17 And the king loved Esther above all the women, and she obtained grace and favour in his sight more than all the virgins; so that he set the royal crown upon her head, and made her queen instead of Vashti.
ESTHER 4:15-16
15 Then Esther bade them return Mordecai this answer,
16 Go, gather together all the Jews that are present in Shushan, and fast ye for me, and neither eat nor drink three days, night or day: I also and my maidens will fast likewise; and so will I go in unto the king, which is not according to the law: and if I perish, I perish.
She begins her marriage relationship in fear of her husband the king – she thinks that he may kill her – and that is the same way that some of us still think about God after we have been united with him by the revelation of the word of this hour, and we think that way because we don’t understand his love for us and the position that he has granted to us by way of his union with us in this hour. We still think (like Esther) that we have to fast and pray and do penance in order to be accepted by him.
ESTHER 5:1-3
1 ¶ Now it came to pass on the third day, that Esther put on her royal apparel, and stood in the inner court of the king's house, over against the king's house: and the king sat upon his royal throne in the royal house, over against the gate of the house.
2 And it was so, when the king saw Esther the queen standing in the court, that she obtained favour in his sight: and the king held out to Esther the golden sceptre that was in his hand. So Esther drew near, and touched the top of the sceptre.
3 Then said the king unto her, What wilt thou, queen Esther? and what is thy request? it shall be even given thee to the half of the kingdom. (She had power up to half the kingdom)
God is determined to bring us out of our fears, and into faith and rest and peace.
*Boaz brought Ruth out of her fear and into peace and rest in an hour of darkness, but she had to lay in his presence. She had to lay in the presence of the sun to ripen, because Boaz was the sunlight in the darkness, he was the only one that could ripen her revelation and bring her into peace and rest.
CHRIST.IS.THE.MYSTERY.OF.GOD.REVEALED_ JEFF.IN V-3 N-7 SUNDAY_ 63-0728
153 Oh, if God can get Him prisoners like that! Now, that's when He can express the preeminences, you see. He, He's got the man, or the person, so that he knows nothing but Christ. You get what I mean? [Congregation says, "Amen."--Ed.] All right. That's secondly.
154 First, to express Hisself completely, God in Christ.
155 Second, to have the preeminences, by this, in His Church, which is His Body, the Bride, till He could have the preeminence to express Himself through them. All right.
156 And, thirdly, to restore the Kingdom to its rightly position, that fell by sin by the first Adam, back to where He walked in the cool of the evening, with His people, talked with them, fellowshipped with them.
Every one of us is on a similar journey through life. Our destination is to come into a reality of where God can have the full preeminence in us.
So God is dealing with us by allowing different experiences and problems to come across our pathway - he’ll let you lead yourself so that when you fail and fall flat on your face then you will realise that it would have been better to have had Him lead you.
**And so all of our experiences in this life have been designed by God just for us and in the channel of the way our mind runs, so there is nothing in your life that God has not allowed to come across your pathway for your training, because he has designed each and every experience specifically just for you in order to lead you into the reality of what he has called you to be.
GENESIS 37:3-11
3 Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his children, because he was the son of his old age: and he made him a coat of many colours.
Remember that Joseph is a type of Christ, and Joseph marries a gentile Bride
Notice - It’s always a Gentile wife…
*Joseph and his Gentile wife Asenath
*Moses and his Gentile wife Zipporah
*Salmon and his Gentile wife Rehab
*Boaz and his Gentile wife Ruth
*Solomon and his Gentile Wives
Why a gentile woman - because in this hour there is a gentile people called the bride of Christ who is greater than Asenath.
*A woman who is greater than Zipporah is Here Now.
*A woman that is greater than Rehab is Here Now.
*A Woman that is Greater than Ruth is Here Now.
**But notice - before Joseph could marry his gentile wife, he had to first go down to the prison house and pay the price for a sin that he never committed, just like Christ paid the price for the sins of the world that he never committed.
So before Joseph could become a mature grain, he first had to first be threshed at the threshing floor - and so the prison house was Joseph’s threshing floor before he was taken into the garner to Pharos’s house - This is the book of Ruth again, and it’s the same pattern throughout the entire bible, and so if it is the same pattern throughout the entire bible, then it will also be the same pattern in your own life – that is why when things seem to go completely wrong in your life, then don’t worry because God is dealing with you in the same manner as he has always done with all of his children – he is also bring you through the prison house in order to bring you into Pharos house and into peace and rest)
4 And when his brethren saw that their father loved him more than all his brethren, they hated him, and could not speak peaceably unto him. (This is Christ again – Love of the father and hated of his brethren – this is not a good family environment to be in)
5 ¶ And Joseph dreamed a dream, and he told it his brethren (sometimes it is not wise to tell certain people certain things – not even to your family): and they hated him yet the more.
(So God is showing Joseph his future, just as he has shown to us our future in this hour, but Joseph does not yet have the wisdom or the character presently to handle that future position – so God must deal with him in a way to prepare him for that time that lays ahead of him, because he could not just put joseph into that position there and then, because at 17 years old he didn’t possess the character and maturity yet, because certain positions require certain levels of character and maturity.
- Esther was chosen to be the wife of the King because of her character.
- Ruth became Boaz’s wife because of her character)
6 And he said unto them, Hear, I pray you, this dream which I have dreamed: (He was determined that they know – and no doubt there was a bit of youthful pride in his heart associated with this telling)
7 For, behold, we were binding sheaves in the field, and, lo, my sheaf arose, and also stood upright; and, behold, your sheaves stood round about, and made obeisance to my sheaf.
8 And his brethren said to him, Shalt thou indeed reign over us? or shalt thou indeed have dominion over us? And they hated him yet the more for his dreams, and for his words.
9 And he dreamed yet another dream, and told it his brethren, and said, Behold, I have dreamed a dream more; and, behold, the sun and the moon and the eleven stars made obeisance to me.
10 And he told it to his father, and to his brethren: and his father rebuked him, and said unto him, What is this dream that thou hast dreamed? Shall I and thy mother and thy brethren indeed come to bow down ourselves to thee to the earth?
11 And his brethren envied him; but his father observed the saying.
QUESTIONS.AND.ANSWERS_ JEFF.IN COD SUNDAY_ 61-1015M
681-Q-163 163. How do you feel is the best way to find the Lord... How do you--how do you feel is the best way to find the Lord's will in some important matters?
Now, let... I don't believe I... Let me see if I can get the continuity to it. "How do you feel is the best way (I see it should be a comma there, I suppose.)... How do you feel is the best way to find the Lord's will in some important matters?"
I tell you, dear friend: the best way to find the will of God in some important matters is prayer. See?
Now, let me... Here's a wonderful little thing here. If you--if--if you have a matter that's very important... Now, here's the way I do it. I take it before the Lord. And it's always been my strength; I wait upon the Lord and see what He says. And I just let myself neutral to it, don't take either side, and say, "Now, heavenly Father, it--it can..."
681-185 'Course now, in my case most of the time, if it's very important, I wait on a vision. But many people God doesn't deal with in visions. So therefore, I wouldn't advise you to do that. See? Because it's just some people that has visions and some does something else. Where you do something else that I couldn't do, maybe--in your way of serving the Lord, I do something that you couldn't do. See? God deals with us different.
And so I would if I was in your place and didn't have visions from before the Lord, I would just wait upon the Lord and say, "Lord, now You show me what's the decision to make." And then, way you feel led to do it, then wait just a little bit, then wait a little while longer, and see which way, which side you lean towards, which way the Spirit... Say, "Now, Father, in my heart You know it doesn't matter; but I--I want to know what You want to do about it."
That's the way I do about meetings sometime. I feel kinda led to go this way or that way, then I follow that way. That's the way to do it, 'cause it's in prayer then; you're doing the best you can.
God’s Ways in How He Deals with Us