If we would really stop and think with what we’ve learned about God in Job, what we’ve learned about God in James, what we’ve learned in the epistles and that in everything we are to give thanks.  Your patience brings glory to God.  You see, there’s more that’s going on, even in this seen realm.  He’s God, He’s Lord of all.  He’s being able to manifest His glory and majesty in the midst of this man that He’s redeemed, is like a dagger in the heart of Satan and his demons and those fallen angels who’ve left their first estate and see the redeemed of the Lord and God pouring out His love and His mercy toward us, praise God!  This is going on in the unseen realm.  If you don’t think that’s part of it, just think back to Daniel and He said, “The day that you prayed I heard you.”  I love this one phrase in there and I know you do, but when He finally shows up after He wars against the Prince of Persia and He finally shows up to answer the prayer that Daniel had prayed, He said, “I have come for your words.”  Hallelujah!

Well, if you have no words, He has nothing to come for; amen?  You need to pray.  We need to put some words out there.  Now, what Daniel prayed, and we’ll look into that a little further, what Daniel was praying is what God had revealed to him His will was, and what was going to happen to the people, the covenant people of God, in the future.  Daniel was just beginning to speak those things and declare those things.  The prophets make it very clear His word does not return void; amen?  It accomplishes that whereunto He sent it.  If we don’t have words, promises, we have nothing to pray.  It comes from abiding in Him, living in Him.  To abide means, “To take up permanent residence,” to where we can say back to Him and return back to Him not of our own strength.  It’s obvious, “Without me you can do nothing.”  This gift of faith that we’ve been given, the mercy and grace that we’ve been given, enables us to say back to Him, “and I will never leave You or forsake You.”  That’s abiding.

Abiding is making that kind of a covenant with God, “Though You slay me I will serve You, and worship You, and praise You, hallelujah!  For You are good and You do good and Your ways are above my ways.”  So, in this fifteenth chapter, He makes it very clear that He’s the true vine and we’re the branches.  Our life is to be a life of purging and pruning.  James says it this way in his epistle, “If you lack wisdom, ask of God.”  As we find ourselves in these circumstances, we’re to ask God, “Lord what am I doing in this situation?  How did I get here?”  Sometimes we get in trials and tribulations, we’re praying to get delivered and God has us in there to get purified; amen?  With every temptation, making a way of escape; that’s what we pray.  James says, “Pray and find out why you’re here.”  You know, sometimes it’s consequences, sometimes we’re still paying consequences for our sin.  God is not going to deliver us from every consequence of sin, but He will deliver us from every sin; amen?

When David was seeking God after his sin with Bathsheba and he was crying out to God on behalf of the child and he was mourning and he was fasting for that child to be spared, we know the story.  Then his servants said, “If he was this much in distress and the pain of his heart on behalf of his child, what’s he going to do when we tell him the child died?  Is he going to follow Mrs. Job’s advice to curse God and die?”  What do you do when you face tragedies in life?  When things don’t go our way, do we turn our backs on God?  His ways are higher than our ways.  To abide in Him is to partake of, to know His character and His very essence.  To abide in Him is to take on the ministry of John and to lean on the breast of the Lord and be called the disciple that He loved.