Being Ushered into the Realm of God to Seek God, Enjoy God, Gain God, and Express God

According to the entire revelation in the Bible, God created man in His image and according to His likeness so that man would receive God as life, enjoy God as his everything, and live by the divine life so that he may become God’s corporate expression.

However, many times we think that God wants us to be better people, people who do good, are kind to others, help others, pray for others to be safe and not sin, and be righteous. There is such a thing as “Christian perfection” which is apart from God, and this perfection is very similar to what Job in the Old Testament had. Job was perfect, upright, and righteous in himself; he stayed away from evil and did good, and he walked righteously.

But then suddenly a lot of bad things happened to him: his possessions were destroyed or taken, his children died, and he himself had a disease that caused him much pain. Such a righteous man – what did he deserve to get all this? So throughout the book of Job we see how Job and his three friends try to find out exactly WHY did all these suffering and terrible things happen to him.

Job even wanted to put God on trial to find out why he, such a righteous man who didn’t sin or do anything to deserve such a treatment, has been going through all these things. Job built up through the years his own righteousness, and in man’s eyes he was perfect and upright; but this righteousness was not from God or of God.

What God desires is not a good, righteous, upright, and moral man but a God-man, a man in whom God has wrought Himself and who expresses God by living out God’s life. God’s intention with Job was that he as a good man would become a God-man, a man that is filled with God and expresses God by living out God’s life.

But Job didn’t see this, and chapter after chapter he stands by his integrity and righteousness and wants to find out why all these things happened to him. We all need to be ushered into another realm, the realm of God – not the realm of good or bad, right or wrong, righteous or unrighteous, moral or immoral, but the realm of God Himself, so that we may gain God instead of building up our own righteousness, perfection, and integrity.

God’s Intention is for us to Become a God-man to Express God in His Attributes

After Job’s discourses, questions, and answers, God finally appeared to him and He showed him that God is unlimited, unsearchable, and untraceable; God’s desire was to help Job realize that he was in the wrong realm – he was in the realm of building up himself as a man in the old creation in his perfection, uprightness, and integrity, and God wanted him to enter into the realm of God (see Job 38:1-3; 40:1-14).

God doesn’t want us to build our own natural man in perfection, uprightness, and integrity; He wants to rather strip these off from us so that we may receive God in His nature, life, element, and essence and thus be metabolically transformed from a good man to be a God-man who expresses God in all His attributes and dispenses Him to others.

Many people today, believers or unbelievers alike, think they are alright – they didn’t kill someone or steal things, they didn’t commit adultery, and they didn’t commit major sins; rather, they are kind to others, they help those in need, they visit the sick, the live a moral life, and they are OK.

What God wants is not for us to have a Christian perfection and uprightness built up throughout the years but that we would seek Him and desire Him so that we may be filled with Him and express Him. God may even take us through things that will take away our godly attainments and self-righteous behavior so that any barrier and covering may be removed and we would be emptied for some further seeking after God.

Our real need is not improvement or correction; our real need is more of God; we are short of God, and we may want to enjoy and pursue many other things (including perfection, integrity, and righteousness) apart from God.

As we see in the story of Job, God’s intention was to reduce him to nothing – yet to maintain his existence (Job 2:6) – so that He might have time to impart Himself into Job.

God’s intention with man is not that man would be perfect and righteous in himself and thus seek to please God by his attainments, but that man would seek God, be infused with God, and be filled with God so that man would become a God-man who lives by God’s life and thus expresses God in His attributes. This is the intrinsic meaning of the book of Job and this is what happens to us in our Christian life.

We may wonder and ask the Lord WHY do all these problems, sufferings, and even bad things happen to us….it is mainly because God wants to strip away any other seeking and perfection, uprightness, and integrity that we may have in ourselves, so that we may seek Him and become a God-man who seeks God, needs God, is constantly seeking to be filled with God, and expresses God in His attributes.

Lord Jesus, cause us to see Your intention that we would become a God-man to express You in all Your attributes. Lord, may we seek nothing and no one else but You. Replace our seeking for perfection with a hunger and thirst for God. We want to pursue You, gain You, and express You. Make us God-men in reality, those who don’t build up their own uprightness and perfection but who have God wrought into them and who allow God to live in them day by day. Transform us in our essence to make us a God-man, a man in the new creation who expresses God and dispenses Him to others!

Being Ushered into the Realm of God to Seek God, Enjoy God, Gain God, and Express God

In the book of Job we see a lot of talk – most of which is quite interesting, elevated, knowledgeable, and full of details; but all this talk by Job and his friends stopped when God appeared to Job and Job saw Him. When Job saw God, all his questions were answered, and by seeing God and having His speaking, he was at peace.

The footnote on Job 42:5 in the Holy Bible, Recovery Version, is really enlightening in this matter:

In the New Testament sense, seeing God equals gaining God. To gain God is to receive God in His element, in His life, and in His nature that we may be constituted with God. All God’s redeemed, regenerated, sanctified, transformed, conformed, and glorified people will see God’s face (Rev. 22:4). Seeing God transforms us (2 Cor. 3:18; cf. 1 John 3:2), because in seeing God we receive His element into us and our old element is discharged. This metabolic process is transformation (Rom. 12:2). To see God is to be transformed into the glorious image of Christ, the God-man, that we may express God in His life and represent Him in His authority. (Job 42:5, footnote 1)

We need to be ushered out of the realm of human perfection, improvement, and self-righteousness and into the realm of God, where God is, He dispenses Himself into His chosen people, and He lives in them.

As believers in Christ, we should seek to see God’s face by beholding Him day by day to be infused with Him and transformed by Him into the same image as Christ, the God-man, so that we may express God corporately. The more we see God, know God, experience God, and love God, the more we abhor ourselves, deny ourselves, and repent, and the more God can do a work of transformation in our being.

We may go through suffering, inexplicable difficult times, problems at home or at work, and much pain, and we may be right (as Job was) that we didn’t do anything to deserve these things….but we need to realize that God’s purpose in dealing with His people is that He wants them to gain Him, partake of Him, possess Him, and enjoy Him until their enjoyment reaches the fullest extent (Phil. 3:7-14; 2 Cor. 4:16-17), as the divine revelation ultimately unveils in the New Testament, that His people may ultimately become the New Jerusalem (Rev. 21:2—22:5) – see Job 42:7, footnote 1.

God’s purpose in saving us, making us His people, and dealing with us is not primarily to give us physical blessings; He wants to give Himself to us as the reality of all the blessings, the all-inclusive life-giving Spirit as the consummation of the processed Triune God (Gal. 3:14), so that we may enjoy Him now and for eternity. He may give us physical blessings especially after we pass through some trials and sufferings (as it happened with Job), but He Himself is our real blessing.

We need to enter into the realm of God where we gain God and enjoy God so that we may express God. Paul lived in this realm, the Lord Jesus lives in this realm continually, and God calls us to enter into this realm and live in this realm today.

Lord Jesus, usher us out of the realm of seeking to be perfect and upright into the realm of God where we enjoy God, gain God, and express God. We simply open to You, dear Lord, in all Your dealings with us; no matter whether we understand WHY certain things happen to us, we want to be open to You for Your infusing, Your dispensing, and Your growing in us. Keep us seeking You as the real and ultimate blessing. We want to gain You, partake of You, possess You, and enjoy You as the real blessing so that we may express You!

References and Hymns on this Topic

• Inspiration: the Word of God, my Christian experience, brother Andrew Yu’s sharing in the message for this week, and the footnotes in the Recovery Version Bible on, Job 38:1, 42:5-7, 10, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, The Need for a New Revival, week 4 / msg 4, Living the Life of a God-man (2) Living in the Kingdom of God as the Realm of the Divine Species.
• All Bible verses are taken from, Holy Bible Recovery Version.
• Hymns on this topic to strengthen this burden:
  # Once it was the blessing, / Now it is the Lord; / Once it was the feeling, / Now it is His Word; / Once His gift I wanted, / Now, the Giver own; / Once I sought for healing, / Now Himself alone. (Hymns #513)
  # Generations lived in mystery! / Seeking Job could not perceive / But persisted to believe / There was purpose in the hidden heart of God…. / In a time beyond time, / In an age beyond the ages, / God and man will be one for eternity. / Hallelujah, what a story! (Song on God’s purpose in dealing with Job)
  # Pursue Him and seize Him, Christ the supreme. / Just love this precious Person. / Forgetting and leaving all other things, / Love Him with your whole being. / Forgetting the things which are behind, / Press on, pursue with this mind. / By any means each hour now redeem; / Stretch forth, lay hold of Him. (Song on pursuing Christ)