God is expecting obedience from us and continually building faith in us so we can experience a deeper reality of Him. Once you experience the reality of God in your life, you will have a better understanding of who God is and what God is up to in your life in regard to His providential dealings with you for your good and for his glory. But to get there is a long, difficult process of adversity and affliction, growth and instruction. Where you get to the place of entering into heaven, if I may so speak, by God's word and by his spirit, where you receive a report from him that reveals your situation and his purpose in it. In Hebrews 11, verses one and two, we read, now faith. is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen, for by it the elders obtained a good report. When we have a close, intimate walk with God, then God will speak to us and tell us what He is up to in regard to His sovereign purpose and His involvement in our life. God told Noah to build an ark to preserve his family in the coming flood. God told Abraham he was going to destroy Sodom and gave him an opportunity. To save his nephew Lott, God told Paul the ship he was on would be lost on the rocks, but there would be no loss of life, for God wanted Paul in Rome. Paul's intimacy with God afforded him an entering in. to see and know the activity of God around him and in his life in particular. Paul could stand on that deck of the ship and confess to his shipmates that God was in control and God was interested in the details of their lives. when we see God in his attributes as he is portrayed in scripture as the tiller of the soil, as a divine vinedresser whose interest and activity in the life of his people is constant we can then have a better understanding of who God is, what he is up to, and how we can experience a deeper reality of him by taking black print on a white page and believing it to be so, so it can become so in our life. A thorough study of the life of Job will be both instructive and rewarding to the believer who desires an encounter with God and who longs for a deeper experience of God by entering into the reality of God. At the burning bush, Moses saw it. At Jabbok, Jacob experienced it. On Mount Moriah, Abraham realized it. When one studies the Lord's life of Job, one will see that Job was sovereignly placed by the Lord in a season of taking, testing, teaching, turning. Job ended his days enjoying a prolonged season of blessing and prosperity unequal to anything before. In Job's experience, he had a fuller realization of God. Then Job answered the Lord and said, I know that thou canst do everything, and that no thought can be withholding from thee. Job endured his trial of affliction and found a deeper reality of God by having a better understanding of himself. I have heard of thee by the hearing of the year, but now mine eye seeth thee, wherefore I bore myself and repent in dust and ashes. Out of those dust and ashes arose a man who could stand more prominently for God in a world perishing without God. Job had a testimony from that point forward because he had received a good report. He had entered into the holy hill of the Most High and had come away enriched both spiritually and materially. The last two verses of Job read, After this lived Job a hundred and forty years, And saw his sons and his sons' sons even for generations. So Job died, being old and full of days. There came a time and place in Job's life where he entered into the reality of God and he exited the season he was in for a season where he enjoyed overflowing resources from God and extraordinary experiences of God for the rest of his days.