Job LXXVI

 If life has no meaning beyond the present, beyond what one can consume, amass, and feel physically, no matter how much time one devotes to the fleeting pleasures of this world, hoping they will suffice as a substitute for the hollowness within, then we should all be equally miserable, despondent, and unhinged from reality. If there is no hope beyond the now and no meaning to life other than to glut ourselves and drown ourselves in wine, then nothing would matter enough to animate us in any fashion or bring us any semblance of joy. It’s why I believe atheists to be the most pitiable, saddest people walking the earth, because to them, this is all there is, and it’s not that grand, and when it’s over, lights out, you’re done, adios and arrivederci. Make sure you have enough in your bank account to cover cremation, and hope some distant relative will take time out of their busy day to spread your ashes somewhere other than the drain.

I get it; if all someone’s got to show for a lived life is a handful of STDs, a once shiny, now rusty convertible, and that one story about when they think they ate blowfish in Japan but suspect it was tuna, the regret they feel is justified. What isn’t justified is their insistence that their life is as good as it gets rather than being the vapid thing it was. It may be the only way they have of coping with their reality, but I don’t have to be party to it. Sorry, Sparky, your life story isn’t aspirational; it’s a cautionary tale. You wasted the life you were gifted pursuing things that left you just as empty after acquiring them as before, and now the end is near, and you’re starting to rethink all the snarky things you said and the mockery you heaped upon those who tried to tell you about a Savior that forgives and restores. Who needs Jesus when you’ve got Jim Beam? Remember that one? You came up with that zinger it all by yourself.

The truth is that people have tried to drown out the still, small voice whispering memento mori, mute it, or smother it with every sin and vice under the sun, but eventually, they lose their appeal and their ability to distract from the ever-present reality of the individual’s mortality. Save for the Lord returning, one day I will die, as will you, and each of us will have to contend with the eternity that follows.

Some have come to terms with their eventual demise. Even so, they try to convince others of their happiness by insisting that they should eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow they will die, not realizing that at some point, there will be no tomorrow and that judgment awaits beyond the veil. If money were a valid substitute for meaning and purpose, then no rich people would have a double portion of buckshot for lunch, ever. Yet, they do. Either that, or they leap from bridges and buildings, walk into traffic, take a fistful of pills, hoping it’s the last thing they’ll do, and the list goes on because we grow ever more inventive regarding the means of our own destruction. While some struggle to survive and claw at the dirt in the hope they don’t starve, others who’ve made money their defacto god and surrogate purpose in life can’t wait to leave it all behind and be done with it.

If the things the grinning faces on television telling you will make you happy really did, why are they all so miserable? If there is genuine contentment in fame or fortune, why are they constantly in rehab, on suicide watch, or descending into such debauchery or hedonism as to make a Roman senator during the peak of the empire blush? That fake, plastic smile does nothing to take away from their dead eyes, and you can tell without really trying that the depth of their misery knows no bounds.

It’s not working anymore. The playbook is tattered and worn from overuse, and the minions the enemy employs to drive the narrative that hedonism is the only true joy in life can no longer bring themselves to fake sincerity. We’ve seen previous iterations of Satan’s ambassadors spiral into despair too often to believe anything that comes out of their mouths anymore. Their influence is waning; they’ve lost their grip on being able to construct a believable narrative, and they know it. Those insisting most stringently that they’re happy, they really are, are, in point of fact, the most miserable souls among us.

Money can’t buy you love or sincere affection. It can’t crawl up on your lap and kiss you on the cheek even though your beard is scruffy, and they scrunch up their nose because it tickles. Fancy as it may be, a car can’t crawl into bed next to you for a snuggle and a bedtime story.

The things that matter most in life, the things that bring purpose and joy, meaning and fulfillment, are free not because they’re worthless but because they’re priceless. You can’t put a price on holding your newborn or growing old with the person you love. Conversely, you can’t put a price on salvation either. That’s why God offers it for free to those who receive His Son, believe in Him, and surrender their lives.

When people with no hope mock your hope, all you can do is shrug your shoulders and move on. There are only so many times someone can slap your hand away as you’re trying to pull them from the mire before you realize they don’t want out. They just want to be told the quicksand they find themselves in will not be harmful to their existence, and they get angry when you insist that it will kill them. I’ve been called unloving more times than I can count for doing nothing more untoward than calling sin by name and pointing to the Scriptures as proof and validation of my assertions.

We cannot discount the Word of God just to appease someone’s bruised ego or feelings, just as we can’t call light dark because it’s too bright and makes another squint. The truth of Scripture will win out, and those who trust in the God of the Bible have a sure foundation upon which they can build their spiritual man.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

Job LXXV

 There is a purpose, and there is a plan, even when our human intellect cannot perceive them. If God Himself said that our ways are not His ways, and our thoughts are not His thoughts, then we have to allow for the reality that He will not go about accomplishing something the way we would have, by the same route, or in the same manner.

I keep returning to the idea that we must have absolute trust in the God we serve, and that level of trust can only come about if we know Him. A superficial understanding of the nature and character of God cannot bring you to a place of fully trusting Him. It’s easy to trust when all is well, and things are running smoothly. It’s far more challenging to do it when everything seems to be falling apart, and every avenue you take ends up being a dead-end road.

Sometimes, we ask questions to which we get no answer because we already know the answer; we’re just hoping for a different one. Last year, we got to do something I’d dreamt of doing since the girls were still in diapers. We got to go on a road trip. I know my dreams are simpler than other men’s, but it’s the way I’ve always been. I never dreamt of a Lamborghini, a gold-plated toilet, a palatial estate, or a private jet, but that road trip was something I wanted to do before the good Lord called me home, and it came together quite unexpectedly.

One of my wife’s clients has a condo in Florida, and on a whim, she asked if we wanted to go and spend a week there. Not one to turn down a free week on the beach, even if it was in December, we made the necessary plans, and when discussion of how we’d get there inevitably ensued, I told my wife I wanted to drive. She agreed, albeit grudgingly, and that was the end of that.

I should have known better than to expect my dream of a road trip to match the reality of it, but I was so enthusiastic about the prospect that I didn’t really think it through. Since we left at a little past midnight, the first few hours were everything I’d imagined: Me driving, my kids sleeping in their car seats, and my wife nodding off in the front.

Then the girls woke up, and the constant chorus of “Are we there yet?” started in earnest. Obviously, we weren’t there yet. We’d just gotten into Kentucky, and we had a way to go, but even after I explained it to them, it was as though they were stuck on replay, and every couple of minutes, they’d take turns asking the dreaded question.

At some point, I stopped answering because they already knew the answer. No, we weren’t there yet, and we wouldn’t be for at least another ten hours. If you already know the answer to the question you’re asking God but don’t want to acknowledge it in the hope that you’ll get a different answer, stop asking or be honest enough to tell Him you don’t like the answer He already gave you. However, instead of courting rebellion, my counsel would be to say, Lord, your will be done, and continue your journey of faith.

It’s disingenuous of us to think that God will change His mind on a given issue just because we make a nuisance of ourselves and keep asking the same thing over and over again. The way is the way, and the journey will last for as long as it must because the whole point of a journey is to reach your destination.

We can choose to be soldiers of the cross or temperamental children. We either put on the whole armor of God and defend the truth of the gospel against enemies from without and within or sit in the dust complaining that our piece of cake wasn’t big enough or that we didn’t get the special job we wanted, and let others fight the battle and reap the corresponding rewards.

No, it is not a sin to ask questions. It borders on sin, however, when having already received an answer, we keep asking the same question because we don’t like the answer we got. Either obey or don’t, but tempting God never ends well.

There are plenty of individuals within the contemporary church who’ve talked themselves into believing that they can do as they will and still be pleasing in the sight of God. In modern-day parlance, they believe they can have their cake and eat it too. Such individuals give certain Scriptures a wide berth because they contradict their fallacious beliefs, pretending as though they don’t exist.

One of the most damning passages regarding this mindset is found in the first chapter of Romans, where Paul warns that there are those among the brethren who exchanged the truth of God for the lie and worshipped the creature rather than the Creator.

Last week, I had to go back to the store and exchange a winter jacket I’d bought for my eldest daughter for a larger size. In order to receive the other jacket, I had to be in possession of the jacket I’d already purchased in order to exchange it. Paul isn’t referring to individuals who never knew the truth or were never in possession of it but who willingly exchanged the truth of God for the lie because they preferred the lie over the truth. It fit them better, and that mattered more to them than whether or not it was godly, truthful, or in line with Scripture.

When we are unwilling to allow the word of God to transform us, and when we bristle at the idea of being molded into a vessel of honor because we prefer to have it our way and reject the truth of Scripture due to its being inconvenient or offensive to the flesh, we choose to shrug off the truth and walk away from it to the cold embrace of the lie. You already know God disapproves; why try to stir His anger by asking if He’s willing to make an exception for you? He is not, and if a voice whispers in your ear that He is, it wasn’t His voice!

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

Job LXXIV

 Job 3:11-19, “Why did I not die at birth? Why did I not perish when I came from the womb? Why did the knees receive me? Or why the breasts, that I should nurse? For now I would have lain still and been quiet, I would have been asleep; Then I would have been at rest with kings and counselors of the earth, who built ruins for themselves, or with princes who had gold, who filled their houses with silver; Or why was I not hidden like a stillborn child, like infants who never saw light? There the wicked cease from troubling, and there the weary are at rest. There the prisoners rest together; they do not hear the voice of the oppressor. The small and great are there, and the servant is free from his master.”

We are all made equal in death. It doesn’t matter how we started, where we started, how far we got, how high we climbed, what we amassed, what we built, how famous we were, or how infamous; eventually, the grave beckons, the spark of life leaves the body, and we return to the earth from which we came. It takes a lot of pain to conclude that this would have been the best-case scenario for you as a person, wherein you query why it was that you didn’t die at birth.

It’s dark, to be sure, perhaps even unbearably bleak, but it just goes to show that Job was human. He felt pain like you and me, he felt joy like you and me, he felt loss like you and me, and in every way, he was as human as anyone walking the face of the earth today, yet it was within his ability to draw close enough to God and surrender himself to the point that God saw him as blameless and upright, fearing God and shunning evil.

Having been wealthy, Job saw the vanity of it, concluding that the best kings could manage was to build ruins for themselves and hoard and amass gold and silver they would never enjoy. If anything, Job’s discourse puts flesh on the statement Solomon would later make wherein he wrote, vanity of vanities, all is vanity.

It shouldn’t go unnoticed that two of the wealthiest men of their generation came to the same conclusion about material things and how impermanent they are. We can either take their counsel to heart or ignore it and go through the trauma of discovering the truth of their assertions on our own. Most people are stubborn and stiff-necked, thinking they can have a different outcome than those who came before them by doing the exact same thing. They won’t, but it will be years before they realize it. Then, rather than admit they were wrong, they’ll double down and keep pressing on to try to acquire things that bring them neither joy nor fulfillment.

Job’s grief followed its natural course. It’s not as though the inflection point of his life was delayed; his reaction to it was. After the shock of an unforeseen disaster wears off, the laments and lamentations begin, and once those are no more, the questions begin in earnest. The difference between Job’s questions and the questions of others in similar, if not comparable, situations is that while Job wondered out loud why he had not died at birth or perished when he came from the womb, most people walking about today would ask why tragedy had befallen them.

Job’s questions were of an existential nature rather than why a good God would allow evil to befall him, a man who had done his all to be upright in his conduct. This is not a distinction without a difference. We were told in the previous chapter that Job did not sin with his lips or charge God with wrong.

His stated position was that whether good or adversity, we must accept all things from God. That doesn’t mean he didn’t feel the pain or the loss, nor does it mean he was expected to be cheerful in his adversity and do cartwheels when the painful boils covered his entire body, but that he had settled in his heart that whatever came from the hand of God must be accepted without finding fault with Him.

It’s a tall order. Yes, I can sit here and pontificate, perhaps even wax poetic, but the reality is that while I’ve never gone through a season of trial wherein I found fault with God, I did wonder why He allowed it in my life. I had to determine whether it was a blessing, a test, or a correction and proceed accordingly.

The hardest one to wrap my mind around by far is a trial that, in the long run, turns out to be a blessing. You can’t see it when you’re in it. It’s near impossible to make sense of it, and while your mind is racing to find explanations, your spiritual man is insisting that you be still and know peace.

Before I met my wife, I was betrothed to another. For those of you not familiar with Shakespearean English, that means engaged. She was a pastor’s daughter, seemingly upstanding and of virtuous moral fiber, and wedding plans were well on their way before her cousin, of all people, called me while I was in the US, warning me that she’d been stepping out and had gotten serious with someone while I’d been away. It devastated me utterly. It was the only time in my life when I came close to having a panic attack. All the well-laid plans, dreams of a future with her as my wife, the conversations we’d had about how many children we wanted, and all the minutia that went along with courting someone went up in smoke and became as bitterness on my tongue in an instant.

I went to my grandfather, the only man I sought counsel from when things went sideways unexpectedly, and after telling him the story, he shrugged his shoulders and said, “Sometimes blessings don’t seem like blessings until you realize how much of a blessing they were.”

I respected him too much to give a flippant answer, but I had a few on deck in the back of my mind. I was heartbroken and near to despondent, and he was giving me fortune cookie anecdotes. Yes, I know, you can either curse the rain or buy an umbrella. If the sun is too bright, find a shady spot. You can’t drink water from a strainer. Got it, thanks. I thought it, but I didn’t say it.

During my next trip to Romania, I met the girl who would become my wife. In hindsight, twenty-five years in, with two beautiful daughters to show for it, I realize how much of a blessing my heartbreak was, and I thank God every day for it. Just because there is pain attached to an event or experience, it doesn’t mean it’s not a blessing in disguise or that it will not work together for good. Trust God. He knows what He’s doing.

With love in Christ, 

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

Job LXXIII

 The potter not only determines the shape or form the clay will take, but he also determines the timing of when the vessel is put into the fire and how long it remains there. None of those things are within my purview or yours. The only thing incumbent upon us, the only thing we have control over, is to not resist the molding process and give God free reign of our lives in all things. Whatever it is we attempt to hold back will be an ever-present hindrance in our relationship with God. All things means all things, even those things your flesh pines over or feels entitled to.

If you’ve ever watched a potter mold a piece of clay, you know it’s not a gentle process. Even before he begins to work the clay into some discernable shape, the potter kneads it, flattens it, folds it over on itself, and kneads it anew until it has the desired consistency. Only then does he begin to form the clay into a vessel of his choosing. All the while, the clay remains silent. The clay does not resist the kneading of the potter in any way but submits wholly to the process required for it to be transformed into something more than just a piece of clay.

I am neither the captain of my own ship nor am I the master of my destiny. You cannot possess such a grandiose mindset and still humble yourself to the point of submitting to the authority of God in all things. I am a servant called to serve. That’s the extent of my titles. I have a Master and I defer to Him, obey Him, and follow Him, knowing that obedience is worth eminently more than any sacrifice I may bring before Him. He does as He wills with my life, and I can rest in that knowledge because I know Him to be a good and gracious Master. The road may not always be easy, and at certain points, it can get downright treacherous, but the knowledge of who He is keeps me surefooted and at peace.

You cannot serve God without trusting Him. You cannot commit your way unto the Lord unless you love the Lord of the way. We’re constantly bombarded with new and inventive ways to get things from God, to twist His arm to do our bidding, without having established true intimacy with Him and without having a proper understanding of our relationship with Him. Save your fifty bucks for the online course on how to fast your way to wealth and buy someone hungry a hot meal instead. At least you’ll be storing up treasures in heaven and not subsidizing the lifestyle of an ignominious ghoul who sees you as nothing more than a piggy bank.

In case you were wondering, no, it doesn’t work. You can’t trick God into doing something contrary to His nature or something detrimental to your spiritual man even though your flesh really wants it. Some people get bitter because they want boatloads of money and never get it, never once, considering that in having acquired the wealth, their desire for God will fizzle out altogether. We don’t like to acknowledge the reality that perhaps God is doing us a favor by not giving us what we desire since it would dampen and diminish our desire for Him.

There is only one thing in this life that we can desire that God is ever willing to give us more of, and that’s Himself. But that’s not fair! Look at all these heathens burning through money as though it had an expiration date. Some guy just spent over six million dollars for a banana duct taped to a wall, which he then ate, and I’m having to sift through my car, hoping to find enough pocket change to get a gallon of gas for my Pinto. How’s that fair?

If life were about our time here on earth rather than eternity, it wouldn’t be. It’s not, though. That the contemporary church has managed to shift its focus from the things above to the things of this earth is not only detrimental and destructive but also the genesis of much bitterness in the hearts of those who ought not to be troubled or concerned about tomorrow. Say it with me: It’s not about this life, but the life to come.

It doesn’t matter how many bananas someone buys for millions of dollars; at the end of the day, we all end up in a box, in the dirt, nevermore to take a lungful of air or see another sunrise. Prince or pauper, the only difference between the two is how nice the box is. That’s when this flicker of a life ends, and eternity begins, and as is most often the case, once eternity begins to unwind, location is everything. Obsessing over things you can’t take with you is a wasted life without any purpose beyond the handful of years you’re given to walk this earth. Eternity and where we will spend it should be at the forefront of our thoughts and actions, knowing that the time we have here is finite and fleeting, and once it’s done, there is no rewind button.

There are no redos; you can’t start over again and wish as we may to go back and redeem the time we wasted in pursuit of something other than eternity; it’s impossible. We tend to dwell on the things we can’t change as an excuse and delaying tactic to put off the things we can. It’s not a natural byproduct of human nature. It’s the enemy’s way of trying to run out the clock because he knows there is no hope of redress after we have gone from this earth. What we do with the handful of years we’ve been given while we are here will determine where we spend eternity. For some, this is a reason for rejoicing; for others, it is a source of constant dread.

No one has looked back on their lives and wished they’d served God less, obeyed Him less or trusted Him less. Even when faced with their imminent demise at the hands of their executioners, those who established the Lord in their hearts and surrendered their will to His did so joyfully, knowing the reward which awaited them. Things that matter, matter, and nothing matters more than knowing that you’ve been bought with a price, saved and sanctified, redeemed by the blood of the Lamb, born again in Him, through Him, and by Him.

When we lay hold of this truth, the things of this earth, the trials of this present life, the testings, and the hardships will grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace. This is why we can retain the joy of the Lord amid sorrow and the peace that surpasses all understanding amid chaos.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

Job LXXII

 Unless you’ve gone through it, the best any of us can hope for is an abstract understanding of what the sifting is. The reality of it, its crushing weight, and the constant buffeting with seemingly no end in sight must be experienced in order to be understood. It’s like someone explaining the difficulties of crossing the Atlantic on a single-passenger sailboat. Sure, you can get an idea of the level of difficulty with being alone on the stormy seas for weeks on end, but unless you’ve experienced the sunburn, cracked lips, anxiousness, isolation, seasickness, and privation, you only know the half of it.

There’s a reason ‘you had to be there to understand’ is a saying. Some things cannot be adequately explained unless they are experienced, and nothing less than the experience will suffice.

The notion of being sifted is not exclusive to Job or even to the Old Testament. It’s not a practice God decided to do away with or no longer allow because the idea of it didn’t poll well when it was peer-reviewed. The misconception that God is somehow subject to our feelings and emotions is ludicrous on its face but ever popular in the modern-day church. We’ve talked ourselves into believing that since we have no appetite for suffering, sifting, or testing, God’s just going to eliminate those things from our lives.

Luke 22:31-32, “Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift all of you as wheat. But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.”

Okay, fine, so two guys. One in the Old Testament and one in the New. That doesn’t make it a common practice, does it? Read those two verses carefully, and you’ll realize it’s not just two guys. It wasn’t just Job and Simon, who would later be known as Peter. Satan had asked to sift all of them as wheat. Jesus singled out Simon in telling him that he’d been praying for him that his faith would not fail, yet as far as the sifting goes, Satan had asked to sift all of them.

Being sifted and having Satan ask to sift the servants of God is not an exception but the rule. These were the guys, Christ’s inner circle, those whom He called by name and spent the last three years of His life ministering with, yet when Satan asked that they be sifted, his request was not denied. Jesus didn’t say Satan asked to sift all of you as wheat, but I got your back and told him no.

Knowing what the future held for Peter, knowing he would deny Jesus three times before the rooster crowed that day, knowing how wrecked he would be once that happened, Jesus encouraged him the only way He could: by telling him, He’d prayed that his faith might not fail.

God determines how far He will let Satan go and the lengths to which he will sift a given individual, but at some point in life, most of us go through it. Are there exceptions? I’m sure there are, but I haven’t met one yet. The firing process makes clay stronger. Without it, it remains fragile and porous. If you are determined to serve God, if Jesus is established on the throne of your heart, the day will come when Satan will ask to sift you.

In that moment, all you have is the faith and trust you’ve built up over the course of your spiritual walk and nothing more. When the sifting begins, it’s too late to grow, press in, mature, or deepen your understanding of the God you serve. Peter already possessed faith; Jesus prayed that his faith would not fail.

We put off the important things, thinking we have forever to implement them, nurture them, and grow them. We know having a prayer life is necessary for the health of our spiritual man, but something always comes up, and we delay the consistent practice of going before God and having fellowship with Him until something happens, and all the distractions melt away, and we find ourselves with nothing but time to sit in our prayer closets, weep and groan and call out to Him pleading for an intervention of some sort. Where were you before the storm clouds? Where were you before the thing that made your world turn on its ear happened in an instant?

Situational relationships are nothing more than usury. If the only time I approach God is when I need something from Him, it’s neither love nor the desire to know Him fueling my pursuit but rather desperation. Seek to know God, make time for Him, and fellowship with Him with as much enthusiasm and desire during your days of plenty as you would in your time of famine, and when the time of famine arrives, He will be present without having been called.

If we think we can ignore God for six days out of the week and pay Him lip service on the seventh, and that’s all it takes to have a firmly rooted relationship with Him, we’re fooling ourselves. I have a friend who’s a bit on the chunky side and doesn’t take care of himself at all until the week before he’s due for his annual physical. That’s when he gets serious, cuts out the sugar and the carbs, starts to move beyond his front door, and gets a little exercise in the hope that he can fool the blood analysts into giving him a clean bill of health. I keep telling him that’s not the way it works, but my counsel falls on deaf ears because he insists it’s worked in the past, and so it will again. That level of self-delusion will eventually be shattered, but by then, it will be too late.

You don’t get on a flight and only then consider packing a bag. By the time the doors on the plane close and you’re taxiing for takeoff, it’s already too late. You must possess faith, know the character of the God you serve, learn to trust Him and establish your heart to be faithful to the end long before you find yourself on a proverbial ash heap scratching at yourself with a potsherd. Your spiritual man needs something to tap into as he is being buffeted. He needs a strong foundation from which he will not be moved, and the onus is on us to redeem the time and do what we must in order to ensure that we have done all to stand.   

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

Job LXXI

 Recent studies have shown that the loneliest people on the planet live in the biggest cities. The more skyscrapers, apartment buildings, businesses, restaurants, subways, and the hustle and bustle of everyday life one is surrounded by, the lonelier and more detached they seem to be. It’s counterintuitive to the point of being illogical when you think about it. One would expect that the more they’re surrounded by other people, the less lonely they’ll be because the opportunity to make new friends is compounded with every hundred or so individuals within a certain radius.

Evidently, this is not the case. You’re more likely to make friends in a small, out-of-the-way town in the middle of South Dakota than you are living in Manhattan surrounded by all the other worker bees trying to get ahead and living in a world of their own. The one word that came up over and over again when people who participated in these studies were asked why they thought this was the case was community. The smaller the town you live in, the likelier it is that there is a strong sense of community, with neighbors helping neighbors rather than trying to set their cat on fire because it relieved itself on their lawn.

One of the devil’s biggest goals is to separate and discombobulate the body of Christ to the point that we are no longer one body but a tub full of body parts independent of each other, trying to do on our own only what an entire body can accomplish. A healthy body is interdependent upon all its members. Although the head may think itself of paramount importance, it needs the fingers and the hand to feed it in order to survive. The hands and fingers need the feet to take them to where the food is, the hands and feet need the eyes and the nose to tell them where the food is and if it’s edible, and once the food is masticated, making use of the mouth, the teeth and the throat, the digestive system has to work properly for the body to extract the necessary nutrients, and eliminate the rest.

Every time we touch upon this subject, there is bound to be someone who writes in insisting that no church body is good enough for them or that they have a hard time finding a fellowship, but lest we forget, where two or three are gathered in His name, He is there. I’ve been to church meetings in barns, garages, living rooms, and someone’s basement, where the presence of God was more evident than in any multi-million-dollar sanctuary I’ve ever come across. Just as the clothes don’t make the man, and I know that’s contrary to the modern adage but is nevertheless true, the opulence of the building or the size thereof doesn’t make the body.

Some of the scummiest, most disingenuous, duplicitous, underhanded, self-serving, callous people I’ve ever encountered were very well dressed, replete with the mandatory silk tie and the matching pocket square. Lawyers come to mind, and unfortunately, I’ve had to deal with a handful of those throughout my life.

Conversely, some of the most honest, down-to-earth, empathetic people I’ve been graced to know likely had one suit hanging in their closet, and that was there just in case they went to the great beyond and needed something to be buried in. When I get around to writing my will, I will specify that I want to be buried in shorts and the raggedy shirt I wear most mornings as I sit and write. No, clothes don’t make a man; his character and the content thereof, his principles, his honesty, and his consistency are what make a man.

We get taken in by the packaging and never bother to check what’s inside the box. Sure, the wrapping paper and the bows are nice to look at, but when it comes down to it, it’s what’s inside that gives it value.

Shortly after the revolution in Romania, we began traveling back to the homeland to help where we could and as we were able. My grandfather’s first trip back was in the early part of 1990, and we paid the extra cost for ten suitcases worth of Bibles to be shipped along on his flight. Those Bibles had been sitting in the suitcases for close to a year, taking up a corner of our already cramped apartment’s living room because God had told him he’d be going back and he’d be bringing Bibles along.

One of the many things I respected about my grandfather was his absolute and unwavering trust in God. If God told him to do something, he set his hand to the plow, not wondering how what he was told would come about or fretting about the impossibility of it in the present moment. Our entire family had been deported with specific orders never to return on pain of death. When he purchased the Bibles and the suitcases, the communists were still in power, and there wasn’t even a stirring among the populace, never mind a full-blown revolution.

After his first trip back, the day he arrived in Fullerton, he sat the family down and told us we’d be building churches in Romania. Although, at the time, we didn’t have the money, the money came in, and the next hurdle was getting it to Romania. This was before wire transfers were available since the country was still in upheaval and years before international banks hungry for profit opened up branches in-country. The only way to get the money into the country to buy the materials we would need for the churches God had told him to build was to carry cash.

To look at him, in his plaid shirt and baggy wool pants, no one would have thought this man was carrying six figures in US legal tender on his person, yet he was. If clothes made the man and hinted at his value, one would likelier hand him a dollar to buy himself a cup of tea than conclude he was carrying enough coin to buy an entire apartment building with money to spare in those days. We ended up building close to sixty churches throughout Romania in the early years after the revolution because the dollar went a long way back then, and the labor force was plentiful.

God sees what men cannot, and He judges by His standard rather than men’s standards. Never allow someone’s appearance to determine how you view them or the sort of value you assign to them. Whether scruffy, unkempt, well-dressed, or otherwise, we are all children of God. Too often, we let the wrapping dictate our reaction to someone long before what’s inside can come to the fore and present itself.

No one walking by, likely giving him a wide berth, would have thought that Job was a blameless and upright man whom God favored; it would have been the furthest thought from their mind. If they’d known of him before his testing, when he was the greatest people of the East, their likely reaction would have been to wonder what he had done to displease God so that he had come to such ruin. It’s not so much not trusting what your eyes see; it’s passing judgment based on what your eyes alone see that’s the problem.   

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

Job LXX

 Job 3:4-10, “May that day be darkness; may God above not seek it, nor the light shine upon it. May darkness and the shadow of death claim it; may a cloud settle on it; may the blackness of the day terrify it. As for that night, may darkness seize it; may it not rejoice among the days of the year, may it not come into the number of the months. Oh, may that night be barren! May no joyful shout come into it! May those curse it who curse the day, those who are ready to arouse Leviathan. May the stars of its morning be dark; may it look for light, but have none, and not see the dawning of the day; because it did not shut up the doors of my mother’s womb, nor hide sorrow from my eyes.”

The invocation of death continues for the first ten verses of the third chapter. It is not an easy, lighthearted read, and the only way to perceive it is to weigh Job’s words against the pain he is currently feeling. It’s one thing to say, “Lord, the road is hard, and I am weary,” it’s quite another to curse the day you were born and wish that it were darkness and no light shine upon it.

Although you couldn’t get any lower than Job’s current state, Satan still didn’t get what he was after, which was Job cursing God and finding fault with Him. Satan did not consider Job’s words a victory, even though they are the groans and heart cry of a man who sees no spark of joy in his existence, because his objective wasn’t to make Job sad or depressed but to disavow himself of God altogether, and deem Him unworthy of the faithfulness and devotion he showed throughout the years.

The devil’s goal isn’t to separate you from your material possessions or your health; to him, they are a means to an end, the end being you turning your back on God. If your joy, peace, purpose, and outlook on life are tethered in the temporal, in the material, or even in your own physical wellbeing, when these things are shaken, and they begin to crumble before your eyes, you will likewise be shaken in your resolve and devotion to God. If, however, you are tethered in God and draw your strength and fulfillment from Him, then nothing will shake your faithfulness when the things of this earth are no more.

Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. It is one of those immutable and absolute realities that prove themselves, and no matter how often men say otherwise, it is nevertheless true. If your heart yearns for God alone, then by that very act, you’ve neutralized close to all of the enemy’s fiery arrows and means of attack. There are still a handful to contend with after you’ve directed the desire of your heart toward the heavenly things, but far less than if you were still pining for the material, the fool’s gold of the here and now that has no permanence or place in the eternal.

When all is stripped away, yet God remains, and you discover He is sufficient, you cling to Him all the more. In order for God to remain, He had to have been present. He will meet you where you are, in your grief, in your loss, in your shame, as long as you’re not busy chasing after the things that have slipped through your fingers and ignoring His presence.

Some men insist that they can’t find God, even though they’ve never actively searched for Him. The pursuit of their entire existence has always been something other than discovering the majesty of God’s presence, yet, somehow, they lay the blame at God’s feet for never having encountered Him.

Matthew 7:7-11, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. Or what man is there among you who, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!”

When we sincerely desire something or someone, we pursue it with abandon. When we desire God and not the things that men tell us will be bestowed to us as a result of knowing Him, everything falls by the wayside, and He becomes our singular goal and object of affection. The beauty of desiring to know God is that He doesn’t play hard to get. God is not coy, demure, or coquettish; He’s not dragging us along until a better opportunity presents itself. He promised that if we seek Him, we will find Him, and if we knock, the door will be opened to us. It is because of this promise that we can approach Him with confidence, knowing that if we ask Him for truth, He will not give us a lie, and if we ask Him for life, He will not give us death.

We tend to overthink the dynamics of our relationship with God, and plenty of individuals are willing to needlessly complicate it and insist it couldn’t be so simple because it serves their ends. All of you for all of Him. That’s the contract. There aren’t fifty pages of fine print you have to wade through; there are no clauses for preexisting conditions or mitigating circumstances that would make the contract null and void. God is faithful. He keeps His word. He will not renege nor walk away when the going gets tough. He is an ever-present help in times of trouble and a comfort in times of heartache. Run to Him. Cling to Him. Trust in Him, and you will never be alone again.  

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.