Job IX

 Job was wholly ignorant of what was taking place in the halls of heaven or that his name was the topic of conversation. It’s one thing for an individual to call themselves virtuous, blameless, or upright, and it’s quite another for God to see you as such and single you out as the solitary figure in the entirety of the world possessing such attributes. How we see ourselves matters little. How God sees us is what counts, and though we might have fallen for the ruse that one’s self-esteem, self-worth, self-regard, or self-assurance dictates their true heart, far too many nowadays boast of things they do not possess and elevate themselves to positions they have no place being in.

Job wasn’t going around calling himself righteous. He wasn’t telling anyone within earshot how he was blameless and upright. He lived out his faith in God, shunning evil and fearing Him, not because of some accolades he might receive or honorifics men might bestow upon him, but because the desire of his heart was to obey God in all things and walk circumspectly with his Lord.

Although the author of the Book of Job remains a mystery to this day, its divine inspiration is undeniable. Whether the author was shown the sons of God coming and presenting themselves before the Lord, or they took dictation, penning what they heard, it took substantial faith to begin writing, “Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came among them,” then keep going.

The type of unshakeable faith and obedience required for one to receive a message from the Lord and then faithfully deliver it without adding, taking away, or trying to interpret it through the prism of their understanding is rarely discussed nowadays, but in light of all the self-appointed prophets coming out of the woodwork speaking all manner of things, perhaps it should be.

Whether it’s Isaiah prophesying the virgin birth or the author of Job describing the sons of God presenting themselves before the Lord, the men tasked with writing down the messages they received had to have had a firm and longstanding relationship with God before any of it took place. They walked with God, knew Him, trusted Him, and obeyed Him without question to be able to be used by Him in such a fashion.

Another aspect of this tableau that stood out from the first sentence is that Satan came among the sons of God when they came to present themselves before the Lord. What makes us think Satan is not present among congregations if he was able to come among the sons of God? That is a question worth pondering for anyone who believes that everything they hear being preached from pulpits today is the Word of God rightly divided or that there is no attempt to plant seeds of deception among the brethren when we are gathered together.

We let our guard down and dismiss that still, small voice more readily when we are in a church setting than anywhere else, and we do so to our detriment. If you hear something that rings false or that you know is antithetical to the Scripture, do not receive it just because you hear it spoken by someone in a suit standing behind a pulpit. It is your individual duty to study the Word and show yourself approved, and no one can do it on your behalf.

The problem with being spoon-fed is that you don’t get to determine what’s in the spoon. It may be easier than checking the ingredients and making sure that what goes into a spiritual meal is wholesome, virtuous, and biblical, but easy doesn’t make it right, and due to men’s laziness regarding spiritual matters or indifference as to what they consume spiritually, there is an epidemic of powerless souls roaming about the church, uncertain of what they believe, why they believe it, or if it has anything in common with the Scriptures.

Satan is an ever-present reality with which we must contend and a tirelessly committed enemy that we must resist. There is nothing wrong with being hyper-vigilant, nor is it sinful. On the contrary, hyper-vigilance is recommended, given the lengths to which the enemy of our souls will go in order to try and shipwreck our faith. The only caveat is that in our hyper-vigilant state, we do not reject a word or a message because of how it was delivered or by whom. The only metric we must use to determine if something is of God is the Word of God.

If it’s biblical, although we might not particularly care for the individual’s appearance because they’re wearing a t-shirt rather than a bespoke suit, or his manner of delivery because he tends to raise his voice rather than try to mimic an NPR host, it does not take away from it being scripturally sound.

There is a difference between rejecting a message because it’s not biblical and finding every excuse under the sun to reject it because, although we know it’s biblical, we don’t like what it implies or what demands it makes on our lives. Men gravitate toward teachers and teachings that harmonize with the desire of their hearts, and if the desire of their heart is something other than total submission to the will and Word of God, they will find ways of circumventing them that seem wholly illogical to an objective observer.

Men would rather descend into mysticism, numerology, astrology, shamanism, and all manner of occultic practices because they are unwilling to humble themselves, fear God, and shun evil. All it is is the flesh trying to find another way when God has declared that there is only One Way. It’s rebellion in its basest form, and though men may think it makes them superior to their fellow man, it doesn’t register on God’s radar. What God notices, what He sees, what He takes note of, are those who, in a sea of duplicitous, half-hearted, lukewarm, and situationally faithful souls, stand out for being blameless and upright, fearing Him and shunning evil. How rare are such individuals? In Job’s time, there was none like him on the earth. That should clue us in as to how small the remnant truly is.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

Job VIII

Job 1:6-12, “Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came among them. And the Lord said to Satan, “From where do you come?” So Satan answered the Lord and said, “From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking back and forth on it.” Then the Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered My servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, one who fears God and shuns evil?” So Satan answered the Lord and said, “Does Job fear God for nothing? Have You not made a hedge around him, around his household, and around all that he has on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. But now, stretch out your hand and touch all that he has, and he will surely curse You to Your face!” And the Lord said to Satan, “Behold, all that he has is in your power; only do not lay a hand on his person.” So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord.”

I’m a voracious reader. I have been ever since I learned English well enough to be able to sit down with a book and understand what the words meant. In every story, regardless of genre, there is an instigating incident that unleashes the conflict, whatever the conflict in question might entail. There is always something that precipitates the confrontation, and this encounter between Satan and God was the flashpoint of the instigating incident in the life of Job.

There are a handful of books in the Bible that are not only humbling but undergird the notion that there are specific events in your life that you can only come out of by going through them. You can’t circumvent them, bow out, or choose not to participate, and oftentimes, they are not of the overflowing with joy and blessing variety.

Aside from the book of Job, the books of Ruth and Esther also confirm a truth we’ve long suspected: Human existence is a journey of ups and downs, joys and sorrows. But as long as God remains our priority, our desire, and our purpose, we will continue to press onward, even when the path gets rocky. Without pressure, there is no growth. Without testing, there is no maturing. Without overcoming and enduring, there is no victory. The life we live is transformative, meaning you are not the same person, have the same thoughts, do the same things, and have the same goals at sixty as you are at fifteen. Life changes you, and nothing changes you more thoroughly than the unexpected, the unforeseen, and the turbulent. This is doubly true when one is born again, receiving the new mind and new heart the Bible speaks of. You cannot be what you once were because you have been transformed.

Specific events in one’s life test one’s character, some their faithfulness, and others still their steadfastness. Then, once in a while, you run across someone like Job, Ruth, or Esther, who have all three tested at once, and you can’t process what they went through or hardly believe that they made it through whole. Not unscathed, not unscarred, not unchanged, but whole, complete, and all the stronger for it.  

It’s human nature to try and avoid hardship. It’s hardwired into us to try and keep from experiencing pain, loss, or hardship. Sometimes, however, no matter how much we try, avoiding these things is impossible. The will of God is sovereign. As such, even Jesus prayed that if it were the Father’s will, and if it were possible, the cup would pass from Him. Jesus concluded His prayer with, “Nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will.”

You don’t get to command God. You don’t get to tell Him what to do, what you will accept, and what you will reject as your lot and portion in life because His will will be done whether you submit to it or bristle against it. These are modern-day inventions brought about by men’s overriding desire to be something more than creation and ascend to the position of little gods. The singular desire of their heart is not to obey God but to determine their own fate and see themselves as masters of their destiny. It’s an illusion. At the risk of beating a dead horse, you are not a little god!

True to his nature, Satan’s first instinct when God brought up the topic of Job was to cast doubt on the purity of his worship and infer that there was some vested interest that Job feared God and shunned evil.

No, I didn’t gloss over the sons of God coming to present themselves before the Lord and Satan being among them, but other than the text itself, there isn’t anything else to add without crossing over into the land of supposition and speculation.

What we can infer from the text is that God is not alone in heaven, sitting on His throne, knitting sweaters, and learning to play pinochle. Heaven is a busy place, an animated place, and God is surrounded by His creation.

Who were these ‘sons of God’ the Book of Job mentions? Personally, I believe they were angels or the hosts of heaven. Before anyone suggests that Satan was among the ‘sons of God,’ the Bible makes it clear that although he came among them, Satan was not one of them. The Bible singles him out as being out of place, not belonging, and otherwise different from the ‘sons of God’ who had come to present themselves before the Lord. The term ‘sons of God’ is often used in the Bible to refer to heavenly beings, and in this context, it likely refers to angels or other divine beings. As for Satan, he is a fallen angel, a rebellious creature who was once among the heavenly hosts but was cast out due to his pride and desire to be like God.

The portrait the Book of Job paints of God's habitation is fascinating to ponder. It dispels the idea that there’s nothing going on there except for God waiting patiently to be asked for a favor, likely related to something material. Instead, it presents a dynamic and vibrant scene, with God surrounded by His creation, engaged in the affairs of His heavenly court.

In reading the scene before the instigating incident took place, one gets the feeling that Satan was somewhere he didn’t belong. The sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came among them. How many sons of God were present is unknown, but what is known from the text is that Satan stood out like a sore thumb. God noticed him among His sons and singled him out. This was not a common occurrence, and we can infer that it was not because he was singled out.  Satan’s presence among the sons of God is not something that happened frequently.

With love in Christ, 

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

Job VII

 As is the case with most things in life, context matters when it comes to the Book of Job. Understanding the timing of when it was written only serves to broaden our appreciation of Job’s story, his life, his testing, and his faithfulness. We have an idea of when this book was written, both by what is there and by what isn’t.

What is apparent is that Job’s family was established in a patriarchal fashion. Although patriarchy has become a dirty word of late, this means that Job was the head of his household and was responsible for the well-being of all those within his sphere of influence, whether that meant his children or those who worked for him.

His length of life also lends credence to the idea that Job lived during the time of the patriarchs, given that after his travails, he lived another hundred and forty years. By all accounts, by the time his end came, Job was at least two hundred years old, perhaps even close to a quarter of a century.

As I said, what isn’t in the Book of Job likewise gives us insight into when Job walked among men. There is no mention of Israel, the tribes, the law of God, or the tabernacle of meeting Moses erected toward the latter end of Exodus. If these had existed in Job’s day, it would have been highly unlikely that they would not be mentioned within the context of the book. There would have been some reference to either the law of God or the people of God had they been established during the life of Job. It’s not a stretch to conclude that Job predated Moses, which in itself makes his faithfulness all the more noteworthy.

He did not have the law, the prophets, or a historical record of what God could do, as there was after the people of Israel were led out of bondage, yet he cemented a relationship with God and remained faithful throughout.

It’s also telling that Job did not take his relationship with God for granted. His love and fear of the Lord did not wane with the passing of time, and he was diligent in bringing burnt offerings for his progeny, as well as maintaining his subservience to God. This says more about his character and the way he viewed his relationship with God than anything he could say about himself. An individual’s consistent actions will speak on his behalf even when he remains silent.

We live in an age when men like to elevate themselves and speak so highly of their accomplishments as to dwarf even the labors of someone like Paul. To hear them tell the tale, all save a handful of people on a remote island somewhere who haven’t heard their great preaching and oration have been blessed by them, and if not for their being on team Jesus, the church would be a shadow of its current self. Even if all the inflated accomplishments were genuine, they weren’t yours. It is God who gives the word, it is God who gives the utterance, and it is God who gives the gifts.

To take credit for something God has done is to relegate Him to the back of the bus and insist that He couldn’t have done it without you. If He must make the stones speak, they will, but God’s word will go forth with or without you or me. Because men see themselves as indispensable to God and His kingdom, and because the true desire of their heart is something other than to serve the body of Christ, pride finds a willing host and brings friends along to boot. Once this occurs, the fall is inevitable because pride will facilitate and perpetuate it.

Job’s worship of God was not for show. It’s not as though his neighbors were watching or he was trying to impress someone with his diligent worship of God. There was no one to impress. There was no one he felt the need to appear spiritual toward. It was who Job was to the deepest recesses of his heart, and what was in his heart flowed forth into his actions. His worship of God was a reflection of who he was.

If the desire of your heart is to know God in a more profound and intimate way, you don’t need degrees or diplomas in order to attain a deep and lasting relationship with God, but simply the humility to follow where He leads and do as He commands. People who put on airs, are overly performative or feel the need to have an audience whenever they do anything on behalf of God are suspect in my book because intimacy naturally presupposes a very reduced number of participants, namely you and God.

Nobody needs to see you praying, worshiping, giving, weeping, singing, or rejoicing, but be assured God does, and when we draw near to Him, He will draw near to us. Acting spiritual isn’t the same as being spiritual, but we will settle for the former rather than the latter because the latter requires consistency and a pure heart in which the Holy Spirit can reside.

Even though save for Jesus on the cross, no man suffered the likes of what Job did, he understood intuitively what Paul would later put into words, that our afflictions, light or otherwise, are working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.

2 Corinthians 4:17-18, “For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal.”

To understand how an individual defines something, you must look at their life in the aggregate to see their lived experience. When Paul speaks of light affliction, his lived experience was being lashed with whips five separate times, at thirty-nine lashes per event, beaten with rods, stoned, and shipwrecked, among other things. That was his frame of reference when he spoke of light affliction. And yet, he looks back on all the pain, hardship, and travail and concludes that it worked a more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.

I don’t know about you, but if I were to compare my affliction to his, it wouldn’t even be worthy of mention.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

Job IV

 It’s easy to forget that Job was an ordinary man made extraordinary by his devotion and faithfulness to God. Every time we encounter a testimony of faithfulness and endurance that seems near impossible to believe, we must remind ourselves that whoever they were and whatever they went through, they were ordinary men and women just like you and me, having to contend with extraordinary circumstances that could only be traversed by having full and unwavering trust in the God they served.

We try to downplay the need for enduring faith in our day and age. Being blameless and upright, fearing God, and shunning evil is not exciting enough because we have to compete with the world and its excesses, whether in the form of entertainment or the rush to validate individual feelings, however absurd those feelings might be. We fail to acknowledge that the premise of the thesis itself is flawed; therefore, any conclusion we might arrive at will likewise be flawed. We are not competing with the world, or better said, the world is not competing with the household of faith. They can’t. There’s no competition there. It’s like pitting a lion against a skunk. The best the skunk can do is make a stink, but giving the lion a run for his money is outside the realm of possibility. What God has on offer for His children so far surpasses anything the world can conceive of, that it’s not even worth mentioning.

Since the devil can’t compete on a spiritual playing field, the only thing left in his arsenal that might make a dent with is deception. Essentially, he has to put lipstick on a pig, hoping enough people aren’t paying attention, and fall for his ruse. We have to make allowances to make church more palatable to the younger generation, don’t we? We have to compromise the truth and lower the standard of the gospel because we’ve built this giant sanctuary that’s sitting half empty, and we have mortgage payments to cover. Look at the guys across town. Ever since they incorporated fog machines and a mosh pit, their attendance has gone through the roof.

Eternity is all well and good, but people are looking for relief and the promise of an easy life here and now. We can’t keep talking about enduring to the end or consecrating ourselves unto God so that we may remain steadfast in the face of the storm because we’ve done enough polling to know that it’s not what people want to hear.

People want to be told that a half-hearted commitment to God is a cure-all for anything and everything, whether a way out of a minimum-wage job or a remedy for that pesky acne that keeps coming back. We’ve reframed the message of the gospel to cater to men’s flesh, men’s wants, and men’s desires, downplaying the spiritual and eternal, the rebirth to a new life and a new understanding of our purpose during the finite time we are here.

God is not a magic genie you can call on any time you need something fixed or a few extra bucks in your pocket. He is God.

Another thing the modern-day church doesn’t want to hear because it shatters the illusion of being little gods is that God is sovereign. There can only be one sovereign. Although man is created in God’s image, man is not entitled to His attributes. To say that man is sovereign in his own right is to say that man is on equal footing with God Himself. The dynamic of creation and Creator will always exist, and though God loves you more than you can ever conceive, He will not share in His sovereignty. In simple terms, when one is sovereign, they possess supreme authority, with the option of exercising it at will. You don’t have that, nor do I, nor does anyone else who insists they are a little god.

Psalm 115:3, “But our God is in heaven; He does whatever He pleases.”

That sums it up quite nicely, no matter how many individuals insist that godhood and its inherent sovereignty were imputed to man along with righteousness. Sorry to break it to you, but you are not a god, little or otherwise. As such, it is incumbent upon us to submit to the One True God and acknowledge His sovereignty in all things.

Although he was a blameless and upright man, Job still feared God because he understood what many today fail to: God is sovereign over all creation! Even though the Psalms were centuries away from being written, Job understood that God is in heaven and He does whatever He pleases, meaning there is nothing outside the realm of possibility when it comes to what He can do.

The God we serve spoke the universe into being. He said, "Let there be light," and there was light. He formed Adam out of the dust of the ground and breathed the breath of life into his nostrils. His majesty is unfathomable to the human mind, yet every day, we attempt to whittle Him down and shrink Him to our level of understanding.

When man tries to fit God into a box and insists there is something He can’t do or something He should do, when God does the opposite of their expectations because He does whatever He pleases, it is inevitable that they will balk and bristle or, at the very least, feel slighted at having their input ignored. This can lead to a crisis of faith or a misunderstanding of God’s character, which is why it’s crucial to acknowledge and submit to His sovereignty.

God is the final authority on all manners, and there is nothing and no one that can stand against His plans and purposes. If He were a cruel God, a mean God, a God who took pleasure in the suffering of His creation, then the reality of His sovereignty should be a reason to fear and dread. However, we know that He is love, the very definition thereof, and whatever circumstance He may allow in our lives will work together for good. Limited as we are in our understanding and having the inability to see into tomorrow, never mind ten years down the path of future time, all we can do is trust fully that He is working a good thing in us.  

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

Job V

 It’s become increasingly popular to try and get through life on platitudes. Those who seek to make merchandise of the household of faith are quick to offer easy answers to difficult questions, even though they are fully aware that their answers hold no weight, nor do they stand up to any scrutiny. It’s a numbers game to them, and as long as half of the people they’re delivering their one-liners to don’t bother to think them through or push back on the vapidness of their declarations, they’ll still end up ahead at the end of the day.

Good things happen to good people, and bad things happen to bad people, so be good and send your best love offering today so that good things happen to you. Overly simplistic, to be sure, but we have more important things to think about, like our fantasy football league, so we’ll take the easy answer and run with it until the day the bad thing we thought we’d avoided by being generous to the snake oil salesman on television makes an appearance at the worst possible time. Admittedly, there’s never a good day for something bad or unexpected to occur in one’s life, but living as though nothing bad will ever occur makes those days all the more impactful.

Had Job been the sort of man to assume that he would never have to suffer loss or be tested because he was blameless and upright when the day came and his testing commenced, likely, his faith would not have endured the pressure brought to bear, and as so many tend to do, he would have given in to bitterness and resentment. Our expectations in relation to serving God must be biblical. If they don’t pass that singular litmus test, when our season of testing comes upon us, our first reaction will be shock and surprise because deep in our hearts, we believe ourselves to be immune from such hardship.

The danger of believing something extra-biblical is that the faith you placed in it will shatter into a million pieces once it is proven a fallacy. A life lived in obedience to God is not a guarantee of earthly comforts or an easy life. It’s been sold as such to a modern audience whose only concern is for the here and now, but just as people often buy counterfeit items because the price is just too good to pass up, so do many in today’s church buy into the idea that all their greedy little hearts ever yearned for is just a sinner’s prayer away even though had they bothered to read God’s Word they would realize they’ve been sold a bill of goods.

When what they were promised does not materialize, when, having raised that hand and said that prayer, their life doesn’t magically get better, when they still have to struggle to make the rent or eat Ramen for a week because that’s all they can afford, they feel like they’ve been lied to, cheated, and bamboozled and conclude that the God presented to them as their ticket to easy street must not be as advertised after all.

But God never promised any of the things to which you clung with such desperation. He never promised you’d win the lottery a day after you walked up the aisle or that you’d find a million dollars someone forgot on a bus bench. All these things are the machinations of men who believed they needed to add something more to the gospel in order to make it attractive to the masses. They were wrong. You don’t need to add anything more to the gospel message than what it already promises those who would humble themselves, repent, and believe in Jesus.

Forgiveness of sin, being washed clean, and reconciled to the Father, eternity with Him when this life is through, and a constant companion while you still walk this earth is already the greatest offer you’ll ever receive. Yet, some still consider it is not enough.

Job was a man wholly satisfied in God. He did not derive his satisfaction from the things he possessed but rather from having a relationship with God, knowing Him, loving Him, and obeying Him in all things. The attitude of his heart was right; therefore, he was able to endure what would come upon him. Had it not been, it would have been a different story, with a different ending, but it was, and it’s the reason he remains an example of what a believer’s attitude during hardships should be to this day.

One of the bleakest seasons of my grandfather’s life was the loss of his wife, my grandmother, at a relatively young age. One would think it would be the beatings, electric chair, torture, or the constant threat of being sent to a labor camp never to see his family again, but in comparison, although unpleasant and painful physically, the loss of his wife was a more difficult valley to traverse by far.

We had multiple conversations on the topic sometime after the wound of her loss was no longer fresh, and he would always get this look in his eyes as though he was reliving the moment. During one of our conversations, he said something that resonates to this day, both simple and profound: “I had the choice of letting go of God or clinging to Him all the more. I chose to cling to Him all the more.”

When the dust finally settles, and the initial shock of witnessing one’s life implode in real time wears off, it boils down to the binary choice of trusting in God and clinging to Him or hardening one’s heart and letting go. The choice we make depends upon the sort of relationship we had with God before the testing, the kind of faith we had in His sovereignty, and in the promise that all things work together for good to those who love God and to those who are called according to His purpose.

Trials and testing are not neutral events. They change you. It is inevitable. You either pull closer to God or push away from Him, but you cannot remain the same. Anyone who tells you their trial or testing did not change them, whether for good or ill, is just trying to put on a brave face.

Do you know God well enough to trust Him in the storm? If the answer is no, there is no better time than now to deepen your relationship with Him. 

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

Job IV

 While in the eyes of his contemporaries, what made Job noteworthy is that he was, at the time, the greatest of all the people of the East, in God’s eyes, it’s that he was blameless and upright and feared the Lord. Because he feared the Lord, he also shunned evil, knowing that accepting, practicing, celebrating, or validating evil puts a barrier between man and God. Job did not have the benefit of Scripture. He wasn’t walking around with an ostrich leather red-letter King James under his arm, but he knew inherently that he must shun evil as one who feared the Lord. Not only that, but he also knew what evil was.

In our day, just as in Job’s day, evil is well defined, and those who are sincere, looking to obey God rather than find ways around His commands, know evil when they see it. It’s not some amorphous thing that nobody can pin down or something so complicated as to be defined only by the scholarly. Even when it wears a disguise and attempts to present itself in a positive light, evil can’t do anything about the stench of rot emanating from its being. Those who practice evil are not ignorant of its nature; they just don’t care.

It’s usually the scholarly and well-learned among us who insist that evil is no longer evil, whether because they’ve compromised the truth or sold their souls outright, but any objective and unbiased person can readily define evil. You don’t need revelation or spiritual gifting to know that murdering a baby before it’s had a chance to take a lungful of air is evil. Yet, here we are, with churches and even whole denominations insisting that it's wholly reasonable to murder and dismember a living human while in the womb.

Job knew what evil was without the benefit of the canon of Scripture, and he shunned it because he feared the Lord. The modern-day church, having the benefit of Scripture as a light unto its path, embraces it and consistently excuses evil, yet it persists in thinking itself wise and brimming with promise and potential.

What’s our excuse? That’s the question that keeps intruding and forcing its way to the forefront of my mind as I read of men who, without the benefit of the written Word or the ability to access a glut of commentaries and writings regarding every topic one could conceive of by clicking a few keys, knew God deeper and more intimately than any of those strutting about on stages, beating their chests, and insisting they are the apple of God’s eye and the pinnacle of righteousness.

The best I can figure is that it comes down to desire and the true intentions of one’s heart. Men such as Job and others who walked with God desired Him above all else. They weren’t interested in using God to achieve their goals but rather were satisfied with having a bond and relationship with Him. They did not pursue God, hoping to get something from Him; rather, they pursued God to obtain Him. There will always be a difference in attitude and approach when someone wants to be your friend for the sake of being your friend and when someone wants to be your friend because you’ll pick up the check at breakfast.

Many today want to use God rather than be used of God. They come into the relationship with the attitude of what they can get out of the deal, and if a better deal comes along, they’re willing to abandon one for the other at the drop of a hat. It’s not so much about Lordship or the reality of servanthood; it’s more akin to a job they perform, often grudgingly, concluding that their boss is stingy in his compensation package whenever they don’t get their way.  

It is a gift to understand the dynamic of one’s relationship with God and to be humble enough to defer to Him in all matters, great and small. If God deems it evil, if God deems it sin, neither you nor I have the right to say otherwise or excuse it for whatever reason. Although it is not highlighted outright, beyond being a blameless and upright man, Job was also humble. Being the wealthiest man in an entire region and likewise being humble is a complex combination to pull off because there will always be an inclination to see oneself superior to everyone else due to your possession, yet here was Job, who was consistent in his worship and rising early to offer burnt offerings not only for himself but also for his ten children.

You sacrifice for the people you love and the things you love. Nowadays, not so much literally, since none of us are dragging sheep to an altar and offering them up, but we all make sacrifices throughout our lives for what we hold dearest and most precious. I can tell you what a man prioritizes in his life by his spending patterns and where he allots his time on a given day. Whether you’re buying season tickets for your local football team or a warm coat for a homeless person, tells me something about who and what you love more than any words will. Is it wrong to go to a football game or five? No, it’s not. It’s just something that reveals the truth of a person’s heart, and given enough time, it forms a pattern. Patterns exist because of consistency, which is something one does with regularity. Whether it’s how often you read your Bible, how often you pray, or how often you spend time alone with God, it’s the frequency of these things that form a pattern.

Do you only read the Word only when there’s nothing else pressing? Do you only come before God in prayer when you have a need or something in your life that requires remedying? Do you spend time with God only when you’re planning to ask for a favor, or is the burning desire of your heart more of Him, and nothing of this life takes precedence over that singular purpose?

Job loved his children so much that he made sure to offer offerings to God on their behalf just in case they’d sinned. His hierarchal priorities were God first, then family, then everything else. Business didn’t come first, nor did entertaining friends or accumulating more wealth. God was first in his life, and because of this, God looked upon him as the rarest of all men.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

Job III

 Job 1:1-5, “There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job; and that man was blameless and upright, and one who feared God and shunned evil. And seven sons and three daughters were born to him. Also, his possessions were seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen, five hundred female donkeys, and a very large household, so that this man was the greatest of all the people of the East. And his sons would go and feast in their houses, each on his appointed day, and would send and invite their three sisters to eat and drink with them. So it was, when the days of feasting had run their course, that Job would send and sanctify them, and he would rise early in the morning and offer burnt offerings according to the number of them all. For Job said, “It may be that my sons have sinned and cursed God in their hearts.” Thus Job did regularly.”

Everyone loves a redemption arc. They have become emblematic of novels, movies, songs, and stories because there’s something that resonates with all of us when we hear a testimony of someone who reached rock bottom only to continue digging until one day, that moment of lucidity gives way to an epiphany that compels them to climb out of the hole they’ve dug for themselves.

Whether it’s the angry soul who holds a puppy for the first time and then goes on to start a no-kill shelter or the alcoholic who one day pours all the booze down the drain, never to touch another drink, then goes on to start a rehab clinic, the notion of redemption resonates deep within the hearts of men.

But what if you hadn’t sabotaged your life wholesale? What if you didn’t end up bruised and broken on the side of a highway before you realized you were on a short journey toward a quick death and the life you were living couldn’t be called a life by any objective metric? What if you lived a noble existence, feared God, shunned evil, and were blameless in the sight of God, and one day, an ordinary day like any other, everything turned to dust before your eyes? What if you did everything right, then in the blink of an eye, everything went wrong?

If karma were a real thing, then Job would have been golden. He was a man who consistently shunned evil, made sure his house was in order, and even rose up early to offer burnt offerings on behalf of his children, just in case they’d strayed and sinned against God. He was blameless both in the sight of God and of his contemporaries.

Some men are singled out for their bravery, others for their wisdom, and still others for their inventiveness or ability to captivate an audience with their oration, but few throughout the Bible were singled out for being blameless and upright.

Job’s singular claim to fame as far as God was concerned was that he feared God and shunned evil. Even in those days, this was such a rarity that he stood out among his contemporaries like a beacon of righteousness. The first thing we discover about Job, after his name and that he was from the land of Uz, is that he was blameless and upright, feared God, and shunned evil.

Those attributes, more than anything, were what mattered in the sight of God, and that by a country mile. The Book of Job doesn’t start out by telling us that there was a man named Job from the land of Uz, and he was filthy rich. It doesn’t begin by telling us his station or his title, but that he feared God and shunned evil.

First things should always come first, and there must be a hierarchy of priorities that places godliness and uprightness at the very top. How the world sees you is irrelevant. What matters is how God sees you. Whether you amass fortunes or climb the ladder of success to the last rung is likewise illusory if God is not foremost in your life and your relationship with Him is not the focus and priority.

Job was likely loving, considerate, generous, and a good father and husband, all qualities and virtues a godly man must possess. But God noticed first, before any of his other accomplishments, that he was a blameless and upright man.

One cannot become blameless and upright by being loving, considerate, and generous, but being blameless and upright will make you a virtuous man or woman who is these things and more. All noble virtue flows from godliness. We do not practice them because they make us more godly; rather, because we are godly, we naturally practice them. We gravitate toward the things of God and shun those of the devil, experiencing a transformative power that shapes our character.

If we are of the light, we cannot abide the darkness. We cannot walk in it, court it, validate it or accept it because light and darkness are diametrically opposed and an existential threat to the continuity of the other. If light is present, darkness scatters. If darkness encroaches upon the light, it too suffers and is weakened.

Before men see anything else about you, they should see that you are a godly individual. Before noticing that you’re good with numbers, with words, running a business, or coming up with a better mouse trap, they should see Christ living in you. A godly individual will possess a godly character. His yes will be yes, his no, no, and he will walk according to the Word of God though he walks alone. His purpose is not to be accepted, liked, embraced, or otherwise fawned over by the godless or those of the world but that all he does will be pleasing in the sight of the Lord. A godly man is willing to suffer the loss of all things in the pursuit of godliness and deem their loss as frivolous and unworthy of mention.

Once we establish in our hearts that Jesus is our everything, that His word is the great treasure we seek, everything else will flow from there, yet never overshadow Him and His presence in our lives. Men must see Jesus first. Then, as they get to know you and notice other things about your character and conduct, the way you carry yourself and the way you are, you can point back to Jesus and give Him the glory for the individual you’ve been transformed into.

A caterpillar that remains a caterpillar for the whole of its existence never reaches its full potential. It did not become what it was meant to be. Sadly, that’s the state of most contemporary Christians today, wherein they raise a hand, say a prayer, and then return to the life they’ve always known, never being transformed, reborn, and renewed in mind and heart.

The question isn’t whether God sees you as a Pentecostal, Baptist, Lutheran, Methodist, or Non-denominationalist. The question is whether God sees you as blameless and upright, as one who fears Him and shuns evil.

Another question worth pondering as we begin this journey is whether a man can truly fear God if he does not shun evil. I’m not asking whether or not they say they do, but do they actually possess the fear of the Lord if they do not consistently shun evil? In light of the shaking that’s been taking place in the modern-day church of late, it is a reasonable and appropriate question.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

Job II

If I had it handy, I’d slip on my hyper-spiritual mask and insist that such suffering would be a breeze to go through, but I burnt my mask along with my pride, goals, ambitions, and personal aspirations long ago. Like you, I am daily working out my own salvation with fear and trembling. What I struggle with isn’t the loss of material things. I don’t have many to begin with; it’s never been an issue for me, nor do I place much value in them. I grew up poor - seven people in a two-bedroom apartment dumpster diving for aluminum cans - kind of poor, and although I am less poor, meaning I no longer dumpster dive, private jets and luxury getaways are not in my immediate future. Although there’s an entire conversation that should be had about supposed servants of Christ living like rock stars off the backs of their congregants, this is neither the time nor the place.

It’s not even the idea of my own personal suffering. It’s the loss of family that wrings my heart over and over like a wet dish towel. Every individual has a breaking point. There’s a reason the straw that broke the camel’s back is an expression that’s been around for centuries. It’s not one thing; it’s the accumulation of many things over time until that last and final straw that finally does it, and your bowed back can’t endure another ounce of pressure. Either Job was the strongest, most stoic man ever to live, or his unshakeable faith in God and His sovereignty carried him beyond his breaking point. You can’t get any lower than where Job ended up, and this is from such a position of affluence as to make him the greatest of all the people of the East as far as possessions were concerned.

It’s one thing to never know what it’s like to be wealthy beyond any of your contemporaries, to have everything your heart could desire and more besides, and never want for anything that you couldn’t get with the wave of a hand and the exchange of some legal tender. It’s quite another to be at the pinnacle of success, envied among your peers, then suddenly and without warning, get the rug pulled out from under you and have nothing left.

Imagine Warren Buffet or Elon Musk suddenly losing everything and ending up under a bridge trying to skewer a rat for their evening meal. Job's fall is comparable, given his status before his testing. All this while, God deemed him a blameless and upright man. Imagine the sort of faith one must possess in the providence and sovereignty of God not to be swayed by such circumstances. It cannot be a fleeting or situational faith but rather one that is cemented, ingrained, all-encompassing, and unshakeable. Job believed in God for everything, in everything, about everything, through everything, all the time, without fail. The life of Job teaches us that such faith is attainable, but the only way to attain it is to wholly surrender to the will, plan, and purpose of God in the best of times as well as the worst of times.

Job also dispels the myth that one cannot fear God and shun evil if one is wealthy. Money, in and of itself, isn’t evil; it’s the love of money that is the root of all kinds of evil. Job was rich but did not love his riches. He loved God, and the desire of his heart was to pleasing to the Lord. I’ve known poor people who love money they don’t have and rich people who are indifferent to the money they do have. It’s about the attitude of the heart and who sits on the throne thereof.

The reason Jesus said it is easier for a camel to enter through the eye of a needle than a rich man into the kingdom of God is that unless a man is blameless and upright, his identity will always be wrapped up in his riches, his desire will always be to increase them, and his purpose will continually be focused on earthly things. When God looked upon Job, he did not see a rich man; he saw an upright man who was blameless and feared the Lord. Being rich does not exclude someone from entering the kingdom of God; worshipping their riches, believing it is they and not God that can save them, and surrendering their hearts to trinkets and baubles does. We will see how much stock Job put in his possessions and how much he valued them shortly, and this is why, although he was rich, God singled him out as blameless and upright.

It’s easy to pontificate and wax poetic. Some people take to it like a duck to water, and they have no qualms about magnifying their spirituality to absurd and cartoonish levels in the hopes of having others look to them as though they were modern versions of Abraham, Job, and Paul all wrapped up in one. Not only is it self-serving and hypocritical, but it is also dangerous to beat one’s chest and say you would likewise endure what they did without allowing either bitterness or resentment to worm its way into your heart.

Serving God is easy when serving God is easy. When all you see are blue skies and gentle breezes, even though the work might be labor intensive, and what you are called to do may require exertion on your part, at the end of the day, you have a family to go back to, a home, a hot meal and a pillow to rest your head on.

Then the storm comes, and everything we take for granted, all those little things we barely even notice day to day, disappear in an instant, yet your duty to God remains the same. The calling doesn’t change, and the amount of work God has set before you doesn’t lessen, but our attitude will if we allow it to or if we’ve fallen into the snare of believing that being in ministry is a guarantee to living an easy-going life, with a nice pension at sixty-five, and a sweet condo on a golf course somewhere warm and sunny. 

Anyone who thinks they can weather such storms on their own without God's aid, comfort, and presence has already failed and will likely fold like an origami crane at the first salvo. Some things men can’t get through on their own, no matter how stiff-spined, resolute, and determined they are. They require uttermost trust in the God they serve and an unshakeable faith in His providence and sovereignty, no matter how bleak and hopeless things may seem. Such virtues do not materialize overnight. They must be grown, nurtured, and built up daily, with the tacit understanding that one day they will be put to the test. Your tepid, on-again, off-again, situational faith must transform into an enduring faith that it might abide.

Pride should be the last thing the life of Job should fan the flames of in men’s hearts. Rather, it should illicit deep and profound humility, bringing us face to face with our own shortcomings and to the realization that in those seasons of trial, hardship, and suffering, it is full and unwavering dependence upon God that will carry us through.

Had I known that a deep dive into this book would be akin to having a melon baller take chunks out of my heart every morning, perhaps I would have put this study off for a few more years, but alas, here we are.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

Job I

 The Book of Job is arguably different from every other book of the Bible. Even though it is near the middle of the Old Testament, being the eighteenth of thirty-nine books, the Book of Job is perhaps the earliest book of the Bible set in the period of the Patriarchs.

Although there has been boundless debate about who wrote the Book of Job, there is no conclusive evidence. While some have proffered that Moses, Solomon, Hezekiah, Elihu, or Job himself were the authors, all of these opinions have no historical undergirding or proof that they were so. Speculation is just that, and not knowing definitively who authored the Book of Job does not take away from its impact and timelessness.

Regardless of who the author was, the book itself is a literary masterpiece. It is disarming in its simplicity and near-overwhelming in the profundity of the topics it broaches. Given that most of the book takes place on a dung heap outside the city, some have taken to calling the Book of Job reductionist. If by reductionist they mean that all the unnecessary narrative flourishes one might expect have been stripped away, then perhaps it is. As far as it being impacting and demanding of both contemplation and self-evaluation, hardly. 

There are lessons to be learned from Job's life that transcend culture, language, upbringing, or historical timeframe because suffering and how we react to it are universal themes. The Book of Job is simultaneously humbling, exalting, encouraging, revelatory, and heartbreaking. It tackles the age-old question of why the righteous suffer, especially in light of God being both loving and all-powerful, and sets the bar for what true suffering is.

However bad a time you’ve been having lately, however horrible a day you’ve had up to the present moment, one re-reading of the first chapter of Job will put life and suffering into perspective to such an extent that you will fall to your knees in gratitude to God for all His many blessings. If there is one constant reminder, one consistent refrain throughout the Book of Job, it’s that there is a greater purpose behind our trials and tribulations, and it is a truth we can never forget.

For the most part, we’ve never known true suffering here in the West, yet we still find reasons to complain and murmur about all the things we think we ought to have but as yet have not been given. Most of us can’t relate to someone like Job, the things he endured, and the testing he went through, and that’s both a good and bad thing.

The reason it’s good is obvious: no one looks at Job’s life and says, “Boy, I wish I were in his shoes!” Sure, the first five verses of Job are enviable enough since he was, after all, a man who was blameless and upright and was rich enough to have thousands of sheep and camels and hundreds of oxen and donkeys, but after the fifth verse, his life takes a turn.

Why it’s also a bad thing is not as obvious, but nevertheless telling regarding the mindset of the average churchgoer today. We’ve been so inculcated and indoctrinated with the idea that our justified expectations should fall within those first few verses describing Job’s abundance that whenever suffering comes upon us, we are incapable of reacting to it properly, having the proper response, or learning from the valleys we must traverse in life.

Life can turn on a dime. In an instant, every safety net, security, and normalcy you knew can be flipped on its ear, and things you thought permanent and immutable can be shaken to their very core. It may not kill you, but you wish it had, and if your faith is not cemented and firmly established, the weight of it can crush you into dust.

The truth is that if you desire to live a life of obedience and submission to God's will and sovereignty, you’re likelier to experience suffering than you are to live your best life now because God’s purpose isn’t your physical well-being but your spiritual sanctification.

Does God still heal? Yes, undoubtedly so, but as He wills and for His purpose. If your healing will work together for good according to His purpose, it will be so. However, if your testing works together for good, it is likewise according to His purpose. It’s not that you lack faith or didn’t give enough to the faith healer who promised to regrow the thumb you sheared off with a band saw; it’s that God’s purpose for your life is something greater than you can currently see.

As I write these lines, I’m halfway through my fourth consecutive reading of the Book of Job, and although I’ve read it multiple times before, this is the first time I’ve sat down, meditated on each verse, and taken notes. With each new read-through, something new leaps from the page that serves to humble me in ways I dare not plumb too deeply, lest I abandon this journey before it’s begun.

I find myself echoing Paul's words in his epistle to the Romans: “Oh wretched man that I am,” not out of a false sense of humility, but at the realization that what I thought to be suffering wasn’t, and what I deemed as a strong and abiding faith pales in comparison. It’s hard to imagine what Job went through, let alone try to walk a mile in his shoes. Seeing how easy my life has been thus far compared to those who came before and how many of God’s blessings I’ve taken for granted throughout my life humbles me all the more.

The Book of Job is all meat, no filler. It’s one of those books you have to chew on and sit with and allow to reveal itself in its own time and at its own pace. You can’t rush it, nor can you give it one superficial read-through just to check it off in your journey through the Bible in a year reading goal. If you do, you’re likely to miss some of the most impacting morsels of this book, both when it comes to learning how to suffer well, as well as relational dynamics between spouses and friends, and how you’re likely to be viewed by others in the midst of your suffering.

It offers us a glimpse into the life of a man whom God declared as blameless and upright yet who witnessed the loss of everything in short order. Would I remain faithful and steadfast given similar circumstances? This question keeps me up at night and rouses me before sunrise. I pray that I would, but until you’re in the meat grinder, making your way through the ashes of your former life, clinging to faith in the sovereignty of God because that, a wife telling you to kill yourself, and a potsherd are all you have left, it’s difficult to give a declarative answer.

The Book of Job doesn’t offer platitudes or easy answers. It doesn’t provide a way out of enduring hardship but shows us the way through it, avoiding the pitfalls of bitterness, capitulation, or doubt as to God's sovereignty. It doesn’t deal with how you can achieve your best life but rather what you should do when the worst possible thing you can imagine comes upon you suddenly, and you’re crushed into the dust by the weight of it all.

What do we do when, in the midst of suffering, we call out and God doesn’t answer? What if He answers, but the answer He gives is not one we were hoping for? How should we react when we encounter suffering that we deem unjust? It’s easy to discuss such things in the abstract, but when you’re going through it when you’re the one in the thresher being bruised and beaten to the point that it’s all you know of life, it’s a different matter altogether.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

Outnumbered X

 Ahab did everything in his power to ensure that the word Micaiah spoke would not come to pass. He disguised himself in another man’s robes, kept himself from the front lines, and even insisted that Jehoshaphat wear his robes, hoping he would draw the enemy’s fire. Not a friendly gesture, but one born of selfishness and an overriding need for self-preservation. He wanted to prove Micaiah wrong if it was the last thing he did, not realizing that Micaiah was just the messenger. The message had come from the Lord.

Ahab did everything but the one thing he could have done, which was heed the word of the Lord and repent of his folly. We acknowledge the world is falling apart in real-time, we look for a remedy, God says repent, and we say no thanks. We think we can fix it on our own without humbling ourselves. We think we can circumvent the iceberg without God’s aid or assistance because we’re resilient and self-motivated. Others in generations past might have been too weak-willed to be the masters of their destinies, but not us, no sir, we’ll show You!

We look at Ahab’s actions and scratch our heads in bewilderment, not realizing that we are often guilty of the same thing. The Lord speaks a word, and rather than submit and act accordingly we do everything in our power to try and prove Him wrong. It never succeeds, but we still try.

Doing what God commands would mean humbling ourselves, and even though the Word tells us that God resists the proud and gives grace to the humble, we’d rather roll the dice and go our own way.

When I was younger and still had hair, I had a friend who was smitten with a young lady. He was a believer, she wasn’t, but that didn’t stop him from going and inquiring of the Lord as to whether he should make an honest woman out of her and propose marriage. He asked if I knew anywhere we could go to prayer, and since I did, we went to a prayer meeting not far away, and the Lord spoke to him through a vessel that was present.

We showed up on a random day, two random people among a handful of others, sang a couple of hymns, and then knelt to pray. There was no exchanging of information; my friend didn’t explain why we were there, so the vessel had no way of knowing what issue needed clarification. The message was as clear as could be: “The path which you desire to take is not the path I have chosen for you. I have prepared a better way for you, and you will see it in due course.”

He knew what he’d gone to the prayer meeting for; the vessel didn’t. It’s one of those details that matter because if you go to someone telling them of your problems, you’re asking them for an opinion. If you’re going to hear a word from the Lord, God already knows what’s on your heart; you don’t need to go into detail. If the vessel is of the Lord, the word will come forth without you having to explain the situation at length.

The desire of his heart was to know if he was supposed to proceed or not, and yet, after the prayer meeting, he began to go on and on about the possibility that this was not what the word was referring to but something else. I told him it seemed pretty clear to me. He gave me a dirty look, and we drove home in silence.

A few weeks later, I received the wedding invitation. The Lord had spoken, he had not heeded, and he’d gone ahead with the plans of his heart even though he had been warned. When I asked him why he’d bothered to seek a word from the Lord if he was already determined to do what he’d done, he shrugged his shoulders and said he was hoping God would cosign his decision. If you’re not fully committed to following through and heeding what God speaks to you, there’s no point in seeking a word from Him. At that point, you’re just tempting God, and once a word is given and you refuse to obey it, you are in rebellion.

My friend was fully assured that he could change her, that his love would win out, and all I could do was give him a sympathetic look because I’d seen this drama play out repeatedly, just with different faces at different times.

Less than two years later, she ran off with an Italian fellow who promised her the moon and the stars, and my friend was devastated, heartbroken, and bitter. Who was he bitter at? You guessed it: not himself or his disobedience but at God for not doing something He never promised He would and who had warned him against this course.

Don’t blame God for doing things He specifically told you not to do when they leave you bruised and broken. He was trying to spare you, but you thought you knew better.

The king of Syria had thirty-two captains of his chariots to whom he gave one order: “Fight with no one small or great, but only with the king of Israel.” Ahab was his target, and everyone else was irrelevant as far as he was concerned. In his own right, Ahab thought he’d outsmarted and outwitted the plan of God, and for a second there, as he saw the chariots chasing after Jehoshaphat, he thought he’d succeeded. Then, a certain man drew a bow at random and let loose. He wasn’t targeting anyone specifically, but his arrow found the space between Ahab’s armor and struck true.

It wasn’t aimed or calculated. Ahab was not his target because Ahab had disguised himself, and the archer had no way of knowing he’d just mortally wounded the king of Israel, but he had. One arrow loosed at random by an archer brought the whole reign of Ahab to a screeching halt.

When you’re not walking in obedience, when you’re not walking in God’s will, it doesn’t take a giant to trounce you. All it takes is a random arrow that will find the space between the joints of your armor and leave you gasping for breath. You can’t outsmart God. Whatever loopholes one thinks they might have found to force God’s hand or circumvent His will are wholly imaginary and have no basis in fact. Ahab found this out the hard way, the cost of it being his life.

It’s been proven often enough that majority consensus can be wrong. Just because a majority of people are saying a particular thing, it doesn’t automatically make them right by virtue of being in the majority. This is doubly true for those who claim to be messengers sent by God, whose words contradict His words, and whose visions of future glory would undermine His nature were they to come to pass.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

Outnumbered IX

 What came next for Micaiah is no surprise. He likely expected it, although it’s kind of odd that the guy who fashioned iron horns for himself seemed to be most offended of all. If you go through all the trouble of making a fool of yourself, at least have the decency to be silent when you get called out. It takes boldness and courage for one man to stand against four hundred, knowing that the king was likewise on their side, looking for you to validate them and him. It’s one of those instances that reveals the true nature of a man beyond any words he might speak or outwardly airs he might put on. Micaiah was a faithful servant and, in his obedience to God’s message, understood that divine validation is far more significant than human approval.

Men having no shame and doubling down on their foolishness is not a new malady. It has been around since the beginning of creation because one of the hardest things for an individual is to admit that they were wrong, misled, deceived, or otherwise duped into saying or believing something that was not factually true. And so they dig their heels in and become ever more disjointed and aggressive, trying to defend an indefensible position. Their ego, their pride, and their flesh just won’t allow them to humble themselves, and so they descend into deeper deceptions to maintain their original position.  

1 Kings 22:24, “Now Zedekiah the son of Chenaanah went near and struck Micaiah on the cheek, and said, “Which way did the spirit from the Lord go from me to speak to you?”’

I wonder if Zedekiah was still wearing the horned apparatus when he struck Micaiah on the cheek. It holds no bearing on the overall exchange, but it’s one of those things that’s easy to imagine and chuckle at, given his reaction.

Micaiah did not react in the flesh. He did not hit back, he did not attempt to defend himself, nor did he try to explain what he had seen or give more information than what was previously shared regarding his vision. There was no attempt at convincing Zedekiah or the others that he was indeed a prophet of the Lord or that what he had seen was true. Micaiah’s duty was to deliver the message, not to convince others of its authenticity. Once the message was delivered, his duty was done, and any further discussion on the matter was wholly unnecessary. God will defend His own words. He does so by bringing them to pass, no matter how many stood against His messenger or how vitriolic their reaction to him might have been.

Do your duty. Anything beyond that is God’s territory and not something you should concern yourself with—the how and the when are up to Him. What you must concern yourself with is walking in obedience and being faithful in delivering the messages He speaks to you as He speaks them to you. Micaiah understood this. It wasn’t his first rodeo, and he’d likely been in similar positions before, given the king’s hatred of him.

I wonder if, during their previous encounters, after having spoken a word of warning or repentance to him, Ahab went to his four hundred prophets to inquire of the Lord whether what Micaiah had said was true. I likewise wonder how many of them pandered to the king, hoping to gain his favor, and assured him that Micaiah was making a mountain out of a molehill and that the Lord saw his heart and intentions or that He understood the weakness and frailty of man.

If you’re looking to circumvent the authority of God, you’re bound to find someone who will give you license to do so. The same goes for the Word as well. The caveat is that you won’t be able to use their words to justify rebellion when standing before the Almighty because a thousand men may say something different, but if God said it, that is the barometer and the standard to which we must adhere.

‘God said’ should suffice in every instance. Well, so and so said this and that, but what did God say? But you don’t understand. This person has a doctorate in theology and is reimagining scripture for a modern audience. All well and good, but what did God say? See how that works? You choose what you allow into your heart, you choose what you allow into your mind, you choose what you feed your spiritual man, and if it’s not the truth and the word of God, the more time passes, the more the truth and the Word will seem foreign to you.

It becomes like trying to drink lemonade after eating a bag of Oreos. Your palate becomes so accustomed to the sugar that even though the lemonade is not tart or bitter, it seems so because of what you previously ingested. The truth of God’s word seems bitter to some because they’ve been subsisting on a steady diet of fluff and self-centered, self-obsessed, self-adulating, self-aggrandizing drivel that convinced them that they were the center of the universe, and God exists to serve them, rather than the inverse.

Ahab had surrounded himself with lying liars, and when he heard the truth, it grated and felt foreign to him.

1 Kings 22:25-28, “And Micaiah said, “Indeed, you shall see on that day when you go into an inner chamber to hide!” So the king of Israel said, “Take Micaiah, and return him to Amon the governor of the city and to Joash the king’s son; and say, ‘This says the king: “Put this fellow in prison, and feed him with bread of affliction and water of affliction, until I come in peace.” But Micaiah said, “If you return in peace, the Lord has not spoken by me.” And he said, “Take heed, all you people!”’

One of the most fascinating things to me when it comes to the prophets of the Old Testament and the things they had to endure for speaking a true word from the Lord is their reaction to the manner in which they were treated for it. Micaiah didn’t try to defend himself, protest, plead his case, or insist that he was being put in prison for nothing more than doing as Ahab had asked.

If you expect a world full of lies to reward you for speaking the truth, you’ve got another thing coming. You speak the truth fully expecting to be hated, maligned, villainized, and made to seem less than human by the godless who receive your words like nails on a chalkboard. Even among what you suppose are God’s people, you will find those who will react as those of the world because, lest we forget, Zedekiah was considered a prophet of the Lord along with the other 399, and he was the one who mocked, then proceeded to slap Micaiah across the cheek for daring to go against the grain. This is the inevitable path of those who speak the truth.  

In moments such as these, don’t look to men to defend you because only God can. Micaiah’s answer was straightforward, without a hint of trying to keep himself from being imprisoned or defending himself personally. If what I said would happen doesn’t happen, then I didn’t hear from the Lord. The proof is in the pudding. It always is, and no matter how many voices said otherwise or insisted that it could not be so for one reason or another, you know the Lord has spoken a thing when it comes to pass.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

Outnumbered VIII

 Whether it’s an individual or a nation living in rebellion and disobedience, it would go against God’s nature of righteousness and holiness to speak good things to them via his prophets or promise them victory of any sort while they remain far from Him.

Very few tackle the next few verses of this passage because they are unsettling, causing distress in the minds and hearts of those who know they are living lives unworthy of the name of Jesus yet desire to hear a word from the Lord, especially if it’s complementary and promises victory, abundance, breakthrough, or favor.

The text is plain; it’s in the Book, and uncomfortable as its implications might be, we must contend with it and take it at face value. Not only is the following passage devastating for those who live lukewarm, duplicitous lives yet expect a true word from the Lord, but it also dispels the narrative that God is in heaven all by His lonesome, just looking for a friend, any old friend, to pass the time and help Him with His tangled beard.

In their attempt to elevate their status, some have taken to stripping God of His majesty, making Him out to be a lonely old man with a white beard, sitting on a throne, doing much of nothing except for pining over stiff-necked and rebellious children who want nothing to do with Him.

Why is it that every time one of these modern-day prophetesses describes their experience with being translated into the holy of holies, it’s always akin to the dorky kid asking the cool kids why they don’t want to play with him? Their version of God always seems to lack some understanding and needs their specific input on how to run the universe He spoke into being. Thank goodness a lady with pink hair or the one with the nose ring came along to set God straight and tell Him what’s what. Imagine the mess we’d be in if they hadn’t been teleported to heaven via a porta-potty for a confab with the Almighty.

You’re just jealous because they got to go to heaven, and you didn’t. I’m good, actually. Vain imaginations are just that. Both vain and imaginations. It’s that bunches of people are buying what these frauds are selling that’s the troubling part.

Micaiah had a vision of the Lord, and what he describes is very different from what modern-day soothsayers describe. God wasn’t all by His lonesome doing Sudoku out of sheer boredom; He wasn’t pacing back and forth in the halls of heaven, not knowing what to do with Himself. Micaiah had a vision of God in His glory and majesty, with all the host of heaven standing by on His right hand and on His left.

1 Kings 22:19-23, “Then Micaiah said, “Therefore hear the word of the Lord: I saw the Lord sitting on His throne, and all the host of heaven standing by, on His right hand and on His left. And the Lord said, “Who will persuade Ahab to go up, that he may fall at Ramoth Gilead?” So one spoke in this manner, and another spoke in that manner. Then a spirit came forward and stood before the Lord, and said, “I will persuade him.” The Lord said to him, ‘In what way?’ So he said, ‘I will go out and be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.’ And the Lord said, ‘You shall persuade him, and also prevail. Go out and do so.’ Therefore look! The Lord has put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these prophets of yours, and the Lord has declared disaster against you.”’

Although there is enough to unpack in these four verses to last us through the end of the year, I will resist the impulse to do a deep dive into this interaction between the Lord and His host regarding the fate of Ahab and succinctly go through some of the most relevant bullet points.

First, Ahab was weighed and found wanting. God had already judged him for his unwillingness to repent. Whether an individual or a nation requires restoration or salvation, the prerequisite for God’s intervention is always repentance. You can think yourself in the best position possible, with all the money in the world and all the safety nets that money can afford, but if your heart is in rebellion, if you are walking in disobedience, none of it matters until your heart is put aright.

We keep hearing that God is going to bless and restore America from various voices on various platforms, but never once do you hear those self-same voices call for humble repentance or a return to the tenets that once made this nation the envy of the world. A nation cannot prosper without God. That’s the reality we are soon to learn intimately.

No individual or group of individuals is smart enough to bypass repentance and achieve what can only be achieved through repentance and obedience. They can talk a good game, plot, plan, and scheme, have projections, and take all sorts of measures to make their dream a reality, but if God’s hand is not in it, it will crumble and fall short every time.

Ahab had refused repentance, and now judgment was upon him. All the words his prophets had spoken over him were the result of a lying spirit that went out encouraging him to go to battle against the Syrians so that he might meet his end.

It was not the Spirit of God that went out to put a lying spirit in the mouths of Ahab’s prophets; it was a spirit who volunteered for the task. Second, Micaiah called the four hundred men Ahab’s prophets, not God’s. It’s an important distinction, lest we confuse what occurred.

They were Ahab’s prophets. Four hundred yes men who would regurgitate the desires of the king back to him and give him their seal of approval for whatever purpose he desired. They were not God’s men, nor were they God’s prophets, and as such, the spirit that went forth was able to put a lying word in their mouths.

God doesn’t allow for false words to be put in the mouths of true prophets, but false prophets are fair game. A true prophet had warned Ahab repeatedly. He’d brought the word of the Lord to him, and because the words were an offense to his flesh, he rejected them. Now, a spirit was sent forth to put a false word in the mouths of the four hundred, and Ahab lapped it up greedily.

If the word of the Lord is correcting you, admonishing you, and calling you to repent of something, then suddenly, a fresh word that no longer insists upon these things comes from someone else, it’s not that God changed His mind or that He no longer requires humble submission to His will; it’s that one who is not His is speaking a false word into your life to keep you from doing the things the Lord told you to do.

God doesn’t do competing prophecies. He doesn’t offer us the option to choose our own adventure and still end up in the same place. He speaks, and we hear. He commands, and we obey. He leads, and we follow. At least, that’s the way it should work.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.