Job LXXXIV

Eliphaz never said the Lord showed him, told him, or revealed to him that Job had sinned. The entirety of his dream and the words the spirit he saw spoke were innuendo. Using human reason alone, what the spirit in his dream said to Eliphaz made sense. If God charges His angels with error, how much more those who dwell in houses of clay, whose foundation is in the dust, who are crushed before a moth? You’d have to be some kind of special in order to attain something so out of reach as being upright in the sight of God, wouldn’t you? Indeed, this is why God singled Job out among his contemporaries as being blameless and upright, and although Satan was fully aware of this, he still attempted to use Job’s friends to weary him and sow doubt in his heart.

It’s so nefarious and evil that only the father of lies could come up with such a plan.

There are two major and often overlooked takeaways from the fourth chapter of the book of Job, the first being that the devil never gives up, no matter how many times he fails. It is why we are commanded, and repeatedly so, that we must be watchful, on guard, sober-minded, and ever aware of the enemy’s plots and schemes.

When Satan had no more appeals before God, having taken everything from Job apart from his life, he resorted to using those close to him and attempted to coerce them on the off chance that he might relent to their counsel when his own machinations did not play out the way he hoped they would.

First came the wife insisting that Job should curse God and die, be done with the pain and the torment of mourning the loss of his children, and sitting on an ash heap scratching at himself with a potsherd; then he went to his friends, going so far as to appear to Eliphaz in a dream in the hope of shaking Job’s resolve and making him wonder what he’d done or what sin he’d committed for having been brought so low.

It was easy for him to accomplish this with Eliphaz because he was just reinforcing Eliphaz’s confirmation bias in that he’d already concluded that none perish being innocent. The enemy will often use what seems right to a man to undermine the plan of God or at least to attempt it. He will even go so far as to put a false word in the mouths of those who deem themselves prophets or give false dreams, as was the case with Eliphaz.

He is a master at twisting Scripture to accomplish his ends, including his attempt to tempt Christ into throwing Himself from the pinnacle of the temple, reminding Him of what was written regarding being caught by the angels so that His foot would not dash against a stone. The devil is shameless in his attempts to deceive and will go to any lengths to get his way. The only means by which we can defend against this is to resist him and know the Word of God for ourselves so that when he attempts to twist it, we recognize it for what it is.

The second major takeaway is that the devil isn’t above using anyone and everyone around you, whether friend or family, in his attempt to sow doubt in your heart or shake your faith in the sovereignty of God. Whether it’s a friend, a spouse, or someone you tend to confide in, Satan is quick to try and finagle his way into their hearts and attempt to steer their thoughts in such a manner wherein when they open their mouth and give counsel, it is hurtful, destructive, and counterproductive within the context of the situation you find yourself in.

As with all things, many who have no desire for the truth will exploit this reality and resist the Word, insisting that it doesn’t bear witness to their current state, but we cannot ignore the overarching truth that Job had committed no sin and had remained blameless and upright. Calling out sin and accusing someone of a sin they have not committed are two very different things.

When the counsel you feel compelled to give is contrary to Scripture, then by definition, it is not godly counsel, and you must assess where the compulsion originated from and resist verbalizing it. Conversely, when you are offered counsel that goes against the Word of God, even if said counsel might seem well-reasoned, it is your duty to reject it because it contravenes Scripture. We get in trouble when we accept advice from those around us that directly opposes the Word because, at the moment, it makes us feel validated or in the right.

I’ve seen more relationships, marriages, and friendships fall apart because a third party thought they knew better and gave advice that was wholly focused on the flesh, on feelings, and on some momentary perceived victory than anything spiritual, long-lasting, and conciliatory.

It is wisdom itself to know when to reject unwise counsel, even if it is well-intentioned or comes from a good place. After Jesus had informed His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem, suffer many things, be killed, and be raised on the third day, Peter took Him aside and rebuked Him.

“Far be it from You, Lord, this shall not happen to You!” This was Peter’s reproof, and I don’t doubt that it came from a good place. He didn’t want to see Jesus suffer or die, and he thought he was encouraging and positive in his rebuke. Christ’s answer was direct and to the point, however, because He understood that in that moment, the enemy was attempting to use Peter to sow doubt in His heart: “Get behind Me, Satan! You are an offense to Me, for you are not mindful of the things of God, but the things of men.”

Peter was still Peter, but Satan was using him. While I don’t recommend using the same response with a spouse or a friend, there are more tactful ways of delivering the same message. Just because someone’s counsel comes from a good place, it doesn’t make it godly. Just because they have good intentions as far as what they’re insisting you should do, it doesn’t mean it’s what God intends for you to do.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

Job LXXXIII

 At first glance, using only human reason and earthly understanding, Eliphaz may have the right of it. No man is perfect, and all have fallen short. Whether by commission or omission, we’ve erred, and he couldn’t possibly know that God had evaluated Job’s life and found him blameless. Again, conventional wisdom and godly wisdom don’t often coincide, and more often than not, they are at odds with each other.

Isaiah reminds us that God’s ways are not our ways, and His thoughts are not our thoughts. If they were, it could only mean one of two things. Either God is human, or we are gods, and neither is true. Being a bride does not make you the groom, and being a creation does not make you the Creator. The mental gymnastics some men go through to conclude that they are more than God created them to be is mind-boggling and leads to all manner of deception wherein they conclude that they are on even footing with the Almighty Himself.  

Much later, Paul would conclude that it is within God’s purview to choose the foolish things of the world and use them as a means to confound or put to shame the wise and, likewise, the weak things to put to shame the mighty.

The potter cannot be molded. The potter does the molding. It takes a certain level of humility to accept this and live accordingly, allowing Him to mold us as He sees fit without resisting it or thinking we are entitled to more.

Where Eliphaz and Job’s other two friends erred is that they approached the situation with already established presuppositions. This is why twists in movies or novels have such a great impact on the individual. You presume you know how it’s going to play out, from start to finish, and then something unexpected happens that shakes the foundations of what you thought you knew. Whether who you assumed to be the main character dies in the first act, or the supposed hero does something unheroic and rather than defend his homestead hides in the cellar shaking with fear, it disorients the viewer or the reader to the point that they are uncertain of how the rest of the story will play out.

If no two snowflakes are identical, then no two situations are identical either. Every time you approach someone in trouble, going through hardship, or dealing with loss, you must do so with a clean slate, without the burden of presupposing that you’ve seen this kind of thing before, you know what caused it, and you can rightly judge it based on previous experiences.

There can be a multitude of reasons as to why your engine is making that noise, but you remember that one time when it was clattering because you were low on oil, so you add some oil and go about your day only to have your engine die in the middle of the highway because it wasn’t more oil you needed, it was your timing belt going the way of all things.

We presume, and we assume because it’s in our nature to do so. Having gone through life and lived similar experiences, our natural inclination is to conclude that we know the reasons behind it, even though it’s just a guess, an assumption, a conclusion drawn on nothing more than the possibility of what something may be, rather than the reality of what it is.

Job’s friends assumed he had sinned and was being judged by God because every other instance in which they’d encountered similar circumstances had been because the individual had sinned.

It’s easy to stand in judgment of others when they’re going through hardships and drawing baseless conclusions, but when it’s your turn to go through some fiery trial or another, you expect those you’ve judged to show grace, mercy, understanding, and compassion.

Matthew 7:1-2, “Judge not, that you not be judged. For with what judgment you judge, you will be judged; and with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you.”

Granted, these verses have been abused, taken out of context, used to justify sin, and all manner of vice even though that’s not what Jesus meant by them, but the underlying truth of it still holds and is applicable to this day.

Jesus never said to ignore sin within the church or turn a blind eye to something you see as wrong or unscriptural, but rather, not to jump to conclusions and assume we know the whole of the situation when we only know it in part.

Job 4:12-21, “Now a word was secretly brought to me, and my ear received a whisper of it. In disquieting thoughts from the visions of the night, when deep sleep falls on men, fear came upon me, and trembling, which made all my bones shake. Then a spirit passed before my face; the hair on my body stood up. It stood still, but I could not discern its appearance. A form was before my eyes; there was silence; then I heard a voice saying: ‘Can a mortal be more righteous than God? Can a man be more pure than his Maker? If He puts no trust in His servants, if He charges His angels with error, how much more those who dwell in houses of clay, whose foundation is in the dust, who are crushed before a moth? They are broken in pieces from morning till evening; they perish forever, with no one regarding. Does not their own excellence go away? They die, even without wisdom.’”

Eliphaz does not relent in his assertion that Job must have sinned or done something displeasing in the sight of God but doubles down and gets spiritual about it. He speaks of a dream he had, wherein a spirit passed before him, and a form was before his eyes; then the spirit spoke and began to ask leading questions reminiscent of the serpent in the garden asking Eve whether God had really said they must not eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

It’s worth noting that Eliphaz never insisted it was the Spirit of the Lord, rather a spirit, faceless and without discernable appearance, but since it echoed what he already presupposed, he received it as such.

We get a snapshot of how devious Satan is in the questions he poses to Eliphaz. Satan knew Job was a righteous man who feared God and shunned evil. He’d proven it repeatedly by holding fast to his integrity and not sinning against God, yet here he was, whispering into Eliphaz’s ear, can a mortal be more righteous than God? Can a man be more pure than his Master?

Satan was inferring that Job couldn’t be as righteous as he seemed because no man could be as such when you come right down to it. He knew the truth of it. He knew better, yet you can never expect the devil to be an honest arbiter or tell the truth. As is the case with most politicians today, the truth is situational at best when it comes to Satan, and he will twist it, distort it, butcher it, omit it, or reimagine it to further his goals.     

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

Job LXXXII

 Job 4:8-11, “Even as I have seen, those who plow iniquity and sow trouble reap the same. By the blast of God they perish, and by the breath of His anger they are consumed. The roaring of the lion, the voice of the fierce lion, and the teeth of the young lions are broken. The old lion perishes for lack of prey, and the cubs of the lioness are scattered.”

Job’s friend believed that his situation was a direct result of something he’d done or some sin he’d committed. He interpreted Job’s testing to be punishment, and in order for a just God to dish out punishment, the individual must have committed some grievous act for which punishment was warranted.

Eliphaz’s understanding of how things work was more akin to karma than it was to how the God of all things, He who created the seen and unseen realms alike, operates. If you plow iniquity and sow trouble, that’s what you’ll reap. Do good, and good will come to you. What’s the saying the hippies have? You get back whatever you put out into the world! Good vibes, brother. I’m not saying you should be going around kicking kittens and stealing children’s lunches when they aren’t looking. Yes, you should strive to be noble, virtuous, kind, empathetic, and helpful, but the reason for being these things shouldn’t be the expectation of some mystical exchange of kind for kind, but because it’s the right thing to do.

It’s the reason many believers find themselves in the perfect environment for bitterness to sprout and grow in their hearts. They fall for the promises of charlatans wherein not only are they to expect kind for kind but they’re also told to expect a return on their investment here on earth. It started with the hundredfold return and worked its way up to the thousand-fold return. I mean, who’d pass up that kind of deal? Give a dollar to the sweaty man in the silk suit and gold rings on his fingers, and in no time flat, you’ll get back a thousand. 

Even though they knew of his integrity and that he was a man who feared God and shunned evil, because of their preconceived notion that God would not allow tragedy to befall someone had they not transgressed, Job’s friends concluded that there had been some hidden sin he was guilty of that brought this travail upon him. Since you’re in a spot of trouble, then you must have sown these things at some point. This was Eliphaz’s conclusion because he did not have the mind of God, nor did he understand that their ways differed fundamentally.

The inconsistency between what people in the West are being told they should expect once they become believers and what those of the body of Christ are enduring in regions of the world and entire continents has always been present. What has changed in recent years is that those of the West who glut themselves on fineries and live a life of such duplicity that the devil doesn’t even bother with them are looking down their noses and condemning those currently being persecuted, accusing them of not having enough faith to speak the persecution away and bring on themselves riches and prosperity. It would seem Eliphaz had sons and daughters, and they had sons and daughters, too, and most of them migrated to the West and became members of mega-churches. They assume it’s lack of faith that has brought hardship upon believers in other lands and not the refining of their faith.

Conventional wisdom isn’t always beneficial. When we try to apply conventional wisdom to spiritual things, we often err and, in so doing, position ourselves in opposition to the will and word of God. That we’ve been trying for the past half-century to fuse the two, insisting that they are interchangeable, has only served to confuse and distract the average Christian from pursuing the righteousness of God, refocusing their passions from the things above to the things of this earth anew.

The constant onslaught of prosperity preaching, prosperity thinking, and prosperity living is not as innocuous as some might hope because it redefines and reimagines what it is to be a servant of God, thereby making us bristle and resist every time the testing of the Lord comes upon us, and we do not experience the easy, carefree life we were promised by those we deem to be honest arbiters of the Word, and ambassadors of Christ upon the earth.

When we take a personal opinion or a personal conviction and attempt to generalize it, broad-brushing the entirety of Christendom and insisting that they make it the salvific issue it’s not, we are no better than Job’s friends, who, having started out trying to comfort him, ended up insisting that he’d done something to cause this calamity to come upon him.

If it’s not a salvific issue, don’t make it a salvific issue. If you are ignorant of all the details or only see a piece of the puzzle before you and not the whole, don’t assume that you know what you’ve not been given to know or sit in judgment of someone because it’s not your place.

Job had not sinned. God said as much. Neither with his lips nor his actions, yet here were his friends insisting that he had. While Eliphaz was the first to address Job, he would not be the last, and as we dive into the words they spoke to Job, we can see the difference in their temperament coming to the fore.

By his words and inferences, we can discern that Eliphaz was a moralist through and through. For him, life was black and white, cut and dry, and the entire foundation of his discourse was that the righteous man prospers, and the sinner suffers. Do good, and good will come to you. Do evil, and you will reap evil. It’s the theory of reward or recompense in its simplest form. He could not allow that something beyond his understanding could be taking place in Job’s life or that God had allowed these things to happen to him for some other reason than that of punishment.

If you’ve ever had a friend like Eliphaz, then you know the sting of such a reproach, wherein knowing yourself to have committed no sin or done something displeasing to God, they insist that it has to be the reason, and there could be no other.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

Job LXXXI

 Even though he started out in a conciliatory fashion, Eliphaz’s tone quickly shifted, and though the question wasn’t asked outright, the subtext was clear: What did you do? It had to have been something grievous. It had to have been something so horrendous as to stir the anger of God Himself. Remember now, who ever perished being innocent? Ergo, you cannot be innocent since you are perishing!

Since the upright is never cut off, and you have been, is it perhaps because you were no longer upright? These were not words spoken in haste. Eliphaz had seven days of silence to work through his thought process, and because he’d never seen someone in such torment without being able to point to their lack of uprightness, he assumed it was the case with Job.

It’s one thing for someone to realize that their sin has brought them to a low place and robbed them of their health, their peace, and their joy. It’s another thing entirely to know you’ve remained blameless and unspotted by sin and yet endure the things Job was enduring. If not for absolute trust in the sovereignty of God, no man could withstand what Job was going through, including Job.

That we serve a good God must be a fundamental truth we not only acknowledge but embrace and allow to take root in the depth of our hearts. The assurance of His goodness and faithfulness, the unshakeable belief that whatever it is we are going through is working a good thing in us, must be the ever-present reality we reside in. God isn’t good just some of the time, or when He pours out blessings upon us, but is so even in the season of trial and purification. God never ceases to be good. It is a constant. He never ceases to be loving. It is His nature.

If the theory that our perception of a thing shapes its reality holds true, then how we see the trials of life goes a long way toward shaping how we react to them.  

Both Job’s integrity and reverence for God were such that had he known himself to have sinned, he would have repented and humbled himself in the sight of the Lord. He feared God and shunned evil. He knew God well enough to know that a bruised reed He would not break.

Do I believe Job’s friends were trying to dispirit him? No, they’d invested too much time and put in too much effort to have done it with nefarious intent, but they had yet to encounter someone whose situation and circumstance did not directly correlate to their actions. This was a new experience for them, and in their attempt to puzzle it out, their conclusion was that Job had sinned, and so incurred the wrath of God.

When someone is struggling, even an innocuous, seemingly innocent remark can cause ripples in their heart because they perceive every experience through the prism of their pain and hardship. In their suffering, they become hyper-sensitive and hyper-aware of every word spoken and every action undertaken by those around them. It’s not intentional, at least in most cases it isn’t; it’s the natural reaction of one who has been beaten down into the dust, wondering where the next blow is coming from.

Granted, there are those who revel in victimhood nowadays, who perceive everything in the worst possible light, and attempt to find threads to pull at, whether real or imaginary, but this was not the case with Job, especially given the cultural environment his story transpired in.

It’s the easiest thing in the world to get polemical when we encounter someone who is struggling, being tested, tried, and going through a season of refining. Not only does it make some people feel spiritually superior, but it also justifies their unwillingness to reach into the dust and pull someone out of their pain. It takes more effort to pull someone to their feet and let them lean on you, dirty, broken, and disheveled as they may be, than it does to kick someone when they’re down.

Every time we open our mouths and speak, we make the conscious choice of using a cleaver or a scalpel. Even when correction is valid and warranted, the way in which we deliver it can make the difference between whether one receives it or rejects it altogether. In some instances, all that is required is a salve and some bandages because the wounds are grievous, and making fresh cuts is unwarranted and needlessly cruel.

Be wise in weighing your words because death and life are in the power of the tongue. I’ve seen seemingly well-meaning people do the devil’s job for him once too often to brush off the importance of the words we speak to those who are hurting. I’ve seen what little remained of the light in people’s eyes go out entirely because rather than be comforted in their grief or offered a semblance of hope in their despair, the individual in question chose to pour salt on the wound by the words they spoke.

We’ve all been there. We’ve all been eager to give someone a piece of our mind, set them straight, and tell them what we really think about one thing or another, but if our mind is in conflict with God’s purpose, and our thoughts are not in harmony with His thoughts, it is a far better thing to keep silent and allow for the possibility that we only know one side of the story, and as such are unqualified to pass judgment.

At best, we are operating on partial information. All we can go on is what our eyes see, our ears hear, and precedent relating directly to the circumstance the individual in question is dealing with. It’s not that God may know something you don’t; it’s that God surely does. It is a certainty beyond doubt, and using wisdom and humility when dealing with friends, family, brothers, or sisters in Christ who are going through hardship is paramount if our desire is to be a comfort and a voice of reason.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

Job LXXX

 Give credit where credit is due. Job’s friends sat with him in silence for seven days, then listened as he poured out the travail of his heart without interrupting him or trying to stimmy him, but now, Eliphaz the Temanite took up the charge and addressed him. Even so, his first question was, “If one attempts a word with you, will you become weary?”

It’s evident that Job’s friends respected him, not so much through their words but through their actions. Even when planning to push back on Job’s words, Eliphaz deferred to him in a manner reminiscent of a little brother attempting to broach a difficult subject with an older one.

It’s likewise evident that these friends had a long history and knew of each other’s exploits because the first thing Eliphaz attempts to remind Job of was all the times he’d instructed others and strengthened weak hands. Job had not insulated and isolated himself. He’d not removed himself from the lives of those around him even though he’d been the greatest of all the people of the East. He’d neither looked down on his contemporaries nor had an air of superiority about him because of his wealth, but throughout his years, his words had upheld he who was stumbling, and he’d strengthened the feeble knees.

Now it was his turn to be on the receiving end of encouragement, of strengthening, of needing his hands to be strengthened, and it was a new and uncomfortable position for him to be in. Within any family or congregation, there will be those who are always encouraging and those constantly in need of encouragement. If you think on it for any length of time, you can readily divide the people you know into one of these two groups.

And this is where I can obfuscate or generalize, and it would be easier for me to do it, but I must admit I’m one of the people in the former category for whom it is very difficult to ask for help, accept help, or admit that I need encouragement on occasion. No, it has nothing to do with toxic masculinity, a modern-day contrivance meant to feminize men to the point of androgyny, or some ever-present need to be a rock for everyone around me; it’s just how it’s always been, and I’ve gotten accustomed to it to the point of being uncomfortable in any other role.

It’s not something I signed up for or volunteered for, but rather something I fell into from a young age. Being the first to learn English in my family when we first came to America, I was always called upon to be the fixer. Whether calling the electric company for an explanation about an uncommonly large bill or dealing with insurance agents after someone hit our car in a parking lot, signing my brothers up for the lunch program at school, or translating my grandfather’s life story, whenever there was a problem, Mike was expected to be an integral part of the resolution even though he was not yet a teenager at the time.

It forced me to forfeit a childhood and grow up before my time, but sometimes, you don’t have a choice in how your life plays out; you just hang on for the ride and hope it’s not too bumpy. I didn’t mind it then, and I don’t mind it now, but it has made me almost incapable of being vulnerable enough to show it when I need encouragement. Somehow, my wife always knows, but wives always do. Other than her, and perhaps my little brother on occasion, no one can tell.

When the ones always doing the encouraging come to the point of needing encouragement themselves, it can be discombobulating and odd because they’ve never been on that side of the aisle. They’ve never needed to hear words of encouragement, or having to have their hands strengthened, and the idea of depending on the strength of others because their own strength has failed them is foreign to them.

As the song goes, everybody needs somebody sometimes, and for some of us, the hardest part is acknowledging the need and having the requisite humility to allow someone to meet it. It’s not as though Job could wave off his friends and insist it wasn’t as bad as it looked. He’d already poured his pain out before them, so now all he could do was sit and listen.

Given that Job’s friends were just as in the dark about why he was going through the trial he was going through as he was, they’d concluded that Job had done something to stir the ire of God against him or that he had sinned. It’s the conclusion most people jump to when they hear of someone’s misfortune or hardship, and they’re quick to voice their opinion whenever called upon to do so. More often than not, they’ll voice their opinion even if no one asked for it because they deem their wisdom indispensable.

Granted, there are situations people go through as a direct consequence of their sin or rebellion, but that is neither a trial nor a test. It’s the crossroad where actions meet the consequences thereof, and what many who get exposed try to do is repurpose their sin and call it a trial in the hope of garnering sympathy.

Because they had never run across someone who had been brought so low as to curse the day of their birth, nor someone for whom their situation was not the direct result of their sinful ways, Job’s friends assumed there was some hidden sin he had yet to confess, or something he’d done which had angered God to the point of causing him to sit on an ash heap and scratch at himself with a potsherd.

Assuming that you know the reason behind someone’s trial is akin to declaring yourself to be omniscient, and we know that only God is all-knowing because His word says as much. What’s worse is that oftentimes, we are so certain of our conclusion that even when it is proven to be wrong, we nevertheless cling to it because we think admitting otherwise would somehow diminish us. If you’ve ever wondered how a self-righteous, sanctimonious, self-aggrandizing, and unloving spirit has its genesis, now you know.

Just because we see someone going through a fiery trial, we cannot automatically assume they have sinned or rebelled against God. It’s a lesson worth learning and applying lest others assume likewise when we ourselves are being tested.  

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

Job LXXIX

 Job 4:1-7, “Then Eliphaz the Temanite answered and said: “If one attempts a word with you, will you become weary? But who can withhold himself from speaking? Surely you have instructed many, and you have strengthened weak hands. Your words have upheld him who was stumbling, and you have strengthened the feeble knees; But now it comes upon you, and you are weary; It touches you, and you are troubled. Is not your reverence your confidence? And the integrity of your ways your hope? Remember now, who ever perished being innocent? Or where were the upright ever cut off?”

Not every problem has a simple solution, and not every question has a simple answer. Life is messy. You can’t just wrap it up in a nice little bow, throw some mantra or daily affirmation stickers on it, and walk around with a glazed look in your eyes and a goofy smile on your face. We’ve gotten used to expecting resolutions to the most complex of problems in sixty minutes flat because if the TV show I’ve been watching can manage to track the killer to Alaska from a nose hair he left at the scene after unthinkingly flicking a booger, why can’t all of life’s problems be as easy to solve?

We’re taken aback when the good guy doesn’t show up to save the damsel in distress because that’s what happens in the movies. It may be that, in some cases, life imitates art, but in others, it couldn’t be further from the truth. We’ve seen enough to know that you can’t always bank on human compassion, decency, empathy, or selflessness. The more time passes, the worse it gets, and there have been instances when, rather than helping someone floundering out of a lake or getting them out of the road once they’ve been hit by a car, the bystanders do nothing more than pull out their phones and film it. We’ve gotten so used to people documenting tragedy, whether for posterity or their ghoulish desire to replay it for friends and strangers alike, that their absence of humanity in those situations no longer registers.

We keep beating our chests, insisting that we are the most caring, compassionate generation to ever grace the face of the earth, but facts prove otherwise. Our humanity is stripped away daily, replaced by callousness, selfishness, and entitlement, to the point that as long as I get mine, it doesn’t matter how many people it hurts as a consequence.

The only segment of the population to have retained their empathy throughout our decline of humanity has been the household of faith, not because we were inherently different people than those of the world but because we’ve been transformed into the image of Christ, who is the prototype of what the pinnacle of the human experience ought to be. To be more like Jesus is to be less like the world.

While the world covets what they do not have, we are thankful for every grace that has been given to us, knowing from whose hand it comes. While the world is obsessed with acquiring ever more, whether it’s fame, fortune, accolades, or influence, we are content and satisfied with desiring only more of God. We are different because we can’t help but be different. We are a peculiar people to those of the world because what animates and energizes them is not so with us, and what drives us is different than what drives them.

If we have been set apart, plucked from the darkness of sin, and brought into His glorious light, then our actions, aspirations, and desires must be different than those of the world by the very nature of what we have become in Him.

When you see a self-professing vegan chowing down on a steak every time you run into them, you’re forced to conclude that they’re either lying about their veganism or they don’t know what it means to be a vegan. The same goes for self-professing Christians in whom there is no discernable difference from the godless they associate with except for the fish sticker on their car. They’re either lying to themselves, or they don’t know what it means to be redeemed, reborn, saved, and sanctified.

Verbal consent that you received Jesus without denying yourself, picking up your cross, and following after Him, allowing Him to mold you, sculpt you, and renew your mind and heart, only means that you spoke a lie.

There are no caveats or carveouts to committing your way unto the Lord and following where He leads you. You can’t say you will follow only so long as where He leads is where you intended to go in the first place. Your destination, desire, and will do not start out in harmony with His. It is as you consistently submit and obey Him that they begin to harmonize, and your will no longer has sway, but the desire of your heart is that His will be done in all things.

In all things, Jesus served as an example for us. He was not of the do as I say, not as I do school of thought, and so throughout His ministry, He made Himself an example for us and the ideal we should aim to emulate. Thrice He prayed in the garden of Gethsemane for the cup to pass from Him if it were possible, and each time, He ended with “not as I will but as You will, Father.”

If Jesus deferred and submitted to the will of the Father regarding something so soul-wrenching as death by crucifixion, why do we have such a difficult time submitting to His will regarding far less strenuous things in our lives? It’s not as though His desire is to needlessly hurt us or cause us harm but rather to purify us and sculpt us ever more into His likeness.

It’s never the spiritual man that bristles at God’s correction or despises His chastening. It’s always the flesh because it knows that with every iteration of God’s reproof, it will become that much weaker and less able to assert dominance or influence over the individual. The flesh isn’t being magnanimous or kind-hearted when it tries to circumvent the chastening of God; it’s trying to protect its power and influence. It’s whispering sweet nothings in your ear while planning your destruction. Do not give heed to your flesh, for it will always seek to draw you away from God.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

Job LXXVIII

 I woke up with a thought I just can’t shake: If God allowed Job to be tested to the point of wishing he were never born, while by God’s standard, he was a blameless and upright man, what will be the lot of those who reject Him, despise Him, mock Him, and trample the Son of God underfoot? It is a fearful thing to consider.

By his own admission, Job had played the what-if game in his mind, and now his worst fears had come to life. Satan had been given leeway to the point of touching everything in Job’s life, including his flesh, and he’d gone about the task with the ferocity of a predator bent on destroying its prey. His goal was to prove God wrong, and the only way he could accomplish this was by putting enough pressure on Job so as to make him curse God, deem Him unjust, or sin with his lips. All three would have been preferable, but had he gotten Job to do just one of these things, Satan would have considered it a win.

The enemy knows your weaknesses. He knows your pressure points and the sensitive areas of your life that could be exploited and picked at. If you say you have no weaknesses, you’re fooling yourself and making for easier prey. Rather than play at hyper-spirituality, our time would be better spent identifying those areas in our lives that need shoring up and proceeding to do it diligently and without delay.

Satan knows what makes you tick. He knows your deepest fears and preys upon them, hoping to fuel them and grow them beyond what the situation reasonably calls for. He also knows the things your flesh gravitated toward before you nailed it to the cross. You belonged to him before you belonged to Jesus, and his memory of what had you shackled before you were freed is fresh on his mind. When we underestimate the enemy’s cunning and knowledge of us, we are not as watchful as we ought to be, thereby offering him an opportunity to plant seeds of destruction anew.

Constant vigil is not a suggestion; it’s a command. Jesus commanded us to be watchful and to pray that we might not fall into temptation. This implies that the danger is real, and the constant onslaught of the enemy is something we must be aware of. When we fail to obey the commands and edicts of Christ, we do so at our peril. He told us what we must do to remain steadfast and resolute. It is not one of many options; it is the only option.

Other than Job, there was one other who cursed the day he was born in the entirety of the Bible, and that is Jeremiah, also known as the weeping prophet. Elisha came close, wanting to die but never taking that extra step and cursing the day he was born. Numerically speaking, it’s a small club compared to how many men are highlighted throughout the pages of Scripture. It’s not that Job and Jeremiah were weaker than Samuel, David, Joshua, Elijah, or Daniel, but the level of their testing and depth of their pain was such that they poured out their groaning in the form of a verbalized heart cry.

Some years ago, my grandpa’s brother’s son, Ion, came to visit. That would make him a second uncle, but I’m unsure about family lineages beyond the immediate family. At the time, he pastored the church in our home village, and to the best of my knowledge, he still does. Since it was getting late, I offered to take him to dinner, and he graciously accepted. While waiting for our food to arrive, he shared a story about one of his parishioners, which changed my outlook on how much time I spent praying for others. Her name was Sister Aurica. She was well into her eighties, arthritic, with the bowed back emblematic of anyone who’s been working a field from the time they were old enough to hold a garden hoe.

Every time she came to prayer, she carried her Bible and a notebook under her arm, in which she had lists upon lists of names she would pray for every service. When Ion asked about the notebook and what it was for, she said she was getting on in age and didn’t want to risk forgetting any of the names on her list. When he inquired why she never prayed for herself and always for others, she shrugged and said, “Because I’m selfish, I guess. I’d rather be the one praying for others than be in the position of needing others to pray for me.”

Being called upon to pray for someone is neither a burden nor a chore. It is a grace. If you would have others pray for you in your time of need or testing, then as a fellow brother or sister in Christ, you must reciprocate the action.  

As I’ve said, I don’t know what it’s like to be so beaten down as to curse the day I was born, but I can sympathize. Taking the aggregate of these men’s lives into consideration and the trials they went through, I can’t bring myself to be so brazen or callous as to call them weak. Weakness is when you give up. It’s when you waive the white flag of surrender and stop fighting for what you know to be true and noble. Weakness is cowardice masquerading as tolerance, and rebellion masquerading as inclusion.

Job was not weak, and neither was Jeremiah. They were hurting, in pain, shattered, bruised, weary, and at the end of their tether, but they pressed on, pressed in, and clung to their abiding faith. It’s easy to judge from the outside looking in. Some among us relish the opportunity to do so because it makes us feel superior somehow. We tell ourselves we’d never go so far as to curse the day we were born, no matter what, having never had to endure what Job did. You never know until you know.

Peter thought he was stronger than he was, insisting that even if he had to die for Him, he would never deny Jesus, only to do it thrice a handful of hours later. We can either beat our chests or bow our knees. We can either pray for strength from above or trust in our own. What we come to realize is that our strength is insufficient in such circumstances, while His strength is more than enough.

The trials we could never hope to get through on our own are navigable with God beside us. It doesn’t mean they will be easy or that we won’t be hard-pressed, but by clinging to Him, we are able to make it to shore while others who trusted in themselves never make it through. Friends, family, acquaintances, or your next-door neighbor can only do so much; God can do all things. Men can offer words; God offers peace. Family can be a shoulder to cry on; God wipes away the tears. Make Him the refuge of your heart.

Matthew 11:28-30, “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

Job LXXVII

 Job 3:20-26, “Why is light given to him who is in misery, and lie to the bitter soul, who long for death, but it does not come, and search for it more than hidden treasures; Who rejoice exceedingly, and are glad when they can find the grave? Why is light given to a man whose way is hidden and whom God has hedged in? For my sighing comes before I eat, and my groanings pour out like water. For the thing I greatly feared has come upon me, and what I dreaded has happened to me. I am not at ease, nor am I quiet; I have no rest, for trouble comes.”

We’ve all had some version of the worst-case scenario play on a loop in the back of our minds. Some of us are better at controlling the impulse to freefall into the hypothetical landscape of what the worst day of our lives might look like, while others spend their lives mapping out ever more horrendous scenarios.

I do not live in fear of what may be tomorrow because the God I serve, the Lord and King of my life, is already there making a way for me. Some men are crippled by the fear of what may be or what could be, to the point that they remain static, unmoving, making no progress in their spiritual walk or growing their spiritual man.

I’ve been living with the reality of imminent judgment for forty years now. It is a truth the harbingers of which we are seeing play out before our eyes. Had I allowed fear to dictate my actions, I’d still be digging a spider hole in the backyard and making sure it’s well stocked and ready to be moved into. Fear of tomorrow has no place in the heart of a follower of Christ. Your life is forfeit; it is no longer yours to do as you will, but His to do with as He wills. I can no more control the course my life takes than I can control the course of the Mississippi River.

My singular priority is obedience. If by my obedience I incur the wrath of the godless, so be it. If by my obedience I suffer the loss of material things, so be it. My duty to God isn’t to navigate my way through life in such a way that I don’t ruffle the devil’s feathers or put a target on my back. It is to stand firm on the truth of Scripture, even if it means losing everything.

It’s a sad day indeed when men whose singular responsibility is to rightly divide the Word omit salvific truth for fear of reprisal. Had those of the early church shared this mindset, it never would have gotten off the ground. Rather than come together and pray for boldness, the disciples would have called a meeting to see how they could best appease the Pharisees so as not to be dragged into prison and beaten again.

Acknowledge, accept, and make your peace with the reality that there is a cost to speaking the truth. Understanding that there is a cost, your next step will be your willingness to pay it, full freight, the whole tab, no layaways, discounts, or twelve easy monthly payments. Some men commit to the way, never being told of the cost required but only about the benefits they will incur. If you get someone to raise a hand at a crusade or attend a church under false pretenses, making false promises that will never materialize, not only will they eventually relapse into their old ways, but there will be a layer of bitterness that wraps around their heart because even though they were paying their tithe, their acne didn’t clear, their truck didn’t stop making that weird noise, and their dog didn’t make it past the fifteen-year mark, as promised.

The road is hard, the way is narrow, the enemy is real, trials are ever present, temptations abound, hardships are a given, and being hated and maligned for His name’s sake is par for the course. There’s even a good chance you will be martyred for the sake of Christ at some point in the near future. That’s what you’re signing up for, and anyone who tells you differently is trying to soften the blow in the hope of getting you to sign on.

You can’t trick people into heaven. This isn’t like selling a timeshare where you fail to inform the buyer that their children and their children’s children will be on the hook forevermore and that the low cost is just an introductory offer that expires in six months.

But we need new blood. Most of our attendees won’t be around in ten years, and we have more funerals than baby dedications in our church in a given month. We need to do something to get the numbers up. Lying to people about what they should expect once they receive their membership packet isn’t the way to do it, though.

Rather than try to bait and switch someone into coming to church, why not try something that’s been proven every time it was implemented? Fast and pray as a body, cry out to God for more of Him, stand on the truth of the Gospel without being swayed by sentiment or shifting cultural norms, and declare the name of Jesus as the only way, the only truth, and the only life. Jesus should never be relegated to the position of an extra or someone with a walk-on role whenever we need to pump up the offering numbers. He must be the message, the focus, the one individual whose presence is indispensable every time you come together in fellowship. The permanence of Christ as the head of the body, the chief cornerstone, the Good Shepherd, the risen Lord, and the soon-coming King is non-negotiable.

A congregation can lack talented praise and worship teams, comfortable seating, children’s programs, and even a charismatic preacher, but if they have Jesus, they have everything they need. If, however, Jesus is absent, no matter how structured, well-organized, stylized, and glamorous, they are, by Christ’s own words, wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked. Those in the latter category can pretend to be something other than empty and hollow, but when the rubber meets the road, their true nature is exposed for all to see.  

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

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.