Job LVIII

 Job’s friends heard of all the adversity that had come upon him and took action. They mobilized, each one coming from his own place, and made an appointed time to come and mourn with him and to comfort him. When we hear of someone’s woes, our reaction to them will tell the tale of our character and virtue. Job’s friends could have heard what happened to him, shrugged their shoulders, thanked the Lord it wasn’t them and continued with their lives. They may have spared him some thoughts and prayers, as has become fashionable in our day and age, but as far as going out of their way and carving out a time in which to come and visit him, they could have easily found excuse upon excuse not to do it.

We have families of our own, businesses to run, things to do, and sheep to shear. It is a horrible thing what happened to Job, but such is life; we wish him well.

The three men held Job in enough esteem and considered him enough of a friend, wherein they put their lives on pause and came to be with him. If your friends, or those you consider your friends, are unwilling to go out of their way to be a comfort in your time of hardship or to mourn with you in your time of mourning, perhaps the relationship is not reciprocal.

There is the comfort friends and family can bring in times of distress, and such comfort is not without its benefits, being as a salve on an open wound, but the comfort others can bring pales in comparison to the comfort God can bring. If you find yourself without friends who are willing to comfort you in your time of hardship, know that God is always willing and able to comfort you beyond what any man can do.

The most difficult time of my life was dealing with my grandfather’s passing, closely followed by my mother’s. It may sound odd to some to put his loss above the loss of my mother, but throughout my life, my grandpa was a constant. He was the person I spent the most time with. My grandpa taught me how to ride a bike, shoot a slingshot, bait a hook, honor God, love the Bible, and even tried to teach me noodling, although that particular skill never took. To my young eyes, he was the coolest grandpa in the village, the only man I’d ever met with a tattoo, which he’d gotten in the Navy. He was my best friend from as early as I can remember, and that carried through pretty much for the rest of my adolescence and into adulthood.

From the age of twelve and well into my twenties, I spent at least nine months out of the year on the road with him, the other three being spent either coming home for a fresh change of clothing or spending just enough time in Fullerton to put the newsletter together. I loved my mother deeply, but my relationship with my grandfather was far deeper, more established, and fleshed out than it was with her. She was busy with working, raising my little brothers, keeping the home, and doing everything else, so as far as spending a lot of time with her one-on-one, that only happened later on in life.

When my grandfather passed, to their credit, friends and family did try to comfort me, but I was inconsolable. Even with having received a word from the Lord that he would be allowed to choose whether he remains or goes on to his reward, the loss was something akin to taking a cheese grater to an open wound.

During that time of grieving, the only thing that brought me comfort was being alone with God and pouring out my heart to Him. It wasn’t so much that the pain of loss went away; rather, it was muted, and the peace of God was an ever-present companion that kept me from despondency. We’ve all experienced loss. We’ve all grieved or mourned the passing of a loved one, and in those moments, the presence of God is a fount of untold comfort.

Although none of us can honestly say we’ve experienced Job-level hardship, we’ve all experienced some sort of difficulty in life. The sun shines on the just and the unjust alike, but what the just have is the presence of God in their lives, something the unjust can never experience unless they humble themselves and repent, thereby becoming just.

Not only did Job’s friends put their lives on hold and come to be a comfort to him, but they also spent seven days and seven nights with him, sitting down on the ground, not speaking one word to him. Could you imagine sitting on the ground for an entire week and not speaking one word? It’s not as though they had cell phones or YouTube to keep them busy; they didn’t have television to make the time pass a bit faster; they didn’t bring books along or do their taxes while they sat; they sat in silence for an entire week.

This shows the depth of love the three friends had for Job. How many people can you think you’d be willing to sit with for seven days and seven nights without uttering one word? Not on a couch or in some comfortable chair, but on the ground, next to someone covered in boils, sitting on an ash pile, unrecognizable from the person you once knew?

If ever there was a question about the affection Job’s friend had for him, their act of kindness and willingness to go beyond what anyone would expect of them should dispel any doubts. They saw his grief was great and knew that no words they could have spoken would have consoled him. Although in a pitiable state, Job did not pity himself or invite the pity of others. He accepted the situation for what it was, never once sinning with his lips.   

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

Job LVII

 True faith and dependence upon God are sustaining. Trusting in His sovereignty removes the burden of second-guessing ourselves or playing the ever-horrendous what could have been game within our minds. I used to do that when I was younger, wondering what would have been had I turned left when I turned right, and realized that it was both wasted time and wasted effort.

The past is the past, the present is the present, and the future is God’s territory. Throughout the years, I’ve learned not to dwell on the past, to live in the present, and to trust God in all things when it comes to the future. I’ve found it’s the only way to be surefooted and retain the joy and peace of God through the ups and downs of life.

It’s easy to get caught up in what will be or what could have been and miss out on what is, fail to live in the present, focus on today, this moment, and what we can do to further the kingdom of God. For the longest time, I was stuck in my own head, not starting a new project for fear of not being around to finish it. I usually don’t write books someone can leaf through in a few hours flat. Most of the books I’ve written are a few hundred pages, and every new book starts with a blank page, the first words, the first paragraph, and the first chapter.

I struggled with this for the longest time until one day, I saw my next-door neighbor planting some trees. His name is Bob, and he is no spring chicken. Bob also had open heart surgery a few years back, so it’s not as though he is in tip-top shape, yet there he was, shovel in hand, digging a hole, planting a tree, and going on to the next.

A Greek proverb that has made its way through the ages says a society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they will never sit. I realized the truth of it and came to terms with the reality that my duty is to run the race faithfully. It is up to God and God alone when I cross the finish line.

The next morning, I started writing again, and six books later, I still haven’t stopped. Sometimes, it’s more about starting something than being bogged down with the question of whether you’ll be around to finish it or not. If God has called you to a work, even if you are fully aware it will not be completed in your lifetime, put your hand to the plow and start doing what God has called you to do. Tomorrow comes with its own problems; it will worry about its own things. We have today, and none of us are guaranteed a tomorrow, but if today is the day I am to meet my maker, I’d like it to be while I am busy doing His work.

I realize full well that, in hindsight, it’s easy to give advice, but there were a good two years when I was just spinning my wheels, and the thought of not being around to finish what I had started haunting me to the point of paralysis. Granted, it was during the time when everyone thought the human race would go extinct from the sniffles, but if it had not been that, it likely would have been something else. I never understood the trope of being self-aware enough to get out of your own way until I did. It was an aha moment, an epiphany of sorts, both profound in its implications and humbling in its simplicity.

Sometimes, you just have to put your head down and put one foot in front of the other without any guarantees other than the knowledge that you’re doing what you’re meant to do. Even when you feel like you’re not making any progress or nothing is coming of it, press on, be diligent, and eventually, you will see it was not for naught.

It’s tempting to put off what you know you’re meant to do until the stars align, and everything clicks into place, until there’s nothing else vying for your time, and you have no worries or concerns. Everyone has their idyllic scene well fleshed out in their mind, mine being a log cabin, a crackling wood fire, the scent of cedar in the air, a hot cup of coffee, with snow gently falling outside the window, quiet, with a pet pug sleeping on a worn carpet at my feet.

I’ve got two rambunctious daughters, no pet pug, and live in a subdivision in Wisconsin. Far from idyllic, but I wake up every morning and do the work. I’ve come to realize that there will never be a perfect time except for that moment to lay aside the concerns and worries about tomorrow and what it will bring and be faithful in the present.

Job received no revelation that eventually things would turn around; an angel did not appear to him, and there was no burning bush or a voice from heaven encouraging him to press on and persevere. He’d lost everything, his health was declining with each passing day, he sat on an ash heap scratching at his boils with a potsherd, and the only thing in his future, as far as the eye could see, was more pain. All that Job had was the moment, that inhalation and exhalation of breath, and in the moment, he chose faithfulness over despondency, integrity over surrender, and trust over bitterness.

When we are anchored in faith, we are not cast to and fro by the storms of life. We remain steadfast even at our lowest, knowing the nature and character of the God we serve and standing on the promise that all things work together for good to those who love God and to those who are called according to His purpose. That’s the critical point many ignore: for all things to work together for good, you must love God. Likewise, you are called according to His purpose and not your own.

Jesus never promised an easy way or a way without trials and testing, but He did declare that He was the only way and the only means by which man can be reconciled to God and be restored to a relationship with Him. There is no other way, and if you love God and are called according to His purpose, know that whatever it is you may be struggling through today, it will work together for good.      

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

Job LVI

 Solomon once wrote that he who walks with wise men will be wise, but the companion of fools will be destroyed. You don’t get to pick your family but you can select your friends. If you find yourself surrounded by fools, it’s nobody’s fault but your own because you chose it, attracted it, and embraced it rather than seek out wise men who would have made you wiser instead.

I cannot boast of a panoply of friends, but the friends I do have, I’ve chosen purposefully. My intent was never to surround myself with yes men or those who would agree with me on every topic, but rather those who would challenge me and, as iron sharpens iron, seek to grow together and hold each other accountable.

One of the worst things a pastor or a preacher can do is surround themselves with sycophants who think they can do no wrong. No, you’re not the second coming of the Messiah, you don’t walk on water, you do have flaws, and it’s good to surround yourself with people who keep you humble.

Some of the biggest scandals within the church of late have come about because rather than love their soul enough to call them out on their sin, the governing body, the elders, deacons, and those with knowledge of the moral failures of their leader, swept it under the rug and pretended as though it never happened. They were more concerned about their paycheck than they were about the spiritual condition of the man in charge, so rather than deal with the festering wound, they set about protecting an image. When your friends, the elder board, or the governing body of any given work are more concerned about image and what exposing sin might mean for the revenue than they are about the truth, it’s a problem that won’t go away.

In hindsight, they all concur that it would have been better to rip off the band-aid and deal with the situation when it arose, but now, months, years, or decades down the line, it’s only gotten worse, deeper, more diseased, and the fallout will be all the greater.

Job was a wise man, and he surrounded himself with wise friends. Teman, the region Job’s friend Eliphaz was from, would later be associated with wisdom itself by none other than God when He queried through Jeremiah whether wisdom was no more in Teman. It had been centuries since the time of Job, and it seems there had been a decline in wisdom in Teman, but during his time, it was a valued and sought-after virtue.

In our modern era, Solomon’s words have been retooled and simplified, wherein the brilliant minds of our day have concluded that you are either the average of the five people you spend the most time with or the better-known adage, show me your friends, and I’ll show you your future, but the genesis of this logical deduction can be traced back to the Proverbs of old, which are included in the Book so many ignore and despise today.

The Bible is a wonderland of wisdom, and more often than not, every epiphany and every quip that resonates, for which men take credit as being the originators of, can be traced back to it in some form or fashion.

It’s no accident that the further a society draws away from Scripture, the less wisdom there is to be found in it. When you do away with the light, when you do away with the Word of God, only darkness and foolishness remain. We can see what society has become in real-time over the last few decades, and the core reason for all this is that we have strayed from God. There is no wisdom to be found in the world or its ways. Every wicked thing that is presented as being the new way to fulfillment and wholeness is discovered to be vapid and substanceless, and those who chased after it, thinking it would make them whole, found themselves more despondent, disjointed, and discombobulated than ever before.

Throughout history, we’ve seen that a renaissance of wisdom began with one man. It didn’t take a village to come together and decide they would pursue it; it took one man whose desire for wisdom was such that he let nothing stand in his way of acquiring it. That desire inspired others, and eventually, there was a movement, a groundswell of souls who were tired of wallowing in the ignorance they’d become accustomed to and hungered for something more. Any quest whose purpose is wisdom will eventually lead to the foot of the cross. It will lead to the Word of God because it is wisdom distilled. The Bible is the source of all wisdom and the only thing we need to be counted among the wise.

There are those who are wise and those who profess to be wise. There is a marked difference between the two, for while the truly wise have their wisdom tethered in truth, in the Word of God and His ways, those professing to be wise become fools trusting in their own wisdom.

Romans 1:22-23, “Professing to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man – and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things.”

This is what your own wisdom gets you: foolishness. All the wretchedness, silliness, foolishness, confusion, and aberrant behavior we are seeing are merely symptoms of the underlying disease. The underlying disease is a departure from godly wisdom for the truth of God’s word and the light of Scripture. The resulting symptoms are readily visible in our modern culture, and until the disease is dealt with, the symptoms will morph, and new variants will appear, all worse than the previous iterations.

Spiritual problems require spiritual solutions. In order for the current problem to even begin to be rectified, we must distance ourselves from those professing to be wise when they are demonstrable fools and return to the wisdom of the Gospel, submitting to it and doing as it commands. We have the prescription, but simply having the prescription will do nothing to alleviate the disease. We must take the medicine that is the Word of God and allow it to purify us from within. Am I preaching to the choir? Perhaps, but I’ve seen far too many seemingly stable believers go off into the weeds, believing things the Bible never speaks of and finding their faith shipwrecked as a consequence.   

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.