Job LXII

 There is bound to be someone in everyone’s life who is quick to remind them of who they were before they encountered Christ. Whether it’s a misguided attempt to keep you humble or they’re just trying to bring you down a peg, when someone insists on dragging up who you were and inferring that it’s still who you are, your only reaction should be to continue picking up your cross, walking humbly with your Lord, and working out your salvation with fear and trembling.

Trying to convince someone that you’re a different person when they’re set on remembering you as you were, without allowing for the possibility that you are a new creature, is an exercise in futility. They will not see you as God sees you, as having been reconciled to Him, because they don’t want to.

In the early 90s, our ministry funded, participated in, and put on a lot of crusades in Romania. Communism had fallen, the gospel was free to be preached wherever someone would rent you a hall, and it didn’t take a genius to see that the harvest field was plentiful. Since it was not about an individual person but rather about preaching the gospel to the lost and highlighting Jesus, we made use of local pastors and preachers whenever possible. More often than not, my grandfather was there as an auxiliary, either praying for people or passing out Bibles, but as far as the preaching went, he was happy to let the local brethren do the heavy lifting.

On one such night, we were in Tirgu Frumos, back before they fixed the roads a good hour’s drive from Botosani, and we’d just gotten done with a crusade where the local church pastor had preached. He was a man well into his fifties, and just by the look of him, you could tell he had a past. His nose had been broken at some point and hadn’t been set right, likely more than once, since it was ridged and flattened, giving him the look of a bulldog. He was broad-chested, with that hunched-over appearance guys who wrestle tend to adopt, and if not for the light in his eyes, one would be hard-pressed to stay on the same side of the sidewalk if they saw him coming from the opposite direction.

As we were shaking hands and saying our goodbyes, getting ready to go back home, a man walked up to the pastor and poked a finger into his chest.

“What makes you better than me? I remember when we used to get drunk together, and I couldn’t even hold a candle to you; what gives you the right? How do I know this isn’t all a farse? Are we just supposed to take your word that you’ve changed?”

Every couple of words, as if to emphasize his point, the man would poke the pastor in the chest. His voice got progressively louder, and his jabs more violent, but the pastor didn’t move; he didn’t back away or try to constrain the man and his stabbing finger in any way.

 When the man stopped long enough to catch his breath, the pastor looked into his eyes and, in a soft voice, said, “You and I both know that if I were still the man I used to be, you’d have a broken finger and a few less teeth. Now do you want to have a conversation, or do you want to keep poking me in the chest?”

I could see the wheels spinning, the man’s realization that had this now pastor been the man he’d known before, he likely wouldn’t be standing. taking a step back and arching his brows, he said, “I’ll take the conversation if you don’t mind.”

When we surrender, submit, repent, and begin the journey of denying ourselves and picking up our crosses, we’re not simply identifying as Christians; we are becoming Christ-like in every area of our lives. We are being transformed from glory to glory into the image of Christ. If the extent of our Christianity is claiming that we are Christian, while none of the transformation is taking place within and without, we will be counted among those who say Lord, Lord, but whom He never knew.

There is no sin in remembering where we once were and acknowledging how far God has brought us. Every journey has a starting point, even the journey of faith. We don’t look back at the starting line with longing or a desire to return to it but merely to gauge how far we’ve come while keeping our eyes firmly affixed to the finish line.

Even one such as Paul wasn’t shy about owning up to what he had been, admitting in his letter to the Galatians that he once persecuted without mercy the church of God and did his best to destroy it. He could have obfuscated or whitewashed his past, but what would be the point? He was no longer the man he had been, and now, rather than seek to destroy it, he made it his life’s mission to grow the church and comfort the brethren. That’s what God does. That is the transformative power of His presence in the heart of man, and to take that glorious transformation and say it’s no longer required, but that all we need do is say a few words and raise a hand at a crusade is not only foolhardy but unbiblical.

Matthew 7:21-23, “Not everyone who says to me ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’”

What does this have to do with Job? Only that his relationship with God and the faith that he’d built up over the years aided him in weathering the storm when it would have utterly broken any other man and brought them to the point of sinning against God with their lips. It’s who you are in Christ that will give you the strength to abide, endure, and persevere, not who you are in yourself.

It doesn’t matter how tough and strong we think we are in our constitution, how high of a pain threshold we have, or how unaffected we are by the circumstances of life; without God, everyone breaks at some point. With God, however, all things are possible.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.