Job CXXXIII

 There is an undeniable escalation in both insinuation and outright accusation with each of Job’s friends, culminating with Zophar, who could not bear to hear of anything as impossible as Job’s doctrine being pure without calling it out. Given Job’s current state, that notion could not be true, at least as far as Zophar was concerned. He could not reconcile a pure doctrine and uprightness with what Job had been reduced to, and the only viable conclusion in his eyes was that Job had so rebelled against the God he’d served all his life to the point that he was getting less than he deserved.

There’s what men think about you, and there’s what God knows about you. This pendulum tends to swing both ways, wherein individuals who are seen by their contemporaries as pillars of morality and uprightness turn out to be the vilest of hedonists, while men who are walking humbly with their Lord, working out their salvation with fear and trembling, are deemed forsaken and lost. God knows the truth of it all, and it is before His throne that we will stand to face judgment, and not before men.

Our duty is to be pleasing in the sight of the Lord, not fit into some mold men fashion out of whole cloth, then insist we adhere to on pain of eternal damnation. If you don’t adhere to this doctrine, if you don’t practice this thing or that, if you pray with your eyes open, if you don’t belong to this denomination, then you’re not going to heaven, buddy, no matter what the Bible says. I, sister Karen of the church of self-importance and overreaction, have deemed it as such, so you’d better get with the program.

Whenever some newfangled, heretofore unheard of doctrine makes its way to the fore, the first and most important question we must ask is whether God said to do the thing these men demand of us and whether it is confirmed by Scripture. That’s the acid test that every teaching must pass in order to be appropriated, absorbed, and adhered to. If it fails, then it’s a no-go, regardless of who came up with it or how many influential leaders give it their tacit approval.

Do what God says, live as He commands, even if it means putting you in a contrarian position with your contemporaries, because it’s not them that you will one day have to answer to, but to Him. God’s will, above all, should be our baseline mindset, and when this becomes a reality, the way forward becomes clear, and moments of indecision or second-guessing ourselves will well and truly disappear.

Job 11:7-12, “Can you search out the deep things of God? Can you find out the limits of the Almighty? They are higher than heaven – what can you do? Deeper than Sheol – what can you know? Their measure is longer than the earth and broader than the sea. If He passes by, imprisons, and gathers to judgment, then who can hinder Him? For He knows deceitful men; He sees wickedness also. Will He not then consider it? For an empty-headed man will be wise, when a wild donkey’s colt is born a man.”

Some sayings and idioms stand the test of time, others not so much. While we still say it’s raining cats and dogs, I have yet to hear anyone insisting that an empty-headed man will be wise when a wild donkey’s colt is born a man. It doesn’t roll off the tongue, and maybe that’s the problem, but what Zophar was insinuating is that Job was too ignorant to understand the gravity of his sin.

If you can’t see it the way I see it, that just makes you empty-headed, and an empty-headed man being wise is as likely as a wild donkey’s colt being born a man. Not only have you sinned, and gravely so, to the point that your suffering is less than you deserve, but you’re too obtuse to see the sin you committed.

This is usually the last stand of anyone losing an argument or realizing their conclusion is flawed. Well, you just don’t see it the way I see it because you’re too ignorant. This approach usually doesn’t work if it’s one-on-one, the debate coming to a stalemate after each participant gives their point and counterpoint, but it is effective when there is a chorus of voices against one individual.

The reason we often see one individual being isolated and then being piled on by everyone is because it works. It takes a steel spine, will, and determination to be the one person in the crowd going against the grain and standing on principle rather than acquiescing to the mob.

It’s easy enough to get carried away by the rushing waters of compromise and feigned loyalty that has become common practice among many today. In doing so, you’ll always be in the majority, feeling as though you belong, but the purpose of we who are as strangers in a strange land isn’t to fit in, assimilate, and conform, but to be more like Jesus every day. If that means becoming outcasts, so be it. If that means standing out like a sore thumb and suffering the ridicule and ire of the masses, so be it.

The temptation of conformity is an ever-present siren song for those whose desire for prominence, influence, or climbing some ladder, social or otherwise, is in direct competition with the mandate to obey God and walk in His ways. It’s the lure of fitting in, of not standing out, of avoiding conflict, even if it means compromising on our faith and values.

It’s not a one-and-done prospect, either. Every day, we are confronted with the choice of holding onto integrity and speaking the truth in love, even if those we are speaking it to will see it as hate, or making compromises, holding back and omitting necessary truths, because of some implied benefit to our current station if we were to do so. It is a conscious choice, and based upon the choice we make, we reveal our true heart, whether that is doing the will of God or desiring the honorifics of men.

By this point, Job must have realized that trying to placate his friends wouldn’t work. They’d made up their mind as to why he was suffering his torments, and no matter how much of a defense he attempted to mount, it would have fallen on deaf ears.  

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

Job CXXXII

 If Job had remained silent, his friends would have likely come to the same conclusion. The only thing that would have been different is Zophar saying should a man who remains silent be vindicated, rather than should a man full of talk be so.

There are situations and instances when no matter what you do, whether you speak up for yourself or let people judge you at will without mounting a defense, their conclusions are already reached, their mindset cemented, and no matter what you say or don’t say, they will not be swayed.

It’s a slimy sort of approach reminiscent of politicians. It’s like the old trope where one man asks another if he still beats his wife, and he demands a yes or no answer. Whenever he attempts to mount a defense and insist that he’d never lay a hand on the mother of his children, he is quickly cut off and reminded that all that is required of him is a yes or a no. Well, the presupposition that the man beat his wife is already established in the minds of his accusers. If he says yes, then it’s a continuation of it; if he says no, it means that he used to but has recently stopped.

Some people have already made up their minds about you, and there’s nothing you can do to change them. They will see you as you once were, not as you are, unable to reconcile transformation and rebirth with the individual that used to run from God as fast as their feet could take them. No matter how much you insist you are no longer the individual they once knew, no matter how much evidence there is to substantiate your assertion, they’re too set in their ways to allow for the reality that God can transform an individual to the point that their entire nature becomes unrecognizable from what it once was.

You may have a past, but you’re no longer living in it. If someone insists that they must see you through the prism of your past rather than the new creation you’ve become, that’s on them, and God will deal with the injustice of it in due time. Are such individuals being used by the enemy? More often than not, yes. By their insistence that you are the same as you’ve always been and nothing has changed, the enemy is attempting to get you to see yourself as you once were rather than as you currently are.

It’s not so much that people change; it’s that God changes people. If it were not so, we wouldn’t have the testimonies of men who once exemplified cowardice becoming bold and outspoken even in the face of persecution. We would not have testimonies of men who were once slaves to sin, now pursuing righteousness with abandon.

It’s the easiest thing in the world to point to someone’s past and ignore their present iteration because it allows for men to feel spiritually superior and look down on others. You say you have been born again, you say your life has been transformed, but I remember when you used to do this thing or the other, so what about that? When this inevitably occurs, our instant reaction is to shy away from our past, from who we once were, while still in darkness, trying to play it down or dismiss it offhand.

When it comes to owning who we once were, I personally believe the best course of action is to take a page out of Paul’s book and acknowledge even the gloomiest of details regarding our past, knowing that we are no longer who we were but something wholly different.

Galatians 1:13-17, “For you have heard of my former conduct in Judaism, how I persecuted the church of God beyond measure and tried to destroy it. And I advanced in Judaism beyond many of my contemporaries in my own nation, being more exceeding zealous for the traditions of my fathers. But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother’s womb and called me through His grace, to reveal His Son in me, that I might preach Him among the Gentiles, I did not immediately confer with flesh and blood, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me; but I went to Arabia and returned again to Damascus.”

You may have heard of my former conduct, and I cannot deny it, but what I can say is that I am no longer the man I once was. Yes, I persecuted the church, Paul confesses, beyond measure and tried to destroy it, but then something changed. God called me through His grace to reveal His Son to me, and I am a man forever transformed.

That’s what God does in the innermost parts of man, and Paul was self-aware enough to realize that you can’t change the past, no matter how hard you try, but by the same token, your past does not define who you are in the present.

True faith in Christ is not performative; it’s transformative. It’s not about putting on a shirt with a button-down collar or wearing freshly pressed khakis; it’s about being born again and becoming a new creation in Him. Much of what passes for Christianity today is performance art, and it’s not even good performance art. It’s more akin to community theater in Pookipsy than a Broadway show.

We’ve come to equate spirituality with how loud someone can yell or how boisterous their declarations are, rather than looking beyond the superficial and discerning whether someone has been born again or is feigning it for some ulterior motive or another. We get taken in by showmanship because a showman is there to entertain, not call men to repentance or preach the Gospel. That suits us just fine. We don’t want accountability, we don’t want to be convicted, we don’t like the feeling of the Gospel scouring the inner depths of our heart; it’s unpleasant and painful, so we’ll settle for superficial entertainment by some carnie sideshow with pink hair and no depth of understanding of who God is.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

Job CXXXI

 Job 11:1-6, “Then Zophar the Naamathite answered and said: ‘Should not the multitude of words be answered? And should a man full of talk be vindicated? Should your empty talk make men hold their peace? And when you mock, should no one rebuke you? For you have said, ‘my doctrine is pure, and I am clean in your eyes.’ But oh, that God would speak, and open His lips against you, that He would show you the secrets of wisdom! For they would double your prudence. Know therefore that God exacts from you less than your iniquity deserves.”’

If his other two friends only made insinuations and hinted at the possibility that Job may have sinned and was thus being punished, it seems Zophar had no qualms about coming out and saying it, and in a less genteel manner than Eliphaz and Bildad combined. Zophar’s directness and lack of tact in his approach to Job’s suffering reflect a common theological belief of the time, that suffering is a direct result of sin. This belief is deeply ingrained in Zophar’s worldview and influences his judgment of Job, even though Job was his friend, and he knew Job’s character more than most. He dismissed all the history he had with Job and all the time they spent together based on a flawed belief structure.

Just because you talk a lot, it doesn’t make you innocent. Just because you insist you can think of nothing that you’ve done that would upset God and set him against you, it doesn’t mean you’re vindicated. We’ve all heard what you said. You said your doctrine was pure, and you were clean in our eyes, but if this is the case, then why are you in the condition you’re in? It’s not difficult to imagine wagging fingers, bulging neck veins, and spittle. Lots of spittle.

You can tell by the tonality of his opening salvo that Zophar had been sitting and stewing for some time. He was emotionally bottled up, had been for days, if not weeks, quiet, brooding, thinking of all the things he would say to his friend, and finally, it was his turn. By this time, Zophar had worked himself up into such a lather that he concluded that God’s punishment of Job in the condition he was in was less than what his iniquity deserved. No, I’m not sorry God is punishing you; I’m just surprised He isn’t punishing you more. Kind of harsh for a friend; then again, we’ve all been there.

Have you ever thought someone had wronged you or that something they said was intended as a slight, and the more you ruminated upon it, the bigger the issue became? The initial interaction might have been something so benign and inconsequential that had you not meditated upon it, you would have forgotten within an hour at most, but you dwelt on it, and let it fester, and it grew, and ballooned to the point that it’s all you can do to go up to the person you once called a friend and demand to know why the hated you.

All I said was that a striped tie doesn’t go well with a polka dot shirt! How did you get I hate you from that? What Zophar did was worse still, because Job had leveled no sleight or accusation against him personally, yet Zophar felt compelled to stand in judgment of him, and somehow, in his mind not only defend God, but insist that Job wasn’t being punished enough! The injustice of it all was palpable.

What more could there be? How much worse could it get? Unless an ear, fingers, or toes started sloughing off Job and falling off randomly, there wasn’t a worse for him. Satan had done his absolute worst and visited upon him all the pain and torment he could think of, yet a man Job called a friend sat before him now and insisted that he was getting less than his iniquity deserved.

What iniquity? That is the question none of Job’s friends could answer, a question Job himself asked of God for which he likewise received no answer because there was no iniquity to be revealed or exposed.

All three of Job’s friends were so certain of their conclusions that they chose to believe him a liar, even though they never called him such to his face, while ignoring the absence of any evidence to buoy their assertions. There was no presumption of innocence on their part, nor did they require proof of guilt. They knew what they knew based on the things they’d learned throughout their lives, and the only thing that made sense to them was that Job was guilty of something horrendous.

Some people are so set in their ways and unwilling to course-correct that even when evidence challenging their preconceived notion is evident and plentiful, they continue to justify their position. This becomes dangerous when the issue is a spiritual matter and when the Word of God is clear on the topic. When we ignore Scripture because it contradicts our entrenched beliefs regarding some doctrine or another, what we are doing, in essence, is placing ourselves above God and insisting that we must be right, even if that means He must be wrong.

This danger is a key moral and philosophical insight from the Book of Job, highlighting the importance of humility and openness to God’s truth. Rather than stare in the mirror and repeat some dated mantra Joel Osteen stole from Tony Robbins, perhaps a better use of our time is to stare in the mirror and tell ourselves we don’t know it all until we actually believe it.

Zophar was a traditionalist through and through. Things are as they have always been, they will always be as they are, and nothing will change; therefore, if you are being ground into the dust of the earth, it must be the direct result of sin.

I hear what you’re saying; I just don’t believe it. Moreover, your punishment is less than you deserve, so you should be thankful for that, at least. The old adage that with friends like these, who needs enemies comes to mind because whatever empathy or compassion they may have shown Job when they first arrived to visit him was well and truly gone. 

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.             

Job CXXX

 2 Corinthians 4:16-18, “Therefore we do not lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal.”

Not only does Paul beautifully encapsulate the reality of life in general, he likewise differentiates between the life of the believer, those who have surrendered their lives, and been born again in Christ, and the life of the godless, who wither daily just as we do, but without the benefit of the inward man being renewed day by day.

We are not the same. Yes, once we were like those of the world, counting down the days hopelessly and without the blessed assurance of eternity, but no longer. It’s not a reason for gloating, pomposity, or pride, but rather a reason for heartfelt gratitude, thankfulness, and indebtedness. But for the grace of God, we would be likewise desperate, hopeless, and adrift. But by the grace of God, we would be living purposeless lives with no hope beyond the handful of days we are given on the earth.

Because our perspective has shifted from the temporary to the eternal, from the things that are seen to the things that are not seen, our reactions to the trials, hardships, setbacks, and valleys of life are different than those of the world.

Job’s outward man was perishing. There was no denying it, no matter how one might hope otherwise. He went from a man in possession of his faculties, of reasonable health, with no apparent issues, to one who was on the threshold of death, covered in painful boils, caked with worms and festering wounds. Although men could only see the outward appearance and pity him, God saw what was taking place in the inward man, and the two side-by-side snapshots of Job couldn’t be more different.

True enough, the outward man was perishing, but the inward man was being renewed day by day. It’s easy to focus on the physical, especially when we’re going through pain or suffering some malady, but the question we must ask ourselves is how is this present trial benefiting my spiritual man? How am I growing through this, learning to trust God despite it, expanding my faith in it, and what will my spiritual man look like once this momentary affliction passes?

Trust that God is doing something you can’t see, but doing it nonetheless, and the final iteration will be a stronger you, forged in the fires of trial and testing, purified and refined into the image of His Son Jesus. By its very nature, the refining process cannot be painless. Although it doesn’t necessarily have to be physical pain, whenever God begins to prune and cut away the things not conducive to spiritual growth, there will be pain. Your flesh will cry aloud, pitch a fit, protest, because it is being mortified, and it doesn’t like it one bit.

The flesh never has a problem with you paying God lip service. What the flesh has a problem with is a steadfast determination of pursuing righteousness and growing in Christ. It knows that the more of Jesus there is in you, the less sway it will have over you. When Jesus sits on the throne of your heart, the flesh is weakened, muted, and unable to assert its influence over your decisions. The more you grow your spiritual man, the easier it becomes to resist the devil, deny the urges and impulses, and overcome the temptations the enemy lays at your feet. It’s work, no, not works, but work. It’s also effort, it’s being watchful and sober-minded in all things, it’s striving to enter through the narrow gate so that the fullness of the indwelling of Christ in you may be so complete that you’ll always be one step ahead of the enemy, and intuit the snares that he sets before you.

The mouse might not know that the piece of cheese is baiting a trap that will take its life, but we’re not mice; we are human beings with the ability to reason and use logic, and you know that there’s no such thing as free cheese, and whenever you see it offered up, you grow weary and cautious understanding that it may look good, smell good, and taste good, yet is nevertheless the means of your destruction.

Although he may have been up until Satan asked to sift him, Job was not living his best life. If this present life is all there was, and here was no eternity, if the only thing that mattered was how much we can accumulate and how comfortable we could make the flesh, then we would rightly conclude that Job got the short end of the stick even with all his uprightness and blamelessness.

Had he grown despondent? Most assuredly, but even in such a deplorable state, he held to his integrity because while his intellect could not make sense of why these things were happening to him, his spiritual man perceived that there was more to the story than he was given to understand.

The notion of blind faith is a misnomer at best. Faith grows and stretches and matures because it perceives that although it may not fully understand a given situation, it understands the nature and character of the One who is above all, the One who spoke the universe into being, and the One who has intimate knowledge of one’s joy, pain, hardships, and trials. We have faith in God and His sovereignty because we know Him, we know that He loves us, and we understand that there is a purpose for all things even though we may not be able to currently define the purpose itself.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

Job CXXIX

 The reason Picasso or Rembrandt, even their lesser known works, or just some charcoal sketch are valued at such exorbitant prices is because the artists not only created the art but signed their names to it. Although there are plenty of others who attempted to imitate their artistry, whether brush strokes, color palate, or configuration, and some even came close, they could not claim to be the artist in question, just a copycat.

A work of art must be authenticated, as must the signature, for it to qualify as a true creation of the artist, and although counterfeits have been floating around for decades, a trained eye who has studied the originals to no end can spot a forgery in an instant. Likewise, we are authenticated as belonging to God by having the presence of Jesus in our hearts and being clothed in His righteousness. God knows the real from the fake. He knows those who have the indwelling of His Holy Spirit within them and radiate the image of His Son and those who pretend to.

Men may fool men, but they’ll never fool God. No matter how close they may come to mimicking the presence of Christ, God will spot the forgery.

Psalm 37:3-5, “Trust in the Lord, and do good; dwell in the land, and feed on His faithfulness. Delight yourself also in the Lord, and He shall give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord, trust also in Him, and He shall bring it to pass.”

What those who misappropriate this passage fail to acknowledge is that if we trust in the Lord, feed on His faithfulness, and delight ourselves in Him, the desires of our hearts, which He promises to give us, will not be some vain, base, or worthless bauble, but more of Him. A regenerate heart, a heart that has been spiritually reborn and transformed by God, does not desire the things of this earth but the things that are exclusively theirs by right of sonship.

The things of this earth, whatever that may entail, grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace. If the focus of an individual and the desire of their heart is focused on earthly pursuits, then by definition, their heart has not been regenerated or renewed.

Job 10:18-22, “Why then have You brought me out of the womb? Oh, that I had perished and no eye had seen me! I would have been as though I had not been. I would have been carried from the womb to the grave. Are not my days few? Cease! Leave me alone, that I may take a little comfort, before I go to the place from which I shall not return, to the land of darkness and the shadow of death, a land as dark as darkness itself, as the shadow of death, without any order, where even the light is like darkness.”

Life is not the destination, but rather the journey toward eternity. It’s fleeting and swift and full of molding, pruning, trimming, heartaches, heartbreaks, victories, defeats, betrayals, disappointments, simple joys, profound gratitude, and epiphanies, whether realizing we were stronger than we thought or weaker than we feared, faith building, faith walking, learning to trust God’s sovereignty, learning to deny ourselves, understanding that His yoke is not heavy, and the reward for those who endure to the end is great indeed, and that’s just an average weekday.

When we conclude that God is an existential need, that without Him we can do nothing, His presence in our lives becomes both the goal and the purpose of our existence. Once that occurs, we gladly forfeit all else for the excellency of the knowledge of Him, looking upon the things we’ve surrendered not as something we had to sacrifice but as something we were freed from.

Once in a while, I’ll happen upon a video where someone has been sober for a year, ten years, or fifteen years. None of these individuals look back on their addiction and conclude that they sacrificed alcohol, but rather that they were freed, and unburdened from it, because they realized it was slowly killing them, destroying their relationships, and making a living hell out of their lives.

 That’s what sin does. It’s killing you ever so slowly, so when God commands us to repent and turn our backs on the desires of the flesh and the shackles to which we were fastened, it’s because He wants you to live, not because He doesn’t want you to have fun. I’ve heard the argument often enough from professing Christians that just a little sin is negligible as long as you can keep a handle on it, control it, and manage it. That’s like saying a little bit of poison is good for you. It’s not, and the one demonstrable absolute is that sin is never static. What satisfied the flesh today will not satisfy it tomorrow, so the depravity of the ‘little sin’ you thought you could manage grows incrementally day by day.

No one ever started out drinking a fifth of Jim Beam upon waking. A beer turned into two, two turned into five, then the flesh wanted something stronger, more potent, and those unwilling to see themselves as they truly were found ways of rationalizing their descent into oblivion. Playing with sin, any sin, is like playing with fire while being covered in gasoline. You never know when what you thought was a release or a way of smoothing out the edges becomes an albatross around your neck, dragging you further into the deep.

We cannot fail to differentiate between someone who trips over a tree root, gets up, wipes off the dust, and keeps going and someone who cannonballs into the pig pen, rolls in the mud, slaps away the hand of anyone reaching to pull them out, and feels at home among the swine. We all fall short, whether that flash of anger when someone cuts us off in traffic or the acidic remark on the tip of our tongue when we deem someone has it coming, but that is very different from willful, protracted, and habitual sin.  

Rebellion and disobedience will bring us to a direr state than any testing will, because while during a time of sifting and testing the presence of God is felt, during seasons of rebellion we remove ourselves from fellowship with Him, and are alone in the dark, groping about, refusing to acknowledge the extent of our own blindness.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

Job CXXVIII

 Most of us don’t look in the mirror and see a masterpiece or a work of art. Especially as we grow older, the hairs on one’s head begin to migrate to parts unknown, and the battle scars of too much food and too little sleep become frighteningly evident, it becomes impossible to reconcile objectivity with the conclusion that we are a wonder to behold. We do our best, looking at ourselves from the side, sucking in our gut, combing over the patch of hair so it covers the entire scalp, but we know what we’re looking at, and it’s not Michelangelo’s David.

Conversely, there are also people who see what they want to see, and when such individuals are asked to rate their looks, they stare up from their mobility scooters, chins wagging and huffing as though they’d just sprinted a marathon, and with a straight face insist that they’re a solid 10. You’d think that if it weren’t for their swollen ankles and inability to find a swimsuit in their size, they’d be entering beauty pageants left and right.

To a certain extent, the self-delusion is admirable. I know I couldn’t pull it off with a straight face, and I harbor admiration for anyone who can do something I can’t. It’s why I hold people who deal with gore, blood, and death on a daily basis in such high regard. I know I could never be a nurse, a doctor, or a mortician because it would disturb me to no end.

At some point, however, objectivity must have a voice, and though grudgingly, we must admit, if only to ourselves, that given the opportunity, we wouldn’t lay down our lives to redeem one such as the individual staring at us from the mirror, yet Jesus did. He saw in you what you fail to see in yourself, which is the Father’s design and creation, and deemed you worthy of redemption, not because the flesh had some inherent value or because in and of yourself you were more special than your neighbor, but because He saw the work of His Father’s hand.

There is a difference between being deemed worthy of something by another, independent of your input or agency, and being deserving of it. Being worthy is showing some quality or ability that merits recognition and investment so that the full potential of the individual in question might be achieved.

Some people are born with raw talent. Whether in sports, mathematics, or a turn of phrase, all raw talent does is reveal the potential of an individual if they apply themselves and are diligent in pursuing the mastering of their natural abilities.

Being deserving, on the other hand, implies that something is owed to you, that by your own agency, you did something that merited Christ’s sacrifice, and so you feel entitled to it. It’s called unmerited favor for a reason. Neither you nor I were so indispensable in our unregenerate state as to compel Christ to walk up Calvary’s hill. Christ’s compulsions were love and obedience to the Father. He saw the potential of what we could become in Him and knew it was the only way to facilitate the becoming.

Jesus deemed mankind worthy of His sacrifice, not deserving. It may seem like splitting hairs, but it’s not, given that so many today feel they are within their rights to take it for granted, abuse it, and be indifferent toward such a grace as this. We approach God differently when we acknowledge that even the best of us are no more than withering husks here only by the grace and mercy of God than when we think ourselves so great and invaluable that Christ’s sacrifice should be his opening gambit and not His final offer. When we do not see ourselves as we truly are- wounded and broken and in need of healing and restoration, shackled and imprisoned in need of a savior who can and will unfetter us from darkness and death and bring us to life in Him- we’re always angling for something more.

Being set free from the depths of despair and renewed of mind and heart that we might glory in our Savior is all well and good, but can you sweeten the pot some? Perhaps a makeover, a new car, a few bucks in the bank, and the recognition of our contemporaries? That would be a good start, don’t you think? Men tend to view Jesus as a corporate head hunter making competing offers, hoping they switch sides, and not as who He is, the Lord of glory and the only one with the power and authority to set them free.         

My wife is beautiful. By any objective standard, she is gorgeous, and I know I lucked out when she said she would marry me. Even so, once in a while, I catch her looking at herself in the mirror with a look that tells me she is seeing something that displeases her. Even though she’s nearing fifty, she is supremely beautiful to me, whether upon waking first thing in the morning, replete with bedhead and bleary eyes, or during one of the rare days when she doesn’t have to go in to work and is wearing her favorite pair of pajamas all day, with her hair up in a bun. She is the love of my life and ever will be thus.

Does she look exactly as she did when I first saw her almost thirty years ago? Obviously not. We’ve had two daughters together and twenty-five years of marriage, with the ups and downs of life and a handful of curve balls thrown in for good measure. The prism through which I see her, however, is as that ever-young, ever-youthful seventeen-year-old I saw sitting on a park bench one random day in the summer of 1997.

God sees us through the prism of His Son, and it is ever thus once we deny ourselves, pick up our crosses, and follow after Him. We are born again to new life, and though we might see gray hair and wrinkles and fleshy bits that weren’t there a few years ago, what God sees is Jesus.

Job wasn’t holding a mirror up to himself, contemplating his appearance, and concluding that he was a masterpiece or the pinnacle of God’s creation in his state. He understood that beyond his present appearance, beyond what eyes of flesh could see, God had fashioned him, molded him like clay, clothed him with skin and flesh, knit him together with bones and sinews, and breathed life into him.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

Job CXXVII

 Job 10:13-17, “And these things You have hidden in Your heart; I know that this was with You: If I sin, then You mark me, and will not acquit me of my iniquity. If I am wicked, woe to me; Even if I am righteous, I cannot lift up my head. I am full of disgrace; See my misery! If my head is exalted, You hunt me like a fierce lion, and again You show Yourself awesome against me. You renew Your witness against me, and increase Your indignation toward me; changes and war are ever with me.”

Job wasn’t trying to have a one-man pity party for himself. He was trying to make sense of his present condition and reconcile the God he knew and served all his life with this seemingly new iteration of Him that Job viewed as a fierce lion on the hunt for him.

He knew he couldn’t find the answers he was seeking from his friends, but he did know the one place where the answers might be found. To that end, Job petitioned God repeatedly, hoping for an answer, yet no answer came. Sometimes, the toughest part of going through a trial isn’t the trial itself but God’s silence in the midst of it. It’s not wondering whether or not we’ve been forsaken because He promises He will neither leave us nor forsake us, but wondering why the silence stretches on and there is no answer to our supplications.

Anyone who says it’s an easy thing to contend with has never been in such a predicament. You know God is there, you feel His presence, you know that He hears, but He chooses to remain silent. You begin to wonder if you’re not praying hard enough, long enough, or eloquently enough; you consider laying prostrate rather than kneeling because the silence is deafening and jarring and something you are not accustomed to.

There’s no one-size-fits-all answer to what we should do when God is silent, but there are a handful of general truths that have been tried and tested throughout mankind’s existence.

The first thing we must do when God is silent is acknowledge that He is still God. His silence toward me does not imply that His power has diminished or that His sovereignty has waned. His silence does not give me license to come up with my own answers or plot my own course. In His time, He will speak just as He did to Job, but while He is silent, rest in the knowledge that He is still present and aware of every hurt, every pain, every hardship, and every tear.

He has not suddenly become cold or calloused. He has not suddenly changed His nature wherein He no longer cares or loves. Just because God is silent, it doesn’t mean you should be. Continue to pray, to seek His face, to verbalize the pain of your heart just as Job did, because His silence does not mean He isn’t listening.

The second thing we must do when God is silent is to resist the urge to equate His silence with His displeasure or punishment. A wise man searches his heart daily, and if perchance there is something requiring repentance, he is quick to repent. If having searched your heart, you conclude there is nothing displeasing to God therein, do not conflate His silence with His reproof.  

The third thing we must do when God is silent is understand that there is a purpose to the silence, just as there is a purpose in hearing His voice. I may not understand the purpose; I may prefer that He speak clearly and resoundingly rather than opt for silence, but in the end, I must defer to Him and submit to His purposes. 

The fourth thing we must do when God is silent is be still and know. Know that He is God, know that He is on the throne, and know that He has your situation well in hand. Knowledge goes beyond hope or presumption. When we know something, it is an established reality that cannot be shaken or altered. Know that He is the God of your life. Know that He will make a way. Know that He will speak in His time and bind up your wounds and broken heart.

Just as there are things we should be doing when God is silent, there are things we shouldn’t be doing when this occurs because they tend to be detrimental to faith, resolve, and the endurance of our spiritual man.

By far, the worst thing we can do when God is silent is to grow exceedingly anxious, nervous, and restless. The escalation in emotional responses to God’s silence can only lead to despondency, and that’s the chink in your armor the enemy will use to try and sow fear and doubt in your heart.

He will invade your mind with thoughts of abandonment if you allow him to, attempting to weaken your faith and resolve, hoping to get you to do what he tried and failed to get Job to do, which is to find fault with God.

Coming in a close second is trying to force God’s hand to speak to us when He has chosen to be silent. This is a futile endeavor that can lead to further spiritual confusion.

After the death of Samuel, the prophet of the Lord, the Philistines gathered their armies and brought them to a place called Shunem. Seeing this and being afraid, Saul inquired of the Lord, yet the Lord did not answer him. Whether by dreams, by Urim, one of two stones in the high priest's breastplate, which was used as a means of revelation, or by the prophets, God chose to remain silent.

Saul could not abide God’s silence, so he took it upon himself to seek out a medium of whom he might inquire. The rest of the story is long and sordid, a meaty topic of discussion for another time as to the power evil forces possess, going so far as to call Samuel’s spirit up, but the point for this particular topic is that Saul tried to circumvent God’s silence by seeking out a voice, any voice, even if that voice was what amounted to a witch, well known in those part and during those times.

It did not end well for Saul. God didn’t view his actions as being a go-getter or give him praise for trying to make things happen on his own; on the contrary, Samuel’s spirit informed him that not only had the Lord departed from him, but had become his enemy.

You’re not smarter than God, and He will not be mocked. If He chooses to be silent, trust that there is a purpose to His silence, and continue to come before the throne of grace with your prayers and supplications.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

Job CXXVI

 Imagine laying in the dust, covered in worms, bleeding from open wounds, and seeing your life seeping away, yet having the insight to acknowledge that the hands of God made and fashioned you. What Job was seeing went beyond his mournful state, beyond his current circumstance, something that could not be perceived with the eyes of flesh.

Whether prince or pauper, we are all fearfully and wonderfully made. Your station in life does not determine the value God sees in you as one of His creations. God is neither interested in a financial commitment nor a recurring monthly gift. His only desire is that you humble yourself, surrender yourself, and give Him your heart that He may wash it clean and dwell therein. Job saw beyond the reality of his current circumstance and acknowledged God’s fashioning of him even as he picked worms off his rotting flesh.

It was not an issue of self-esteem or visualization with Job. Even if he’d tried, he couldn’t talk himself into seeing the best version of himself in the state he was in. Less open sores? Less worms? Perhaps a nice hot bath? That was the extent of what he could imagine for himself, yet he understood that bedraggled as he was, he remained one of God’s creations.

Your inherent worth is not based on how well you dress or what kind of car you drive but upon the price paid on your behalf on the cross by the sinless Son of God. Although Christ’s sacrifice extended throughout time and generations so that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life, it’s also personal and intimate. A life for a life. He died with you and me in mind. He sacrificed Himself so we might know freedom and have life in Him, knowing that there is no life outside of Him.

We can never minimize what Jesus did for us, nor can we ever cease making it personal. He died for me. The perfect Son of God died for me so that I might, in turn, have life and have it more abundantly. He paid the debt I did not own; I own the debt I could not pay, and for this, my life is His to do with as He wills. That is our baseline. Not looking in the mirror and seeing something that isn’t there or talking ourselves into believing our duplicity, lukewarmness, and half-hearted commitment to Him will have to do, or worse still, that it’s all He is entitled to. But knowing that He loved us enough to die for us, individually and personally.

There are certain terms we use so often that they’ve lost their meaning. Being saved is one such term wherein we’ve lost sight of what it means both implicitly and explicitly. For someone to be saved, they need to be in a situation where they need saving. If you walk up to someone lounging in a hammock on a sun-dappled beach and insist you’re there to save them, you’ll likely get strange looks, if not an outright tongue-lashing.

Jesus didn’t come to save you from poverty, crooked teeth, or a negative self-image. He came to save you from hell, from eternal separation from God, and the outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. He came to save us because we needed saving, and once we are saved and have been redeemed, we owe a life debt. He bought us at a price. Having been purchased, we no longer belong to ourselves but to Him. This is what it means to be a bondservant: a willing slave who serves out of love and gratitude for the Master’s kindness and mercy.

If you’ve ever wondered how some are able to withstand persecution, privation, or martyrdom, it’s because they understood the reality of what Jesus did and that they are now bondservants whose duty is to obey their Master. It’s not because they’re made of tougher stuff or have greater pain thresholds than you or I. It’s because they understand the true meaning of salvation and what they were saved from.         

Until the calamity visited upon him turned his world upside down, Job seems to have shared the same straightforward, if overly simplistic, view of life: God favors the righteous and punishes the wicked. Good things happen to good people, bad things happen to bad people, and never the twain shall meet. That is the essence of what Job’s friends had concluded, after all, wherein the reason for his current lot was some hidden, as yet unconfessed sin. Whether Eliphaz, Bildad, or Zophar, the underlying premise of their conclusions was that sin was somehow involved, and Job had displeased God in such an egregious fashion as to find himself wishing for death.

It was the implicit contradiction Job was having difficulty wrapping his mind around, wherein the selfsame God who made and fashioned him now sought to destroy him. It didn’t make sense, no matter how many times he returned to this paradox, and with each iteration of allowing his mind to ponder this discrepancy, Job’s desperation becomes ever more evident. It was a conundrum without resolution, and it naturally gave way to indignation.

Having the entire structure of what you believed turned on its ear in an instant and being able to withstand it is no easy feat. We see this play out often enough when some elevated figure that seemed beyond reproach turns out to be less than, and those who followed the individual rather than the Christ have to contend with the reality that all was not as it seemed, and they’d placed their trust in someone who ultimately betrayed it.

Trusting a man will lead to heartache, disappointment, bitterness, and resentment. Trusting God will never lead to any of these things because God is not like man, fickle and faithless, but ever faithful and true from age to age.

Our faith must be cemented in Christ and Christ alone. Not in a given denomination, doctrine, or individual, but in Christ. When we are anchored in Jesus, and the Word of God is the plumbline and filter through which we process spiritual matters, we become unshakeable in our resolve and know that come what may, He will be an ever-present help.

We would spare ourselves so much grief, heartache, and heartbreak if we took the Word of God to heart and followed it rather than the ramblings and machinations of men whose words stand in stark opposition to what Scripture has declared. Unfortunately, there will always be a market for fool’s gold, and it’s usually acquired by fools who only see the depth of their folly when they try to cash it in and discover it to be worthless.

Men make empty promises; God doesn’t. When God makes a promise, He keeps it, and the only time we run the risk of being demoralized and disillusioned is when we talk ourselves into believing that men’s promises are interchangeable with God’s or that God is bound to keep the promises men made in His name.

God will have the last word. He always has and always will, no matter what men might say or what conclusions they may come to regarding your station, situation, circumstance, or trial. As such, it is incumbent upon us to be more concerned about how God views us than how men view us, what He has to say about us, than what men do. His opinion is the only one that matters.

With love in Christ, 

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

Job CXXV

 The tapestry of Job’s responses to his friends is so rich, vivid, and brimming with wisdom that could only have come from above that it’s easy to miss some crucial nuggets, thereby minimizing the depth of knowledge and understanding someone who many would consider uneducated, primitive, and antiquated possessed. But Job was wealthy! True enough, but being wealthy doesn’t make you wise; being godly does. We’ve all seen the foolish things rich people do, so having material wealth does not equate to having wisdom. If it did, then most of our politicians would be Rhodes scholars with IQs north of 165, but they’re not.

The wisdom Job possessed was otherworldly. It did not originate from books, scrolls, or manuscripts but from God Himself. He understood there was a verifiable and demonstrable difference between flesh and soul, between this present existence and something beyond it, to the point that he begins the tenth chapter by declaring that his soul hated his life.    

Job 10:8-12, “Your hands have made me and fashioned me, an intricate unity; Yet You would destroy me. Remember, I pray, that You have made me like clay. And will You turn me into dust again? Did You not pour me out like milk, and curdle me like cheese, clothe me with skin and flesh, and knit me together with bones and sinews? You have granted me life and favor, and Your care has preserved my spirit.”

It’s a special kind of pain to know that God’s hands have made you and fashioned you in intricate unity, yet the same God would now destroy you. For those who never knew the goodness of God and those who do not acknowledge Him as the creator and architect of all that is, the source of their suffering is laid at the feet of happenstance, chance, bad choices, or even bad luck. They do not acknowledge the divine hand of supreme authority, and their understanding is forever marred due to their unwillingness to humble themselves before Him and view this existence via the prism of divine order.

Job was still trying to make sense of the incongruence of the God he knew and worshiped with what was happening to him, unable to wrap his mind around one day being molded like clay and the other being turned into dust again.

Job was not hubristic when it came to acknowledging God’s role and presence in his life. He did not take credit for the things God had done, nor did he claim that the things with which he’d been blessed before they were snatched away were somehow due to his ingenuity or prowess. He acknowledged God in all things, declaring that God had granted him both life and favor, and it was His care that preserved his spirit. That acknowledgment alone places him ahead of the pack of most of the modern-day church, wherein a modicum of success is ceaselessly trumpeted and declared to be the work of the man or woman in question rather than the favor of God.

There is a reason God gives grace to the humble while simultaneously resisting the proud. There is a reason why God would rather use a humble individual with no natural ability than a proud one with charisma, eloquence, or a powerful presence. The humble tend to be more obedient on their worst day than a proud man is on his best day, and what God is searching for is an obedient heart that He can mold, purify, fill, and use.

When God calls you to service, when He places a task before you, even if it may seem impossible to human understanding, be fully assured that He will give you the necessary tools to see it through. These tools may include wisdom, strength, boldness, courage, and divine favor. He will give you the words to speak and provide the opportunity to speak them, and as long as you remain humble and acknowledge Him in all your ways, He will continue to use you.

I’ve seen countless ministries, churches, preachers, pastors, and evangelists come and go throughout my forty years of ministry, and it’s not because we planned better, were smarter, or preached a message the masses were desirous to hear. On the contrary, the message is a hard one, and few have ears to hear. As far as being overly deferential and heaping praise upon people undeserving of it, those who know me know that it’s never been something we’ve done. The one thing I can point to that I know without doubt was the reason for our longevity was obedience.

We didn’t have five-year plans or public relations firms on retainer; we didn’t give away new Kias or Hyundais every year or offer one-on-one sessions with the leadership in return for a substantial donation; we did what God told us to do, and we trusted He would make a way even when it seemed impossible.

When God told my grandfather we would be building an orphanage in Romania, seven of us were living in a two-bedroom apartment, my dad worked two jobs, my mom cleaned homes on weekends, and we had less than a thousand dollars in the bank. Even though back in the day, the dollar stretched far, and the exchange rates were favorable, it didn’t stretch that far. How it would come about was never part of the conversation. If it had been, we would have never started, but if God said we must do it, He would have to provide the way by which it got done, and He did.

I recently got a message on one of our YouTube videos from a young man who had been in residence at the aforementioned orphanage from 1998 to 2009. He just wanted to drop a note and say thank you. Who knows what road this young man would have gone down had we deliberated about not having enough resources to get the project off the ground rather than simply being obedient to what God commanded us to do?

Were there moments when bills were due, and there was nothing to pay them with? Most assuredly, but rather than panic, we prayed, and God always made a way. Theoretical faith is easy enough to pontificate about. Practical faith, however, requires steadfast resolve that not only can God make a way but that He will. It is God who makes a way; it is God who ensures that His word will not return void. What is required of us is to obey and be unshakeable in our faith as we walk in that obedience.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

Job CXXIV

 Job 10: 1-7, “My soul loathes my life; I will give free course to my complaint, I will speak in the bitterness of my soul. I will say to God, ‘Do not condemn me; show me why You contend with me. Does it seem good to You that You should oppress, that You should despise the work of Your hands, and smile on the counsel of the wicked? Do You have eyes of flesh? Or do you see as man sees? Are Your days like the days of a mortal man? Are Your ears like the days of a mighty man, that You should seek for my iniquity and search out my sin, although You know that I am not wicked, and there is no one who can deliver from Your hand?”’

Job knew that something wasn’t adding up; he just didn’t know what it was. He knew the nature of the God he served to the extent that what had befallen him didn’t make sense, and once again, he was trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together, even though some of the most important pieces were missing.

Yes, sometimes testing and sifting can seem like punishment. Especially in Job’s case, wherein he was not aware of all that had gone on between God and Satan, it was the only conclusion he could come to, even though it seemed incongruent with God’s justice and righteous judgment.

By this point, Job’s only desire was to understand why he was enduring these torments. He’d gone beyond asking for death to asking God to show him why He contended with him.

Everyone’s gone through something similar, and if not, at some point in life, you will. Someone you know, perhaps someone you trust, does something so wholly uncharacteristic that the only question you want answered is why. Why did they do this thing that seemed to be so contrary to the person you thought you knew? Why would they set upon a course that would shatter your friendship or fracture any modicum of trust? Was it hubris? Was it hate? Was it ignorance or folly? That they did the thing seems less relevant than why they did the thing they did because needing to understand the reason behind their actions will likewise shed light on the situation in a far greater fashion than dissecting the action itself.

There are things in this life that God will be the cause of and things that God will allow. God had allowed Satan to sift Job, but it had not been God who had been the originator or cause of his oppression. This was Job’s paradox, the one thing he could not wrap his mind around, and the reason for this is that he was ignorant of the details that brought about his current afflictions.

Sometimes, the why is out of reach, beyond our understanding or ability to comprehend. Would I prefer that it was different? Yes, and I think anyone would, but there’s the reality of what is and what we would prefer reality to be. Once again, this is where trust comes to the fore and becomes imperative because without absolute trust in the goodness, sovereignty, and mercy of God, we would all be beside ourselves with angst and trepidation.

You know that I am not wicked, and yet, here I sit, having lost everything, covered in dust and worms, seeing my life as no more than a burden. Job couldn’t reconcile the God he’d known, served, worshiped, and trusted with what had befallen him, and he was trying to process and understand.

The only way for Job to understand why this was happening to him was to have the one piece of crucial information he was, as yet, not given to have. From a purely emotional position, this seems unfair, even mean-spirited, but who can know the mind of the Lord that he may instruct Him?

We’re usually brimming with opinions when we’re not the ones in the thick of it. We are certain that we know why something is happening to someone even though we have no insight into their spiritual walk, maturity, or situation, but we like to think we do. It makes us feel lordly, pontificating ad nauseum about everyone else, but once we’re the ones being tested and tried, we change our tune and begin to understand that perhaps telling someone that God was judging them when He isn’t wasn’t the height of wisdom and Christian brotherhood after all.

Being humble enough to acknowledge that we don’t know everything all the time, regardless of the situation, goes a long way to keeping from sticking our foot in our mouth so often as to make others wonder if we like the taste of feet.

If we find the time for fruitless debates but not the time to pray, and if we go out of our way to give someone our two cents while finding every excuse imaginable not to spend time with God, it reveals the inner desire of the heart beyond what we say with our lips or the image we try to project to those around us.

Your purpose and duty isn’t to try to convince someone that water is wet or that the sun is hot, but to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, daily growing in the knowledge of the God you serve and cementing your trust in Him.

There are things I think, things I know, and things that the Word of God declares to be the absolute truth. These things are not interchangeable, and my opinion on a given matter is neither on equal footing with the Word of God nor does my opinion supersede the Word in authority. I must submit to the will and Word of God even if the whole puzzle is not set before me, and even when I don’t see in whole but just in part.

Job’s friends had opinions. They had conjecture. They’d drawn conclusions based on personal experiences and the experiences of others but never inquired of the Lord if their thoughts were as His thoughts. Given the available information, they were well-reasoned, educated guesses, but in the end, that’s all they were.

God doesn’t guess; He knows. He is fully aware, without the drawback of blind spots or incomplete information about a certain situation. His knowledge of you extends to keeping an accurate count of the hairs on your head, an unmatched feat, even if you happen to have the time to wake up every morning and start counting.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

Job CXXIII

 We want emancipation while still enjoying all the benefits of sonship. We want all the perks with none of the responsibilities inherent to being a son or daughter of God. We want to be able to run to Him when things get hard and insist that He remedy our situation, but unless we have a problem that needs fixing unless we have a need that must be met, we prefer that He keep to Himself and not bother us with such abstract notions as relationship or fellowship.

We want to be used by God in the manner we see fit, and if any duty seems beneath us, we want the option to pass on it and ask for something more. We want spiritual growth without sacrifice; we want revelation without commitment; we want to boast of titles we’ve assigned to ourselves while neglecting to point to Jesus as our all in all. We don’t want to share the stage. We don’t want to share the spotlight, not realizing that in and of ourselves, we are nothing, a bag of skin and bones deteriorating daily and inching ever onward toward the grave.

We relish seeing ourselves as the authority with none above us to whom we must give account, and if perchance someone points to the Word and attempts to correct us, we retreat to the well-worn defense of our feelings and how they somehow matter more than what Scripture says.

We reject the one true cure for the disease that is killing us, and that is daily crucifying the flesh because although we would only admit it to ourselves in the sincerest of moments, we prioritize our flesh over our spiritual man more often than not.

We will cling to any man who offers us an alternative to sanctification and demonize those who insist upon it, creating ever more fanciful narratives in our minds as to why those preaching the gospel are cruel and unloving because they insist upon the standard that Christ set forth. Then, when our lives turn to ruin, and every fantasy to which we held so dear dissipates like fog in the morning sun, we blame God, shake our fists to the heavens, and insist that He has somehow failed us and not we who have deceived ourselves. How could I have deceived myself when I am beyond deception, says the fool in his heart.

The difference between Job’s mindset and many in the contemporary church is that while Job did his due diligence, searched his heart, weighed his actions, and concluded that as far as he knew, he was blameless, yet acknowledged that he did not know himself, many today do not feel the need for either introspection or self-assessment. There is no striving to enter through the narrow gate, nor is there a desire to present their bodies as holy and acceptable to God, which is their reasonable service. Remembering introspection is a key part of our spiritual growth, and understanding of our relationship with God is crucial.

It seems paradoxical at first glance: “Though I were righteous, my own mouth would condemn me; though I were blameless, it would prove me perverse. I am blameless, yet I do not know myself.”

Job understood what Scripture would later reveal to us all: that we cannot stand in our own righteousness before a holy God and expect it to suffice. Was Job blameless? Yes, he was because God declared him to be so, yet Job could not, and would not, use his uprightness as a defense for why his suffering was undeserved.

The more Job speaks, the more we understand the depth of his wisdom and understanding of things no man without a true and longstanding relationship with God could have gleaned. Even in his grief, he hit upon some of the most profound and existential truths humanity has been grappling with for millennia, none more profound than the need for a mediator between man and God.

In his attempt to make two people involved in a conflict come to an agreement and resolution, a mediator must understand both sides and be privy to all the requisite information. Since He was fully human and fully God, Jesus is the only one in a position to qualify as the mediator between man and God, having walked the earth for thirty-three years, understanding the frailty of man, being able to sympathize with our weaknesses, having been tempted as we are in all points, yet remaining without sin.

If ever the thought that God doesn’t understand you has crossed your mind, it was a foolish thought. He understands you better than you understand yourself, and all that He allows in your life, whether you deem it a benefit or a detriment in the moment, is done so with the preeminent purpose of growing you, purifying you, pruning you, and transforming you into an image more akin to His Son.

A toddler may not understand why their mother says no when he reaches into the candy dish for the tenth time, but the mother does, and only after the toddler is fully grown and has averted diabetes due to his mother’s insistence that their diet should not consist solely of colorful candies do they come to appreciate the discipline and denial of their wants.

When God says no to something, it’s not because He’s being unloving or doesn’t want us to enjoy life but because He is sparing us from pain, hopelessness, and torment. Those who have gone and done what God commanded them not to do because they thought they knew better can attest that it never turned out the way they thought it would. Sooner or later, the reason why God said no to something becomes evident, but by then, for those who chose to disobey, it is too late.

Whether standing behind the pulpit or sitting in the last pew of the church, whether your wall is brimming with doctorates or you’ve just started reading the Bible for the first time, you must approach every day with the knowledge and assurance that God knows best. In every situation, in every circumstance, in every trial, in every setback, in every closed door, God knows best. Trusting in His wisdom should bring you ever-present reassurance in your faith journey.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

Job CXXII

 Whether we strive to keep our head above water or allow ourselves to be dragged to the bottom of the deep is a choice. Yes, treading water is tedious and tiresome, but the alternative is permanent and final. I’ve known terminal people who fought to their last to see another sunrise, to take another breath, who held on until they couldn’t hold on a second longer, and, unfortunately, I’ve known a handful of people who gave up, packed it in, and sought escape from this world not because they were suffering, or they had some incurable disease that caused them too much pain to think straight, but because they got bored, or thought working a full-time job was just too much to live with.

When we do not see life as the gift that it is, when we do not acknowledge that God Himself breathed life into man that he may live and be animate, we undervalue its worth and squander it vainly. I’m sorry to be the bearer of ill tidings to those who have surrendered to the notion of religious stews, wherein they’ll take a bit of this and a little of that and make up their own belief system, but there is no reincarnation, no coming back as a dung beetle or a bull elk to try and right the wrongs you may have committed in a previous life. Once is all we get, a limited, finite amount of time that we have on this earth, which, depending upon how we’ve redeemed it, will determine where we spend eternity.

It is this ever-present reality that the enemy does his utmost to keep us from pondering, heaping distraction upon distraction, hoping that we will ignore the implacable truth that all flesh withers, all flesh dies, then eternity.

If he can keep men focused on the here and now, on their flesh, on their pride, on their aspirations and futile dreams, then they will not contend with what matters most. You can have all the treasures of the world laid at your feet, but to what end? You can have prominence and fame, influence and reach, but if our focus is on this life only and we neglect the life to come, we are no more than pitiable creatures who have squandered a most precious gift.   

Job 9:32-35, “For He is not a man, as I am, that I may answer Him, and that we should go to court together. Nor is there any mediator between us, who may lay his hand on us both. Let Him take His rod away from me, and do not let dread of Him terrify me. Then I would speak and not fear Him, but it is not so with me.”

Simple truths are always the most impacting ones. Some men philosophize others into a stupor, trying to seem intellectual for the sake of their own pride, but in the handful of words Job directed to Bildad, simple though they appear, Job plumbed the depths of wisdom itself.

Job acknowledged that God was not a man as he was a man. There is a clear difference between creator and creation, between God and man, and whenever men try to diminish God that they might rise in prominence, they infer that they do not understand the God they purport to serve.

God will never be on my level. His ways will never be His ways, and my thoughts will never be His thoughts, but because I acknowledge His supremacy in all things, I defer to Him and obey whatever He commands. I am in no position to question God, just as Job understood he wasn’t, nor am I justified in telling God He was wrong in some matter or situation. He wasn’t; you just thought he was, and in the aggregate, personal opinion matters, not a tittle.

When men do not fear God, they take liberties with Him, insisting that they are somehow equal in stature, power, or authority, which is as laughable as the mighty ant castigating an elephant. It’s not even close to a comparable metaphor since the disproportion of grandeur and power between God and man is far greater than the elephant and the ant, but you get the idea.

We allow our egos to fuel our delusions and our pride to fuel our feeling of supremacy when there is no basis for it, earthly or otherwise, and once the flesh gets going and thinks itself a giant among men, it begins to question the authority and supremacy of God Himself.

Neither men nor beasts, principalities nor powers, gods nor idols can be compared to the God of the universe. He is unique in His power, His authority, His might, and His supremacy. All of creation bows before Him, and there is none like Him, nor will there ever be. He is the Alpha and Omega, without beginning or end, yet here we are, thinking of ourselves on equal footing and entitled to question, demand, and dismiss as antiquated and behind the times.

Job may have been a blameless and upright man, but he was not a perfect man. He had his doubts, his pain, his hurt, and his moments of utter teeth-gnashing desperation, but through it all, he understood his place and position regarding God and His authority.

Job also understood that there was, as yet, no mediator between man and God. The Christ had not been born, nor had He lived, and it would be millennia until He would. Once Jesus came, so did our mediator, the One who gave Himself as ransom for all that we may be reconciled to the Father.

Yet another layer of blessing and grace that we are afforded to which those who came before us did not have access is the presence of Jesus as our mediator. This profound privilege allows us to approach God confidently, a privilege that was not available to Job or many others in the past. Not only that, but we also have the Spirit Himself, which makes intercession for us with groanings that cannot be uttered. Yet here we sit indifferent and apathetic, balking at any mention of repentance, righteousness, uprightness, or holiness unto God.

Obedience and faithfulness? Self-denial and a pursuit of righteousness? Lord, you ask too much. I appreciate the input, but just give me my mansion, pay my bills, and let me do as I will. That is the attitude of much of today’s church, and the idea that such a lukewarm and faithless generation will withstand persecution, privation, and the loss of all things for the sake of Christ stretches credulity beyond its breaking point.  

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

CXXI

 Because we are not living for the here and now, because our focus is not on any earthly kingdom but the kingdom to come, the children of God live lives deemed by those of the world to be contrarian to theirs. If our focus, drive, desire, and purpose do not differ from those of the world, if the way we approach adversity and view ourselves is not in diametrical opposition to the way the world does, it is a reason for alarm and an honest self-assessment as to whether or not we are walking in the will of God is warranted.

In the eyes of the world, strength is strength, and weakness is weakness. Seeing life through the prism of the spiritual, the children of God know that in our weakness, His strength is made perfect, and in our moments of trial and hardship, the power of Christ rests upon us. We are not strong in and of ourselves. We are strong in Christ, through Christ, and by Christ; His strength is immutable.

2 Corinthians 2:19, “And He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore, I would rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.”

This concept of ‘boasting in infirmities’ may seem paradoxical. It does not mean we should revel in our weaknesses, but rather, we should acknowledge them and understand that it is in these moments of weakness that God’s strength is most evident. It is a testament to the power of Christ that we can find strength and hope even in our most challenging times.

It’s rare that we get to acknowledge this reality in the West because, for the most part, unless some tragedy befalls us and some situation comes about for which we have no resolution, we have no need to lean on Him to the level that we know it is He who is carrying us, it is He who is strengthening us, and giving us the wherewithal to persevere.

Job had reached the end of himself. There was nothing he could do and nothing he could say to assuage his condition or make it better. It was either God would intervene on his behalf, or he would slowly degrade to the point of emaciation, then death. The notion of death was not displeasing to him. On the contrary, he yearned for it, seeing it as a blessing, a grace, and a relief.

Anyone looking at Job’s life objectively would likely conclude that there was no coming back from this. They’d written him off and now waited for the inevitable, for surely no one in his condition could be restored to health or have the things he had lost or the children that had been stripped from him returned. To the eyes of flesh, Job’s situation was untenable, impossible, and a foregone conclusion. Little did his friends and contemporaries know that what is impossible to men is more than possible to God.

If men have written you off, let them. If friends have written you off, let them. If family has written you off, let them. As long as God has not written you off, cling to your integrity, cling to your hope, and cling to your faith.

There is a noticeable through-line as we read through Job’s words versus the words of his three friends that while every time Job spoke, his discourse included prayer and supplication to God, none of his friends entreated the Lord, whether on their behalf or his.

Even though he was uncertain as to why this had befallen him, even though the pain and difficulty he was going through was unmatched by anyone of his generation, Job still entreated God, pled with Him, cried out to Him, and made supplication.

While his friends saw their part in this drama as some theological, philosophical, or existential debate between themselves and Job, Job’s singular focus was between himself and God, and trying to parse out the who and the why of his situation.

Looking back on some of the most difficult seasons of life, I can attest to the truth that prayer was a large part of what got me through them. Simply pouring out my heart to God, crying out to Him, had not only a cathartic effect, but a rejuvenating one, giving me strength I was not aware I possessed. The truth of it is that it wasn’t my strength; I didn’t have some long-forgotten stores of endurance that I tapped into, but rather His strength that buoyed me in my time of greatest need.

Acknowledge the presence of God in your life. Acknowledge His strength coursing through you in your weakness, and be grateful for the grace that He has shown you. Rather than boast in ourselves, rather than beat our chests and say we overcame, may we be wise and humble enough to point to Him as the source of our strength and deliverance.

Job 9:25-31, “Now my days are swifter than a runner; they flee away, they see no good. They pass by like swift ships, like an eagle swooping on its prey. If I say, ‘I will forget my complaint, I will put off my sad face and wear a smile,’ I am afraid of all my sufferings; I know that You will not hold me innocent. If I am condemned, why do I labor in vain? If I wash myself with snow water, and cleanse my hands with soap, yet You will plunge me into the pit, and my own clothes will abhor me.”

If I could heal myself, I would. If I could restore myself, I would. If I thought putting on a brave face and smiling through my tears would bring about a resolution, I would do that too, but alas, I know none of these things will work. There would be no benefit in pretending that I am not afraid of my sufferings other than being made a liar. If we all take different roads to the same destination if I am condemned regardless, then why do I labor in vain?

These were the thoughts raging through Job’s mind unbidden, thoughts to which he gave voice, question after question to which he received no answer because the testing of one’s faith demands that we press on even when we don’t see the road ahead, when pieces of the puzzle are missing, and when we do not understand the why of a situation.

It would be easy to have a predetermined resolution to our trials before they’ve begun and foreknowledge of how they will end once they commence. There’s a difference between being stranded in the ocean bobbing upon the waves with no land in sight and swimming laps in an Olympic-sized pool at the local Y. With the latter; your survival is almost guaranteed, save for some infarction or freak accident. With the former, however, your only hope is that someone will come to your rescue because there is no way of rescuing yourself.

A test of one’s faith is being firmly convinced that even though the situation might look hopeless, one way or another, there will be a rescue. Not only that, but you are firmly convinced and know with confidence who your rescuer will be.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.