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. 

Job CXX

 A wolf never has the sheep’s best interest at heart. It doesn’t matter what words they use to beguile, seduce, or mesmerize; their purpose and intent are singular: to devour. A wolf will never look upon a sheep as anything more than a meal. Something to pounce upon, tear asunder, and consume. It is his nature. It is what he does, no matter how often he insists that he’s the only wolf in the history of wolves who’s a vegan or has no appetite for sheep.

A shepherd’s duty is twofold: to lead the sheep to green pastures, teach them the Word, and present Christ in all His glory, but also to keep the wolves at bay. One of the most heart-wrenching oratories in the New Testament is Paul’s warning to the elders of the church at Ephesus, knowing that once he departed, he would not be able to defend them from the wolves, and the wolves would waste no time in trying to devour them.

Acts 20:29-31, “For I know this, that after my departure savage wolves will come among you, not sparing the flock. Also from among yourselves men will rise up, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after themselves. Therefore watch, and remember that for three years I did not cease to warn everyone night and day with tears.”

He had laid the foundation of the faith for three years. He labored ceaselessly, he taught, he preached, he poured himself out, yet Paul knew that once he departed, the savage wolves would find a way in, and not only that, but even some from among them would rise up speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after themselves.

It’s easy to spot the enemy when he’s on the outside, teeth bared and hackles raised; it’s more difficult to discern it when he’s made his way into the household of faith, pretending to be something he is not, all the while dripping venom into the hearts of any who would hear.

Would I go so far as to say Job’s friends were wolves? No, I wouldn’t. They were, however, leaning on their own understanding and doing their best to demoralize Job and convince him that he’d brought offense to God to such an extent as to deserve everything that had happened to him.

Although they didn’t succeed in convincing Job to let go of his integrity or admit to something he hadn’t done, by Job’s words, it is evident that they were chipping away at his resolve. Their words, coupled with his worsening situation, were having an impact, although, given that this had been a protracted trial lasting for months, it may have seemed imperceptible to them.

It’s akin to living with someone who has gradually lost fifty, sixty, or a hundred pounds, seeing them every day, and acknowledging that something has changed but not realizing the extent of the change. Take that same individual and put them before someone who hasn’t seen them in six months, and their jaw is likely to drop to the floor because what they remember and what they are seeing before them seem like two different people.

Job 9:21-24, “I am blameless, yet I do not know myself; I despise my life. It is all one thing; Therefore I say, ‘He destroys the blameless and the wicked.’ If the scourge slays suddenly, He laughs at the plight of the innocent. The earth is given into the hand of the wicked. He covers the faces of its judges. If it is not He, who else could it be?”

It is the natural tendency of man to put his best foot forward. We would rather project strength, ability, wherewithal, and grit than we would weakness and ignorance because we realize that, on some level, how we present ourselves to others will determine how they view us in the aggregate.

While some men are weaker than they project, there are others who, while possessing great reserves of strength, do not insist that others view them as such. Such individuals are not interested in how they are viewed by the world or those they come in contact with because they possess enough self-awareness to understand that the opinion of others regarding their abilities or aptitudes does nothing by way of making them stronger or weaker in any given area.

Given what I’ve been called to do, it may sound incongruous, but I’m not big on lengthy conversations or splitting hairs regarding issues that are undeserving of the time required to do so. I don’t walk around the grocery store glued to my phone, I don’t feel the need to have protracted discussions about the weather, and I’m a big fan of the tried and true adage that if you could say in five words what would take others fifty, you’re ahead of the game. If a yes or a no will suffice, rather than go on a lengthy oratory about why I gave a specific answer, I usually just answer in the affirmative or the negative, sometimes even just nodding my head.

Boastful people always have something to prove either to themselves or others. Whether they’re suffering from an inferiority complex and they need to reaffirm, if only to themselves, that they’re more than they know they are or trying to prove to others that there’s more to them than what meets the eye, you always get the sense that they’re trying too hard.

Job could have put on airs, but what would have been the point? His friends saw the condition he was in, and they’d known all the tragedies that had befallen him, so trying to convince them otherwise would have been a fool’s quest at best.

By this juncture, he was verbally processing, trying to get a handle on his circumstances, seeing everything through a haze of pain and grief, and even to his pain-riddled mind, what was happening to him didn’t add up. He couldn’t reconcile his suffering with the God he’d served for so long, but given his ignorance of the interaction between God and Satan, Job’s question remained: if it is not He, who else could it be?

Unbeknownst to him, Job was nibbling at the edges of an epiphany that would cast a light on his trial, a light that would chase away the shadow of doubt threatening to overwhelm him. If it is not He, who else could it be? If I am not being punished by God for something I didn’t do, then perhaps there’s more to this than what my friends have insisted upon for these many days.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

Job CXIX

 For anyone who believes they are owed a vision, a dream, a revelation, or an explanation for something happening in their lives because they belong to a specific denomination or because the wing of a hospital is named after them, and they deserve special attention for being so charitable, consider that there was none like Job on the face of the earth, blameless and upright, and after months of torment, God remained silent. There was no whisper in the night encouraging him to hang on; there was no vision of angels tending to his wounds, no dream of the day he would recover and be made whole, just the pain, and the torment, and his three friends demanding he confess to some sin he knew himself innocent of.

When God is silent amid the maelstrom, the only thing we can do is go back to the instruction manual and reacquaint ourselves with it. Unlike Job, we have the benefit of the written word, the blueprint for spiritual growth, maturity, and wholeness. In it, we will discover that we were told what to do in any given situation, how to react to adversity, and most often, no further instruction is required except for what has already been written.

Revelation 2:10, “Do not fear any of those things which you are about to suffer. Indeed, the devil is about to throw some of you into prison, that you may be tested, and you will have tribulation ten days. Be faithful until death, and I will give you the crown of life.”

Jesus warned we would have hardships, trials, and tribulations; He warned that we would be hated, maligned, and persecuted; there is precedent within Scripture wherein the enemy asks to sift the faithful, and God allows it, and through it all, our instruction is to be faithful until death. It’s not to bemoan our situation, grow bitter, or seek escape, but to be faithful, knowing that if we are faithful until death, He will give us the crown of life.

Thankfully, few, if any of us will be called upon to suffer to the extreme Job did; then again, few, if any of us are as rare a soul as Job was, upon which God can look and see blamelessness and uprightness to the level of being unique among our contemporaries.

In acknowledging that no matter how learned, well-versed, educated, or erudite we might be, there will always be more things we do not know than what we do know, our minds are kept humble, teachable, and given to allow that we do not see in whole, but in part. All three of Job’s friends were so certain of their individual conclusions that they would not allow for the possibility that there was something more than what they perceived. They were fully convinced that what they saw was whole and not in part. Therefore, they were adamant in their claims and assertions.

It’s not as though Job’s friends weren’t convincing or that there wasn’t any truth in their conclusions. However, you can take a core truth and dilute it with a personal opinion to the point that the truth itself becomes unrecognizable, retaining so little of its original consistency as to be rendered nonexistent. The same can be said for taking a lie and couching it in truth so that it’s palatable, only to discover that you’ve been poisoned by something that, to the naked eye, seemed harmless and even beneficial.

Being firmly rooted in the Word of God, making it our main source of spiritual succor, acts as a spiritual immune system, wherein, every time some harmful pathogen attempts to worm its way into our hearts, it combats it and renders it harmless, expelling it before it has a chance to do damage. The answer to why so many people are deceived nowadays is simple: they are not anchored in the Word and do not feed their spiritual man with it.

The less of God’s word one has residing in one's heart, the easier it is for the devil to sow doubt and deception because there are no antibodies fighting against such things.

Psalm 119:11, “Your word I have hidden in my heart, that I might not sin against You.”

It’s not complicated, but we make it so because we give heed to the voices insisting that there are easier means, shortcuts, and newfangled ways to circumvent being saturated in the Word and hiding it within our hearts that will produce the same results. There aren’t. No matter who says it, how much they insist upon it, or how reasonable it may seem to human intellect, there is only one way of knowing the will of God, and that’s by knowing His Word.

Truth sets us free. Truth is not subjective, nor is it given to personal interpretation. It will not bend to men’s feelings or opinions; it remains ever resolute and absolute because Jesus is the embodiment of the truth we must walk in, the only way that will lead to life.

No one trying to complicate a relationship with Jesus or dismissing the fundamentals of prayer, fasting, reading the Word, and spending time with God as something antiquated or belonging to a bygone era that did not possess the wherewithal to find ways to circumvent them is doing so out of magnanimity or a selfless desire to see you make spiritual progress.

Sooner or later, the reason behind their insistence that you need them, their teaching, their wisdom, their counsel, or their guidance in order to grow in God becomes apparent, and it always has something to do with enriching themselves at your expense. Men exploit men for their own self-interests, and that is not exclusive to the world.

The reality of it is that you don’t need me, you don’t need some course, or some conference. All you need is a hunger and desire for more of God, a Bible, and the time required to consume the Word, to be in His presence, and to have fellowship with Him.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t avail yourself of teachings, writings, or sermons, but when an individual insists that they are indispensable, that without them, you will never attain a relationship with God, and they are the only way by which you will come to a deeper understanding of Him, they have placed themselves on par with Jesus, and that is wholly unacceptable.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

Job CXVIII

 Job 9:14-20, “How then can I answer Him, and choose my words to reason with Him? For though I were righteous, I could not answer Him; I would beg mercy of my Judge. If I called and He answered me, I would not believe that He was listening to my voice. For He crushes me with a tempest, and multiplies my wounds without cause. He will not allow me to catch my breath, but fills me with bitterness. If it is a matter of strength, indeed He is strong; And if of justice, who will appoint my day in court? Though I were righteous, my own mouth would condemn me; Though I were blameless, it would prove me perverse.”

Because no one can stand to see themselves in the light of God’s glory, they take to comparing themselves to their contemporaries, thereby concluding that their righteousness cuts the mustard, meets a standard, or is otherwise superior to a majority.

Job was not so hedonistic as to compare himself to his contemporaries, nor did he highlight his righteousness in an attempt to prove his case. Notwithstanding Jesus, who was sinless and walked in perfection, no matter how righteous one may seem in their own eyes, when juxtaposed with the righteousness of God, theirs is as filthy rags.

Comparing one’s righteousness with God’s righteousness is akin to comparing a flickering candle to a 200,000-lumen flashlight. There is no comparison, and when we have the temerity to insist that we deserve either health, prosperity, or prominence because of our righteousness, it is nothing more than base vanity.

Yes, Job was a righteous man. He was blameless and upright because God declared it to be so, yet by his own estimation, in light of God’s righteousness, his own mouth would condemn him if he were to boast of it, and though he were blameless, it would prove him perverse. Job did not see himself in contrast to his friend, his family, or his contemporaries but in contrast to a holy God, and that made his own righteousness so insignificant as to be unmentionable.

Well, then, if we’re always falling short, why even try? Why walk humbly with our Lord? Why be sober-minded and circumspect in all our ways? Why strive to walk in obedience? Because that is the duty of man in light of God’s will. It is our duty to keep His precepts diligently as faithful servants and children of God.

Psalm 119:1-5, “Blessed are the undefiled in the way, who walk in the law of the Lord! Blessed are those who keep His testimonies, who seek Him with the whole heart! They also do no iniquity; they walk in His ways. You have commanded us to keep Your precepts diligently. Oh, that my ways were directed to keep Your statutes!”

If God commanded it, it is not optional. It is not a take-it-or-leave-it proposition or something we can opt out of. He commanded us to keep His precepts diligently. It’s not work; it’s obedience. It’s not earning our way into heaven; it’s doing the things God commanded us to do.

We are great at trying to find shortcuts in pretty much every area of life, and serving God is no exception. I have a friend who was very enthusiastic about starting a ketogenic diet and wouldn’t stop talking about it. It was her first day, and as the conversation progressed, she started detailing all the available hacks she’d uncovered, wherein she could still hold to the diet but kind of cheat a little bit because life without pasta is no life at all, and everyone deserves a treat at the end of the day.

Since I’m usually honest to the point of bluntness, my only response to her was, if you’re already looking for ways to cheat, you might as well give up today because you’re likely going to give up tomorrow anyway.

I’m not a nutritionist, nor do I purport to be. However, if you want to know how to shed a few pounds, find a fat person and pick their brain because they likely know more about losing weight than the hippie chick with the kale smoothie who’s always been a size zero ever will. All told, I’ve probably lost a few hundred pounds throughout my life. The problem isn’t taking off the weight; it’s keeping it off, and the quickest way to gain it all back is trying to find hacks and shortcuts, which will inevitably lead to greater allowances in your diet to the point that you find yourself back right where you started with a few extra pounds to boot.

If we approach our service to God with the mindset of how much we can get away with and still be pleasing in His sight, we will flounder, stagnate, and return to our previous rebellion as a dog returns to its vomit.

A soldier remains a soldier whether they are on active duty, deployed, or awaiting fresh orders. They never cease being a soldier, and throughout their time, they are duty-bound to obey orders, regardless of how it makes them feel or whether they deem the task set before them as difficult. There is a reason Paul compares the life of the believer with a soldier or an athlete, and it’s because both of these require total commitment, total focus, and total dedication.

An athlete strives to be the best he can be, not allowing for mediocrity to be an acceptable recourse, but ever striving, pushing themselves, knowing that stagnation is death, and the absence of progress will doom their chances of claiming the prize.

There are rules for every race that every participant must abide by. There are no exceptions and no carveouts. If you are unwilling to abide by the rules, then you are not an official participant. You can run alongside those who are, and pretend to be in the race, but come the finish line, you will not be awarded any prize due to your unwillingness to submit to the rules and regulations governing it.

Likewise, there is a chain of command that every soldier must adhere to. Orders come from the top down, not from the bottom up. God commands, and we obey. That’s the way it works, and anyone who insists that they can subvert God and make up their own rules as they go is an army of one with no command structure or allegiance.

Job was a man who fundamentally understood these things and did his utmost to suffer well. Did he fall short of it at times? Likely, but there’s falling short, then there’s finding fault with God, and that he never did.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

Job CXVII

Throughout all this time, as Job’s friends were taking shots at him, questioning his faithfulness, and wondering out loud if he’d forgotten God altogether, his condition was worsening, and his suffering was escalating. It’s not as though his pain had peaked and now was lessening. With each new sunrise, Job was declining, his health was failing, and his flesh was caked with worms and dust, cracked and breaking out afresh.

Even those with overactive imaginations would have a hard time picturing the state Job was in at this point, something so ghastly to behold as to cause individuals he once knew to give him a wide berth for fear of contracting likewise. There was no liniment, ointment, medication, or poultice one could apply to ease his suffering, and by this time, everything they could have thought of would have been tried already.

Even dying in peace was beyond his reach because although Satan had free reign to touch every area of his life, including his body, he was not allowed to take his life. By this, we know that God can place limitations on the devil and that the devil cannot go beyond those limitations. He can’t break the rules once God spells them out, no matter how much he’d like to. If given the chance, Satan would have likely ended Job’s life out of spite, if nothing else, because he’d gambled, and he’d lost, and that surely didn’t feel good. He had one shot, one opportunity to prove God wrong by getting Job to sin or find fault with Him, and this pesky human clung to his integrity like he had something to prove.

There’s no doubt Job wanted to die, but he wasn’t willing to curse God in order to do it. He was unwilling to surrender his integrity or find fault with God in order to experience the release of oblivion, to be done with the pain and the torment, and the constant drumming of his friends insisting that he had sinned.

Yes, I’ve heard all the one-liners: tough times don’t last, tough people do, tomorrow is another day, the sun will shine again, look for the silver lining in every cloudy sky, if you don’t mind it, it doesn’t matter, et al. Easier said than done when your flesh is covered with worms and dust, and every day, you’re oozing anew from a new tear in your flesh and cracked skin.

When we attempt to minimize the extent of Job’s suffering, it’s easy to try and find a soap box or perhaps even a high horse from whence we can proclaim his frailty and weakness. It’s not as though they’re hard to find; his friends managed to find both high horses and soapboxes, and they went to town on a man who was their friend and had been reduced to not much more than rotting flesh and a pulse. Instead of providing comfort, their words and actions added to Job’s suffering. If nothing else, this should be a stark reminder to us all of the power of our words and the need for empathy in times of distress.

Whether as a nation or an individual, we do not value or appreciate God’s hedge of protection until it is removed. It’s not as though the first time Satan had heard of Job was when God mentioned him. He’d had his eye on him, roaming about, trying to find something he could exploit, but Job was an upright and blameless man whom God favored, so all Satan could do was watch and seethe.

It was only when Satan received permission to sift Job that the hedge around him and his family was suspended, sort of like an electric fence meant to keep predators out being shut off, and the floodgates opened wide. When we perceive our existence through the prism of God’s grace, protection, mercy, and providence, we learn to appreciate every sunrise and every sunset, every smile, and every breath because it is His hedge that is keeping us from being utterly devoured and trampled underfoot by the enemy.

There’s no such thing as a small grace; we only perceive them as such. The other day, I was on my way to the local grocery store to buy some milk for the girls when the light turned yellow. The car in front of me gunned it because waiting thirty seconds for it to turn green again was too much time for them to waste sitting at a red light, while another car that was turning left decided it was a good time to try and play chicken. The inevitable collision occurred not twenty feet in front of me, with one car spinning out, having been t-boned by the other, blocking traffic and causing havoc.

Thankfully, no one was hurt, but as I sat there, watching the accident unfold and then waiting for the police to show up, I couldn’t help but think that all it would have taken for me to be the one getting in a wreck was two, maybe three seconds.

Every day, a million things can go wrong that don’t, but we never acknowledge them as being God’s grace and protection. We go through life taking for granted the reality that angels have been given charge over us, watching us, protecting us, and keeping the enemy at bay. It's important to recognize and appreciate these everyday blessings and acknowledge them for what they are: manifestations of God’s grace and protection in our lives.

Psalm 91:11-12, “For He shall give His angels charge over you, to keep you in all your ways. In their hands they shall bear you up, lest you dash your foot against a stone.”

When we’re going through a trial, a testing, or a sifting, it’s easy to forget all His benefits and all the times He plucked us from the clutches of the enemy, delivering us from seemingly impossible situations. We are so focused on the present that we dismiss His faithfulness in the past, which ostensibly leads to either bitterness or desperation. Trust God. He will make a way. He always has, and He always will. It may not be as soon as you would like or in the manner you thought it, but His faithfulness is a certainty no matter the situation we might find ourselves in. This unwavering faith in God’s faithfulness is the key to enduring and overcoming trials.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

Job CXVI

 I have more respect for a country preacher who goes about rightly dividing the Word, with no aspirations of having a mega church or multiple campuses, than I ever will for those whose only purpose is to elevate themselves and make themselves out to be more important in the sight of God than their contemporaries. Humility is a noble virtue that has fallen out of favor with much of today’s leadership, and we are seeing the effects of their arrogance and pursuit of recognition and elevation. They stopped taking heed lest they fall, thinking themselves above the ability to fall, only to find themselves in the dirt, staring up at a starry sky, wondering how they got there.

By this point, Job understood that he would find no compassion in his three friends. All three took different routes but reached the same conclusion, wherein Job must have sinned; otherwise, all these things would not have happened to him. When the hearts and ears of men are non-responsive when, no matter what you say, they’ve already cemented their opinions, there is still God before whom we can plead our case and pour out our hearts.

God will neither shun you nor dismiss you. Even in His silence, He comforts those who cry out to Him and gives them the strength to persevere and cling to their faith during the process of pruning, trial, and testing.

Job had surrendered to the will of God, whatever that may have entailed. If He takes away, who can hinder Him? That was the conclusion Job had come to after months of torment. Oftentimes, God takes away the things we leaned on and trusted in so that we might reshift our focus on Him and learn to trust Him rather than the things that come from His hand. If we are wholly surrendered to God, when things are taken away, we do not bristle, grow bitter, or react in haste but understand that it did not occur accidentally or haphazardly. There was a purpose in it, perhaps beyond our understanding, but a purpose nonetheless.

From the moment it is born into the world and placed on its mother’s chest, a baby begins to develop trust. It knows it is safe and secure, will be tended to and looked after, fed, changed, and all the things that parenting entails because it has always been a constant. When we are born again into the kingdom of God, we are as babes, but with each passing day of seeing God’s faithfulness manifest in our lives, our trust likewise grows, and we come to understand that we are safe in His embrace.

Just as any parent does, sometimes God must discipline us, not because He revels in doling out chastening, but for our own good, our own growth, and our own maturing. The first time I had to discipline Victoria for something she did, which she was explicitly prohibited from doing, I cried more than she did. It broke my heart, and although it was more of a tap than any real discipline, she understood the gravity of the situation by seeing my own emotional distress in having to do it.

Love compels God to chasten His children. Not hate, not animus, not misplaced anger, but love. Due to the tragic reality that not all who sire children in our day and age are parents in the true sense of the word, mothers and fathers who care for, love, and cherish the gifts that God bestowed on them, many have difficulty understanding the true definition of love, and what it entails regarding God, who loves us with a perfect love.

Allowing children to do as they will when they will without instruction, direction, or correction is not love; it’s indifference and apathy. Not having guardrails and showing them right from wrong isn’t the height of good parenting, but an abject failure of one’s duties as a parent and a slow-moving tragedy waiting to happen.

In Job’s case, having known the goodness of God for most of his life, seeing himself in the state he was in, and knowing he had not sinned made it difficult for him to reconcile the God he knew with what he was enduring. Yet, on a fundamental level, he understood that God’s sovereignty, His absolute authority and control over all things, was not diminished by his personal suffering, and He does as He wills.

Job understood that while we can entreat God, pray, seek His face, cry out for mercy, and come before Him in faith, knowing that He hears, it does not necessarily mean He will do as we ask, and if He chooses not to, we have no right to question Him and ask, “What are you doing?”

Because they never understood what the sovereignty of God meant, many people today throw a tantrum every time God does not do as they demand, and rather than submitting to His authority, insist that it’s not God allowing something in their lives, but rather some nefarious force set on keeping them from living their best lives.

Unpopular as it may be in today’s self-obsessed climate, a servant does not have the right, whether implicit or explicit, to question their master or work against His will and purpose, thinking they know better.

We will all stand before Him on that day of days, and He will determine whether we were good and faithful servants or faithless and rebellious. Everything will be laid bare, and nothing will be hidden from His eyes. In that instant, the notion of faking it until you make it will die a quick and sudden death because God knows the inner thoughts of the heart, the things men think they can keep secret, and no justification will suffice, for God will know the truth of it. This inevitability of God’s judgment should make us feel accountable and mindful of our actions. It’s not something we can dismiss or wave off as insignificant or unimportant.

Those who were faithful and true will be welcomed into His Kingdom, receiving the reward for their faithfulness, while those who were faithless will be cast into the outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. We could try to blunt the blow of this reality or find ways to mitigate the full weight of what it means, but the truth is the truth, even when it makes us squirm in our seats.

For those walking in obedience, the reality of what is to come should not make them feel ill at ease but rather joyful and expectant. For those believing they can ride the fence and only pay God lip service while living in rebellion, it is a dreadful prospect, one they can readily remedy by genuine repentance of heart.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.