Job CLXXIV

 Job 16:6-9, “Though I speak, my grief is not relieved; And if I remain silent, how am I eased? But now He has worn me out; you have made desolate all my company. You have shriveled me up, and it is a witness against me; My leanness rises up against me and bears witness to my face. He tears me in His wrath, and hates me; He gnashes at me with His teeth; My adversary sharpens His gaze on me.”

Few feelings in life are more of a gut check than being between a rock and a hard place. It’s like a game of chess where you realize you’re two moves away from checkmate, no matter what move you make going forward. It’s the helplessness, I think, that’s the worst part of it, especially for someone once resilient, in control, a leader of men and head of his household, with the ability to multitask to the point that up until Satan asked to test him, everything was well in hand.

When there is no right move, when there is nothing you can do, and you can’t see a clear path forward, you can choose to fall apart or trust in the captain of your salvation to see you through. We possess more knowledge of God’s promises and assurance that He is faithful, and more examples of Him doing what seemed impossible to man throughout history than Job ever did. We have the canon of scripture, we can run to it in moments of uncertainty, testing, despair, or spiritual attack, but what we lack in our modern era is the sort of relationship Job had with God.

God’s people may be perishing for lack of knowledge, but doubly so for lack of commitment. We may possess more knowledge than those of Job’s day, but evidently not enough to understand that God detests duplicity, hypocrisy, lip service, and fake devotion. We know His standard, we know His Word, but we refuse to live by them, submit to them, and follow after Him.

Luke 12:48, “But he who did not know, yet committed things deserving of stripes, shall be beaten with few. For everyone to whom much is given, from him much will be required; and to whom much has been committed, of him they will ask the more.”

Knowledge, in and of itself, is not an exemption from accountability; it is the measure by which we will be held accountable. Do you know that Jesus is Lord, King, and Savior? Do you have faith in Him? Then dedicate your time to that fundamental truth and grow in Him, know Him more, and mature your relationship. You would never reach the limits of Jesus, who He is, how He loves, and what He did on behalf of mankind, were you given a hundred lifetimes, so why get distracted by tertiary matters that hold no spiritual weight?

I encountered Jesus fifteen years ago, but ever since that first encounter, I’ve busied myself with planetary alignments, aliens, the rapture, hand gestures, and their demonic roots, the identity of the man of sin, and whether Jesus takes offense at being addressed as Jesus. Have I had fellowship with Him? Well, no, busy bee and all that. I have conspiracies to unwind and people to warn about accidentally being photographed picking their noses. It’s Illuminati, especially if you pick your left nostril with your right index finger!

Although it wasn’t the case with Job, many today back themselves into a corner, exhaust every option they have at their disposal, come to the point of desperation and ruin before they humble themselves and seek God’s counsel, His guidance, and His instruction.

They know they should stop digging, but they can’t help themselves. All the self-care, the therapists, therapies, mantras, and motivational quotes haven’t worked thus far, so they double down and keep doing what has been proven not to work in the hope that, for some unexplained reason, tomorrow it will.

While my wife is brilliant in most areas of life —excelling at her job, taking care of the girls, and managing the homestead —her one blind spot is her car. I hadn’t ridden with her in some time, and one morning we decided to go to breakfast as a family and take her car. As we petered down the highway, I started hearing a banging and clanging whenever I turned the wheel. When I asked her if she’d noticed it, she said, Yes, it’s been making that noise for some time, but I just thought it would go away on its own.

I know this woman. She is an intelligent, rational human being, so it was hard for me to reconcile her words with who I knew her to be. “You know those noises don’t just go away on their own”, I said, “and if it’s getting worse, it will just keep getting worse until you call me from the side or the road one day asking if I’m in the area so I can come pick you up.”

You can’t keep doing what doesn’t work and expect it to work one day. You can’t ignore patterns you’ve developed in your life that consistently rob you of joy, peace, and fellowship with God, hoping that one day, out of the blue, the ship will right itself and you will shake off the slumber.

If every time you interact with strangers on the interwebs and a friendly debate turns into a war of words, rather than hoping that men’s nature will one day change and they will react wisely when their theories are confronted, step away. Take that time you would have spent checking your pulse because you’re starting to feel lightheaded and your cheeks are flushed, and be alone with God. Go before Him in prayer. Ask Him for wisdom and a greater measure of self-control. Don’t keep doing the thing that robs you of peace, expecting that one day peace will flow like a river.

That’s not the way it works. You may want it to work; someone may have told you it does, there may even be testimonies online of people swearing by it, insisting that it was the breakthrough it needed, but the proof is in the pudding, and if what was supposed to bring you peace robs you of it, what was supposed to bring you joy takes it away, the longer you put off making a change the worse it will get.

This was precisely where Job was, as he’d concluded that though he spoke, his grief was not relieved, and if he remained silent, it would not do a thing to ease his suffering either. Either way, the hurt would remain, but at least he could try to convince his friends of the truth while he waited to die.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.