Job CCI

 Genuine faith produces good fruit. Job’s life had been lived in service to God, and that reality had affected, permeated, and guided all of his actions, whether how he treated his wife, his children, or his servants. The genuineness of one’s devotion and relationship with God isn’t something they can turn on and off like a spigot. It’s not something that materializes and suddenly appears on weekends or when we’re in church. We are changed, transformed, and made new creations in Him; by definition, a new creation with the old attributes, inclinations, predilections, vices, desires, and emotional triggers is just the old man pretending to be new.

Therein lies the beauty of the testimonies of those who were once at enmity with God, living lives of hatred, bitterness, violence, and chaos, who, having been born again, renewed of mind and heart, became the polar opposites of who they once were. Rather than hate, they love; rather than bitterness, they exude joy; rather than visit violence upon others, they turn the other cheek.

When we are born again in Christ, we’re not trying to be better men and women; we become better men and women. No, it’s not a distinction without a difference, but one of the signs that we have been regenerated, sanctified, and transformed into His likeness.

The true heart of an individual is revealed in how they interact with you when they have nothing more to gain from you. The heart of Job’s servant was revealed to be less than noble as he’d already concluded that Job was a gasp away from dying, had come to the lowly place of sitting on an ash heap, scratching at his boils with a potsherd, and lost everything that the world, including himself, saw as valuable. His attitude toward Job had changed because Job’s position in society had changed. That is a sure sign that no genuine affection ever existed, but only a feigned subservience, dependent on whether Job could continue to keep him employed.

Some twenty-five years ago, the ministry went through a trial of unprecedented proportions. Individuals whom we’d trusted decided they could take the ministry to another level if they were in charge, and so did everything they could to take it and run with it. My grandfather had gone to his reward some years prior, the whole family had moved back to Romania, and at the time, we’d needed someone to focus on the work in the States. Little did we know of the aspirations these individuals had.

I get it. It’s always easier to attempt a hostile takeover of an established ministry than to put in the time and sweat equity to start your own. The problem is that it wasn’t my ministry, or my mother’s ministry, or my family’s ministry, but God’s ministry. This isn’t a business; it’s a calling.

The issue dragged on, and we found ourselves unable to make payroll for the orphanage staff, even after we’d sold the ministry vans and pretty much everything that wasn’t nailed down. We gathered the staff, who numbered well over forty, and had a heart-to-heart. We explained the situation and told them we would do our best to ensure they were paid, but there was no guarantee.

We understood they had families of their own to feed, so if they chose to find employment elsewhere, we wouldn’t hold it against them. Not one left! That was a defining moment for me because I understood that those we’d surrounded ourselves with weren’t doing what they did solely for the paycheck but because they, too, had been called to the work of watching over the children in our care.

God made a way, as He always does, and we were able to pay our employees on time, keep the lights on, and the children fed, but that moment when they had nothing to gain, could have walked away, but chose to continue serving is still something I remember fondly, even though it’s been nigh on twenty-five years.

Some of those individuals remain employed by the ministry in Romania to this day. They stuck it out when times were tough, when the situation seemed untenable, not because they knew it would work out in our favor or that the situation would be remedied, but because they understood it was the right thing to do. An individual's character is revealed in difficult times. Job’s servant failed the test.

Among the handful of people I consider my friends, a couple of them are relatively well off, so much so that in conversation with them, a nagging concern, something always in the back of their mind, is whether those in their orbit are there only because of what they can do for them, rather than a genuine desire to be in their presence.

My take was simple enough: pretend you lost it all, then see who sticks around. Those are your true friends. Neither of them took me up on my counsel because they confided a latent fear that more people than they believed would disavow them and have nothing to do with them. If that’s the case, then you’re enabling people who care nothing for you anyway.

I’d rather know and let the chips fall where they may. Pretend friends who are only present during the good seasons of life aren’t really friends; they’re opportunists who see a ticket to easy street and will do anything and say anything to stay in your good graces until such a time as you are no longer able to throw them a few bucks. They’ll never challenge or correct their benefactors even when they know correction is warranted because their goal isn’t your well-being, but theirs. Those are not the kinds of people you want to be around, and enough stories are floating about to confirm this truth.

You will never have to wonder about Jesus. He has no ulterior motive or vested interest. He’s not pretending to love you. He’s already proven His love by laying His life down for you. He loved you first. He proved His love to the point of death, and it is a love worthy of being reciprocated in kind.

1 John 4:19, “We love Him because He first loved us.” 

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.