Job CXCVII

 Pain, whether physical or the pain that comes with the loss of a loved one, is hard enough to process and deal with without a chorus of voices insisting that you deserve it, you had it coming, and that it’s no less than God’s justice manifesting itself in your life. It compresses your universe to a pinprick, and all you know in the moment is that. If mourning, all you know is that hollow feeling that comes with the reality of separation. If bedridden due to some ailment, the bed soon feels like a prison, and the fresh air one took for granted, the sunsets and sunrises they rarely acknowledged, become untenable dreams and yearnings to be experienced again.

There is a difference between having to endure the consequences of the choices one makes in their life and what Job was going through. If you spent the last forty years on a steady diet of booze and not much else, when the doctor tells you that your liver’s shot, it’s not God punishing you, it’s the consequence of the choices you made time and again.

I am fully aware that accountability is as popular as foot fungus with a side of hives nowadays, but seeing what lack of personal accountability has wrought upon this present generation, perhaps we would do well to reacquaint ourselves with it while there is still time.

What’s worse is that many within the household of faith would rather deflect and pass the buck, blaming everyone from God to the devil to their next-door neighbor for the choices they knowingly and willingly made, growing bitter when walking the aisle and raising a hand doesn’t turn out to be the cure-all they were promised it would be.

God’s job isn’t to fix your life, it’s to save your soul. If He chooses to intervene and clear up some of the mess you’ve made, that’s His decision, His prerogative, and He does so not because we are deserving of such grace, but because He wills it so.

Have you come to the foot of the cross and humbled yourself because the love of Christ was made real to you, or because you wanted an easy fix for the problems that were piling up? Have you repented, picked up your cross, and followed after Him in the hope of being served, or out of sincere desire to be His servant?

There are those who inquire about Jesus because they’re curious, others who are desperate, and others still who are looking for an escape from their current circumstances, but the only ones that stick, the only ones that remain, the only ones that go the distance and live out their days in obedience to Christ are those who acknowledge that they are lost, broken, bruised, beaten, shattered, hopeless, and need a savior. They’re not looking for a temporary reprieve or an escape from the consequences of their choices, but true transformation, rebirth, and sanctification.

It is those who acknowledge that they cannot save themselves, and who are willing to surrender their pride, their ego, and their flesh, abandon aspirations and esteem for their positions and possessions, and submit wholly to His will, pruning, molding, and chiseling that go beyond the superficial, and come to experience the glory of having Christ dwell in their hearts.

There is nothing casual about authentic faith. There is nothing casual about true intimacy with God. The term casual Christianity is a misnomer of the highest order, one that readily passes the lips of a slew of people who use it as an identifier. There is no such thing as casual Christianity! True commitment isn’t situational. It’s not something that only applies when you’re in the majority, or when there are no headwinds of persecution in sight.

Eternity beckons and calls to us with each breath we take. With every sunrise and sunset, we are one day closer to shuffling off this mortal coil, and the last breath we take will be the last time we will be able to choose whether we will be welcomed into His kingdom or sent away. Eternity is what it’s about. It’s what it’s always been about, and the constant calls to embrace prosperity, which is nothing more than cloaked hedonism by those who ought to know better, aren’t doing the sheep of God’s pasture any favors.

Philippians 3:7-11, “But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith; that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection of the dead.”

These words were not penned by a nobody. They were penned by a man who showed such promise and brilliance in his youth that at the age of thirteen, he was sent from Tarsus to Jerusalem to study under the preeminent theologian of the time, a man named Gamaliel. His career path was set, and his entire life was before him. He would be a Pharisee, a high office to aspire to, but one encounter with Jesus made him count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus. 

Paul understood what so few truly grasp, that this journey called life is about the eternity that follows. This is the goal. This is the prize. Not earthly treasures, or temporary comfort. Job understood that life was finite. It has a beginning, and it has an end, and what we do in the short time we are here has eternal consequences, whether for good or ill. As far as Job was concerned, his life was already forfeit. He could not see a way out of his current predicament, yet his hope in the God he served remained intact, understanding that the day would come when there would be no pain, no sorrow, and no tears but for tears of joy.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.