Job CCCXI

 Job 34:21-30, “For His eyes are on the ways of man, and He sees all his steps. There is no darkness nor shadow of death where the workers of iniquity may hide themselves. For He need not further consider a man that he should go before God in judgment. He breaks in pieces mighty men without inquiry, and sets others in their place. Therefore He knows their works; He overthrows them in the night, and they are crushed. He strikes them as wicked men, in the open sight of others, because they turned their back from Him, and would not consider any of His ways, so that they caused the cry of the poor to come to Him; for He hears the cry of the afflicted. When He gives quietness, who then can make trouble? And when He hides His face, who then can see Him, whether it is against a nation or a man alone? – That the hypocrite should not reign, lest the people be ensnared.”

If God’s eyes are on the ways of man and He sees all his steps, it is God and God alone that can determine the rightness of his way, for only God knows all, the things both open and secret, the things done in the shadows and the brightness of the day. It is the logical destination Elihu never arrived at, because he was too busy puffing himself up and insisting that men wiser than he lend him their ears to realize that he was attempting to appropriate God’s authority and pass judgment regarding Job.

Men can couch a lie in the truth often enough, but what they fail to realize is that the lie at the center of the truth in which it is encased pollutes it, and twists it into something other than the truth it began as. Factually, there was nothing wrong about what Elihu said. God’s eyes are indeed on the ways of man; He does see all his steps, and there is no darkness nor shadow of death where the workers of iniquity may hide themselves. All true, save for the presupposition that because Job had been brought low he must have been one such worker of iniquity.   

I have exceedingly more respect for someone who says they don’t know something, whether regarding spiritual matters or otherwise, than one who assumes, presumes, or tries to make out like they know the intricate details of a thing when they are wholly ignorant of it. In an attempt to save face, or keep their pride intact, men will double down on insisting they know something they clearly don’t until their ignorance is so evident as to be undeniable, or they are called out by someone who knows what they’re talking about.

Given that most people don’t like confrontation and they go out of their way to avoid it, the shameless among us who insist upon things that are clearly untrue usually get far before they are rebuffed, called out, or run out of steam.

When there is no pushback, when there is no resistance, they become more emboldened and, as such, become louder, to the point that they begin to believe their lies, passing them off as the truth. I’m sure you can think of a handful of things off the top of your head that are demonstrably false, that have, nevertheless, been passed off as the truth, and because few, if any, stood against them, they are now regarded as unimpeachable truth.

Elihu continues building his narrative, sprinkling in what God does with the wicked and the workers of iniquity, inferring that Job himself must be one such man since that is precisely what God does to them. Because God strikes wicked men, and Job himself had been stricken, then Job must be a wicked man.

Not only does Elihu detail what God does to the wicked, but he also insists he knows why, which is because they turned their back from Him, and would not consider any of His ways, and so Job must have, likewise, done these things since he had been stricken.

Generally speaking, Elihu is not wrong about God’s justice, or that He hears the cry of the afflicted. These are both true and factual statements, yet he applied them to Job, insisting this was the only viable explanation for why Job had lost and endured so much.

Elihu had already gone beyond judging Job, to condemning him for perceived wickedness he had no evidence of, not because he was a warrior for truth, or because justice flowed through his veins, but because he saw an opportunity to elevate himself by demeaning another. Before jumping on any bandwagon and adding to the chorus, perhaps it would be wise to determine why one individual has it out for another, and whether the intent behind their accusation is justice or their own self-aggrandizement.

Guilt or innocence are determined by whether someone actually did what they’ve been accused of doing, and not whether or not you like the way they come off, present themselves, or what denomination they belong to. To deem a man guilty when you know him to be innocent just because you don’t like his attitude or the manner in which he speaks is sinful. It is equally sinful to deem a man sinful when you know him to be guilty just because they’re likable or they belong to your particular clique.

God is not a respecter of persons. He will not judge you by your pedigree, lineage, level of education, or what continent you were born on. What impresses men does not impress God, and what disappoints and frustrates them isn’t what disappoints and frustrates Him. He knows you as you are; He sees beyond projection, façade, or image, to the heart of you, and when He looked upon Job, He saw a blameless and upright man, one who feared the Lord and shunned evil. Can the same be said about you or me? If not, then why not? It is not an impossible feat, after all. Job proved as much.     

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

Job CCCX

 Job 34:16-20, “If you have understanding, hear this; listen to the sound of my words: should one who hates justice govern? Will you condemn Him who is most just? Is it fitting to say to a king, ‘You are worthless,’ and to nobles, ‘You are wicked’? Yet He is not partial to princes, nor does He regard the rich more than the poor; for they are all the work of His hands. In a moment they die, in the middle of the night; the people are shaken and pass away; the mighty are taken away without a hand.”

If you cannot convince someone of your position by the soundness of your argument, your next best bet is to wear them down with the multitude of your words. I envy people who can tell the same banal story a thousand times with the same enthusiasm and fervor. Unfortunately, I am not one gifted in this area of oratory, and to the dismay of those who hear me preach, teach, or drone on for the hour or so on the radio program every week, there isn’t much repetition.

In what seems like another life, I was an interpreter for my grandfather. When we traveled, and it was often, those who came to hear him wanted to hear his testimony, and he told it not because he wanted to elevate himself in any way but because it was a springboard to the real message of repentance and holiness unto God lest judgment be visited upon this nation.

I never found that dull or tedious, because it was his testimony, and he was, after all, my grandfather whom I loved and had great fondness for. What I do find dreary and lackluster, however, is when out of the entirety of the Bible, sixty-six books in all, some preachers choose one favorite passage from which they preach the same message to the point that the audience can quote it verbatim, and they never seem to tire of it.

It’s the reason I’m reticent in retelling my grandfather’s testimony: it’s his testimony, and as far as the message for America goes, it’s available for free, on multiple platforms, whether in written form or audio, so for me to retread already tilled soil seems like an ill use of the time I’ve been given.

It would be no hard thing for me to endlessly hopscotch down rabbit trails, and regurgitate my grandfather’s testimony ad nauseam, but to what end? There must be a purpose to what we do beyond endless self-promotion, or the attempt at riding someone else’s coat tails for the sake of clout. The time I spent traveling with my grandfather wasn’t always easy; oftentimes it was brutal, but they are all fond memories because I got to spend a solid decade and change with the man who taught me how to ride a bike, made me my first slingshot, and was a consistent example of servanthood and obedience. There are far worse ways to spend your teenage years, but I am a teenager no longer, and the calling to which I have been called differs from that of my grandfather, perhaps not substantively but in the granular details.

You can tell a lot about a person by the things they say and what they choose to focus on. Elihu was so wrapped up in himself, so eager to prove his mettle and unveil his genius, that he demanded anyone within earshot stop what they were doing and listen to the sound of his words. It is, after all, the only way you will see how wise I am, how brilliant, how compelling, and you will walk away knowing how unique and special I am. By the end of his oratory, they may have walked away thinking him special, but not in the way he would have liked.

There are some nuggets of truth buried in Elihu’s self-honoring, self-promoting speech that deserve to be unearthed and pondered, chief among them the reality that God is not partial to princes, nor does He regard the rich more than the poor. It is men who judge other men based on their appearance, their wealth, their position, or their prominence. None of the things men judge others by are what God judges men by. We are all the work of His hands, fashioned from the same clay, and the only things that set men apart and are noticed by the Almighty are the selfsame things that made Job stand out: being blameless, upright, and fearing the Lord.

Do you belong to Him not just in word but in deed? In modern parlance, are you merely talking the talk, or walking the walk? Is Jesus on the throne of your heart? Is His presence the overarching desire of your heart? These are all questions we can answer for ourselves as individuals, and if the answer is no, then no amount of influence, authority, or prominence will make Him regard you in a better light.

The rigidity with which Elihu viewed God and the implacable, unbending conclusion that there are no exceptions to the rules he established is what made him so myopic. This is the way God must operate, and no other. This is the way God must do things, and no other possibility exists. You, who was once the greatest of all the people of the East, are now a wretch, a pitiable thing covered in boils, and this can only mean one thing: you have sinned, committed wickedness, such wickedness that cannot be expressed given the extent of your troubles. Proof? No, there is no proof. There is no evidence, but your present condition is all the evidence I require.

The failure to understand that God does as He wills, and is not subject to the preconceptions of His creation, is one of the quickest ways to run afoul of God Himself. Creation will never be in a position to dictate what the Creator can and cannot do, and to claim such is to place oneself above His sovereignty.

You can declare and proclaim until you’re blue in the face, and if God does not will it, it’s for naught. When we pray “Your will be done,” it is in all things, not just the ones that benefit or profit us in some form or fashion. Often, God’s will humbles us and brings us low, but even in such instances, His purpose is to draw us ever closer to Him. While Job was honest enough to acknowledge that he did not, as yet, understand God’s purpose in his suffering, Elihu was supremely assured that he did. The only problem is that Elihu was wrong.      

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

Job CCCIX

 Job 34:10-15, “Therefore listen to me, you men of understanding: Far be it from God to do wickedness, and from the Almighty to commit iniquity. For He repays man according to his work, and makes man to find a reward according to his way. Surely God will never do wickedly, nor will the Almighty pervert justice. Who gave Him charge over the earth? Or who appointed Him over the whole world? If He should set His heart on it, if He should gather to Himself His Spirit and His breath, all flesh would perish together, and man would return to dust.”

There’s nothing like a man’s own words demonstrating his ignorance that clarifies the situation beyond any doubt, or the ever-present, “that’s just your opinion, I think he’s really smart”. Granted, some people have a blind spot for certain individuals, and no matter the inane word salad that spills from their lips, no matter how incoherent, banal, illogical, or counterintuitive, they’ll still swoon and heap praise upon them as though wisdom itself had at last found a permanent home.

If ever Elihu’s wisdom was in question, uncertain as to whether he had the wherewithal to follow through with his claims, we now have a definitive answer and definitive proof. After endlessly puffing himself up and extoling his own wisdom, Elihu’s argument boils down to karma.

If you do good, good will come to you; if you do evil, evil will be visited upon you. Perhaps when all is said and done, the flesh is no more, and we stand before God, there was truth in Elihu’s words, that God repays man according to his work, and makes man find a reward according to his way, but what happens between now and then, between the moment a man is born and a man goes the way of all things has nothing to do with karmic justice, or karmic reward. Bad things happen to good people, the wicked prosper, and the righteous hang on by the skin of their teeth, and that has nothing to do with whether God is showing one favor over the other, or blesses one above the other, unless you boil everything down to how much is in a person’s bank account and equate that number with their level of righteousness.

If prosperity were the plumb line by which holiness were measured, then Elon Musk is the holiest man walking the earth today. If Elihu’s banal conclusion of karmic justice and reciprocity held any truth, then there is no man walking the earth that has done more good than the world’s first trillionaire.

It’s always tempting to wax poetic on things and topics we have no clue about, but it is a temptation we must resist lest we do as Elihu did, and go on a protracted rant regarding the nature, character, purpose, and sovereignty of God without having a clue as to what they entail.

Elihu might have known certain aspects about God, but he did not know God, at least nowhere near the level Job did. There is a different level of understanding between knowing about someone from what others have told you and knowing them personally, having had fellowship, broken bread, and spent countless hours together. Job knew God personally. Elihu, it seems, had heard about God, learned about Him, but as far as having a relationship with Him goes, knowing Him personally and intimately, it seems unlikely.

That didn’t stop Elihu from demanding that everyone listen to him, because although ignorance may not be a virtue, it is a warm blanket that shields against self-awareness, or objective introspection. We’ve seen it often enough in our day and age wherein everyone is an instant expert on the most niche of topics, and once they’ve made up their mind, once they’ve decided that they’re right, no amount of evidence to the contrary will sway them.

To add to the growing list of things we shouldn’t do, Elihu goes on to presume the mind of God, and establish what God can and cannot do based on his underlying belief that karmic justice is the only true and viable explanation for Job’s suffering. This type of hubris is becoming commonplace in the contemporary church, with men declaring, in full authority, that there are limits to what God can do, or that, because they’ve decided it is so, there are things He no longer does.

They come to their conclusions not based on what the Bible says, not based on Scripture, but based on their individual, intellectual reasoning, and the most relevant thing of all, it isn’t happening to them, or they’re not personally experiencing it. It is flawed logic at best. It presupposes that if they never learned to swim, then everyone else is incapable of swimming by the sheer fact that they can’t.

Have you tried, though? Why would I bother? It’s impossible! But other people have experienced it, so it can’t be impossible. They’re just lying, that’s all, because if it were a possibility, then I would be doing it!

When we presume to declare what God can and cannot do, we are, in essence, limiting His omnipotence, appropriating His authority, and speaking on His behalf when He said nothing of the sort.

Although Elihu had the right of it when he declared that God would never do wickedly nor pervert justice, what he failed to acknowledge was the reality of the enemy of all that is upright, blameless, and pure, as well as God’s ability to test one’s faith by allowing the enemy to buffet and harass the righteous.

Yes, Job was a unique case, but if the enemy were given free rein to do as he wills, we would all be as Job, lying in an ash pile and scratching at our boils. There are no limits to the enemy’s hatred of God’s children. It is a hatred so overarching and all-consuming that only by God’s mercy and protection and the limitations he places on the devil as to what he can and cannot do to come against us can we still be about the work of the Kingdom.    

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

Job CCCVIII

 Job 34:1-9, “Elihu further answered and said: ‘Hear my words, you wise men; give ear to me, you who have knowledge. For the ear tests words as the palate tastes food. Let us choose justice for ourselves; let us know among ourselves what is good. For Job has said, ‘I am righteous, but God has taken away my justice; should I lie concerning my right? My wound is incurable, though I am without transgression.’ What man is like Job, who drinks scorn like water, who goes in company with the workers of iniquity, and walks with wicked men? For he has said, ‘It profits man nothing that he should delight in God.’”

The more Elihu speaks, the worse off he comes. There are a plethora of things to unpack in these nine verses, but in the hope of keeping the word count of this second volume under the benchmark of War and Peace, I will only focus on three.

First, Elihu continued to make it all about himself. It wasn’t about hearing the word of the Lord, but about hearing his words. It wasn’t about seeking an answer from outside of himself, but about those present giving ear to him. There’s a difference between being wise and being wise in one’s own eyes. The wisdom to which I am referring is not book knowledge, or the attaining of degrees and diplomas, but the wisdom that comes from God, which only He can give to whom He chooses, at a time He has appointed.

In reading the words Job spoke, and the depth of wisdom he possessed, it is undeniable that he wasn’t the source of his wisdom. He spoke of things he had no way of knowing, or discerning with human reason, and one could readily tell that it was of divine origin.

Young as he was, perhaps Elihu had some head knowledge; perhaps he’d read a parchment or two, he’d happened upon a dusty scroll and perused it, sat in the counsel of those older than him and gleaned some measure of understanding, but he wasn’t anywhere near as wise as he believed himself to be, yet that in no way kept him from declaring his wisdom to any who would hear.

Hear my words, and give ear to me is what Elihu declared to those present. There was no mention of the Lord, or hearing the voice of the Lord, or giving heed to His counsel. We’ve got it from here, and we will determine whether Job is guilty or innocent. Whatever the Lord’s input, whatever the Lord’s judgment, whatever He might have to say on the matter is now moot, for I, Elihu, have come to pass judgment.

Elihu’s second blunder was assuming he had the right or authority to determine what justice looked like, or that he had the wherewithal to know what is good based on the partial information he possessed regarding Job.

“Let us choose justice for ourselves; let us know among ourselves what is good.” And who exactly gave you the authority to do this? Who appointed you judge, jury, and executioner of a man God Himself deemed blameless and upright? If the Lord has spoken, if the Lord has sent, if the Lord has appointed, then by all means speak what the Lord has spoken and go where He has sent you, walk in His authority as you go about His work, but to claim and appropriate an office, a position, or an authority that He has not given you is a recipe for disaster on a grand scale.

The difference between walking in His authority and yours is the difference between victory and defeat. The difference between speaking His words and your own in His name is that one will be rewarded due to the obedience required to go and speak a difficult message to someone reticent to hear it, and the other punished for appropriating God’s authority and speaking in His name when He never spoke. Be absolutely certain that when you speak in His name, they are His words, for all men will be held to account for the words they speak and whose name they speak them in.

Every time I speak, whether on the radio or before an audience, I go out of my way to delineate between personal opinion and revelation, between the word of the Lord and my own words. Although asked to do so on multiple occasions by various individuals, I refuse to take a word from the Lord, a prophecy, or some revelatory insight, and interpret it, flesh it out, or give my opinion on what I think it means, because that’s not my place. I do not have the authority to do it.

If God gives a message, deliver it verbatim and be done with it. If you want to wax poetic on why you should include tofu in your diet for better gut biome health, do your worst, but never claim it was something the Lord commanded His children to do.

As an aside, if God gives you, personally, a specific instruction to either abstain from something or do something, it does not automatically become general doctrine for everyone else. When Samson’s head was shaved, he lost his strength. This does not mean that everyone with long hair will have Samson's strength. He neither went around demanding everyone grow out their hair, nor did he insist that the reason they did not have his strength was that their hair wasn’t long.

The third and most egregious thing Elihu did was that he put words in Job’s mouth that Job never uttered just to make his point and position more credible. Although Elihu claimed Job had said that it profits man nothing that he should delight in God, those words never passed his lips.

If you are so inclined, go back through the previous thirty-two chapters, and see for yourself. Job never said that! What he said was the opposite of what Elihu claimed he’d said, insisting that God was the only thing worth pursuing in this life, and whether prince or pauper, whether rich or poor, if the presence of God abided, it was more than enough and the only thing his heart desired.

Whether he’d misheard Job’s words, or he did so knowingly, Elihu lied. Given that his lie served to bolster his assessment of Job’s situation, I tend to lean toward him knowingly insisting Job had said something he never did just to get a win. If saving face, or keeping your pride intact, is worth besmirching and lying about what another has said, there is something very wrong in your heart that must be dealt with before any claim of wisdom, or being on a mission from God, can be made.         

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

Job CCCVII

 Job 33:29-33, “Behold, God works all things, twice, in fact, three times with a man, to bring his soul from the Pit, that he may be enlightened with the light of life. Give ear, Job, listen to me; hold your peace and I will speak. If you have anything to say, answer me; speak, for I desire to justify you. If not, listen to me; hold your peace, and I will teach you wisdom.”

In all of his self-serving diatribe and repeated attempts to elevate himself to a position of authority he had no right to appropriate, Elihu did happen upon a nugget of wisdom that cannot be dismissed or readily brushed off. In an admittedly roundabout way, Elihu hit upon the grace and mercy of God, wherein He will endeavor to bring a man’s soul from the Pit not once, but twice, in fact three times as Elihu states, and for some even more than that.

I’ve never been a fan of modern technology, and with the increase in spam calls, or individuals trying to sell me extended warranties for a car that isn’t worth the monthly premium of said warranty, the ringer on my phone is permanently on silent. I don’t like distractions, especially when I’m spending alone time with God, and wouldn’t you know it, that hour or two in the morning that I carve out as both intentional and exclusive to get into the Word and spend time in prayer is when everyone decides to reach out.

I often find three or four missed calls when I finally get around to checking my phone after I’m done with my quiet time, and they're always spam, potential spam, or an unknown caller who picked that specific time to dial my number.

I learned early on that one of the most often used and undeniably effective tools of the enemy is distraction. You commit yourself to a time of prayer, or study, you purpose in your heart that this thirty minutes, an hour, or two hours will be used exclusively for that pursuit, and suddenly everyone wants a piece of you, a moment of your time, something that can’t be put off or delayed, because if the enemy can keep you from spending time with God one day, he will attempt to rinse and repeat the rest of the week, then the month, then the year.

It never ends up being the emergency it was presented as being, and you find yourself having missed that window of being alone with God, because once the day gets started, it never stops. Between rushing the kids to school, packing their lunches, going to work, or the hundred other things we need to do to keep our head above water, the moment has passed.

The point is that a relationship must be reciprocal. If you want to know God on a deeper level, you must make the time to spend with Him. If you want understanding about a given biblical topic, you must make the time to study it. Yes, God works all things twice, in fact three times, to bring a man’s soul from the Pit, that he may be enlightened with the light of life, but it requires the individual’s consent and participation insofar as he does not resist the spirit of grace, nor turn his back on the proffered love.

God doesn’t take hostages. He will not keep you in His kingdom at gunpoint. Jesus Himself said if anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. This is the way, walk in it.

Jesus did the heavy lifting. His purpose on earth was to reconcile us to the Father, something He alone could accomplish, and by His sacrifice made a way for us to be with Him in paradise, saved from the Pit, born anew, sanctified, and cleansed of what we once were, to be transformed into an image of Himself. In His own right, God extends grace, mercy, and forgiveness to all who humble themselves, but He will not force Himself on anyone. He knocks, and we open. He calls, and we answer. He molds, and we submit, not growing brittle or stiff-necked, but remaining malleable.

Any goodwill Elihu may have fostered by his mention of God’s grace gets canceled out when he once again attempts to bring the spotlight back on himself and insists that Job should listen to him, hold his peace, and allow him to teach him wisdom. A person who thinks they know more than they do is a danger not only to others but also to themselves. There was no humility in Elihu, no allowance for the possibility that things weren’t as they seemed at first glance, and like a bull intent on goring whatever stands before him, Elihu pushed ever onward, insisting that anything he had to say was wisdom personified.

Elihu was the quintessential armchair quarterback, the man who not only knew everything but believed he would have acted and reacted to a specific situation better than the individual in question. He never bothered to consider all that Job had lost, all that he had been through, or all that he’d endured thus far. His narrative was firmly established, and he would not be swayed from his position. He was wise in his own eyes, and he was sure to let everyone know it, for after all, if you don’t point out your wisdom, who’s going to do it?

You see this happening in churches and ministries often enough: a soon-to-retire pastor or head of a ministry brings on a young, unseasoned individual to take the helm, only to have them reimagine the ministry's mission statement and transform it into something unrecognizable within a matter of months. Never mind the hostile takeovers taking place in the corporatized Christian landscape, wherein someone believes they can do a better job than the individual who spent decades building up the work. The one question that’s rarely asked, and one that should be asked more often, is if you’re so star-spangled awesome and you have the vision to grow something exponentially, why covet another’s ministry rather than starting your own?

As was the case with Elihu, the sad reality is that some men’s hubris exceeds their intellectual ability, and when it comes to ministry, many go without being sent, doing more harm than good in their single-minded pursuit of something that was never theirs to begin with.   

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

Job CCCVI

 Job 33:23-28, “If there is a messenger for him, a mediator, one among a thousand, to show man His uprightness, then He is gracious to him, and says, ‘deliver him from going down to the Pit; I have found a ransom’; His flesh shall be young like a child’s, he shall return to the days of his youth. He shall pray to God, and He will delight in him, he shall see His face with joy, for He restores to man His righteousness. Then he looks at men and says, ‘I have sinned and perverted what was right, and it did not profit me.’ He will redeem his soul from going to the Pit, and his life shall see the light.”

If you get the sneaky feeling that you’ve met Elihu before, you’re not alone. The reason for this is that you’ve likely run across an Elihu type in your life, as I have, because they are more common than one might think. Elihu was the type of individual who, no matter the situation or circumstance, had the ability to make it all about himself. He was the star of his own show, and everyone around him was an extra.

If a typhoon devastates an entire region, the Elihu type will bemoan the fact that their flight might get delayed or diverted. Never mind that thousands of people are missing and presumed dead, or that an entire nation is without power for going on two weeks; your plans got ruined, you were inconvenienced by having to wait in an airport for two extra hours, and that was the real tragedy.

Elihu took what was happening to Job, and you guessed it, made it all about himself, and how Job was lucky, or at least should feel lucky, because God had sent him along to act as mediator, and by Elihu’s very presence, his selfless act of standing in for Job, he would be spared from the Pit if he would only confess and admit to having sinned and perverted what was right.

In his hubris, Elihu saw himself as one in a thousand, and if he’d had a say in the matter, the book would have been called the Book of Elihu rather than the Book of Job. Job was auxiliary, as far as Elihu was concerned, and the real story here was the selflessness Elihu exhibited by being willing to mediate between Job and God.

Even at the pinnacle of his success, Job never made it about himself. He didn’t go fishing for accolades or seek the praise of men; he didn’t see himself above the need to have a true and abiding relationship with God, nor did he forego the time he spent in God’s presence.

By the time the story of Job begins to unfold, his children were already grown, each in their own houses, yet, even then, Job would send and sanctify his children once the days of feasting had run their course, and offer burnt offerings according to the number of them all.

He understood that everything was dependent on God, His good pleasure, and His sovereign will. For some, once they “make it,” whatever that entails and however that plays out in their minds, God becomes less relevant, less necessary, less important, because their desire was never to have intimacy with God but to succeed, to outshine their competition, and to reach their earthly goals. Not so with Job. By any metric, he’d made it. He was the greatest of all the people of the East, yet that did not dampen his desire to be in God’s presence and walk uprightly.

It’s not as though Job was secretive about his desire for God, nor about his relationship with the Almighty. By his own admission, Elihu had overheard the back-and-forth between Job and his three friends, had witnessed Job’s repeated insistence that he had not done wickedness and that God remained his singular priority and pursuit, but Elihu refused to believe him.

If Job had lived his life incongruent with the will and plan of God up until that point, not only would God not have singled him out as blameless and upright, but there would have been enough evidence to point to and rightly call him a liar to his face when he claimed innocence. He was well known enough that, had he done something wicked, it would have been discovered no matter how hard he tried to hide it.

Job wasn’t trying to save face or claim innocence when he knew himself to be guilty; he wasn’t trying to get off on a technicality, asking what the definition of wickedness was; he knew that he knew himself to be one who feared the Lord, and was not reticent in saying it.

Anyone who seeks to judge others before they judge themselves is not acting out of love, kindness, or righteous indignation, but a desire to elevate themselves and highlight their own perceived righteousness.

There are a few things that are offputting about Elihu and his approach of Job, but for me, worse than any other, it is the prism through which he saw Job, from an elevated position, thinking himself righteous and within his rights to pass judgment on a man who had, up until this time, denied all the accusations leveled against him, and conducted himself in such a manner as to make those who had been arguing with him have no retort or counterargument.

Elihu might have been a fresh face on the scene; he may have seen himself as superior since Job’s friends were, in his words, very old, but when he opened his mouth to speak, we soon realize he was the worst of the lot. Say what you will about Job’s three friends, but none of them had the temerity to appoint themselves as mediators between Job and God as Elihu had.

As the adage goes, respect isn’t given; it’s earned, and although Job’s friends had earned his respect by traveling to him in his time of need, Elihu had done no such thing. He saw an opportunity to exalt himself, and he took it, thinking it would be an easy thing given Job’s state. What Elihu hadn’t counted on was that it wasn’t any man who was Job’s defender but God, and when God is your defender, no matter what men might say, you will continue to stand firm and resolute.         

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

Job CCCV

Job 33:19-22, “Man is also chastened with pain on his bed, and with strong pain in many of his bones, so that his life abhors bread, and his soul succulent food. His flesh wastes away from sight, and his bones stick out which once were not seen. Yet his soul draws near the Pit, and his life to the executioners.”

If Elihu ever failed at being Job’s self-appointed spokesman before God, he could readily try his hand at being an utterer of personal prophecy in our modern era. He would likely get more traction than some of the new brood of internet prophets, who have measurably less insight and awareness than Elihu. What Elihu was saying wasn’t revelatory by any means; it was the conclusion to which he’d come based on Job’s suffering, because if a man suffers from pain in his bones to the point of abhorring bread, surely he must be under God’s chastening.

It’s funny how the faces change, but the means by which those who claim revelatory insight use the same deductive reasoning to reach their conclusions. It’s also the reason that focusing on the mechanisms and contrivances that such individuals use, rather than on the individuals themselves, is a better use of one’s time.

The false prophets, teachers, evangelists, and those pretending to be sheep but are inwardly ravenous wolves are like the hydra of legend, wherein if one head is lopped off, two others grow in their place. Different face, same scheme, time and again, but if you are able to articulate and properly define the scheme, the face won’t matter because you will know them by their fruit.

Matthew 7:15-20, “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thornbushes or figs from thistles? Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Therefore by their fruits you will know them.”

One of the biggest scandals within the prophetic movement in recent years was self-titled prophets using Facebook to mine data about individuals, then passing it off as authentic prophetic utterance. People were wowed and impressed as though they were there for a magic show rather than a church service, smiling and clapping like trained seals when they were told the street they lived on, or the name of their pet poodle, not bothering to think it through and conclude everything they’d heard was public knowledge, but receiving it as words from on high.

Those who understand how such individuals operate and can identify the mechanisms they employ know that the street number or the name of their recently deceased grandmother is just a springboard to what they’re really after. It never ends with “Your cat’s name is Mr. Whiskers, very original”; it begins with it. Sooner rather than later, also under the guise of prophetic utterance, the manipulation will begin in earnest, and whether it’s sowing a faith seed for the new parsonage that will allow for greater spiritual interactions with the Almighty, or coming under their mentorship which they then use to exploit toward nefarious ends, the victims go along with it because he knew my pet hamster’s name offhand, so he must be what he claims to be.

As an aside, when did the purpose of prophecy become to confirm to you something banal and spiritually irrelevant that you already knew, or could readily discover by looking at your driver’s license? When did we lower the bar to the point that we equate prophecy with a variety show put on by the local high school to raise money for its summer camp outing? What we are seeing today is what happens when desire to witness the supernatural meets unwillingness to live lives worthy of the name Jesus. We want the experience without the repentance; we want the words of knowledge without sanctification; we want the power without the indwelling presence because the indwelling presence demands a clean vessel, and that, in turn, demands that we mortify the flesh and deny ourselves daily.

You can’t have one without the other, but you can pretend to. It may work for a while; the crowds may be wowed, and the gullible may swoon, but the end will be worse than the beginning, and eventually the truth will out.  

If by some miracle we run across someone with true prophetic gifting and they speak a word that challenges us, calls us to repentance, chastens us, or isn’t what we expected to hear, we brush it off and go prophecy hunting until we hear the one we want to hear, because it was never about what the Lord would say but about confirming our biases and hearing a word that is little more than an echo of our own machinations.

I really didn’t like the word about humbling myself and striving for righteousness because it challenged me and made me feel some kind of way, but that one about being highly favored and God having a plan for my life where I would reach millions with my gift - that one hit home. It bore witness, don’t you know, so it must be God’s honest truth. Never mind that I know I’m not where I’m supposed to be in my walk with God. Never mind that although by now I should be on a steady diet of meat, I’m still on milk, and even that only enough to subsist; the man on stage said that I too would be a prophet to the nations.

Elihu didn’t go so far as to prophesy or claim he was prophesying, but he allowed his worldview to determine Job’s guilt and then created a narrative to support his conclusion. It’s like insisting you know the answer to a math equation before you’ve heard the equation itself. It’s four; I know it’s four; I don’t care if the equation is seventy divided by two; the answer is still four.

Such people are impossible to reason with because they will not allow for a different answer, no matter how much evidence exists that they were wrong.  

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

Job CCCIV

 Job 33:8-12, “Surely you have spoken in my hearing, and I have heard the sound of your words, saying, ‘I am pure, without transgression; I am innocent, and there is no iniquity in me. Yet He finds occasions against me, He counts me as His enemy; He puts my feet in the stocks, He watches all my paths.’ Look, in this you are not righteous. I will answer you, for God is greater than man.”

Though he believed himself to be the possessor of pure knowledge, one from whose lips nothing else could flow, Elihu’s first action was to fall into the logic trap Job’s friends had likewise fallen into, not allowing for the possibility that there was something beyond what they understood taking place.

I’ve heard you say you were pure, without transgression, and that there is no iniquity in you, but if that were the case, why would God find occasion against you? If you were an innocent man, then God would not count you as His enemy; ergo, you are not an innocent man!

With all the build-up, with all the bloviating words Elihu used to introduce himself, one would think his first address to Job would have contained a tad more wisdom than it did. After talking himself up to the point of appointing himself as Job’s spokesman before God, his hot take was basic and banal. There is nothing new. There is no epiphany, no nugget of wisdom that would make one believe Elihu was as profound and intellectually gifted as he thought himself to be, but that’s the thing about hubris: it always makes the individual suffering from it think more highly of himself than he has any right to.

One thing Elihu said was true: God is greater than man, but given the subtext of his words, he also concluded that even though God is greater than man, God must see Job’s situation as he did, thereby making God beholden to him in His thinking.

I have judged you guilty; therefore, God will judge you guilty as well. It matters not that you insist upon your innocence or that there is no evidence of sin or wrongdoing; I am Elihu, and I have judged you thusly.

Presumptive human reasoning based on one’s own prejudices and the mind of God don’t mix. To assume that the two are in harmony, and appropriate the authority of God in one’s assertions isn’t merely dangerous; it’s sinful. God will not share His glory with another, nor will He allow His authority to be misappropriated and abused.

When one comes in the name of the Lord, they are there to speak His words, do His bidding, deliver His message, and nothing more. He must have been sent by the Lord in order to come in His name, and everything he does in his duty toward the Lord must be within the boundaries of what the Lord declared. You neither have the authority to wing it nor interpret the words that God spoke and assume that it’s what God meant. Your duty is to repeat the words God spoke verbatim, meaning in exactly the same words as were used originally.

Elihu had not been sent; he had no message; he had no word from the Lord for Job, yet he presumed to know the mind of God and placed himself as the sole mediator between Job and God.

Job 33:13-18, “Why do you contend with Him? For He does not give an accounting of any of His words. For God may speak in one way, or in another, yet man does not perceive it. In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falls upon men, while slumbering on their beds, then He opens the ears of men, and seals their instruction. In order to turn man from his deed, and conceal pride from man, He keeps back his soul from the Pit, and his life from perishing by the sword.”

As I read Elihu’s words, the one analogy that comes to mind is of someone trying to teach a fully grown, adult Shakespeare the alphabet, insisting that he needs to know the basics of language before he can hope to read a sentence, never mind write one. Job was a man who was so accustomed to the presence of God that his singular terror was His absence, yet Elihu was going on about the varied ways He can speak to mankind, yet mankind, being obtuse, does not perceive His message.

Job’s greatest lament was God’s silence. Not that God had spoken and he’d missed it, or that he did not understand the message he’d received in a dream or a vision of the night, but cry out as he might, God remained silent to him.

Job had made this clear enough in his discourse, but Elihu heard what he wanted to hear, and had formulated his conclusions based on the premise that God was punishing Job for something he had yet to admit to, and what’s worse, in Elihu’s estimation, God had been speaking to Job all this time, but Job was too dense to perceive it.

He hasn’t gone quite so far yet, but at some point it would be no surprise if Elihu went with the standard, “If I were in your shoes, this issue would have been resolved a long time ago. I would have perceived what God was telling me and would have acted accordingly, but you refuse to do so. God has tried to turn you from your deeds, but you did not turn.”

It’s evident that although Elihu thought pure knowledge flowed from his lips, he had no clue what he was talking about regarding Job and his relationship with God. He judged the situation for what it was without spiritual insight or allowing for the possibility that something more was happening, just as Job’s friends had done.

We’ve all been guilty of getting caught up in thinking we were right about something to the point that it becomes all important to prove just how right we were. When it turns out we weren’t, that we’d misjudged a situation or a person, one of the hardest things is to admit as much, to acknowledge that we’d judged wrongly, and that we need to repent of it.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

Job CCCIII

 Job 33:1-7, “But please, Job, hear my speech, and listen to all my words. Now, I open my mouth. My words come from my upright heart; my lips utter pure knowledge. The spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty gives me life. If you can answer me, set your words in order before me; take your stand. Truly I am as your spokesman before God; I also have been formed out of clay. Surely no fear of me will terrify you, nor will my hand be heavy on you.”

In contrast to Job, who was humble enough to know what he didn’t know, Elihu was a young man whose self-assurance and self-importance were ones for the ages. It wasn’t God who declared Elihu a man of upright heart, but Elihu himself, unlike Job, whom God deemed blameless and upright.

Grandiose doesn’t come close to describing Elihu’s attitude, because he didn’t just consider himself a man of upright heart; he also believed that his lips uttered pure knowledge. Every word that comes out of my mouth should be carved into stone to be remembered for ages to come, in my humble opinion. Can anyone validate my claim that my lips utter pure knowledge, you ask? No, then again, they’re all beneath me, so why would I consider their input?

Try as one might to see Elihu as a sympathetic figure, his words and attitude make it difficult, if not outright impossible. How would you react if, after a lifelong relationship with the Almighty, having lost everything, lying in the dust, scratching at yourself with a potsherd and barely clinging on to life, someone came along and insisted that they were your spokesman before God?

But I speak to God every day. I entreat Him to show me the error of my ways, if any error is present; I long to feel His presence and have fellowship with Him. How is it that you’ve appointed yourself my spokesman before God?

On the one hand you say we’re the same, both formed out of the clay; on the other you position yourself as spiritually superior, insisting I should fear you and that your hand would not be heavy on me. Who exactly are you? Why should, after all I’ve been through, endured, and suffered, be at all concerned with the weight of your hand on me? These are all valid questions Job could have asked, but Elihu was not interested in having his bona fides questioned. His only concern was that Job take his stand and answer him as though he were judge, jury, and executioner all rolled up into one.

There are a handful of practical yet important lessons in what not to do regarding Elihu’s approach, demeanor, and overall delivery of what he had to say that would serve any of us well as a cautionary tale.

The first of these is to reject the often appealing sense of self-importance. Not only did Elihu consider himself a man of upright heart, but he also insisted that his lips uttered pure knowledge. That’s quite a boast, one not even Job had made, yet Elihu felt perfectly comfortable making it.

Whether it’s Robert Tilton back in the day claiming to be the apple of God’s eye, or the more recent individuals who have no qualms about declaring themselves the solitary conduit of wisdom, knowledge, and prophetic insight, anyone who attempts to elevate themselves and claim exclusivity regarding an attribute that God gave to the household of faith as a whole is suspect and should be engaged with caution if at all.

If one such as Paul dared not elevate himself beyond the station of bondservant of Christ, what gives any person living today the right to make claims and boasts of such grandiosity as to make one think they were interchangeable with the Almighty Himself?

The second thing that Elihu did, that we should avoid at all costs, is presume to know the mind of God, and assume that He thinks as we do, judges as we do, or sees things through the same prism and the same light as we do.

Isaiah 55:8-9, ‘“For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,’ says the Lord. ‘For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.’”

If Job didn’t know why he was going through the things he was, surely Elihu didn’t have a clue. Yet, in his hubris, he was fully assured that he knew the right of it, and all that was left was to convince Job of it. Set your words in order before me, answer me, take your stand; I will determine whether you speak the truth, I will determine whether you are innocent, and will eventually prove your guilt.

Elihu wasn’t without his bias. He had already made up his mind regarding Job, and had concluded, as had Job’s three friends, that he’d done something truly wicked to suffer in such a manner. He presumed to know the inner workings of the mind of God Himself, and was not reticent in declaring as much.

The third thing we should avoid, and one that has become epidemic within the household of faith, is claiming titles God never gave you, or offices to which you were never called. Elihu had assigned himself the position of Job’s spokesman before God. God never called him to be so, nor had Job solicited his aid in beseeching God. Elihu took it upon himself to claim something to which he had no right, and many today are doing the same thing within the context of ministry.

Everyone and their grandma is suddenly an apostle or prophet, not because God called them to be, or equipped them to be, but because the title gives them clout and perceived authority. It hits different when a message comes from a supposed prophetess than from Aunt Midge with the sixteen cats and neon hair, doesn’t it?

In the end we will all be called to account for the lives we’ve lived, the titles we claimed, the authority we misappropriated that was never ours in the first place, the boasts we made, the words we spoke, the pride we felt, and the glory we took for ourselves that rightly belonged to Him.

While the humble, obedient, and faithful cry out, Come quickly, Lord Jesus, there are those within the household of faith who look upon that day with dread and great terror because they know God knows, and their farces have not fooled Him in the least.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

Job CCCII

 No one asked him to do it, no one inquired of him, but Elihu took it upon himself to educate Job and his three friends, and he had nothing good to say about any of them. Job had offended his sensibilities by declaring his innocence; the three friends had offended him by being unable to challenge Job’s assertions; and, of all the men present, he thought himself the sole possessor of wisdom and understanding.

With the advent of modern technology, it has become far easier to highlight one’s ignorance and put it on full display for all to see, and the chorus of those screeching “Listen to me, I also will declare my opinion” has become the soundtrack of life, ever present in the background, like the buzzing of a hornet or the stridulation of a grasshopper. You try to tune them out, even succeed on the good days, but more often than not they get so loud as to become impossible to ignore, a cacophony of noise with no underlying substance.

The first impulse is to add our own noise to the chorus, to speak our mind, to have our say, to throw our two cents in to a growing mountain of pennies. Surely, if the guy with the squeegee, offering to clean your windshield for some spare change, has an opinion on geopolitics and global affairs, you should have one too; at least you own a car, and technically, delivering DoorDash to lazy people is a job, so you have one of those too. Yep, that’s what I’ll do. I’ll give him a piece of my mind and tell him what I think because I have just as much right to an opinion as he does to his, and my opinion is likely the correct one anyway.

If we surrender to that first impulse, all that occurs is that our voice is added to the noise, and we find ourselves trying to talk over others, each holding to their position, becoming ever more impatient, erratic, and vitriolic. Soon enough, it’s no longer about the position, but about the person, and the ad hominem attacks come in hot and heavy, focusing on the individual rather than their premise, because if the message is bulletproof, the messenger likely isn’t.

I’ve found that the wisest thing to do in such situations is refuse to participate entirely. People who’ve made up their minds about one thing or another are rarely willing to hear dissenting opinions, or allow for their minds to be changed on the matter. If I’m asked my opinion, I will give it, but beyond that, I refuse to engage in a war of words that will likely produce nothing but bitterness and animosity.

If the matter is of a biblical nature, then all I can do is point to what Scripture says, because I am subordinate to it, and not it to me. If it’s a trivial matter, we all have our preferences and will not judge another for failing to tuck in their shirt or wear khakis to the park when it’s blistering hot outside. Do I think that wearing knee-high socks with open-toe sandals is a good idea? No, but it will neither bring one closer nor distance them from Jesus, so why should it matter to me?       

Job 32:15-22, “They are dismayed and answer no more; words escape them. And I have waited, because they did not speak, because they stood still and answered no more. I also will answer my part, I too will declare my opinion. For I am full of words; the spirit within me compels me. Indeed my belly is like wine that has no vent; it is ready to burst like new wineskins. I will speak, that I may find relief; I must open my lips and answer. Let me not, I pray, show partiality to anyone; nor let me flatter any man. For I do not know how to flatter, else my Maker would soon take me away.”

For well over half of the book of Job, no one even knew Elihu was present or that he even existed. His name had not been brought up, he had not been included in the conversation, none of what was said pertained to him, yet he was full of words, and the spirit within him compelled him to speak. Which spirit, I wonder?

This wasn’t about giving an arbitrary opinion on the weather; it wasn’t as though he was asked to chime in, but Elihu took it upon himself to speak; otherwise, he would burst. In his mind, what he had to say mattered so much that had he kept silent, he would find no relief.

If you’ve ever had someone jump in mid-conversation without understanding the context or knowing what was said before they decided to give their hot take, you know what Job and his three friends felt like. I’m sure you’re right, and Fords are unreliable, but the conversation wasn’t about cars. You misheard “afford” and thought it was “Ford”, and now we’re onto a whole new topic when the initial conversation centered around how no one could afford health insurance anymore.

There is wisdom in the admonition that one ought to be slow to speak and quick to listen. Granted, Elihu had been listening to the back and forth between Job and his friends, but he had no reason for injecting himself into the conversation save for hubris and the elevated opinion he had of himself and his opinion.

He knew what he was going to say before he said it, and likewise knew it would not land well, so he couched his words in a self-serving, “I’m just being honest, not looking to flatter, or show partiality” preface before launching into his diatribe. Even giving him the benefit of the doubt, believing him at his word that his desire was not to show partiality to any one individual over the other, the question remains: why say anything at all? It’s not as though Job asked him to jump into the conversation, nor had his three friends enquired of his opinion or asked for his aid in convincing Job that his uprightness was an illusion. Even so, in Elihu’s mind it was either speak, or burst like a new wineskin, and there was no in between.    

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

Job CCCI

 As we proceed further into the chapter, we are made aware of a fifth individual, one who, up until this moment, had watched and heard the interaction between Job and his three friends but had remained silent.

We are informed that he is Elihu, the son of Barachel the Buzite, of the family of Ram, and by all accounts, he was an angry young man. His wrath was aroused against Job, against Job’s three friends, and as any youthful hubris is likely to do, he thought he knew better than everyone and proceeded to set them straight. He’d held his tongue up until this point. Perhaps his parents had taught him to respect his elders, and although he’d been present for the back and forth between Job and his three friends, and managed to hold his tongue and not speak, that time had come and gone, and now he would give them a piece of his mind.

His wrath was aroused against Job because he viewed Job’s discourse as justifying himself rather than God, and against his three friends because they found no answer, yet condemned Job. Young Elihu was an island unto himself and had convinced himself that he knew better than everyone, and he’d prove it.

Evidently, it’s not just this generation of young people who think they know better than those with decades under their belt. It’s not a new malady, it seems, but something that has been around for thousands upon thousands of years.

The first words out of Elihu’s mouth could readily be seen as an insult to the other four men, calling them very old, rather than wise or experienced. If you have children of a certain age, you’ve likely had at least one such conversation wherein the things they said revealed a lack of practical life experience. When we were children, we all thought as children. Tragically, even though fully grown, some men still think as children, but generally speaking, the way of things ought to be that the grayer your temples, the greater the wisdom you possess.  

There are no substitutes for some things. While you can substitute sugar for Splenda or coffee for tea, there are no substitutes for lived experience, and the wise among us tend to learn from the mistakes of others instead of making the same mistakes themselves.

There are countless examples in which the good advice parents gave their children was summarily ignored, only for the very same children to come back years later and grudgingly admit that their parents were right. Perhaps the face tattoo wasn’t the best idea. Perhaps mom and dad were right, and gainful employment did have its benefits, like not starving, after all.         

Job 32:10-14, “Therefore I say, ‘Listen to me, I also will declare my opinion.’ Indeed I waited for your words, I listened to your reasonings, while you searched out what to say. I paid close attention to you; and surely not one of you convinced Job, or answered his words – lest you say, ‘We have found wisdom’; God will vanquish him, not man. Now he has not directed his words against me; so I will not answer him with your words.”

No one asked it of me, but I will, nevertheless, give my opinion, and you have no choice but to listen to me. Although the Word does not go into detail about who this young man was, other than that he was from the family of Ram and the son of Barachel the Buzite, it seems he thought highly of himself and was not shy about it. It’s one of the things the household of faith contends with more and more these days, because everyone not only has an opinion about everything, but they feel it is within their right to voice said opinion, and insist that everyone listen.

It’s one of the reasons we have strayed so far from Biblical truth that we now require a roadmap just to get back to its general vicinity. It may deflate some egos, but when it comes to Biblical truth and what the Word of God says, your opinion is irrelevant. I know, but I’m me, and I’m important, and people should listen to everything I have to say, even if it contradicts Scripture itself.

As I heard a young man ask the cashier at the local grocery store when she denied his coupons because they’d expired, “Who you is? Who do you think you is?”

We have foregone discipleship, seasoning, maturing, studying, learning, and growing, because those things take too long, and we have a five-year plan for our ministry. I got saved on a Wednesday, and started teaching the Word on a Sunday, even though the first time I ever cracked open a Bible was the previous Thursday, but listen to me, and I also will declare my opinion!

Then they start playing their own version of “Did God really say?” with scripture that is obvious and unambiguously declares what God said, because in order to stand out, you have to put a new spin on the old text, and in order to do that, you must go beyond the bounds of what it states.

Now that you’re old, you just have a problem with young people in ministry. Not so, but I do take issue with brash young people in ministry who attempt to twist the Word of God to fit their reimagined version of what they think Christianity should be instead of what the Bible says it is. Being loud doesn’t make you right; it just makes you loud.

Speaking of things that can’t be substituted, discipleship is one of those things, at least if the desire of your heart is authentic ministry and not just a get-rich-quick scheme you’ve dreamed up. Who one chooses as their mentor in spiritual matters tells me everything I need to know about the true desire of their heart. There are those who follow after Christ, laying aside their plans, dreams, aspirations, and desires in the process; then there are those who pretend to follow Him to fulfill their plans, dreams, aspirations, and desires. One will lead to a humble, well-lived, obedient, and Biblical life. In contrast, the other will lead to compromise, because being Biblical will never draw the crowds that being worldly will, and if the heart is set on the things of this world, then every decision will focus toward that end.

The worst thing the young can do is seek to be discipled by flash over substance, unless what they really want is to mirror the flash, without regard for what the Bible says a bishop, elder, or teacher of the Word ought to be. We’ve seen the consequences of these choices time and again, and we’re just getting started.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.