Job CCCXLV

 Good intentions without follow-through are nothing more than wishful thinking. I know it may sound harsh, but it is nevertheless the truth. You know it, I know it; we just have to admit it to ourselves and do something about it. We can tell ourselves otherwise, trying to mollify our burdened conscience, but if we know what we ought to be doing and delay doing it, it risks becoming chronic procrastination.

Timing matters. If I know I have to pay my electric bill by the 27^th of the month, but I only get around to doing it on the fifteenth of next month, it should come as no surprise that I get hit with a late payment fee, and if it goes on for much longer than that, then dinner by candlelight and spoiling food in the now dormant refrigerator is not outside the realm of possibility.

Not only is procrastination counterproductive, but it is also dangerous to our spiritual progress. Tomorrow becomes next week, next week becomes next month, and by the time we know it, years have passed, and that Bible we had planned on reading from cover to cover, even having bought the multi-color highlighter pens to underline the passages that stood out, has an inch-thick layer of dust, and if we had to find it, we would be hard pressed to remember what room we left it in.

You can’t get back wasted time. Once it’s gone, it’s gone, and you’re one year older, a little grayer, the wrinkles more pronounced, and the only thing you can do is break the cycle and set about doing what you’ve determined to do without delay. Even wallowing in regret, thinking of how far along we could have been had we started when we’d purposed to, is in itself a form of procrastination.

If I’d started my diet last year, I would be at my goal weight today, but I didn’t, and I’m not, and rather than dwelling on it for another year, there’s no better time than the present. There will never be a perfect time to start doing something that requires exertion on our part, or demands that we stretch ourselves beyond our comfort zone. Rather than focus on the difficulty of the task itself, focus on the results and understand what the end of the journey will look like instead of the beginning; that can, in and of itself, motivate you to focus, press in, take that first step, and keep moving forward.

Every moment spent with God will deepen your understanding of Him. Every moment spent in Scripture will more firmly establish your foundation and stretch your faith. It is inevitable that there will be growth; it is inevitable that there will be forward momentum; it is inevitable that you will graduate past the milk stage to the meat stage, the more you devote yourself to the things of God.

Those who insist that they’ve plateaued, or feel like they’re spinning their wheels when it comes to spiritual growth, just aren’t putting in enough time and effort to get alone with the Word, study it for themselves, and meditate on the profundity of what it reveals.

Although up until this point Job confesses that he’d only heard of God by the hearing of the ear, it did nothing to dampen his desire to know God more fully, spend time in His presence, and devote himself to being pleasing in His sight. All his years of devotion, prayer, supplication, and striving to be an upright and blameless man had brought him to this, wherein he was no longer hearing of God by the hearing of his ear, but seeing Him with his eye.

Does this mean God appeared bodily to Job and his three friends? No. What it does mean is that Job’s understanding of God was stretched beyond the point of a conceptual deity, some formless omnipotent, omnipresent power that did as it willed, to seeing Him fleshed out, and understanding His character, His love, His compassion, and His mercy. He saw the righteousness of God on full display and could come to no other conclusion than to abhor himself and repent in dust and ashes.

It’s the difference between hearing about God and having a personal experience with Him. Men hear about God every day, and some are so stiff-necked and brittle that they don’t give Him a second thought. Others may even acknowledge that there is something greater than them in this great big universe of ours, but they fall short of understanding who He is, thereby refusing to humble themselves and repent.

Job had heard, but now he saw the glory, majesty, and holiness of the God he served, and though God deemed him blameless, though he was one of one in his generation as far as uprightness is concerned, in contrast to God’s holiness, Job abhorred himself.

Men have a tendency to compare themselves to those with different flaws than their own, and deem themselves more righteous because they do not share them. That’s not to say they don’t have their own flaws, but while their flaws are permissible to themselves, the flaws they do not exhibit that others do are the ones they tend to focus on because it makes them righteous in their own eyes. We can play that game, especially given the ego boost that’s likely to occur at seeing ourselves superior in some way, but to what end?

A man whom God deemed blameless abhorred himself when he beheld the holiness of God. A man whom God deemed upright repented in dust and ashes, not because he wasn’t what God deemed him to be, but because even he fell short of the holiness of God, and knew it to be the case.

Unlike the Pharisee, Job did not see another man’s shortcoming or sin as evidence of his own worthiness, nor did he point to his friends and insist he was not like them. He humbled himself before the righteousness of God and repented in dust and ashes. It is one of the many worthwhile lessons we can glean from the life of Job, one that will serve us throughout our lives here on earth if only we would apply it to ourselves. Tend to your own garden, pluck your own weeds, focus on your relationship with the God and Creator of all that is, because when you stand before Him on that day of days, you will be held accountable for you, and I will be held accountable for me.             

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.