Playing Favorites

 It’s obvious to anyone looking that those with power, clout, influence, or money are shown favoritism in this world. It could even be that you’re the son of someone powerful, and you get away with things that would have gotten an average Joe locked up for decades. When such blatant favoritism is exposed, the revulsion and disgust are universal regardless of political party.

Some years back, there was a scandal having to do with rich Hollywood types getting their less-than-intelligent children into Ivy League schools by means other than forthright and honest. They tried to defend their actions by saying they were motivated by love for their children, as though the poor kid who applied for the same spot and got rejected in lieu of the silver Spooner wasn’t loved by their parents, or their parents didn’t do their best for them.

You can try to spin it however you want. It was immoral and wrong and revealed the character of these vaunted has been starlets in far greater measure than any press release they might have conjured up trying to minimize the collateral damage.

It’s disgusting when the world shows favoritism, but by all accounts, it’s perfectly acceptable in the church. If you’ve ever watched a televised service by one of the top three megachurches, you see the famous people sitting up front, the cameras lazily panning to and fro, trying to catch a moment of euphoria as a reaction to the power of I am in sermon form. From actors to rappers to producers and musicians, they all get preferential treatment because of who they are in the eyes of the world and not who they are in the eyes of God.

In the eyes of God, the clout is irrelevant, the influence is irrelevant, and the fan base is irrelevant because all God looks upon is the heart and whether it’s surrendered, malleable, and obedient.

But you don’t get it; the star power draws people to Jesus. I must have missed that one in the gospel, according to John. Jesus says He will draw all men unto Himself, and He doesn’t need the assistance of someone who, a week after being filmed in the first-row pew, is accused of things that would make a masochist blush.

If anyone has ever uttered the words, ‘I came to Jesus because I saw Beyoncé in church,’ I’ve yet to hear them, but if, perchance, it did occur, check up on that person in a year and ask them where they are in their spiritual walk.

It’s a wicked kind of cruelty to prioritize one soul over another because of the clout they can bring you or because of what they can do for you. Even if that person is honest and sincere in their desire, eventually, they’ll be turned off altogether because they will feel used by the individual to whom they came for wisdom and guidance.

You’re not pointing the way to Jesus; you’re using someone’s pain and confusion to catapult yourself to renown. If you want examples, I’ve got them, but as intrepid as you are, I’m sure you can find a handful of those names for yourself.

Rather than lead such souls to rivers of living waters, they are kept dependent on the individual and their teaching because the intent isn’t to grow and mature someone; it’s to ensure the continuation of a newly minted piggy bank.

James 2:1-4, “My brethren, do not hold the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, with partiality. For if there should come into your assembly a man with gold rings, in fine apparel, and there should also come in a poor man in filthy clothes, and you pay attention to the one wearing the fine clothes and say to him, ‘You sit here in a good place,’ and say to the poor man, ‘You stand there,’ or, ‘Sit here at my footstool,’ have you not shown partiality among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts?”

James saw it coming from a mile away because he understood man’s propensity to show partiality toward those who could profit him in some form or fashion. Showing deference to someone esteemed in the eyes of others is a natural inclination, but one we must resist because God does not view man as we view men. He does not judge their garments or their fineries, nor does he judge their poverty and need. God judges the heart, and I’ve known well-to-do men with good hearts and poor men with evil hearts.

The wrapping may fool you until you open the box. Only then do you realize that the wrapping itself is irrelevant; it’s what’s inside that counts. It’s why if you have something expensive to ship, you don’t put it in an ornate, gilded box with gold embossing and bone inlay. The nicer the box looks on the outside, the greater the chances that it will never arrive at its destination. Someone will see the box and deduce that there’s something worth having inside. Your best bet is simple, basic cardboard, a box so common that no one will give it a second thought. People will look at it and conclude it’s not worth the time or the risk of taking it because what’s inside is likely worthless.

God sees all men as equal in value. Their possessions don’t make them worth more in His eyes, nor does their poverty make them worth less. The price Jesus paid was the same for everyone, across the board, regardless of their net worth, pedigree, or upbringing.

The promise we have is that if we believe in Him, we will not perish but have everlasting life: no addendums, no carveouts, no special exemptions. Believe, and you will be saved. Believe, and you will have eternal life.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

Priorities

 I’m not about to jump into this because it’s not my fight. That said, if people on either side were as passionate about Jesus as they are about defending their position regarding the shape of the earth, we’d be cooking with rocket fuel. That we allow such things to bring division to the body of Christ shows our level of immaturity, and if this is the best we’ve got, when the devil starts throwing some persecution into the mix and focusing on the church exclusively, mass casualties will be the best we could hope for.

It seems as though every other day, there’s some new thing that is used as a wedge to separate believers from other believers because the enemy knows that the more isolated you are, the easier of a target you will make.

We’re watching people lose their cool in real time over what was supposed to be a brotherly debate over an issue that has become contentious all of a sudden, as though if you were living a life of surrender and obedience to God and fell on the wrong side of this one issue, you’d be barred from the halls of heaven forevermore.

But you don’t get it, brother Mike, this is really important. It may be important to you; I’m not disputing that, but is it as important to God? I’m old enough to remember the head-covering battle royals of my country and how divisive that issue became. The first division was whether a woman’s hair could be her head covering, not requiring an actual piece of cloth. Once those two teams were firmly set against each other, it bisected from there into myriad niches and interpretations.

Even among those who agreed that head coverings were biblical, there were micro factions that insisted it must be tied in the front and not the back, it must be a specific size, and it shouldn’t draw the eye with colors or other such unholy vestiges like landscapes or sunrises. Some even went so far as to insist the sisters wear the coverings to bed since the presence of angels could take place at any moment. Once you’re off on a tangent, it’s easy to spiral.

They took one thing that is arguably debatable as far as biblical foundation is concerned, then went about creating laws upon laws that were nowhere to be found in the Word of God.

I don’t care what the topic is; if it takes the focus off Jesus and becomes its own competing pursuit, it’s wrong and unbiblical. Yes, even prophecy, because I’ve known people who were so consumed with prophecy that they’d neglected their relationship with Christ to the point of no longer spending time in fellowship with Him.

If we’re at each other’s throats over this, how will we react when there is a constant drone of Here is the Christ, or There is the Christ, and you have to tell people it’s not really Him and that He warned us as much.

The deception’s just begun, and it will ramp up exponentially. Our singular focus must be Jesus, learning to know His voice, hear His voice, and obey His voice.

We’re not watching for the things Jesus said we should be watching for, we’re not doing the things Jesus said we should be doing, but we are gung-ho about scratching at each other over something that will not determine in the least whether you spend eternity in His presence, or the outer darkness.

Somehow, we’ve gone from he who is not against us is on our side to if you don’t agree with me on every issue, tangential and tertiary as it might be, then you are Ichabod, and there is no redemption for you. By the way, that whole he who is not against us is for us thing was said by Jesus, in case anyone was wondering.

But it’s important to me! Samson’s hair was important to him, but he didn’t make a doctrine out of long hair. Not everyone was required to take the Nazarite vow just because Samson had. We’re taking personal convictions and broadening them as general doctrine for everyone, then weaving in the notion of our personal conviction being a salvific issue to boot.

What is doctrine has been established. Salvific issues are clearly defined in the Word of God. Why are we so intent on looking for more and more things to divide us?

If we’re both standing in front of a painting of flowers no more than two feet apart, we will have a different perspective and see it from a different angle, but we can both agree that it’s a painting of flowers. If I’m seeing flowers and you’re seeing elephants, then one of us needs to get their eyes checked.

I don’t think today’s average Christian appreciates just how bad it’s going to get in this world, or if they do have an inkling, they’ve been convinced they won’t be here for any of it. When Jesus said those days would be shortened for the elect’s sake, it was not because they ate too much pie and had upset tummies.

And that’s another thing: the reality that those days will be shortened for the elect’s sake is the Gordian knot that no one’s been able to untie or explain away. If we’re not here, why does it matter how bad things get? If we’re not present, why would those days be shortened for our sake?

This world is about to be shaken like a snow globe in the grip of someone in the throes of an epileptic seizure. Rather than focus on being spiritually ready for that eventuality, here we are, trying to poke each other in the eye with sharp sticks for no other reason than to defend our position.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

Undefiled

 Are you a hearer only or also a doer? The question itself is simple enough, but the required introspection is quite difficult for many. Some are hearers pretending to be doers, some hear what they want to hear and do what they were never told to do, and some are hearers pretending they never heard. Then there are those who hear and do as the Word of God instructs them to do. It’s those that the enemy targets. It’s those that the enemy attacks. It’s those that the enemy attempts to sideline because it’s those who are a threat to him. Obedient believers, doers of the word, present a clear and present danger to the enemy and his plans. Lukewarm ones are just that, and the enemy pays them no mind.

Why would the devil bother with someone who poses no threat? If he can devour you, he will, but there’s a difference between a convenient meal and an ongoing, protracted attack because the individual is walking in the authority that makes the enemy quake.

James 1:27, “Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.”

There’s religion, there’s religiosity, then there’s pure and undefiled religion. When something is presented as undefiled, then the possibility exists that it can be defiled. Variations of that undefiled thing likely exist in a defiled form, and James outlines the prerequisites for a pure and undefiled religion.

Much of what we see practiced today throughout Western Christianity is neither pure nor undefiled. Being the fountainhead of rickety doctrine, what was popular in the West two decades ago is now making its way to the third-world nations of the world, causing heartache and division as one would expect. If you want examples, there are plenty to be hand, but all you have to do is apply the standard James lays out to see it for yourself.

Two things are required for religion to be pure and undefiled: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble and to keep oneself unspotted from the world. You can’t do one but not the other and expect to have an undefiled religion. Both must be present in your life, and both must be actively worked toward, and the text proves this.

If you could only do one of the two and still have a pure and undefiled religion, then the rich would always have an edge. They could give alms to the poor in such quantities that they wouldn’t have to bother with keeping themselves unspotted from the world. It would be akin to buying indulgences from the pope back in the day, and we all know how that worked out.

So what exactly does it mean to visit orphans and widows in their trouble? Are you supposed to ask for proof of widowhood or orphanhood before helping someone in need? When James references the widow and the orphan, he is isolating the two groups in society least capable of helping themselves or providing any sort of return. When you help a widow or an orphan, your name won’t go on a plaque in the foyer telling everyone how generous you were. Helping a widow or an orphan will not help advance your career or make you seem magnanimous to the crowd at the country club.

What James is saying when highlighting the widow and the orphan and insisting that pure and undefiled religion is to visit them in their trouble is that being a present help to those who would otherwise have no way of recompensing you for your kindness is the mark of pure religion.

It’s just you and an orphan, widow, or family so hungry that they’ve taken to peeling bark off trees and chewing on it. There are no galas, and there is no round of applause when you stand up to make the large donation for the new building fund or a special audience with the pastor because you gifted him a new Mercedes. No one will know except you, the person being helped, and God, and that’s the way it should be.

Show kindness to people from whom you have nothing to gain because your true heart is revealed in how you interact with the lowliest of society. We’re all human. No one is special, and when we begin to see ourselves as special or others as special, altering how we act around them, we are headed toward a life of compromise and excuses.

It’s the reason I’ve never liked lickspittles. You can’t count on them to speak the truth, you can’t count on them to point out the errors in the things you do, because they have a vested interest to remain in your good graces because there is something they gain from being in your sphere.

The weak-willed and duplicitous love to surround themselves with lickspittles and, yes men, with people who will never challenge them about anything, but they do so to their detriment. At some point, the biscuit wheels fall off the gravy train, and those you thought were loyal and true will be the first to plunge the knife into your back because they have nothing more to profit from you.

People who stroke your ego aren’t your friends, and those who challenge you aren’t your enemies. Doing something seemingly noble just to see your name up in lights isn’t pure and undefiled religion, but reaching out to the lowliest of society while keeping yourself unspotted from the world is.

We have no choice but to be in this world, but we do have a choice of whether or not we are of it.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

Bridle

 I’ve never been mistaken for an equestrian. I’m too tall, too wide, and I don’t feel it’s fair to the horse. Plus, we’ve invented bikes and scooters and cars so we can give the poor ponies a break. They fulfilled their purpose long enough before the combustible engine came around and earned the right to take a breather and relax.

That said, I’ve been around enough horses to know what a bridle is, and when James insists that someone who cannot bridle their tongue deceives their own heart, it’s worth meditating upon and understanding beyond the superficial.

What a bridle does is control the horse. Due to the bridle, you can direct where you want the horse to go and not where it wants to go. When James insists that we must learn to bridle the tongue, it’s not just about knowing when to keep silent but also when to speak, what to say, and when to refrain from speaking.

You must have full control of your tongue. In doing so, you will never regret letting something slip you shouldn’t have or not warning someone you should have. Your emotions cannot get the better of you, and your mouth cannot speak of its own free will.

What takes three seconds to blurt out takes a lifetime to repair in some cases, and that’s because the person in question did not learn to bridle their tongue, nor did they have control over the words they spoke.

I’ll be the first to admit it’s not always easy. My natural inclination is to have at least a dozen patented zingers waiting to be unleashed at the first sign of someone deserving it, and it’s a battle that is ongoing with myself because sometimes it’s better to let things go than to get into endless back and forth battles of wit with people that are punching below their weight.

The entire secret of bridling one’s tongue is to ensure that you control it and that it does not control you. Easy to say, not so easy to do in the heat of the moment, but you must do it nonetheless. I know you really want to say that hurtful thing that you know will crush your spouse, your parents, your children, or your pastor, but before letting loose, ask yourself what it profits and who it profits.

We all know that person who says the worst, most hurtful thing at the worst possible moment. We’ve all got at least one in our life. It’s as though they intentionally try to twist the knife after they plunge it in, and it’s so consistent that you conclude they are either psychotic or aren’t in control of their faculties when they let their tongues run loose.

Are the words you want to let spill out of your mouth like a dam breaking going to bring peace, healing, joy, and reconciliation, or will they cause division, hurt, brokenheartedness, and acrimony? By determining what the words will produce, you will be able to determine who profits. If the tirade you’re about to unleash will bring hurt and heartache, you know it’s the enemy who will profit and benefit. Why give the devil a win? Learn to bridle your tongue.

Consequently, there are times when you have to force your tongue to say the things it needs to say, even when the rest of you will be uncomfortable doing it. Bridling one’s tongue is controlling it, both when to speak and when to keep silent. Yes, there are moments and situations when what you know you have to say will land like a loud burp at the ballet.

James 1:26, If anyone among you thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his own heart, this one’s religion is useless.”

Bridling one’s tongue is not something that is done by a third party but by the individual in question. You must bridle your tongue. Your pastor can’t do it for you, nor your husband, or your friends. If you have to take a breath before you respond to a provocation, then take the breath. If you have to take ten, then take ten, but be certain that you’re the one controlling what your tongue is doing.

If the enemy knows you are easily riled, he will bring people in your path who will readily rile you. If you respond to the provocation with vitriol and uncontrollable rage, then the enemy has one, and you’ve proven that your tongue is not yet bridled.

Luke 6:45, “A Good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart brings forth evil. For out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.”

Given that a man’s mouth will reflect whether sin is in his heart, we better understand the need for bridling our tongue and committing to doing so.

When you are of Christ, you are imbued with the character of Christ. If your character is not in harmony with the Word of God, if your life does not mirror Jesus, if you do not bridle your tongue but say the things you shouldn’t and omit the things you should, your religion, your spirituality, your higher plane thinking, or any other new term for old foolishness we might come up with is useless.

It’s like having a tent someone pocked a thousand holes into yet being confident that when the rains come, you’ll remain dry. Your confidence will hold only until the first raindrop makes its way onto your face; then, it will crumble like it was never there.

False doctrine begets false confidence. It’s unavoidable, as is the person’s reaction once they realize they’ve been clinging to mist and shadow rather than the hem of His garment.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

Spiritual

 Back in the day, they called it being religious. Today, they call it being spiritual. Anytime I hear someone say they are spiritual, usually a thirty-something with one too many tattoos and a blank, lifeless stare, I throw up a little bit in my mouth because the spirituality of which they speak is something of their own creation that has no resemblance to the pure and undefiled religion that James speaks of further in his epistle. Yet, somehow, the people who drone on about being spiritual have convinced themselves that they will end up in some version of a paradise, not necessarily the Christian heaven, but maybe Valhalla, Sutala, Jannah, or perhaps even Svarga, which is a blending of two heavens into one that silly people came up with to appease a larger percentage of the populace.

There is only one heaven, the place that Jesus went to prepare for His faithful. At the risk of sounding repetitive, there is also only one way to His heaven, and that is through Him.

James 1:26, “If anyone among you thinks he is religious, and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his own heart, that one’s religion is useless.”

I don’t mean to rile up the Beth Moore fans anew, but just because you think it you don’t become it, whatever that it might be. You can have vision boards and manifest, speak into existence, bind, loose, and stand on the promise of your astrological sign, but all of that is useless and nothing more than self-deception if you are not being transformed into the image of Jesus.

I’ve been accused of picking on the female false prophetesses and teachers. In my defense, I haven’t yet heard a man say he was teleported to heaven in a porta-potty or that you would have pet dinosaurs in heaven or that they went back in time to have a confab with Eve, yes, that Eve. When I run across a man who is so brazen in his lies, then I will speak about him as heartily as I do their female counterparts.

I’m equally offended by false prophets as I am by false prophetesses; one does not offend me more than the other because of their gender.

If anyone thinks they are religious but don’t have the fruit to back it up, they are deceiving themselves. Some will stand before the throne of judgment fully convinced in their self-deception until they will be told to depart from before His all-knowing eyes. Jesus echoes the same sentiment, warning of the same consequences.

Why can’t you let people be? Why do you have to make people feel uncomfortable by insisting that they judge themselves and their lives before they stand before the throne of judgment? Because once you’re before the throne, it’s too late to do anything about it.

Jesus loved you enough to warn you; Paul, Peter, James, Jude, John, Luke, and all the other writers of the Bible loved you enough to warn you; why would I love you any less?

There are a lot of people headed to hell thinking they’re going to heaven, and that breaks my heart.

The shock of it will be doubly worse for ones such as these because evil men who lived evil lives had no expectation of ending up in heaven, but lukewarm people who were justified by false shepherds kind of do.

It’s expecting one thing and getting the opposite that really crushes you. I failed my first driver’s test at the age of sixteen. Up until the mustachioed man with the guayabera shirt and the pit stains told me I’d failed, I was wholly confident that I’d passed with flying colors. I’d kept my hands at the ten and two positions, signaled, and nailed the parallel parking, and the only thing I was thinking about was whether or not I was going to smile or strike a serious pose in my license photo.

Then he informed me that I hadn’t passed. The reasons were twofold, but I’d stopped listening by then. It had something to do with turning into the second lane rather than the first when I turned left, and not turning my head to check for cars when I changed lanes. I was numb. I didn’t care about his reasoning; I’d failed when every expectation was that I’d be walking away with a license in my pocket.

It crushed me, and it took me a few days to get back in the right headspace and reschedule another test. I passed the second one, but it was a different instructor, so maybe that had something to do with it.

When it comes to eternity, there are no second chances. You don’t get a redo; you can’t ask for a different judge, and you can’t reschedule life, hoping to learn from the mistakes of your first go-round. We’re not Buddhists, and we don’t believe the mosquito we just mushed into a glob was a reincarnated in-law.

One life is all you get, so make sure you don’t waste it or live with the impression that you can defy the Word of God and still end up walking the halls of heaven someday. Live each day as though it were the beginning of your forever, being ever aware of the difference between thinking about being saved and being saved. One is an unrealized hope or plan; the other is being a child of God with all the afferent benefits and protections. The day is almost upon us when those benefits and protections will mean all the difference between walking through the fire or being consumed by it.

Hacky as it may sound, since it’s so often repeated, everyone gets eternity. It’s just a matter of where you spend yours that has yet to be decided. Location is everything; just ask a real estate agent.

With love in Christ,

MIchael Boldea, Jr.  

Mirrors II

 There are those who look in the mirror and remember what kind of man they are. Those are the ones who end up taking steps to peel off the layers that still reek of the world, clean up the smudges, and wash the stains. Then there are those who look in the mirror and forget what kind of man they are as soon as they see their reflection. Whether they see themselves as good enough or passable or compare themselves to others they deem more unclean, those who do not acknowledge their sin will never do anything to be free of it. The genesis of repentance is recognizing you have something to repent of.

One must acknowledge one’s state in order to be comfortable with looking in the mirror, and that would mean accepting where one is and that nobody drove them to that particular point; their choices walked them to it ever so slowly.

The first step in any transformational endeavor is to accept responsibility for where you are and that you are not without fault for being there. McDonald’s didn’t make anybody fat; people eating it in bulk quantities without regard for the caloric count or nonexistent nutritional value perpetrated their ever-expanding girth on themselves. It’s not as though a pimply-faced kid in a McDonald’s uniform would show up at your door with a bag of greasy fries and six cheeseburgers if you failed to drive yourself to one of their locations and wait in the drive-through with all the other gastronomy snobs.

The mirror is the mirror. It’s how you react when standing in front of the mirror that matters. We’ve all done the sideways suck-in-your-gut mirror check or taken two steps back, thinking perhaps we would look thinner and more streamlined. Then again, maybe it’s just me. Even so, everything we did to create an optical illusion was just that because deep down, we knew that we never had washboard abs, no matter how much we wanted the mirror to reflect it.

How honest you are when approaching the mirror and how you react to the reflection you see sets you apart and determines whether you will take steps to correct what the mirror shows needs fixing or ignore it and continue about your life as though nothing were amiss.

2 Corinthians 3:18, “But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.”

What are you hoping to see when you look in the mirror? Someone thinner, younger, with more hair and a chiseled jawline? The ideal is to reflect Jesus. That is what you should hope to see when you look in the mirror of the Word. Sounds easy, but like most things, just because it sounds easy doesn’t make it so. The concept itself is simple, and some people confuse simple with easy, but dying to flesh and putting the will of God before your own is a battle. It is, nevertheless, a battle you must win. It’s a process, and if you see more of Jesus and less of you every day you look in the mirror, you’re headed in the right direction.

Your heart’s desire must always be for more of Him and less of you. That’s a heady prospect to some because they begin to fear losing themselves, their identity, and who they are if they surrender so much of the flesh. Such individuals are always resisting the transformative power of the presence of Christ, not realizing that the point of it all is for the flesh to die so that Christ may live in them.

People want God but on their own terms. They want only so much of Him when it’s convenient for them and when their schedule doesn’t conflict with anything else. They don’t want all of Him because all of Him would presuppose that they are no longer their own, and all they desire is for the will of God to be done in their lives. If you’ve ever wondered why we see so little of the manifest power of God in today’s church, it’s because the level of commitment required to experience the manifest power of God just isn’t there.

God is not some college student hard on his luck who is forced to have roommates. He doesn’t want to share your heart with another, and whenever men insist that He should, His answer is always no. God wants you for Himself. Until you’re ready to be wholly His, you will not walk in the authority rightly yours as a son or daughter of God.

In His love, God may facilitate an encounter with the mirror, but He can’t force you to change what you see in it unless you desire to do so. No, you can’t do it on your own. The stains are old, long-dried, and deep-set. The rags your flesh deems as royal robes are torn and filthy, stinking of rot and bad choices, and only the blood of Jesus can cleanse them, but you must want to be made clean.

If you’ve ever seen a video of someone trying to give a dog or a cat a bath, you have a pretty good idea of how some people react to being cleansed of their old ways. In His mercy, God tries and tries, but eventually, if the clay hardens and resists, the potter will just go on to a new lump of clay. He loves you; He’s proven it by sending Jesus, but if you consistently trample the Son of God underfoot and count the blood of the covenant as a common thing, you are treading on dangerous ground.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

Mirrors

 The Word of God is a mirror that is honest in its reflection. If you peer into it, you will see yourself as you are, not as you would like to be. Thankfully, the Bible also gives explicit instructions on how to get where you want to be; man just has to apply himself and follow through. Given that most people don’t like being confronted with reality, we’ve invented filters where a bit of pixel magic will shave off fifteen years and make your skin look silky smooth.

We’ve attempted the same with the Bible, from coming up with over 100 versions of it to no longer reading it for ourselves but counting on someone else’s interpretation to tell us what it means. Those are all filters because we can’t handle the truth. Looking in the mirror for ourselves would be too traumatizing, so we allow others to tell us what we look like, and wouldn’t you know it? It’s always flattering and beyond what we envisioned ourselves to look like.

Rather than take steps to improve the things that don’t look right when we look in the mirror of the Word, we’ve decided not to look in the mirror at all anymore. That fixed the problem, didn’t it? It’s like people who feel themselves putting on weight and stop weighing themselves altogether after they pass a certain threshold. If you don’t decrease or change what’s going into your mouth, not weighing yourself isn’t going to make you thinner.

If you don’t like what you see, when you look in the mirror of the Word, not looking into it anymore won’t fix anything. That, however, is the avenue many people choose to pursue because not looking is far easier than trying to change, and since there are people lining up around the block to enable you in your sin, you’ll always find a reassuring voice to insist that it’s not really what the Bible meant, and anyone saying it is, is just a legalist and a prude.

My daughters like stickers. They’re still young enough to enjoy simple things, so I indulge them with batches of stickers from the dollar store, varying from farm animals to emojis, planets, stars, constellations, and everything in between. It’s the dollar store; you can’t be picky, and they don’t much care about the subject matter as long as they’re stickers.

It’s not every day, but some days, I head into the office early. By early, I mean I’m out the door by six and behind my desk a half hour later. Thankfully, since I have no one to impress, I don’t have to dress up, so it’s usually some form of t-shirt and shorts if the weather permits it.

While the girls are still sleeping by the time I leave the house, my wife is usually awake and downstairs, getting ready for the day ahead. Since me and vanity have never been fast friends, if I’m heading out early, I don’t bother with the mirror, and this particular morning had been one of those instances. As I went to kiss my wife and wish her a good morning with the girls, I noticed she was trying to stifle a smile.

We’ve been married for almost a quarter of a century, so by now, much of our communication is nonverbal. All I needed to do was raise my eyebrows for her to say, “Go look in the mirror.”

I did as she asked, and sure enough, there was a lamb, a happy face, and a thumbs-up sticker on my forehead and left cheek. It’s what I get for falling asleep before the girls. Had it not been for my wife, I would have gone out into the world with three stickers on my face, wholly oblivious to why everyone was staring, smirking, or laughing.

Generally speaking, you look in the mirror when you get ready to leave your house and interact with the world at large. Unless you have an evening routine that includes face masks or moisturizers, chances are better than good that you won’t be scrutinizing your appearance in the mirror right before bed. Come the morning, however, whether going to work or just dropping your kids off at school, you’ll throw a glance at a mirror to see if you’re presentable.

You don’t look in the mirror once, then never think of it again; it becomes a daily routine wherein you look at your reflection to assess your appearance. If you look into a mirror every day to determine your physical appearance, why wouldn’t you look in the mirror of God’s Word every day to assess your spiritual appearance?

When we fail to look into the mirror of the Word and go out into the world, chances are that others will notice if there is anything amiss and be quick to point it out. The enemy revels in exposing contradictions in the lives of believers. It doesn’t matter that his minions live lives of such abject debauchery that if ever they were dragged into the light, even the godless would recoil. They’re not the ones claiming to be ambassadors of Christ, are they?

You can tell when someone hasn’t glanced into a mirror or bothered to check if they have Cheetos in their hair. I’ve run into those types of people in the grocery store, and it’s always interesting to see everyone else’s reaction and the individual’s ignorance of why everyone is staring. The godless have similar reactions to supposed Christians doing as they do and acting as they act.

We look in the mirror of the Word daily not to remind ourselves how good we look or how good we are but to keep from bringing shame to the household of faith and the name of God. Even if you’re not going out into the world on a given day, it’s still good practice to look into the Word and see the reflection it presents. If nothing else, it’s a good way of keeping us humble.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.