Job XLVI

Some would readily wither on the vine, merely contemplating Job’s trials, never mind going through them. We all have our version of what tragedy, adversity, hardship, and calamity may look like in our mind’s eye, and the limits of my imagination may be different than yours, and yours may be different than another’s.

Depending on where you grew up, how you grew up, and the type of difficulty you had to overcome, not finding the right brand of cereal at the local grocer can seem like an unbearable and unduly cruel hardship. If you happen to tell someone who had to eat tree bark as a kid just to keep their stomach from growling that the Piggly Wiggly was out of Grape Nuts and it ruined your day, they’re likely to roll their eyes and think some less than kind things about your affirmation.

It’s all a matter of context and previous experience, but wherever you land on the spectrum of what you believe true suffering to be, we can all agree that Job is the gold standard. Whatever trivial thing I may be going through on a given day, from a flat tire or the car not starting to getting stuck in traffic for an hour on an ordinary Tuesday, all I have to do is bring to mind the things Job endured to feel a sense of gratefulness wash over me and repent for considering such things hardships worthy of bemoaning.

For the last three decades and change, I’ve traveled back and forth to Romania consistently. Less so since the girls were born, but my little brother was there to pick up the slack, so I didn’t feel the need to leave my wife and children in order to go and do what someone else could. The ministry began as an outreach to the poor, abandoned, and forgotten of Romania, and although we have broadened our work to include Ukraine of late, the core of our mission statement remains intact. We feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and look after the orphan and the widow to the best of our ability. In so doing, I have come to realize that my definition of poverty is someone else’s definition of wealth and prosperity.

It’s hard to be bitter about having to buy a second-hand car or clothes from a thrift store when you’re daily hearing stories from people not knowing if they’ll survive the coming winter because they have no firewood and no means with which to purchase some. Unless you are made of stone, it changes your perspective about how blessed you are and that countless millions worldwide dream of the life you currently despise and deem cumbersome and needlessly cruel.

I’m not trying to lay a guilt trip on anyone; I’m speaking for myself. There are a myriad of daily graces and blessings I take for granted, from decent health to a roof over my head to the ability to work and earn enough, wherein I don’t have to be fearful about my children freezing to death. These are not things I am entitled to or deserve, yet on a certain level, I feel as though will always be there in some form or fashion.

The attitude of gratitude we must possess is not something naturally occurring in the human heart. It is something that must be nurtured and encouraged to grow, and in so doing, it keeps the desire for more or the tendency to compare our lot to those who have more by way of the material at bay.

A couple of years back, shortly after they started attending classes in person again, I noticed my daughters were coming home with stories of what the other kids in their class had been gifted or the new toys their parents had acquired, to the point that every week someone had gotten a new doll house, a pony, a new car, or were planning a vacation somewhere exotic. There was always a tinge of expectation or a questioning look in their eyes as to why we weren’t doing the same, and it was largely the reason my wife and I decided to take a family trip to Romania, so they could see the other side of life, and hopefully learn to appreciate what they had and not envy what others did.

For the two weeks we were there, I took my daughters and my dad, and we went out to numerous villages, passing out food packages, clothing, and finances where needed, and they got to see true poverty in a way very few in our Western culture get to do. Young as they were, they were able to make the connection between the life they lived, with running water, indoor plumbing, electricity, and something to eat always within reach, and the lengths to which others have to go just to survive.

I could see the shift in their mindset and the change in their outlook. It was a transformative experience for them. They went from asking when they could get a new toy some girl at school had just gotten to giving their stuffies to children their age who had no more to play with than a rusty bucket and a stick.

Perspective matters. It allows us to be thankful for the things God has given us rather than be envious of others who have more. Even in our hardship, our suffering, or our testing, though it may seem unbearable to us, we must acknowledge that others have been where we are, and they had to endure far worse, yet they persevered.

Given the examples and testimonies of those who came before us, rather than bemoaning our current lot, our time would be far better spent discovering how men such as Job endured all that came upon him while remaining faithful, retaining his integrity, and not growing disillusioned, bitter, or disheartened.

Once you know how something is done, you can replicate it, using the same means to achieve the same result. First, Job knew the God he served intimately and profoundly. Second, Job trusted the God he served and His sovereignty throughout. Third, Job clung to his faith and hope regardless of the situation he found himself in, knowing the goodness of God, even when his life was reduced to a pile of ash and a potsherd.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.     

Job XLV

 Job’s integrity was an observable virtue. It was not cloaked or hidden, or something you had to search high and low for, but readily seen to the point that his wife pointed out the fact that he still held onto it after his life came crashing down around him. It’s very likely his wife wasn’t the only one to notice. Whether the servants who survived, his neighbors or those who interacted with him regularly, his current steadfastness and preservation of his integrity only confirmed to them what they already knew of the man.  

That said, it wasn’t something he actively sought to exude, something he thought about, or something he focused on. This is an important distinction because far too many try to put on airs, pretending to be spiritual, thinking it’s the image people want them to project. In some instances, they need to project an image rather than who they are authentically because they are presenting themselves as spiritual authorities rather than genuinely desire to serve God and be one of His children both in word and deed.

When you see an individual playing at being spiritual or having integrity instead of genuinely possessing these virtues, there’s always something that seems off, a bit odd, with that not quite authentic feel to it. It’s reminiscent of politicians pretending to be human, smiling awkwardly, pretending to grill burgers on a grill with no flame, or biting babies for whatever reason. Their humanity is not naturally occurring. They are not genuine and take their cues from those around them as to how a real human with real emotions should act.

That which is in the heart of a man will shape his character, his attitude, and the way he interacts with those around him. If God is on the throne of his heart, then his actions will speak for themselves. He won’t need to carry a bullhorn around and insist that he is a prophet, an apostle, or a man of God; his attitude will show it without him having to trumpet it to anyone within earshot.

Whenever someone tries to draw more attention to themselves than to the God they serve, it’s always a warning sign. We are here for the sole purpose of pointing the way to Jesus and telling anyone who would hear that He is the way, the truth, and the life. It’s not about us or our ego, it’s not about us and our pride, it’s not about what we can do but what He’s already done.

When we humble ourselves in the sight of the Lord, and faithfully pick up our crosses and follow after Him, it is He who will raise us up. It’s not something we need to try and do on our own or by ourselves because that is not the purpose of the exercise; that’s not the reason you were called to serve. We’ve lost sight of the reality that a servant is not greater than his Master, and there’s an ongoing, evermore violent scramble for the spotlight nowadays, wherein men will actively try to tear down another in the hopes of being elevated themselves.

If someone is teaching aberrant doctrine, they must be called out. If, however, you begin to undermine an individual just because you feel as though he’s encroaching on your slice of the pie, your heart is not in the right place, and you’re not doing it for the glory of God.

There is also this tendency among the sheep to pit shepherds against each other and try to get them to start slinging mud. I’ve often been asked what I think of certain individuals within ministry, and every time this happens, my focus is always on whether they are teaching the truth of Scripture. I’m not concerned about their delivery or eccentricities or whether they wear suits or sweaters when they preach. My only concern is whether or not they are teaching the salvific truth of the gospel of Christ, and if they are, God bless them. I hope the Lord gives them strength, endurance, and a bigger platform than what they already have to do the work of the Kingdom.

Trying to protect, defend, or otherwise elevate something that isn’t yours to begin with is wasted energy and a horrible use of one’s time. Although a former president was wrong when he said, “You didn’t build that,” in relation to individuals who started businesses and built them up, if he’d been referencing ministries or the work of God, he would have been spot on. I don’t care how big your ministry is or how many campuses your church has; you didn’t build that! If you insist that it was you, that you built it and made it grow, then God wasn’t in it, and it wasn’t His work. You can’t have it both ways. It’s either God’s work, and He builds it to a size He desires, or it’s your work, and God’s not in it, and you’re off on your own, doing your own thing, using God as a foil for your aspirations and goals.

On the other side of it, Job didn’t pretend as though he wasn’t hurting or that he wasn’t feeling the pain attributed to losing his children and being covered in painful boils. He didn’t put on a brave face and pretend as though what was happening to him wasn’t. When Jesus said we shouldn’t have a sad countenance, it was within the context of fasting, not within the context of feeling sadness, pain, or hardship.

The difference between how those of the world and those of the household of faith process and go through affliction and heartache is that while the world does so alone, we do so anchored in hope, whether the hope that we will one day be reunited with our love ones, or that God has a plan we are currently unable to see. Having gone through my fair share of heartache, I can testify that hope makes the difference, and it is a sure comfort we can cling to even in the worst of times.

Because we know the God we serve, because we know He is with us, because we know that He will make a way and that the valley will soon give way to the mountaintop, we hold fast to our integrity, we cling to faith and hope in the God we serve, we persevere and press ever onward toward the prize.

1 Peter 5:10, “But may the God of all grace, who called us to His eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after you have suffered a while, perfect, establish, strengthen, and settle you.”

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

Job XLIV

 There are moments in life that define us. There are situations and circumstances we go through that compel us to either rise to the challenge, dig deep, and discover new wells of heretofore unexpected strength, or crush us beneath the weight of their bulk, leaving us broken and untethered. These are the make-or-break moments, the ones that shape us and we remember for the rest of our lives. When we find ourselves at the crossroads of such monumental, life-defining choices, the deciding factor will always be whether we trust God beyond what we can see with our eyes of flesh or surrender to the avalanche of despair that the situation produced.

Trust, faith, and hope are all choices we make as individuals, and once the choice is made, we contend with the consequences, whether for good or ill. It takes self-awareness and brutal honesty to look at where we are and admit, if only to ourselves, that it's due to our choices and decisions over the span of months, years, or decades that we find ourselves in certain situations and conclude that had we heeded God at certain bifurcations in the road, we would be in a different place altogether.

You can’t blame God for where you are if every step of the way, you turned left when He told you to turn right, moved forward when He told you to stand still, and pressed on trying to make it work on your own when His instruction was to rest in Him and see what He can do.

Beyond the ripples and waves the fall of prominent men within Christendom has caused of late, what I find equally tragic is that few, if any, have taken accountability for their actions, acknowledged their failures, and sought repentance. I’m not talking about those who, eying a return to ministry, have half-heartedly apologized for their sin, but those who, understanding the gravity of their situation, repented before God in sackcloth and ash.

It’s not my job to gauge true repentance of heart because only God knows the hearts of men, but with true repentance comes a new humility, a change of one’s ways, and a rejection of the sins that beset them, then exposed them, then made them the topic of the news cycle for weeks on end.

How do you know so and so didn’t repent? Because they’re still trying to find someone to blame for their actions, attempting to scapegoat their sin, and laying the blame at the feet of anyone else other than themselves, that’s how.

Recently, a pastor of one of the biggest churches in America tried to blame his twelve-year-old victim for the unspeakable things he did, claiming that she seduced him, having a Jezebel spirit and a spirit of seduction upon her. Yes, you read that right, twelve. This occurred while he was a fully grown adult, married, with a child, but it was the twelve-year-old’s fault for his being creepy and perverted and grooming her to the point of taking her innocence. Sorry, not sorry, but that’s not true repentance of heart. That’s trying to justify your perversion and licentiousness.

This is where we are, and it’s not because God desired the church to be full of hypocrites and perverts doing unspeakable things to those under their spiritual authority but because those men made choices. Conscious, repeated, ongoing choices contrary to the Word and will of God.

Nobody wakes up five hundred pounds overweight, huffing and puffing as they waddle to the door to take delivery of their Dominos order. It happened gradually, over time, one choice leading to another, compounding its effects, until one either acknowledges the state they’re in or continues to blame the dryer for shrinking their clothes and buying a new dryer.

Sin lies at the door of every man’s heart, and its desire is to corrupt and destroy, but it is our duty to resist it and rule over it, knowing that we have the power to do so through the grace of God. It has been this way since the beginning, when God warned Cain of the enemy’s devices, clearly defining the two paths that were before him. He could have chosen to do well, and he would be accepted, or harden his heart, grow bitter, and do the unthinkable, rising up against his brother Abel and killing him.

Man does not disobey, rebel, or sin in a vacuum. There are always consequences to the path they choose to take, whether those consequences are evident instantly or over time. In His love, God warns us to choose what is good, to do well, and to let faith be the anchor that keeps us from being swept away by the roaring sea, but the choice is ultimately ours as individuals as to whether we will heed His counsel, or do as we will.

Not only did Job not find fault with God for his situation, but he also didn’t go looking for someone to blame for it. He didn’t lash out at his wife, trying to blame her for having lost everything, or his servants who came to bring him the devastating news of what had occurred to his children and his possessions; he didn’t inquire if the cook had made some bad lamb and that’s why he was covered in boils, he retained his integrity and his faith in the God he served and humbled himself in worship. All this while God deemed him a blameless and upright man. It’s not as though Job had some secret sin that had been exposed or knew himself to be faithless, pretending to be faithful. He was not suffering the consequences of his actions or the repercussions of his rebellion. His faith was being tested, all the while remaining in the dark as to why and for what purpose.

Job made the choice to remain faithful even though he could not see the whole picture and was operating with incomplete information. All he knew was that he’d just suffered the loss of all his earthly possessions, the loss of his children, and the loss of his health. Even so, he trusted the God he served and had confidence in His sovereignty.

How far are you willing to trust God? If not all the way, then your faith has not been established, and the only question is how hard the enemy has to press to make you waiver.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

Job XLIII

 It’s human nature to accept good things with open arms. Whether it’s a compliment, a promotion, or finding out someone slipped an extra nugget in your six-piece value meal, it tends to make us feel warm and cozy, elevate our spirits, and more often than not, we find ourselves smiling for no other reason than that something good and unexpected just occurred.

Although we are not as jubilant about embracing adversity, it too has a purpose that is well-defined and readily identified, especially in hindsight. Hardship, adversity, trials, and testing mold character, and once we’ve gone through it and come out the other side victorious, we are stronger for it, with a deeper faith in the God we serve.

Even at his low point, Job had the wherewithal to acknowledge that both good things and adversity come from the hand of God and, as such, must be received with equal aplomb. But that just can’t be! We’re told day in and day out that our expectations of God should extend no further than good things, pressed down, shaken together, all the time, without fail, whether we’re awake or sleeping. Otherwise, we’re lacking in faith or failed to make a seed offering to our preferred televangelist.

While the modern-day church needlessly complicates some things, it also oversimplifies others, to the point that the entirety of our spiritual man’s succor is boiled down to a handful of overused clichés or morning affirmations we’ve taken to repeating in the mirror. We wouldn’t want to burden people with deeper discussions about faithfulness, obedience, or perseverance. They’re busy people with busy lives, and if we insist they take an extra second to consider deeper truths, they’re likely to go to the church across the street that has an hour of praise of worship followed by a five-minute sermon about karma.

The shepherds have failed the sheep, the church has failed God, and what was to be an army marching through the land with healing in their hand and everlasting joy and gladness in their hearts has been reduced to a bunch of man-babies who whine and stomp their feet until someone comes along to shove a pacifier in their mouth, and tell them it’s all going to be fine, and their breakthrough is just an offering away.

You get what we have when there is a systemic failure to preach the Gospel in any given generation by those whose sole purpose and duty was to do just that. The whole counsel of God means even those things your flesh is uncomfortable with, even those areas that call for the mortification thereof, and the undeniable reality that the testing of one’s faith, whichever way it may manifest, is not something outside the realm of possibility, or even a probability, but a certainty.

When an entire generation has been conditioned to believe that only good things will abound and overflow in their lives once they’ve made a half-hearted commitment to call themselves spiritual, their immediate reaction to any adversity is to arch their eyebrows and back away slowly because it’s neither what they signed up for, nor what they were promised by the guy in the three-piece suit and the Rolex on his wrist.

Job did not react in the flesh. He did not shake his fists at the heavens or insist he didn’t deserve to go through the adversity he was currently going through; he didn’t get bitter, angry, or vindictive because his focus was exclusively on God, and he trusted in His sovereignty, the way a child trusts their mother or father. He did not doubt God’s goodness and mercy, nor did he charge Him with wrong.

We can dwell on our current situation or circumstance, and the more we do, the bigger the problem seems to get, or we can fix our gaze upon God and worship Him, fully confident that He knows the end from the beginning and has made a way of escape for us.

1 Corinthians 10:13, “No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape that you may be able to bear it.”

Although when we think of temptation, we tend to associate it with a seduction of some kind, the broader definition of the word is the desire to do something wrong or unwise. Yes, wanting to eat that triple-layer chocolate cake in one sitting is a form of temptation, but so is the desire to question the authority of God. As far as the cake is concerned, it’s an easy fix: walk away. If you can’t walk away, throw it in the garbage. If it’s still tempting you while sitting in the garbage can, toss some wet coffee grounds on it, or if, perchance, you happen to have a child still in diapers, a dirty diaper draped across it should dissuade you from digging it out.

When it comes to resisting the temptation to grow bitter or resentful, it’s a bit more complicated because you can’t walk away from your feelings or what’s burdening your heart. The means of escape from such temptations requires deep, unyielding, and abiding faith in the God you serve because it’s your faith that will be the means of escape from spiraling into despondency and the nagging question of whether He is still with you or not.

Job knew that God was with him still, even as he sat on a heap of ashes, scratching at his boils with a potsherd. He knew the presence of God in the midst of his trial and was unshakeable in his resolve.

Avoiding the storm isn’t proof that God is with you. Knowing His abiding presence in the midst of the storm is. The storms of life are purposeful, whether to teach us dependence and reliance on Him or for the works of God to be revealed in them.

When Jesus noticed a man who had been blind from birth, his disciples wanted to know whether the man or his parents had sinned that he’d been born blind. Jesus answered, saying, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but that the works of God should be revealed in him.”

Not as simple as chanting, “Money cometh unto me now,” then again, few things in life are.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

Job XLII

 If a stranger were to approach either of my daughters, insisting that they’d seen me kicking a puppy, they’d call him a liar to his face because they know my character. They wouldn’t even entertain the thought or ask for evidence; they would know offhand that it was a lie and that there was no further need for debate.

As true children of God, there is not a shadow of doubt regarding God’s love, goodness, mercy, and grace because we know the character of the God we serve just as readily as my daughters know mine. Our reaction to trials and hardships, testing and chastening, reveals the level to which we know God. If God is established in your heart, and you acknowledge Him in all your ways, come what may, you will not be moved or shaken. The valleys may be uncomfortable, even painful to the flesh, but your assurance that God is working all things together for good to those who are called according to His purpose will remain resolute.

When we do not know the nature of the God we serve or have a limited understanding of it, then we will interpret the goings on of life in the worst possible light, likely growing bitter and hardened in our hearts along the way.

My little one is not what anyone may call overly cautious. She’s happy and carefree, as children should be for as long as you can manage it, but sometimes, as a father who wants the best for his children and is ever aware of the dangers lurking everywhere, I have to step in and keep her from doing something that will hurt her.

My daughters have a youth Bible study session at church every Wednesday night. I’m usually the one to take them since I like to give my wife a couple of hours of free time when no one’s calling her name every fifteen seconds, and she can decompress. Although both of my daughters know that they should look both ways before crossing the street, the little one is not as cautious when it comes to walking through parking lots. We’d parked in the church parking lot, and before I could turn off the engine, the little one was already out the door. I rushed to catch up, seeing as she was getting ready to sprint to the church door, and as I caught up to her and put my hand on her shoulder to stop her progress, a car zipped by, perhaps two feet from where she was now standing since I’d stopped her momentum.

She didn’t bristle or argue; she just turned her head, and with big eyes, realizing what could have happened had I not stopped her in her tracks, she said, ‘Sorry, Daddy.” Then she took my hand, and we walked into church.

We must allow for the reality that God sees the future far clearer than we, creations with limited understanding, can. In truth, unless we are giving divine insight or some prophetic revelation, we cannot know what the future holds for us as individuals. We have hopes, and we work toward goals, but as far as achieving them or things turning out the way we’d imagined, they rarely do. When God stops our forward momentum, our progress, or takes our hand and steers us away from something we’d intended to pursue, it’s not because He’s being mean or doesn’t want us to have good things, but because He sees the impending danger, and the tragedy that would befall us had we continued on our way.

Some people think they know better than God, so they resist His guidance. They push on, even though His hand is upon them, insisting that they stand still. They pursue their goals even though they are not in harmony with God’s plan for their life, then turn around and blame Him when it comes to ruin, and all that they’d worked and labored for, slips through their fingers like so much ash.

The same goes for when our level of maturity is tested. For every spiritual lesson there is a corresponding exam, and only once we’ve passed the exam can we graduate to the next lesson. If we fail to study to show ourselves approved, we get held back, just as one would get held back in the first grade if he failed to learn the alphabet. Granted, spiritually speaking, some people are still in first grade after decades of failing to learn the most basic or elementary principles of Christ, but that’s on them and not on God.  

Have we learned what we were meant to learn, or did we go through the lesson without applying any of the wisdom to our daily lives? Are we changed for the better? Do we see the world and our place in it through a more spiritually-centered prism? Are we striving for and seeking after the things above and not the things of this earth?

The testing determines the truth of it, and as is often the case, what is on our lips and what is in our hearts are two wholly different things. You can’t cheat your way out of God’s testing or have someone else take the exam for you.

God’s purpose is your maturity, your sanctification, your walking in faith, and the authority rightly due to His children. The reason you have to grow in order to be entrusted with greater responsibility, a greater calling, or a greater gifting is the same reason you don’t let a toddler play with a loaded gun. You need to know the rules, go through safety training, and be mature enough in your understanding to know that there is power in what you’ve been given, and it’s not to be abused, misappropriated, misused, or treated lightly.

Job was a man whom God deemed worthy of testing. The testing of one’s faith ought not to be looked upon as a negative or something to be begged off but as something God deems us worthy of. It’s an honor, a promotion, an achievement, and not a punishment or demotion.

It’s a difficult, almost counterintuitive mind-shift to embrace, especially given all the ignorant voices equating God’s testing with His punishment or reproof. Shortly after being beaten for preaching a risen Christ, the apostles departed from the presence of the council of the Pharisees, rejoicing that they had been counted worthy to suffer shame for His name.

If you are being tested, it’s because God finds you worthy of testing. If you are being chastened, it’s because God loves you, He sees you as a son or daughter, and He chastens those He loves. It may be uncomfortable, disconcerting, even painful in the moment, but the end result will be more of God and less of you, which is the ultimate goal of every believer.

Romans 5:3-5, “And not only that, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance; and perseverance, character, and character, hope. Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.”

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

Job XLI

 When God asked Satan if he’d considered His servant Job, Satan did not feign ignorance or insist he knew not of what God spoke. Not once, but on two occasions, we see that Satan is aware of those who cling to faith, who walk upright, and who serve God just as readily as he is about those who are his or those who pretend to be of the household of faith but are not.

If you are a true servant of God, then you have a target on your back. Satan is fully aware of your faithfulness, just as God is, but while one rejoices in your faithfulness, the other is scheming and plotting ways to shatter it and destroy it. Far too many believers are walking about today, not fully cognizant of the lengths to which the enemy of their soul will go in his attempts to stall their commitment to walking in the way or stifle the fire of their love for God.

Ignorance of the enemy and his devices will likely cause an individual to be taken by surprise when the attacks commence, especially if they’ve been sitting under teaching that does not allow for the possibility of being tested, tried, attacked, or targeted.

Awareness of our enemy and the plots he schemes is directly related to our spiritual maturity and understanding of the spiritual warfare in which we are bound to engage if we continue walking in faith and growing in God. Neither of my daughters was naturally aware that fire was dangerous when they were babies. They had to be told not to touch a hot stove or a hot skillet, and when they’d ask the inevitable why, either their mother or myself would sit down and explain it to them. Fire burns. It doesn’t matter whether or not you are aware of its effects, and it does not spare someone who stuck their hand in it out of ignorance. Having to contend with scars for the rest of your life is a high price to pay in order to learn that fire is not to be played with, but some individuals are unwilling to learn from the mistakes of others and have to prove it to themselves.

Mature believers, especially those in leadership, such as elders or pastors, have the duty to warn those who are babes in Christ of the dangers the enemy poses and instruct them to guard their hearts against his devices. Not doing so is not an oversight but a failure of their spiritual duty toward the body of Christ, and something that will not go unnoticed by God.

We act as though we’re trying to sell a timeshare when preaching Christ, as though we have to trick people into signing on the dotted line and becoming active members of something that would otherwise not be worth it were it not for the prettied-up presentation. We feel as though we need to add extra value to what is already the best, most generous offer we will run across in a thousand lifetimes, thinking that we are doing God a favor or that we’re the ones nudging the individual toward a commitment of some kind.

Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. Anything other than the Word of God may produce an emotional reaction, a temporary sense of remorse or regret of some kind, but it will not produce faith because faith can only come by hearing the Word. True conversion in Western nations is rarer than one might imagine for the simple fact that what is being preached from the pulpit today is not the Word of God, but the words of men made up to look like the Word of God, spoken with enough inflection and pregnant pauses that the newly initiated, or the outright ignorant can’t tell the difference between the two.

Although I’ve made this point repeatedly, some might even say excessively, I will make it anew: You must study to show yourself approved! You can’t outsource your knowledge of God’s word to another; you can’t hire an assistant to do it for you; it can’t be transferred to your heart via telekinesis or telepathy. You must sit with the word of God, read it, contemplate it, meditate upon it, let it feed you, take root in your heart, and nourish your faith.

Brother, tell me what I need to do to grow in God and deepen my faith. Read His word, pray, and spend time with Him. But I’m looking for a shortcut, something that won’t take up so much of my time. Isn’t there another way? No, there isn’t, and anyone who tells you differently is lying to you and, at some point in the future, will try to sell you some magic beans or a genie in a bottle.

It’s easy to focus solely on Job’s travails. All things being equal, it’s hard to look away. It’s like driving by a recent car crash on the other side of the road. You slow down, take a long look, make sure someone is there to help already, then close your eyes, breathe a sigh, and thank God it wasn’t you being extricated from a pile of twisted metal with the jaws of life.

We shouldn’t discount what Job suffered, but at the same time, as believers, we must focus on the perseverance of his faith and submission to God in all things far more readily than we would the loss of all things or the painful boils covering him from head to toe. Job’s reaction to all that befell him is a master class in placing one’s faith and trust in God and being unshakeable when it comes to the knowledge of His character. In order to endure what Job endured and come through it with your integrity intact, you must know the God you serve intimately and personally. Job hadn’t heard about God; he knew God. He hadn’t watched others worship Him; Job worshiped Him.

There is a tendency in our modern age to put men up on pedestals and think them spiritually superior, and there are plenty who take advantage of this esteem and make merchandise of those who see them with starry eyes and fluttering hearts. They lean into it and project an air of spirituality that they do not possess, doing such impeccable acting as to be worthy of an Oscar. As for the sheep, they come to believe that by giving a few shekels to someone whom they deem close to God, they themselves draw closer to God, not understanding that the only way to grow in God is to do it themselves.

You are not made righteous by another’s righteousness. You are not sanctified because someone you know or esteem is so. You’re not spiritually mature because you sit under the teaching of someone who is. There are no shortcuts, no cheat sheets, no mantras, no secret pathways, just a daily fellowship with God, spending time with Him, growing in Him, and learning to trust Him in all things. That’s how we get from where we are to having faith like Job. What many fail to understand is that such a faith isn’t optional for the believer but necessary in the days ahead.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

Job XL

Specialists in the area of breaking the human will have concluded that everyone has a breaking point. You can’t hold out indefinitely. Eventually, the pain becomes too much, the privation too intense, and something snaps. You relent. You give in. You tell the interrogator what he wants to know, and some besides just to make it stop. This is by no means a new revelation. It’s been common knowledge among those whose profession is to hurt others in varied and ever-crueler ways for a very long time. This is why the fortitude, perseverance, tenacity, and grit of the Christians baffled the Communists so. They were supposed to relent, they were supposed to break, they were supposed to give up the ghost and tell their torturers what they wanted to hear, yet they didn’t.

For many, it was a long road to martyrdom, nothing so swift as a guillotine or a bullet to the back of the head because they had information their persecutors needed in order to ferret out their brothers and sisters in Christ and stamp out this obstinate resistance to the system. It’s how they viewed believers, not because they were overtly political or partisan, but because their hope in Christ eliminated the need to be dependent on the current power structure, and that, in turn, weakened their control over them.

What those who doled out merciless pain didn’t understand is that those they were persecuting had hope and faith in the God they served. Those were the unquantifiable factors that allowed common men to endure uncommon hardships, all the while deepening their bond of love and devotion with the God they served. They understood that whatever hardship they had to endure was temporary. The pain, the tears, the cold, the hunger, the dehumanization rituals that were a favorite of the old regime couldn’t last forever.

Sometime in the 1950s, an experiment was conducted by a professor at Johns Hopkins that attempted to quantify the power of hope. The professor’s name was Curt Richter, and he used rats for his experiment. He took a group of rats, put them in water, and timed how long it took them to drown. I know, cruel, perhaps needlessly so, but bear with me.

Then he took another group of rats, put them in water, and just as they were about to drown, pulled them out. He allowed them to rest, then put them back in the water, and to his surprise, the rats that had been saved, having returned to the water, swam for far longer than those who had never known the hope of being plucked from the water and jubilation of being saved.

Believers endure and persevere because they have faith and hope in the God who saved them. They know what it is to be on the brink of death, drowning in sin, and to be plucked from the depths by His loving hand. We go on when others give up, and we endure when others surrender because we know our hope is not misplaced and our faith is not without substance. Our prior experience of having been given life through the sacrifice of Christ on the cross solidifies our hope and faith that God is able, He will make a way, and He can do the impossible.

No matter how violent the storm or how strong the waves buffeting us, our attitude must always be one of trust and full assurance in the God we serve. God is in control. It is a sentiment that has been echoed by every true servant throughout the ages whenever faced with circumstances deemed impossible by others.

We can’t get around the reality that faith involves putting yourself at risk by acting on what you have confidence in. When Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego stood before an enraged Nebuchadnezzar, they had confidence that their God was able to preserve them, keep them, and save them. Whether He would or not was another matter entirely, but they’d made their peace that whether God saved them or they succumbed to the flames, He was still God, and they would remain faithful.

The only assurance they had was that God was God, and He would continue to remain God even after the events that would transpire, whether He chose to keep them from becoming human torches or supernaturally spare their lives. Their faith in God’s omnipotence was unwavering even though they stood before a king and his assembled acolytes, with the flames of a raging furnace within view.

It’s one thing to be threatened with some future, potential punishment; it’s another to watch the fire and know that the man threatening to cast you in it has both the power, authority, and inclination to do so. It wasn’t hypothetical; it was actual, factual, and real. They did not doubt Nebuchadnezzar’s resolve; they trusted in the power of the God they served.

You can’t quantify faith and hope. You can’t bottle them up and sell them, and acquiring them requires a lifelong commitment to obeying the will and Word of God in all things. Faith and hope begin as infants, and with diligent nurture and attention, they grow to maturation, just like a child would.

When we begin the journey, we have faith in the little things because our faith is small. It is alive, a substantive thing, and we can feel it in our hearts, but the more we exercise it, stretch it, feed it, and lean on it, the more it grows. As your faith grows, you learn to walk in it with ever greater boldness, looking back on the road you traveled and seeing the countless times it kept you surefooted and upright.

By the time Job’s trial came his faith in God had fully matured. He’d served God, worshiped Him, and fellowshipped with Him for many years before Satan asked to sift him, and we know this because, by the time of his testing, he already had ten fully grown children living on their own. Satan was as befuddled as the torturers of the old regime as to why this man’s faith held strong, and he did not waiver because even though the demons believe and tremble, they cannot possess salvific faith.

It’s easy to conflate belief and faith, but they are not the same. Faith involves reliance and trust. Faith endures in the face of trial and doubt. Belief, on the other hand, is something we take to be true. You may believe you can walk on water, but Peter had the faith to step from the shore and walk toward Jesus upon the waves. That’s what faith does. It keeps you pressing onward even when your sense of self-preservation and all available physical evidence is screaming that you should turn around. Faith takes us from the realm of the impossible to that of all things being possible with God.

Jude 20-21, “But you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life.”

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.