Redeemed

The promise of redemption begins while we are earthbound but echoes into eternity. The promise of redemption is magnificent. The hope this promise creates in the hearts of men is unequaled, as is the humility it produces when the price with which you were purchased crystalizes.

Something is only worth as much as someone is willing to pay. That may sound clinical, but it is nevertheless true. You can have an emotional attachment to something or think it’s worth more than its actual value, but the rubber meets the road when you ask someone to pay a certain price for whatever you are trying to sell.

Rather than let my girls veg out in front of the television, I went to Hobby Lobby and bought them a bunch of canvases, two miniature easels, and art supplies to outlast Armageddon when they were on sale. Because I wanted to motivate them to draw, paint, scribble, or otherwise make a white canvas less so, I told them I would purchase their paintings at what I considered was a fair value.

When they heard there was the potential of making money, they took to their painting with a fervor and dedication my wallet couldn’t hope to keep up with. In one day, my oldest daughter had five works of art ready for purchase, and her younger sister had three.

When I asked them how much they wanted for their art, the older one piped up and said, “I think two dollars a piece is fair, daddy.”

“I think five dollars apiece would be fairer still,” I answered.

Were they worth five dollars per painting on the open market? Perhaps on a good day to the right buyer. To me, they were worth every penny of the five dollars and then some because their value went beyond paint on a canvas as far as I was concerned.

There is intrinsic value; then there is market value. Although the paintings I purchased from my daughters didn’t have much by way of market value, they had intrinsic, inherent value by the boatload. They were worth more to me than they would have been to anyone else because my daughters drew them.

I’m brutally honest when it comes to me. It’s the least I can do for myself. Whether it’s to be nice, avoid conflict or spare feelings, most people aren’t honest with those around them, but you can tell yourself the truth even if no one else will. It may sting in the moment, but it’s good medicine.

I know what my market value is. It’s not anywhere near what God declared my inherent value was. To be honest, my market value and my intrinsic value aren’t even in the same hemisphere.

Some people overestimate the value of things and get away with it. Remember when pet rocks were a thing and sold for ten bucks a pop or the tulip mania of the Dutch Golden Age? Those were exceptions to the rule because although there is a sucker born every minute, not every sucker has enough money to buy cruise art at an inflated price.

If you’ve done it yourself, don’t feel too bad, I know quite a few people who have. It’s that estimated value that gets you, isn’t it? You see a lithograph, which is basically a numbered copy of an original work, and the paper says it has an estimated replacement value of $8000, but it could be yours right now, as the boat is bobbing along in open water for the low price of $4000. They fail to tell you that you’ll never find someone on dry land willing to pay you $1500 for the piece, but then again, it’s in their best interest to keep that kind of information to themselves.

When it comes to you, there is no quibbling over your value because the price has already been established and paid in full. As a child of God, you should never have to wonder about your worth or if you are wanted because God proved that you are, and as far as the price that was paid is concerned, He sent His only begotten Son to redeem you.

The cost of your redemption was the life of Jesus, and He paid it gladly.

John 10:17-18, “Therefore my Father loves Me, because I lay down My life that I may take it again. No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This command I have received from My Father.”

You are the byproduct of a God who loved you enough to redeem you. Let that sink in. The price that was paid for you was not negligible; it was not some paltry thing like gold or diamonds; you were purchased with such a high price as to make any substitute insignificant and unacceptable. Had all the gold in all the world been lined up in baskets, had all the earth’s diamonds been piled up into a mountain, it would not have been enough to redeem one soul.

That one would need redemption presupposes alienation. It presupposes estrangement and the desire of the redeemer to pay an agreed-upon price to have that which was lost to him be returned.

You are precious. Precious enough for the Son of God to have redeemed you with His blood. No matter the struggle, the valley, or the feelings of inadequacy or worthlessness, you do not get to determine your value; God determined it for you, and it is great indeed.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

Always

 For some, it is an unequaled comfort. For others, it’s a cause for concern, consternation, and incongruent behavior akin to a schizophrenic inside a funhouse. Because they know they ought not to be doing what they are presently doing, some people even have panic attacks, hyperventilate, or outright snap at the thought that God is ever-present. Either that or they find an ear tickler somewhere to tell them that though God is with them, there to prosper them, clear their acne, and straighten their teeth, He is blind and deaf to their sin and depravity.

It’s the best of both worlds. You can walk around like Foghorn Leghorn, telling everyone within earshot how special, unique, and princely you are, then drink in the pollution of this world until you vomit without ever once considering the consequences or taking personal responsibility for your actions.

We try to navigate this minefield of what is sin and what isn’t sin when the answer is so simple, even the simpleminded can glean it: Since God is always with you, don’t take Him where He doesn’t want to go and don’t do the things that would displease Him. Simple enough statement, but the implications are vast.

It’s telling how few walk as though God is walking beside them. Do they not believe the Word, or do they not care? Is God Lord of their lives, or nothing more than fire insurance? Good to have just in case that whole thing about hell turns out to be real, but not worth more than the commitment and sacrifice it took to walk down the aisle to the front of the church one day.

Why speak of these things? Why point them out? Because sooner rather than later, there will be a sifting. Sooner rather than later, there will be a separation, and I do not want you to be shocked by how few remain.

If you think walking with God is boring or that the world is more exciting than the presence of God, then you’ve never walked with God. Enoch walked with God for three hundred years and didn’t get bored.

Jesus said He would always be with us, a constant companion on this journey called life. Those whose singular desire is to glorify Him and live according to His precepts and commandments rejoice in the knowledge of this truth. He’ll never be too busy; He’ll never be out of town; He’ll never be in a meeting with someone of higher stature or more important. He is always there, walking alongside you on the road of life, closer than a brother.

Sometimes He’ll even tug on your sleeve, not because He doesn’t want you to live your best life, have fun, fulfill your destiny, or whatever cliché the Beth Moores and Paula Whites of the world try to sell you as a word from the throne room. He tugs on your sleeve because He sees around the corners, He sees over the hills, and He knows what dangers lay beyond. He knows what snares await, He knows what enemies lurk in the shadows, and He can only protect you if you walk beside Him.

He’s not keeping you from reaching your goal; He’s ensuring you do. It takes will and humility to shift your perspective so radically as to see the truth of that statement. Most people will just double their efforts and try harder, not realizing God is slowing them down for a reason.

If God is sending you, it is with a purpose. If God is sidelining you for a season, that is also with a purpose. It’s not like He lost track of where you are or what you need to be doing, nor did He underestimate your potential and give you less responsibility than you thought you could handle.

You may be strong enough to withstand today’s battle, but God knows the strength you will need to be victorious in tomorrow’s battle as well. If He will not allow you to rush headlong into the unknown, trust that it is not unknown to Him.

The perpetuity of His presence gives comfort to the obedient. Whether the road is easy or the road is hard, He is there, ever-present, desiring closeness, intimacy, and relationship. He has no vested interest or hidden agenda. His love for you was proven beyond a shadow of a doubt through the sending of Jesus, His beloved Son.

Knowing these things, knowing what God has done, is He not deserving of our all? Does He not deserve our affection, obedience, faithfulness, and steadfastness?

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

Trust

 My wife insists she fell in love with me the first time she laid eyes on me. I still think she should have gone to have her eyes checked, but twenty-three years and two children later, I guess I have to take her at her word.

Some things happen instantaneously; other things take time to build up. Trust is one of those things that doesn’t happen overnight. It is hard won and quickly lost because you only need someone you trusted to betray you once, and straight back to the start you go, no matter how long it took to build it up.

They can have reasons, excuses, and justifications for why they did what they did, but to your heart, it will just be empty words. I don’t care why you stabbed me in the back; you stabbed me in the back! No further explanation is required as far as I’m concerned. Unless you meant to tell me you were going for the invisible man who was getting ready to strangle me, and even then, I probably could have fought him off and still been better off than getting stabbed.

We’ve all been there at some point; we all know how crushing it is to have your trust betrayed and how long it takes to repair the tear in your heart. We also know how skittish we become about trusting from that point forward because the fear of being betrayed anew is ever present in our minds. The wounds may heal, but the scars remain, and sometimes the phantom pain is so real you can’t tell the difference between the two.

When it’s another believer that betrays you, it becomes more complicated still because it’s easy to conflate a Christian’s betrayal with the notion that God betrayed you. Rather than lay the blame where it ought to be, bitterness against God begins to blossom.

Were that it was not so, but most of the time, God gets the blame for what His supposed servants do. Not everyone who says Lord belongs to Him, and not everyone who attends church, is honorable. Not even everyone who pastors a church is honorable, now that I think about it. All you have to do is collate the stories of how many pyramid schemes and failed investment scams their flocks were taken in by to see the truth of it.  

Trusting God and trusting man are not the same, nor will they have the same outcome. One will fail you, the other never will. One will betray your trust if it’s advantageous; the other will stand by His promises because He is God, and He changes not.

Every person in the Bible from Genesis forward knew that they could count on God. It wasn’t some mass conspiracy to make God look good; it was the truth of their lived experiences. Some of the things certain authors admit to within the pages of Scripture are not flattering. David had a guy murdered because he thought his wife was cute, among other things. If they were that candid about their own shortcomings, if God had ever failed them, or they could somehow pass the buck and say it was because God fell short, don’t you think they would have?

Who would endure what the apostles and the primary church did for a God known for failing those who followed after Him? Who would go to the ends of the earth preaching a gospel whose God did not help when He promised He would?

Keep in mind, they weren’t living the lives of the posh and pampered back in the day. There was no earthly reward for their dedication and determination to spread the Gospel and no offer of comfort and excess if they remained true to their callings. The things they had to look forward to weren’t mansions and jets. It was crosses, flails, beatings, and tortures.

Sometimes we miss that part of it. It’s hard to relate living as we do, but there is a cost, there is a price, and the reward is not on this side of eternity.

We’ve been conditioned to believe that God keeping His promises always means the good guys win or that you get to ride off into the sunset, fully intact and unsinged. Sometimes it does. Sometimes it doesn’t. You don’t get to choose which, and you don’t get to decide how the story ends because God’s thoughts are not yours, and your thoughts are self-centered on the best of days anyway.

Even Jesus prayed that if it were possible for the cup to be taken away from Him, He wouldn’t mind at all if it was, but He resigned Himself to the Father’s will and said, “not my will, but Yours be done.”

Sometimes God keeping His promise means dying well or your faith not failing before the finish line. We cannot see the spiritual through the prism of the physical and assume we are rightly dividing what we are seeing. We all want to be the heroes of our own stories but forget that martyrs are heroes too. I either spoiled your day or made your day with that one. It is the truth, whichever side you land on.

Because you know He will not fail or betray you, you can trust God fully. That in itself is liberating beyond description. You know that trust is not misplaced; you know it will not be abused, and every time you cry out for help, He will be there. That beats any thirty-day money-back guarantee.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

Goodness

 Now that we’ve determined what trouble means and given the word the requisite gravitas ask yourself if you’ve ever been in real trouble since becoming a believer, and God has not been there in some form or fashion. Sometimes He intervenes supernaturally. At other times, He uses people, but His goodness is undeniable, as is His presence in our moments of greatest need.

He is not an absentee Father; He has not abandoned His children, nor is He deaf to their cries. Because He is engaged and present, there are moments in your walk when He knows you can do more than you think you can, and having done it, you will mature exponentially.

All things work together for good to those who love God, including those things that are unpleasant to the flesh. It is so because even the difficult days - the days you feel as though you’re being crushed under the weight of the cross you carry - are according to His purpose.

The same God that created the eagle created the giant clam. I know that came out of left field, but there’s a point to be made. While all the giant clam has to do is open its mouth, and its food floats in, the eagle must soar high into the air, then dive bomb a body of water, hoping to get its claws into his dinner.

We look at the lives of others and think that they have it too easy. At least, they have it easier than us. That is speculation without foundation because you don’t know what they go through behind closed doors, how hard they work, how early they rise, or the effort they put forth when no one is looking. Even if it were true, it isn’t your place to compare the ease or difficulty of life to others because God may have made them giant clams while He made you an eagle.

Yes, there are moments in life when you’d give anything to be a giant clam, just sitting on the bottom of the ocean and opening wide once in a great while, but then again, that’s all you’d ever know; that one place on the bottom of the ocean. You’d be at the mercy of the currents and have to content yourself with whatever floats into your space.

Between the eagle and the clam, it is the clam who fears for tomorrow; it is the clam who grows anxious and fearful when no food washes into its mouth for days on end. If the eagle is hungry, it hunts. The world is its oyster, as it were, and he is never anxious or fearful for his sustenance. The eagle lives a mindset of abundance, while the oyster one of scarcity.

Don’t be an eagle pretending to be a clam. You won’t get far. If all the eagle does is sit in its nest waiting for food to come its way, it will starve. If, however, it uses the unique gifts it has been given, it will never do without. If you do decide to be a clam, if you don’t strive, knock, seek, but just wait for someone to throw leftovers in your maw, as my kids like to say, you get what you get, and you don’t throw a fit.

There’s a tradeoff for everything in life, and this is no exception. Being an eagle may be more taxing, but you get to see sunrises and sunsets and feel the thermals under your wings. You get to soar, fly toward the heavens, and be free. I think that last one is key. You get to be free. Sure, you have to work a little harder, but you’re not helpless, dependent, or reliant.

The beasts of the field and the birds of the air have no help, yet they are not anxious for tomorrow. We have the promise of God’s help, yet we are in constant panic about what the future holds. God’s already there, ready to help if you need it, but trusting that you will avail yourself of the tools He’s provided you first.

I’m not absent anxiousness because I’m sure of my abilities; I’m not anxious because I’m sure of His.

Psalm 121:2, “My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.”

That’s not a boast; it’s a fact. He who made heaven and earth is in your corner. He is there to help. What have you to fear? What have you to be anxious about or fearful of?

Your focus shouldn’t be on the things of this earth or what is in store for tomorrow. Your singular focus should be seeking the kingdom of God and His righteousness. Once you do that, everything else will fall into place.

Matthew 6:33, “But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.”

Sometimes that’s easier said than done, but it is nevertheless necessary. We must acknowledge that some things the Word commands us to do are more difficult than others, but even so, they must be carried out if we desire to walk in the promises of God and not just speak of them.

If you seek the kingdom first, you will attain what you have sought, and as a bonus, everything the common man frets over and worries about will be added unto you.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

Peril

 You cry for help when your life’s in peril, not when you can’t quite reach your umbrella drink from a sitting position. It would be nice to have a permanent butler there in the snap of a finger as soon as you ring a tiny bell, but God isn’t a butler, and to think Him such demeans His nature, who He is, and what man’s relationship toward Him ought to be.

For that matter, He isn’t a magic genie, a fortune teller, a mystic, or Santa Clause. His entire reason for being isn’t to bless you, and your obedience isn’t optional; it is mandatory.

We’ve been spoon-fed the nonsense about being tiny gods for so long that some have even taken to believing it. No, they’re not impudent enough to use the big G, but what’s the harm in a little g? The whole dynamic falls apart when you substitute the words creation and Creator for God and god. It’s not just a didactic difference. It isn’t something we can sweep under the rug with a shoulder shrug and an eye roll.

The devil lied, but Eve went apple-picking anyway. You are not like God. Except for knowing the difference between good and evil, that’s where your similitude with God ends. Being made in the image of someone doesn’t make you a tiny version of that someone with the same inherent powers and abilities, just in miniature form.

When people see my eldest daughter and my wife together, there’s always the comparison since they look so similar. It’s a smaller version of you always ends up being said at some point, but she’s not. She is independent, autonomous, self-governing, and separate. The same goes for the my body, my choice crowd. It’s not, though. There is an independent, sovereign human residing inside of you. It’s not just your body, it’s their body too, and you’re making a choice to murder it because it’s inconvenient to your five-year plan.

I get that we have excuses at the ready for every unscriptural thing we do. It would be fun to watch if it wasn’t so heartbreaking. While most people don’t bother to read their Bibles regularly, let them try to find a justification for something they’re doing, and they become scripture sleuths and theological scholars overnight. They’ll go into Greek, then Latin, then translate the Latin into the Greek, then into King James English, just to try to make their point. If they’d put that much effort into forming a relationship with God and growing in their faith, they wouldn’t need to be pretzel-twisting the Scriptures for an excuse.  

In order to have a rightful expectation of God’s help, we must first define what the word trouble means. That way, people won’t be accusing God of not showing up every other minute even though He promised He would be a present help in times of trouble. I couldn’t find my car keys, and I said Lord help, and He didn’t. I kept looking for my car keys for another five minutes until I realized they were in my pants pocket. Was that really trouble, or was it more you being scatterbrained and not taking a second to inhale, exhale, then think the situation through logically?

To say that we have become like the boy who cried wolf, but instead, we cry for help would be a mischaracterization of the boy. We’re like the boy who cried wolf on speed with a half dozen Red Bull chasers under our belt.

The issues most people are crying for help with can readily be solved with a bit of common sense and some elbow grease. You’re not in trouble. You may be in an uncomfortable situation, but if you were in trouble and cried out to God, He would be there to help.

I’ve only ever been in trouble once. Some years ago, I was driving from Bucharest to Botosani, Romania, in the milkiest fog you’ve ever seen. If ever there was a setting for a horror movie, that was it. I wasn’t going slow enough; truth be told, I probably shouldn’t have been driving in that soup at all, but I wanted to get home, and parking on the side of the road until morning wasn’t that appealing.

The road curved left, I didn’t, and I saw the highway beam dividers the instant before impact. It’s not as though I was driving a sturdy car. It was a puke green two-door Ford Escort hatchback. It was as pretty as it was tough.

I knew what would happen before it did, and all I had time for was an ‘Oh, God’ before the sound of metal on metal and the force of the impact made everything go dark. I don’t know if I passed out; if I did, it was only seconds, but when I opened my eyes, a beam was sticking through the windshield and out the back hatch, and that was just the start of it.

I made to get out of the car, and surprisingly, the door opened after a bit of prodding. I walked around it to get my bearings and saw two more beams sticking out of the engine block, with quite a few others littering the highway. I looked down the edge of the beam that had gone through the windshield, and it had missed the driver’s side headrest by a few inches at most.

I sat on the curb and fished in my pockets for my cell phone, and as I did, cars began to pull over with drivers and passengers rushing to my ruined Escort, feverishly pulling on the doors. When I asked one of the closest men what they were doing, he looked at me as though I was slow-witted and said, “we’re trying to get the victims out.”

“What victims?” I asked.

“The bodies, boy, the bodies. No one could have survived this.”

I stood up, brushed some dirt off my pants, then tried to tell the man that there were no victims, there were no bodies, and I’d just called the police to come and file a report.

It was only then that I realized I didn’t have a scratch on me: no bloody nose, scraped knees, or bruises of any kind.

The police came, they wrote out a report, called a tow truck, and drove me to the train station so I could catch a train home. A few weeks later, when they sent their final determination, the police informed me I had gone through twenty-four beams before the car finally stopped.

Psalm 50:15, “Call Me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify Me.”

He did, and I did, just like He said I would because when you see the hand of God deliver you from certain death, there’s nothing else you can do but glorify Him.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

Proven

 There are things within your purview that you are capable of doing. There are others you have no control over, things that you cannot affect, no matter how much you might try. It’s easy to remove a pebble from your shoe. It’s impossible to move a mountain, no matter how much you heave and ho. At least, it’s impossible for you. No such thing as impossible for God.

I’ve been part of a ministry since I was twelve years old. My grandfather ran it until his passing; then, it fell on my shoulders to continue the work. Since its inception, the ministry's vision has been far greater than its bank account or ability to see it through without help. Every project exceeded our present ability to see it through to its rightful end.  

When my grandfather gathered us around the kitchen table and informed us that God had told him we should build an orphanage in Romania, we had less than $500 in the ministry bank account. Four years later, the project was completed, and to this day, children are being cared for and trained up in the way they should go in that building.

Had we leaned on our understanding and attempted to employ human reason to the problem, the project would have never gotten off the ground, nevermind been completed.

We knew that we could not carry out the vision God had birthed in our hearts but that He could. That was enough for us to take the first step, then the second, and when we could no longer walk, God was there to be a present help, to give us strength, and to prove His faithfulness.

God is a proven factor. He is quantifiable. You don’t have to guess whether He is capable of something; you know it with the immovable certainty that all who have seen His hand move in their lives do. You’re not stepping out blindly; you’re stepping out in faith. There’s a difference and a big one. You are stepping out with a promise backed by the full faith and credit of a sovereign God.

It’s when we wander off on our own or when we begin new works catering more to serving the flesh than serving God that we fall flat on our faces, and there is no one there to lend a helping hand. Had God told you to begin the new work, He would have been faithful in seeing it through to completion.

Don’t take it upon yourself to do something God never commanded you to do. You will fail and fail spectacularly. Even if it may not seem so difficult to pull off, even if you reason that a bit of elbow grease and a few sleepless nights will make it a reality. God doesn’t need architects, visionaries, or influencers; God needs laborers. He will provide the plan, He will provide the vision, and He will provide the influence. All you have to do is the grunt work. No, it doesn’t sound glamorous, and it isn’t; I’d be lying if I said it was, but if glamour’s what you’re looking for, I hear the fashion industry’s left somewhat of a vacuum recently.

The work of God requires the removal of your ego from the equation. It hurts at first, but once you begin to catalog all the things that God has done, things that you would never have dreamed of accomplishing on your own, you realize your ego was nothing more than an impotent, toothless lion who thought itself fierce and capable.

Yes! You can do all things through Christ, who strengthens you, but that implies that you can do nothing without Him. Rather than carry the idea to its rightful conclusion and walk humbly with our God, we shortened it to I can do all things, then talked ourselves into believing we were the captains of our ships and masters of our destinies.

We’ve gone from God being our refuge and strength to building our own towers, taking steroids, and having 911 on speed dial. Then we have the audacity to wonder why every other day you hear stories of supposed Christians doing things that the mere thought of keeps you up at night.

When the sons of Korah wrote the forty-sixth psalm, they weren’t doing it by way of secondhand or third-hand information. They did not write as though they had no experience with the power of God or that they heard through the grapevine stories of what God did somewhere far away, in a time long forgotten. God is our refuge, they wrote, including themselves in the experience of having seen the mighty hand of God move on their behalf.

We cannot be satisfied with the testimonies of others when it comes to the present, manifest power of God. If we are, there will always be a niggling doubt as to whether or not God can do as He promised. Once you experience God as your refuge, once you are invigorated by Him, and He becomes your strength, once your enemy presses you in on all sides and He becomes your refuge, you will have lived the reality of what He can do and does do for His beloved.

We must desire to see His presence in our lives. Towards that end, we hunger and thirst for righteousness; we strive for a pure heart so that we may see God and the fulfillment of His promises toward us.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

Help

 Fictitious though they may be, even superheroes have limitations. God does not. He is limitless, almighty, omnipotent, and omniscient. There is nothing He cannot do, there is nothing He does not know, and one of His promises to those who love Him is that He will be an ever-present help. That may not sound like much to some because they still view God through the prism of their experiences with their fellow man.

We’ve all been there. We all have that one friend who promises to help us move, only to twist his ankle the night before. It’s almost serendipitous how that happens. He’s very clear about how he’d love to help, he really would, but his doctor told him not to put any weight on the ankle if he wants it to heal properly. You kind of want to point out that the last time they had a doctor, it was a pediatrician, and Ronald Reagan was still president, but you let it go, say you understand, and try to barrel-carry a couch down two flights of stairs all by your lonesome.

When God says He’ll be there, he means it. When He says He can help, He can. They are not just empty words. He is, after all, not Joel Osteen.

If you’ve ever wondered how certain individuals could display such courage and boldness in the face of persecution, threatened with loss, and death itself, it’s because they believed God’s promise toward them, as well as possessed certainty regarding His ability to carry it out.

Psalm 46:1, “God is our refuge and strength. A very present help in trouble.”

God doesn’t ask what kind of trouble. He doesn’t qualify His promises with addendums or disclaimers like the commercials for medications on television. He is a very present help in trouble. That’s a broad umbrella. Any kind of trouble, at any time, He is there, presently, and not just to stand by and watch you sink into the quicksand, but to help.

A man does not need refuge during times of peace. He does not need refuge when things are going swimmingly, there are no enemies to be had, and the sun is shining overhead. A man needs refuge when he is being pursued, when his life is in the balance, and when being without refuge would mean certain death. It is in times of peril that God our refuge is there, not just willing to lend a hand, but fully able to turn the tide, to quiet the storm, and to put your enemies to flight.

Oftentimes we want God to do for us the things we can do for ourselves. The Word doesn’t say He is our maid, our piggy bank, or our personal chef. He is our refuge! You don’t need supernatural healing for the ingrown toenail; you just need a pair of clippers.

The mundane is not where God resides; the impossible is. If you are able-bodied and of sound mind, pray for an honorable employer and not to find a bag of gold someone left on your front porch.

But what about Elijah and the ravens? What about it? It’s not like Elijah was camping out in the parking lot of a Quickie Mart. He was in the wilderness with no way of providing for himself, and God sent the ravens with meat and bread. Even then, it doesn’t say God cooked the meat for Elijah. Some things we can do for ourselves, and if we can, then we must rather than expect supernatural intervention. When the answer to your problem is less laziness rather than ravens bringing you meat, be less lazy.

Could you imagine if that happened in our day and age? Granted, if it came down to survival, I don’t think anyone would be that picky, but I’m sure there would be at least one who would ask if the bread was gluten-free and another who would try and remind the ravens that they were vegan and couldn’t possibly eat the meat proffered them. 

Whether refuge, strength, or trouble, they all denote a sense of urgency, desperate need, and an inability of the individual to affect change regarding the situation of their own volition. If you need refuge, you are unable to push back your enemy, whether because they outnumber you or because you are not strong enough. If you need strength, it is because you do not currently possess the strength required to carry out the task you intended to carry out. If you are in need of help, it is because whatever the mountain standing in your way is, you cannot move it on your own.

Men blame God or the devil for their failures but never themselves. If they did not succeed in an endeavor, it’s either because the devil tripped them up or God didn’t help them enough. It’s never because they didn’t put in the requisite time or because their endeavor was a nonstarter, to begin with. I'm sure books for pets would have been a global phenomenon if only you could have gotten it off the ground.  Never once do they consider that their endeavor might not have been the will of God for their lives or that had they succeeded, it would have chilled their relationship with Him.

Self-obsession eliminates objectivity. If you think the world revolves around you, you leave no room for the plan and purpose of God for your life. What may be good in the short term for you might be detrimental in the long term. What may be easy for your flesh might be detrimental to your spiritual man.

While we are obsessed with the flesh, the here and now, this moment in time, God’s focus is on you with Him in eternity. When our minds are transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit, then we’re on the same page as God, with eternity as our goal rather than a momentary, fleeting comfort.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.