Love II

 Anyone who believes grace is unnecessary or that they don’t personally need a double portion has not realized the high standard of the law. James is writing to the twelve tribes which are scattered abroad or the Jews of his day, and he is attempting to stir within them the realization that they, too, need grace since even by showing partiality, one commits sin and, as such, is convicted by the law as a transgressor.

That’s a high bar because James does not specify whether the aforementioned partiality had to have been shown willingly or premeditatedly. Even if you caught yourself showing partiality while in the act of doing so, the law says you are guilty of it, therefore guilty of sin, and consequently convicted by the law as a transgressor. Are you still inclined to brush off or beg off grace? Do you still think you don’t need it?

That’s not to say that this present generation has not abused grace and transformed it into a license to sin, but the Bible is clear on that, and though men might deceive themselves in the moment, they will not deceive God. They loved their sin more than they loved God and did what they had to in order to create allowances for the thing they loved. People in sin know it's a sin. It’s not a mystery to them, but they love it too much to be rid of it even though it’s killing them.

James 2:10-13, “For whoever shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble in one point, he is guilty of all. For He who said, ‘Do not commit adultery,’ also said, ‘Do not murder.’ Now if you do not commit adultery, but you do murder, you have become a transgressor of the law. So speak and so do as those who will be judged by the law of liberty. For judgment is without mercy to the one who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment.”

Just as love does not mean tolerance of sin, neither does mercy. James is not trying to be some libertine, flaunting his libertine ways. Once again, he highlights the need for grace, mercy, and the law of liberty by which we should prefer to be judged. If you desire to be judged by the law of liberty, so speak, and so do. You cannot be merciless yet expect mercy. You cannot be without grace, yet expect a double measure of it.

When we live our lives as unto the Lord, unconcerned with how the world might view us or judge us, our faith is healthy, and our focus is on Him and Him alone. By walking in His will, in obedience and faithfulness, we will know to judge a situation rightly, show grace where grace is warranted, and mercy where mercy is required.

We’re so quick to look for anything we can nitpick to death in our fellow brethren that some of us have taken to preaching with our hands in our pockets for fear of an errant finger twitch that will forever label us Illuminati or Masons. I have to excuse myself to go pick my nose because someone might deem my index up my nostril up to the first knuckle as being a message to the others, whoever those others happen to be.

If we don’t learn to differentiate between quirks, cadences, ticks, unintentional finger wags, and outright sin, we’re going to be churches of one, and even then, we won’t be able to stand ourselves half the time.

Only the good Lord knows how many people I’ve had to counsel and reassure because while they surrendered their lives to Jesus, repented, were baptized, and transformed, someone came along insisting that it was all for naught if they didn’t refer to Jesus by His Hebrew name. These individuals were so adamant that those professing Christ were not saved for no other reason than they referred to Him as Christ that it sowed seeds of doubt to the point that they had to reach out and ask if they were hopelessly lost and just didn’t know it.

Do what you will; it’s your life, after all, just as long as you understand that judgment will be without mercy to the one who has shown no mercy. The sanctimonious self-righteousness with which some pass sentences in today’s church and declare Ichabod at the slightest disagreement will have consequences. It’s not because I want there to be consequences, but because the Bible says there will be.

If some people treated themselves as they treat their brothers in Christ, never mind their neighbors, they’d be a mass of welts and bruises atop healing scars.

When we hold to tenuous positions with stronger grips than we do to Christ, there’s a problem that needs to be addressed and remedied. When something as puerile as what language you use to address the God you cry out to with tears of repentance and brokenness is enough for lifelong disfellowship, your priorities are misaligned, and that’s putting it mildly.

Do you honestly think that the God who so loved the world that He sent His Son to die is sitting up in heaven listening to someone cry out, then shrug His shoulders in indifference because someone didn’t say Yeshua? Do you not think He knows the cry of someone’s heart, even if it’s just a groan or a cry of despair?

How have we come to this? Personally, I believe it has a lot to do with everyone trying to stand out, be different, be unique, and come up with something that will set them apart. Are you trying to point the way to Jesus or yourself? Are you trying to build up His kingdom or your own? Are you of Paul, are you of Apollos, or are you of Christ? It’s not about getting a slice of the pie; it’s about serving Jesus, and some have sadly forgotten that.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

Love

 As is the case with most words that matter, we’ve redefined love to mean something it was never meant to. By we, I mean this present generation who is dead set on ignoring the Bible, doing whatever it wants, but still expecting to be welcomed into the Kingdom of Heaven posthaste and without delay. Who are you to say I can’t get in just the way I am? Nobody, but the One who said it is somebody, and He’s the somebody that gets to make the determination. I’m just the messenger. Shoot me if you must, but it won’t change the message.

We can play all the games we want with dialect and translations from Hebrew and Greek; we can insist that something isn’t fair because it does not allow for a duplicitous, uncommitted life, but all our endless machinations are just that. In the end, in order to receive what God promised, you must do as God commands.

Love does not mean tolerance of sin. Love does not mean tolerance of evil. Love does not mean that you see someone running toward a wood chipper and you say nothing for fear of offending them. The wood chipper will hurt worse than the words you cry out in warning ever will, and if the individual in question is not so consumed in their depravity that they will ignore the warning, they may even thank you at some point. Even if they don’t, you’ve shown love in that you did your best to warn them of the danger.

James 2:8-9, “If you really fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself,’ you do well; but if you show partiality, you commit sin, and are convicted by the law as a transgressor.”

What does it mean to love your neighbor as yourself? It’s a hard nut to crack because nowadays, self-loathing is the standard rather than the exception, and everywhere you turn, you are told you should hate yourself. The only things we’re encouraged to embrace about ourselves are the things that are going to kill us quicker, but when it comes to looking in the mirror and loving what God created as it is, that ship sailed some two decades ago.

If you declare that God got it wrong and He put you in the wrong skin, you’re brave and beautiful even though your face could pass for a Halloween costume, but if you dare say that you are happy and comfortable in the traditional role of husband, wife, and family, you’re just an oppressor and an ally of the patriarchy. The dumber people get, the more you start hoping for a mushroom cloud, but it may just be me.

Culture has become so twisted that the number of those who want to feel a physical manifestation of their emotional pain is multiplying exponentially, and they end up either hurting themselves, hurting others, or turning to anything that could numb them and make them feel nothing at all.

When all of this is taking place around us, yet the church is silent in declaring that Jesus is the remedy for all that ails this broken generation, we are falling short and not doing our duty. If you don’t tell someone that Jesus can take the hurt away, if you don’t tell someone that Jesus can put them back together and make them whole, you are not loving your neighbor as yourself. You are keeping the gift to yourself and not shouting it from the rooftops.

That’s the disturbing thing as far as I’m concerned. Most preachers today are still preaching a 90’s gospel to a 2020s generation. They’re still beating the prosperity horse, long dead and maggot-riddled, not realizing that most in this generation just want the pain to go away. They just want the hurt to stop, and money isn’t going to do it. That’s the problem with tweaking the gospel to fit a specific time rather than presenting it as timeless. If only they’d preach Christ and Him crucified. If only they’d preach forgiveness of sins and being reconciled to the Father rather than things you can get just as readily if you applied yourself, perhaps the average age of churchgoers wouldn’t be 87.

I’ve run into some of these kids and had interactions with them, and they’re not daydreaming about McMansions or driving Bentleys. They just want to wake up without hating the fact that they did. They just want to go through a day without thinking about hurting themselves, yet here we still are, trying to call money down from heaven and insisting that God wants you to have mega bucks.

The world around us has become what it is because we stopped preaching a risen Christ. It will continue to spiral and descend into ever-growing darkness as long as we continue omitting the name of Jesus from our vocabulary. The world is hoping it stays this way. The devil is hoping we never return to the preaching of the gospel because between uppers, downers, mood stabilizers, anti-anxiety medication, anti-depressants, and therapy sessions where the therapist subtly suggests that maybe the problem is your sexuality and you should explore more, his minions are doing gangbusters business and hell has enlarged herself and opened her mouth without measure.

Love is active. If you love your neighbor as yourself, you will take steps to ensure that they know of the hope that resides in you, that they know there is peace and joy to be had, and that they can lay their burden down at the foot of the cross and be made whole. The greatest demonstration of love is not buying someone a meal, or a car, or a house; it’s telling them about Jesus. Do you love your neighbor as yourself? The answer might be harder to come by than first thought.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

Fruit II

 Poverty in the eyes of the world and poverty in the sight of God are two wholly different things. How the world perceives poverty, and how it defines someone as being poor is markedly different than how God defines them. Although in the eyes of the world, someone might be perceived as having reached the heights of success, in reality, they are no more than an empty husk trying to fill the void with excess and self-destructive habits. You don’t gnaw on the wrong end of a double-barreled shotgun out of too much happiness.

The world can look at someone who is well-to-do and conclude that they are rich, while God can look at the same individual and conclude that they are poor, miserable, and wretched. Tragically, it’s not just the world that improperly defines rich and poor, but more often than not, the church does as well.

Among the seven churches of Revelation, there was one who said she was rich and had become wealthy and in need of nothing when what God saw was something miserable, poor, blind, and naked that He was getting ready to spew out of His mouth. Whether the church of Laodicea was just putting on a front or really believed it was rich and wealthy is something the text does not flesh out, but one thing is certain: God saw them as wretched.

The church had adopted the world’s definition of what it is to be rich, and they reveled in their earthly accomplishments. They were rich in material goods and had grown wealthy, yet here God was looking down and passing sentence on them for having abandoned the way of righteousness. If you have to choose between spiritual riches or material ones, the former is preferable to the latter every time.

How you see yourself, assess yourself, and define success is irrelevant. The only thing that matters is how God defines these things. The Laodiceans had stopped looking to God for approval and decided that as long as they approved of each other, it was good enough.

It’s similar to these prophetic roundtables where six or seven guys pat themselves on the back and confirm prophetic mantles for each other. There’s a difference between peer-reviewed callings and God-sanctioned ones.

But brother so and so said I had a prophetic mantle, and I was supposed to be a prophet to the nations, and I prophesied the same over him. But did you ever inquire of the Lord if it was He who spoke these things? Did you ever once consider testing the spirits to see if they were of God, or was the message just too good? I mean, prophet to the nations!

The devil knows your aspirations and the vain desires of your heart. Your singular desire, first and foremost, must be to serve and faithfully obey. He will call you when He needs you, and in such a way that you’ll know it’s him.

If you desire to be a prophet to the nations rather than a servant of God, then the enemy will bring people in your path who will talk you into wasting years of your life chasing something God never intended you to have rather than building up your most holy faith and learning to walk in obedience.

Between people who say they’ve always wanted to prophesy and those who say it was something they never aspired to, I have more respect for those who never actively sought whatever calling they were called to. Yes, the word says we are to desire spiritual gifts, and especially that we might prophesy, but that’s after we’ve come to a place of maturity in our spiritual walk where greater responsibilities can be placed upon our shoulders. A baby does not come out of the womb desiring to run a marathon. When a baby is born, the only thing it’s concerned with is that it gets fed, and if you miss their feeding window, they’ll let you know about it.

If you desire to prophesy over having a relationship with Jesus, you’re in the wrong, and there are no two ways about it. We love to take the verses we like out of context and not consider the message in its entirety. It’s like the guy who shows up for a job interview, and while the interviewer was quick to point out that after a decade of seniority and if they prove their worth to the company, they can make upwards of six figures, all they hear is that they’ll be making six figures. They leave the interview, and for the next month, they’re bragging to anyone who will listen that they’re going to be making six figures a year until they get their first paycheck, and after all the withholding, they barely have enough for a box of Ramen and a bag of Funyuns. That’s when the anger and frustration kick in, wholly targeted toward their employer rather than themselves for not listening to what they were told.

Don’t go bragging to people about how you’re going to be the prophetic voice of your generation and the messenger that will warn the world. It’s not as exciting a calling as it sounds, anyway. Desire a relationship first. Desire obedience first. Desire the presence of God in your life first before you start daydreaming about being a prophet to the nations and ruling with a rod of iron.

Is having the title more important than doing the work? Is being seen by others as a prophet, an apostle, evangelist, pastor, or teacher more important to you than walking in obedience? I’m not trying to pick on anybody. I’m just pointing out the obvious. There are people who live for titles, and then there are people who live to obey. Be one who lives to obey, and you will know what it is to walk in His authority rather than the authority of a particular calling. Yes, there’s a difference.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

Fruit

Human nature has remained stubbornly consistent since the first man and woman woke up in the garden without belly buttons. Given a particular time in history, there might have been more or less fear of the Lord, more or less obedience and faithfulness, but the root of man’s nature remains unchanged. If people of a certain tax bracket act a certain way today, be sure they acted in like manner two thousand years ago.

If those trying to ingratiate themselves to those of a particular tax bracket act in some kind of way today, be certain they acted in like manner two thousand years ago. The old saying that the more things change the more they stay the same has remained true throughout the centuries, and that’s because so has man. We like to tell ourselves that we’ve evolved, that we’ve become enlightened, that we are smarter and more introspective than past generations, but it’s a lie. We lie to ourselves a lot. Perhaps we have to in order to keep from spiraling into depression because it’s not hard to see that the further we get from the simple joys of life and biblical living, trying to replace them with something else, the less happy and fulfilled we are.

Funny how a book maligned by intellectuals for having been written by people beneath them has all the answers to life’s most important questions, while their theories of supplanted emotionality and talking yourself into believing you’re happy despite your tears only work on those delusional enough to believe that gluing on a tail makes them a lion.

I’m glad you have a career and bucco bucks in the bank, but you’re making reservations for one, and the closest thing you have to companionship is a cat that’s frightened of how violently you hug and pet her. There’s a reason it scratches at your face, and it’s not because that’s how she shows affection. It’s no one’s fault but your own that you listened to the narrative being doled out by those who had no interest in what was best for you, rather only what was best for them.

They succeeded in making motherhood a dirty word and family as something you’d never want in a million years, and by the time you woke up and realized what they’d done, it was already too late. Assistant to the executive assistant and a parking spot three rows back is all well and good, but it’s not nearly enough to adequately compensate someone who gave up having a family, children, someone to hold and count on as they journeyed toward the twilight of their existence. But her Instagram is full of duck pictures and posing with a beverage. And that’s all she’ll ever have, and even that will be gone when the account gets deactivated for nonuse.

The same goes for the men who chose to forego family for that sweet, sweet Dodge Viper. How’s that mean machine running, old man? Rusted and put out to pasture decades ago, I would wager.

James isn’t being snarky; he doesn’t hate rich people and wants you to know it. He’s reminding us that people were people even back then, and they acted in like manner even though the times differ.

James 2:5-7, “Listen, my beloved brethren: Has God not chosen the poor of this world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which He promised to those who love Him? But you have dishonored the poor man. Do not the rich oppress you and drag you into courts? Do they not blaspheme that noble name by which you are called?”

So, has God chosen the poor by virtue of their poverty? Is that what it takes to be chosen by God and be made rich in faith and heirs to the kingdom? No. That is not what James is saying, and for those who insist that you have to live in a dirt hut and eat crickets in order to be an heir of God’s kingdom, it’s funny how that doctrine is viable only until they’re no longer living in the dirt hut.

Once they move on up to the East side and that deluxe apartment in the sky, the tune changes, as does the doctrine.

The truth of it is that the poor of this world have no fallbacks, no safety nets, nothing they can count on, and no one to run to in their need except for God. Their dependence upon Him, having nothing else to cling to, makes the poor of this world rich in faith, which in turn makes them heirs to the kingdom. Poverty or being poor is not a prerequisite to being rich in faith. That is not what James is saying, but he is making the logical deduction that when God is all you’ve got, and you have to trust Him for everything, your faith will naturally grow and mature.

It’s not that the poor get special treatment; it’s that they tend to be the first to run to God and cling to Him for dear life.

Neither poverty nor wealth will make you rich in faith. Only believing God for greater and greater things will mature your faith in such a manner. You can be dirt poor, but if you never believe God for anything, you’ll be dirt poor both in material things and in faith.

James understood that the inclination of the flesh was to chase after material wealth rather than spiritual. He understood that given half a chance, the flesh would blind the individual to their spiritual needs until life had passed them by, and it was too late to do anything about it.

If you have breath, you have the opportunity to analyze what you’ve been pursuing, and if it’s not God and the fullness thereof, remedy your focus.

The rich are not evil by nature of their wealth. Given half a chance, the poor would be as cold and callous as some who are rich and above the laws most of us are subject to. What matters is if you are His and He is yours, and that’s the message James is trying to make clear.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

The Faith

 The faith of our Lord Jesus Christ is not currency, it is not leverage, it is not a means by which men should amass fortunes or a reason for some to feel superior over others. Likewise, it is not to be a source of division or the vehicle by which some in the church lord over those they deem beneath them. Some days, you wake up, make a pot of coffee, sit down to read your Bible, and instantly realize all the things the church of today is doing in direct opposition to the counsel of God and His holy word.

Everything James tells us not to do is common practice in most churches. We honor and venerate individuals based on their status, we show preferential treatment to some over others, and those tasked with shepherding the flock feel entitled to all its wool and some besides. When it comes to defending the sheep from the wolves, however, they’re always reticent, not wanting to dirty their garments or be on the outs with the in crowd. They do not possess the love of Jesus for the sheep in that they would stand between them and the wolves but rather see the sheep as a medium of exchange. Using someone isn’t loving them. It’s using them.

Our reputation as sleazy car salesmen is well deserved because we’ve strayed from the objective and disregarded what the Word says in lieu of filthy lucre. When you justify and validate someone’s admitted habitual sin because they lead worship, sing well, are big donors, or know how to work the fancy audio equipment rather than insist upon repentance, you’re more concerned about what you can get out of the person than about their eternal soul.

I’ve seen enough people used and discarded in various ministries to have an instant and visceral reaction to the practice. When they could no longer serve the purpose they were expected to serve or contribute what they had contributed before, they were cut off and ignored as though they were never there. Souls are paramount. Eternity matters more than someone being offended or feeling judged.

Treat everyone equally. Be willing to give of your time to a poor man in filthy clothes just as readily as you would to one in fine apparel with gold rings. Don’t play favorites.

That said, some people readily disregard that you have a family and other responsibilities and will monopolize your time to the point that you must remove yourself, but that’s a different issue altogether. It’s not so much about how much time you allot someone; it’s about how you treat them in the time you allot them.

Some people choose to forget the state they were in before Jesus found them. I know you think you found Him and not the other way around, but trust me when I tell you, Jesus wasn’t hanging around the places you were hanging out in just waiting to be found. He came looking for you, found you where you were, and picked you up from the dirt.

 I think for some, being around those who are still lost and hurting, dirty and broken, is too much of a reminder, so they’d rather avoid them altogether. There is no sin in acknowledging what you once were. On the contrary, it’s a testimony of what God can do and how He can transform a life ready for change.

James is reminding us that the faith of our Lord Jesus, the Lord of glory, is not ours to do with as we will and dole out as we see fit. You are not a proprietor of the faith; you are a beneficiary of it just like everyone else, no matter what your office or calling might be.

You are a servant subordinate to the Master, and it is His business you must be about and not your own. As such, you must conduct yourself and interact with others as He deems appropriate, not as your flesh thinks you ought. I’ve been around long enough to see all types of people demand respect because of a title they claim or an office they hold. Respect is something one earns, not something one demands. You get entrusted with the greater things once you prove faithful in the little ones.

God promotes from within but in His time and at His pace. You may think you’re ready for greater things today, but He knows that you will be ready for greater things tomorrow, and all you can do is continue to walk humbly with your Lord and do that to which you were already called.

The only sure way to a greater tomorrow is to be faithful in your calling today. Even if you are content where God has you, when the moment comes that He calls you to something greater, you will have no choice but to obey because obedience is what God responds to and rewards.

The faith of our Lord Jesus Christ must not be altered by our prejudices, our preconceived notions, or our hasty conclusions about someone based on their appearance or how they present themselves. We cannot give someone preferential treatment based on perceived net worth, what we can gain from ingratiating ourselves, or any other criteria.

Because of how our society has come to be, being unaffected by someone’s possessions, position, or influence might seem like a slight, but that cannot be helped. If they are a true servant of Christ, it will not bother them that they are being treated equally to their fellow brethren. If they are not, they’ll let you know it, usually prefaced by ‘Do you know who I am?’

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

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.