Job CCX

Speaking of my wife’s job, nearly half of her clients are individuals who, having tried to fix it themselves, realized they were in over their heads, and in trying to make it better, they just ended up making it worse. I mean, how difficult can it really be? A wall here, a buttress there, a vaulted ceiling and some arched doorways, and you’re in business.

After months, if not years, of wasted effort, money, and time, they had to swallow their pride and admit they couldn’t do it on their own; they had neither the skill nor the ability to carry out the project and make come to fruition what they imagined in their minds, and finally sought the help of a professional.

The hard truth they faced was that not only would they have to redesign their adobe, but they also had to tear down the things they had tried to do themselves because they were incongruent with the project as a whole.

Spiritually speaking, many today follow the same path, fall in the same snare, and not only do they have to be built up from the ground up, but they also have to undo and unlearn all the things they tried on their own before they came to the realization they couldn’t do it on their own.

Raise your hand, say this prayer, send a check, and you’re good to go! But what about being discipled? What about having some notion of the direction I’m supposed to be headed in? Do you perchance have a blueprint or a general outline of what the end result should look like? Oh, I’m sure you can figure it out. I’ve got to go make fifty videos about how a thousand people got saved the other night, so I’m a little tight on time, but make sure to like, comment, and subscribe to the videos I’ll be putting out. Engagement is essential, and the algorithm rewards participation.

But what about growing, maturing, and understanding the deeper things of Scripture? What about going beyond the milk of the Word to something denser? Oh, you know, just feel your way through it. It’s like telling someone to go buy lumber, nails, and a hammer, then once they’ve done that, expecting them to build a craftsman home from the ground up with no instruction, direction, or idea of what it should look like. Then we’re shocked that so many are spiritually stunted, have no relationship with the God they claim to serve, or have never approached Him after that one night when they said the sinner’s prayer in a hushed tone.

To be fair, there’s also the other side of the coin, wherein people who’ve never held a hammer or used a saw are keen on telling you how to build your own house. They got saved on a Tuesday, and by Friday, they’re reimagining Scripture, questioning the purpose of Christ’s being born, insisting that He is not sufficient, and there’s a plethora of other things you need to do to be saved, then declare themselves prophets to the nations which you must obey as though it were God Himself standing before you asking you to give generously.

It’s like taking marriage advice from newlyweds on their honeymoon. What do you know about it, exactly? I’m sure for the week you’re on a beach, waking up every morning with the sun warming your face with no worries and no concerns, it’s as easy as a Sunday morning, but let’s talk after a decade or two, a couple of health scares, a miscarriage, conversations about budgeting, or having to care for your wife or husband for an extended period of time while they’re bedridden.

Perhaps then, it won’t seem so easy, but it doesn’t mean it’s not worth it. Nothing worth having in life comes easy. That’s just a sales pitch that unscrupulous people resort to when trying to get you to buy their course. A seven-figure passive income without a dollar out of pocket? Sign me up. The course costs five grand? What about the no out-of-pocket money thing? Oh, you mean after I give you the five grand? Got it, thanks.

A warrior does not become seasoned in a vacuum. A warrior becomes seasoned through battle, building upon the experiences of having stood toe to toe with the enemy and not flinching away. Seasoning, maturing, or growing in God, for that matter, takes time, even if it’s not what some might want to hear. It’s not about a diploma or a certificate of completion of some online seminary; it’s about lived experience and walking with God purposefully and consistently.

Your faith in God grows and expands as you journey through life following after Him. Had Job not had his lived experience regarding the faithfulness of God as a foundation, it would have been a short book indeed. Two chapters in, and Job would have been vanquished, his doubt overwhelming any desire to endure, but this was a seasoned warrior, one who had seen the hand of God at work time and time again, and who understood finishing a race is as important as starting it, if not more so.

The glory, the reward, the culmination of one’s labors in life are at the finish line. It’s the desire to hear well done, good and faithful servant that makes the trials, hardships, and valleys of life tolerable, while having the added benefit of refining us, maturing us, and teaching us reliance on the God we serve. I know my Redeemer lives. Five words that resonate with every believer. Five words the contemplation of which could fill entire libraries. Five words that give us hope in the midst of despair, that provide us with peace in the midst of chaos, and that give us joy in the midst of heartbreak.

You can know all there is to know about moon cycles, constellations, ancient civilizations, and the letter of the law, but if you do not know that your Redeemer lives, it’s all for naught. Job knew! Although his flesh was withering, his servants abandoned him, his friends judged him harshly without evidence or merit, Job knew his Redeemer lived, and that gave him the strength to press on.  

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

Job CCIX

 Not one of the major themes that Job hits upon in the last eight verses of this chapter could have been intuited by human reason or logic. Whether speaking of a future time when He shall stand at last on the earth, or the resurrection of the dead, wherein Job declares that in his flesh he would see God, or that in the end there is a judgment, all of these were divinely inspired utterances meant to resonate through time, left for the generations that would follow as a testament, and a testimony.

What may seem obvious to us today, given that we have the canon of Scripture, and that the birth, life, death, burial, and resurrection of the Christ have already taken place, wasn’t so obvious to the people of Job’s time. It was pure revelation, and although God did not intervene in Satan’s sifting of Job, these divine insights helped to sustain him through the trial he was enduring.

If you’ve walked with God for any length of time, you can look back and identify the moments when, at your lowest, He spoke encouragement to you, when, at your most desperate, you’ve felt the touch of His hand. It wasn’t your high IQ mind coming up with the perfect balm for your pain; it wasn’t your resilience or ability to pull yourself up by the bootstraps that gave you that extra burst of peace, joy, or comfort; it was God, His presence, and His love that saw you needed it.

We tend to take credit for what God does in our lives. I’ve heard some variation of I worked on myself, or I healed myself, more times than I could count, and what so few realize is that none of us possess the tools to fix ourselves. None of us possesses the knowledge or ability to heal ourselves.

It’s one thing to try to fix something that broke if you knew what it was supposed to look like when it was whole. The problem is that absent God, man was never whole. Man was never fixed. Man was never right. The best any man can do without the aid, presence, and restoration of Christ’s blood washing them and making them clean is a less broken version of themselves, but never really whole. A less sickly version of themselves, but never truly healed.

There are programs, centers, and clinics aplenty trying to circumvent the need for Jesus. Even when we acknowledge our frailty, we refuse to recognize it fully. We still think we can patch a bullet hole with a Band-Aid and be right as rain. I don’t need to surrender my life to Christ, I don’t need to repent and humble myself; all I need is thirty days in rehab, says the man whom the staff knows on a first-name basis because of all the times he’s been a guest.

If you break your finger, taking aspirin will not heal it; it will just numb the pain, and even that is only temporary.

God doesn’t deal in pain management; He deals in healing. He restores, transforms, and makes new, not partially, but fully. He cauterizes the open wounds of betrayal, disappointment, self-loathing, doubt, fear, inadequacy, trauma, and hurt with His love, and once the wounds are closed, He doesn’t just paint over the scars but makes the entire heart new.

A new heart does not possess the old desires. A new heart does not possess the old yearnings. A new heart receives a new purpose, and the things that once brought it joy and pleasure are as dross and rubbish.

My wife is an interior designer by trade. She is phenomenal at her job. Sometimes, people mistake her for a decorator. They just want some new curtains, or some sconces, perhaps a fresh coat of paint, or some crown molding, just to spruce up the place, but not really change anything beyond the superficial. She then has to inform the individuals that it’s not what she does.

Her job is to take an existing structure and remodel it completely. Tear down walls, move pipes, gut the place down to the timbers, and rebuild it differently, all of which require time and labor, because while you can hang some new curtains over lunch, it takes weeks if not months to demo an entire home, frame new walls, install new floors, and bring in new appliances.

If you’re looking for a decorator, God’s not what you’re looking for. There are life coaches, therapists, and specialists aplenty for those things. If you’re looking to make the existing you less hideous to the eye while remaining the same in your heart, there are beauticians, nail salons, fashion gurus, and a glut of makeup companies eager to take your hard-earned money with little to show for it at the end of the day.

Superficial change does not require divine intervention. Transformation, however, requires not only God’s active presence but your voluntary consent to be transformed and made new. God will do the work, but you must allow Him to do it.

In conversation with my wife, she’s made it crystal clear that the most tedious clients are the ones who constantly second-guess everything and question every decision. Why can’t we just do away with this wall entirely? Because it’s a load-bearing wall, and if we remove it, you’ll be wearing your roof for a hat. Why can’t we just extend this part of the house by a couple of feet? Because it would end up on our neighbor’s land, and he will likely sue you into homelessness.

If you’ve submitted yourself to God, trust that God knows what He is doing. Yes, everything He removes, prunes, or otherwise demands that you must repent of is necessary. You need a new roof because the old one is leaking. You need new siding because your home has termites. You need a new heart because your old one is riddled with sin, and it cannot carry the presence of God in its current state.

God is not a decorator. He is a designer, demo crew, and expert builder all in one. He knows what He is doing, and if you neither despise the chastening of the Lord nor detest His correction, but submit to His will, you will be in awe of the finished product.            

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

Job CCVIII

 If someone’s friendship, respect, or loyalty is contingent on what you can do for them, just know that, much as they might insist that they’ll be with you through thick and thin, it’s situational, and once you can no longer provide the thing they’re after, they will be the first to disavow you.

We see this happening in churches nowadays, where the prominent members get preferential treatment, are pandered to, are placed in the front row and fawned over, but the moment they’re no longer able to write the checks, or their name wanes in popularity, and it’s no longer profitable for the preacher to associate himself with them, they’re discarded. Such individuals are within their rights to feel like they were used, whether for their money or their clout, because that’s precisely what happened.

Not only do they begin to grow bitter and disillusioned, but they also readily come to the conclusion that everyone’s the same, the whole church family thing is a farce, and they become resentful toward God Himself.

Whether prince or pauper, we are all the sheep of God’s pasture. When those in authority place value on something someone can offer rather than the individual himself, it always ends in disaster because it’s not the way the Word of God tells us the household of faith should operate. As one body, those who can help those who need it, but that does not make them superior to those in need.

While we busy ourselves mimicking the church of Corinth, we should acknowledge that they weren’t held up as an example to be followed, but a cautionary tale to be avoided. They did the same thing two thousand years ago: the rich sitting and congregating with the rich, the poor set apart and looked down upon, and when Paul wrote his letters to them, he gave them no quarter, nor did he excuse their behavior.

As Job’s trial progressed, so did his isolation and loneliness. We are not given to know when his own servant would no longer answer his call, but it likely occurred later than when his hardship commenced. The servant had seen Job’s trials intensify day after day and at some point had concluded that he wasn’t worth the bother. He wasn’t long for this world, so what did it matter if he pretended not to hear his master’s call? Herein lies the difference between a principled, honorable individual and an unethical one.

There is a broader theme here, one we can learn from, because oftentimes the servant takes it upon himself to covet the position of his master, and in so doing uses every opportunity to undermine him. When you see individuals who are meant to be servants disagreeing with the written word of the Master, you know that they are not content being a servant, but desire to usurp the authority of the one whom they claim to serve. They pretend not to hear His voice when He warns them to repent; they ignore His word when it gives explicit instructions about what the office demands, all the while hoping that men will look to them as the authority rather than to God.

I don’t care how well-known, how prominent, or how many titles the individual has assigned himself; if he attempts to downplay, disregard, or usurp the authority of scripture and make it his own, he is to be marked and avoided. He is no longer serving the Master faithfully but attempting to become a master in his own right. Unfortunately for them, there can be only one Master, and anyone other than Christ is a cheap imitation, floundering about, trying to magnify their own relevance at the expense of Jesus.

The one silver lining in this otherwise melancholic situation is that once your fair-weather faux-friends have gone, you realize God remains, and He is sufficient. The way forward for Job was now clear. He saw both the vanity of all things, the faithlessness of friends, family, and servants, and the all-importance of knowing God all at once.

God replaces every bullet point on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Instead of needing self-actualization, God. Instead of needing safety, esteem, or security, God. Instead of needing love from others or a sense of belonging, you have the love of God and know that you belong to Him.

God isn’t just one aspect in the believer’s life; He is everything in the life of the believer. He isn’t just an outer shell covering up a patchwork of hubris, rebellion, disobedience, doubt, and indecision, so those we come in contact with don’t shrink back in horror. When we are born again, we are transformed, made new, emptied of what we once were that we may be filled with Him, His presence, His Spirit, and His purpose for our lives.

Whether it’s Job’s declaration that he knew his Redeemer lives, and one day he would see Him for himself, or Paul’s testimony of having counted all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of the Lord Jesus, both men had come to the same conclusion: God above all! God above my will, my desires, my wants, my needs, and my very life.

All of Him for half of you doesn’t work. Picking up your cross and following after Him on weekends, then doing whatever you want the rest of the week, doesn’t work either. Declaring yourself to be an ambassador of Christ when it costs you nothing, then shrinking away and denying Him like you were Peter by a bonfire at the slightest pushback, means you were never truly His to begin with, because true worship, obedience, and servitude aren’t situational.

Job’s faith in God gave him the eyes to see beyond his present situation. It gave him eyes to see the glory that would come, that once his skin was destroyed, he would see God in His glory and majesty. Faith allows us to see beyond our present struggles and gives us spiritual eyes to see the future glory. Faith doesn’t give us hope for a better tomorrow, but assurance of an eternity in His presence.         

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

Job CCVII

 A stranger is a stranger. They don’t know you, you don’t know them, and for the most part, their opinion holds little weight. Your spouse and a stranger can say the same thing, in the same tone, with the same inflection, and the one spoken by your spouse will smart far worse than the words of the stranger.

It’s not the stranger that abandons you, it’s those closest to you. It’s also when you feel the pain of it more thoroughly, because those now pretending not to know you were the selfsame people who sat at your table, ate your food, and enjoyed your company. Job was discovering how fickle his inner circle was, how situational their feigned loyalty and friendship, because those who had once crowded around him, vying for his attention, had now become completely estranged from him.

It was not Job’s choice; it was their choice, and now Job lamented the reality of having had fair-weather friends all along and not realizing it. It’s inevitable that people grow apart as they journey through life. People you once called friends in your teens likely aren’t the same people in your fifties. People move, they get married, they have children, and the friendships you thought would have permanence and be part of your life until its twilight wane, and falter.

What Job was experiencing wasn’t growing apart over time, but abandonment the moment he was no longer the prosperous, powerful man he had been up until his moment of testing came. There isn’t much you can do about choosing your family, but you do have agency when it comes to choosing your friends. Choose wisely; otherwise, when you need them most, they’ll disappear into the ether as though they were never there.

Being abandoned during seasons of trial is not something we fear or concern ourselves with when it comes to God, because He has promised that He will neither leave us nor forsake us. There is steadfastness and permanence in the promises of God, and when He says He changes not, He means it. For those who’ve never been abandoned or forsaken by friends or family, it may sound nice and comforting, but it will not resonate on the level that it will with those who’ve gone through such an experience.

The reason abandonment by those closest to us in our time of need feels so raw and painful is also due to the implied betrayal. In many cases, they don’t just grow indifferent but outright hostile, likely because deep down they know they’re in the wrong, don’t want to admit it, and choose to lash out.  

Only those who’ve truly been hungry understand the value of a warm meal and appreciate it far beyond someone who’s never been forced to miss one, not because they chose to, but because there was nothing to eat, ever will. The same goes for being cold or thirsty, because once you’ve experienced privation of any sort, you become more grateful, thankful, and appreciative when what you were deprived of becomes readily accessible.

My daughters do not appreciate freedom to the same extent I do because all they’ve ever known is freedom. I grew up in a communist country, saw the toll it took on my parents, and experienced the heavy-handed practices of authoritarianism to the point that being left alone by the powers that be and not dictated to regarding the minutest of details regarding my personal life is considered a gift and a grace.

It’s because they’ve never experienced it that a particular segment of the population is endlessly droning on about totalitarian governments and that we’re living in one. Those who come from former communist block countries, who grew up in true totalitarianism, can’t help but roll their eyes and think to themselves, just you wait. If you think this is totalitarianism, when it finally does arrive on our doorstep, you will be stunned into paralysis.

It doesn’t matter who you are; we all filter present experiences through the prism of past experiences. If you’ve ever been bedridden for a prolonged period of time, then when someone you know, whether friend or family, goes through a similar trial, your first impulse is to sympathize and empathize with them rather than try to crack a joke about how it must be fun to just lie around all day.

If they’ve never gone through it, all they see is someone propped up on some pillows, whittling the day away. They don’t see the muscle cramps, the bed sores, and the atrophied muscles, and they do not understand that the comfy bed eventually starts feeling like a prison, one which the individual in question would do anything to escape.

Job had already stated that he would have been a better friend to the three men who were berating him had they been in his situation. He had come to realize that it extended beyond the three to everyone he knew and to everyone he thought he could rely on if ever the need arose. That is a hard pill to swallow for any man, and had Job not had the relationship with God that he did, it could have very well been the nail in his coffin of desperation.

It is a cruelty that cannot be understated, to be abandoned by family, friends, brothers, and acquaintances when you need them the most. Never be stingy with your kindness. Never be stingy with an encouraging word or with providing a shoulder for someone to cry on. It’s those small, random acts of kindness that mean more to those on the receiving end than you will ever know.

All it would have taken for Job to see his world a bit brighter and have some hope infused into his countenance would have been for one of his friends to say, I believe you, I’ll pray with you, for you, intercede on your behalf, and cry out to God because there must be something more to the story than what we currently perceive. Not a high bar, or unachievable ideal by any means, but even so, everyone in Job’s life fell short.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

Job CCVI

Just as there is a difference between knowing and presuming, there is a difference between acknowledging that while God can do all things, and nothing is impossible for Him, it is within His purview, in light of His omniscience and ultimate purpose for your life, whether or not He will. Yes, God can. Will He? That is an altogether different question, the answer to which is dependent on whether what you are asking for is in harmony with Scripture and if receiving it will lead to greater sanctification for your spiritual man.

If we are asking for things that will make the flesh more comfortable while being detrimental to our spiritual man, because He loves us, and His purpose for us extends beyond this present life, God will say no. We may not see it as a kindness, a blessing, or a grace in the moment, but given enough time, in hindsight, we will come to understand that God said no for our own good.

If you have children, odds are you’ve had to say no to them at some point. It likely wasn’t because you didn’t love them, or were indifferent to them, but you understood that eating a three-pound block of chocolate fudge in one sitting likely wouldn’t have a positive outcome. Yes, they really wanted it, pleaded for it, insisted that they wouldn’t get a tummy ache, or that the sugar rush wouldn’t keep them up half the night, bouncing off the walls and asking what board game we could play at a quarter past midnight, but as a parent, you knew better.

You knew that even though they meant it when they said they wouldn’t get sick, once they consumed the entire block of fudge, they would not have control over the outcome. They could not control whether they got sick or not.

God tells us in His word that sin kills. It’s an across-the-board statement that allows for no exceptions or carveouts. Yes, there are some who, having read what the Bible says, roll their eyes and insist that they will be the exception to the rule, that although sin might kill weaker men, it will not bring them low. Although they might believe wholeheartedly that they can walk the fine line between God and the world, juggle satisfying the appetites of the flesh and being pleasing in God’s sight, by the time they figure out they overestimated the magnitude of their self-restraint and ability to say no, it’s too late.

The Word instructs us to flee youthful lust, abstain from every form of evil, and resist the devil, not because God doesn’t want us to have any fun, blow off some steam, or make merry. He instructs us not to do them for our own good, knowing that their end is death and destruction, and His desire for us is to have life, and life more abundantly.

That some have convinced themselves God is miserly because He tells us to walk circumspectly, pursue righteousness, pray without ceasing, rejoice always, and hold fast to what is good, reveals their ignorance of both God’s character and the dangers of sin. It’s like one’s children thinking their mother a villain for insisting that they eat their broccoli and putting the fudge in the high cupboard. If you do not possess enough maturity to see the benefits of what God instructs in His Word, the worst thing you can do for yourself is grow bitter and resentful and conclude that you know better.  

We can tell ourselves that if a sack of money dropped out of the sky, we would use every dime to do good, show charity, and be magnanimous, and perhaps even mean it at the time. That does not ensure that we will follow through once the money falls from the sky, and rather than causing our love for Him to wane and be replaced by the love of money, God declines our request.

I know individuals personally whose entire lives would be turned to ruin if they ever had more than four figures in their bank accounts. Whether it’s an addictive personality or an inability to budget, whatever sum would show up would summarily be squandered, with a bit extra to boot, making the latter end for them worse than the beginning.

If the end result of what we ask for is not God’s glory, then although God can, for our own good, He will politely decline the request. If our first reaction to God saying no to something we’ve been asking for is, that’s not fair, it reveals the truth that we were not seeking His kingdom, but the things of this world, which, had we been given them, would serve as both shackle and quicksand for our spiritual man; Ever sinking, yet unable to escape.

If you want to have it your way, Burger King is still an option. If you want it God’s way, then by definition you must submit to His authority, His will, His sovereignty, and His plan for your life. The reason so many find spiritual progress slow and difficult is because they’re spending their days digging in their heels, resisting the urging of the Holy Spirit, and attempting to debate God on whether where He is leading them is the best possible path. You see, they’ve done their research. They read dissenting opinions on the interwebs, and they seemed more practical and in harmony with their five-year plan than just praying, fasting, reading the Word, and spending time with God. All of that seems so tedious. Why not fork over the three grand, get yourself an authentic, freshly printed prophetic degree, and proceed to be the prophet to the nations you always knew yourself capable of being?

Where He leads, I will follow is simple enough in theory, but what if He leads where the flesh doesn’t want to go? Do I have to submit to His will? Yes, yes, you do. Life is easy when it’s easy, as are obedience, faithfulness, and living out your convictions. It’s when the road gets hard and what we are tasked with requires sacrifice and self-denial on a grand scale that we must be determined to press on, continuing to follow after Him, knowing He will lead us to green pastures and still waters. Try as we might to convince ourselves otherwise, it’s not about us, but about Him, and His working through us to bring about His glory in us. 

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

Job CCV

 Looking at the entirety of the book of Job in the aggregate, one can’t help but notice that though he started out as a man of faith, a man who was blameless and upright before God, by the end of his trial, the strength and magnitude of Job’s faith in God had increased exponentially. There is always room for growth when it comes to faith. We build upon it daily, and there’s never a cap or a limit wherein we can conclude that our faith is complete.

Faith is less like a house, with four walls and a roof, and more like a tower, ever ascending toward the heavens, and the more we build upon it, the closer we are to God. The higher the tower of our faith, the clearer we are able to see Him, know Him, feel His presence, and trust in His plan.

Today, you may have barely enough faith to trust God in the small things. Tomorrow, the things you trust Him for will be greater than today, and next month greater than tomorrow, because faith is ever-expanding, stretching, ascending, as with each brick we lay, we come to understand that it’s neither futile nor misplaced.

Jeremiah 29:11, “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.”

The more we grow in faith, the clearer His thoughts and plans for us become. The more we grow in faith, the more certain we are that His plans and thoughts for us are of peace and not of evil, intended to give us a future and a hope. The more we grow in faith, the less likely we are to wonder if God truly loves us, because we see His love shine through with every breath we take, and every obstacle we overcome by His strength rather than our own.

Even so, oftentimes we see in a mirror, dimly, and don’t fully grasp the magnitude and intricacy of His plan. That’s when the trust equity that has been built up over time comes into play. If God never failed me, left me, nor forsook me thus far, if He always answered when I cried out to Him in my grief or desperation, if His presence has been consistent and uninterrupted, I trust that He will remain faithful even if the current trials of life seem greater than the previous ones.

Trust is the antidote to doubt. It is the antidote to timidity. It is the cure for hesitation when we are called to press in, press on, endure, and overcome. I trust God. I know He is not leading me down the wrong path; I know the trials He allows are not purposeless; I know that He will make a way even when there seems to be no way, because He is unchanging, and if He did these things before, He will do them again.

God doesn’t have a credibility problem. Men have a faith problem. Since the dawn of creation, God has never promised something He has not delivered. He never bragged about being able to do something, only to fall short of the mark. Even when it came to something as impossible to human reason and man’s intellect as a child being born of a virgin, because He spoke it, it came to pass. I know my God can do all things because He’s proven He can do all things.

Luke 1:37, “For with God nothing will be impossible.”

This is a straightforward enough declarative. Nothing means nothing, and the angel that came to Mary did not elaborate any further. He didn’t say, except for this one thing, whatever that might be, but declared simply that nothing is impossible with God.

God is not limited to man’s understanding of Him, nor is He constrained by what men think He can do. He is God! Sovereign, supreme over all of creation, with full authority to do as He wills as the Creator of all that is. He does not need man’s permission nor man’s consent to fulfill His purpose over His creation.

Why were the three young men resolute as they refused to bow? Because they knew nothing was impossible with God. Why did Daniel stand fearless amidst the lions? Because he knew nothing was impossible with God. Every example in God’s word of men who exceeded their limitations, who went beyond themselves, and who stood unperturbed in the midst of the tempest, was due to their unflinching conviction that nothing is impossible with the God they served.  

There is a confidence that makes itself manifest when we walk by faith and not by sight. It is a confidence that is evident in our actions, decisions, and overall outlook. Even at his lowest, Job exhibited this confidence I speak of, wherein he declared without equivocation that he knew his Redeemer lived.

He had cried out, and God had remained silent. He had lost his wealth, his children, his health, and felt the grave calling to him, yet retained the presence of mind and faith to declare, I know that my Redeemer lives, and He shall stand at last on the earth.

Do you know or do you hope? Do you know or do you presume? Every morning, I get ready to go to work, and I hope my car will start, but I don’t know that it will. Whenever it gets cold, I hope my heater can keep up, but I don’t know with certainty if it won’t finally decide to give up the ghost. It’s not a distinction without a difference; it’s the difference between being able to endure the trials of life while looking onward toward the prize and giving up the race and never receiving your crown. The race must be completed for you to receive the prize. There are no participation trophies mentioned in the Word.

Job knew. He knew that after all the pain, all the travail, all the heartache and despair, he would see God for Himself, and his eyes would behold Him and not another.  

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

Job CCIV

 The heart yearns for what it truly desires above all else. When one has a yearning, it’s not a take-it-or-leave-it proposition; it’s not something that can be substituted or replaced with something else, but an overwhelming longing the attaining of which eclipses all else. No sacrifice is too great, no toil is too excessive, because the yearning for what the heart desires is so great as to make any effort worthwhile.

One of the greatest tragedies of the modern-day church is that it has lost its yearning for God and the things thereof. We’ve gone from desiring God to desiring the things God can provide, from desiring fellowship with Him to having an experience. Whether the experience is of divine origin matters little to many. They just want something outside the norm, something that will animate them, or give them goose bumps, something that will assail the senses rather than pierce the heart so they can say they felt something.

When the heart is transformed and renewed, it yearns for God above all else. Because the desire and longing are singular, whenever someone offers a substitute for the intimacy that only a broken and contrite heart can experience with God, it is rejected outright. I want God, and you’re offering me prosperity? No, thank you, I think I’ll pass. I want God, and you’re offering me prominence? I’ll have to pass on that one as well.

The reason those appealing to the flesh are so popular is because much of their audience, although claiming to be blood bought and born again, are still in the flesh. God is not the yearning of their hearts; He is an afterthought. He is not the main meal, but a side dish. Give me the stuff first! Give me the McMansion and the cars, give me the name recognition and digital footprint, give me all these things first, then sure, I’ll take a smidgeon of God as well. Not so much as to make me change my ways, not so much as to cause me to repent and humble myself, not so much as to make me crucify my flesh, but just enough to give me fire insurance.

Coming from a man who once had everything life had to offer, whether wealth, prominence, authority, or the respect of his peers, Job’s words regarding the yearning of his heart to see God and behold him with his eyes should not only hold weight but reveal the vanity of everything the world deems as the pinnacle of success.

When men use God as the means by which they achieve the desire of their heart rather than make Him the desire of their heart, there will always be compromises, there will always be concessions; they’ll always try to strike a bargain with the world in order to achieve their goal. It’s why so many try to make excuses for the Word of God rather than preach it. It’s the reason so many inject their feelings or opinions when it comes to what God has declared, rather than unashamedly proclaiming the truth.

It’s a zero-sum game. Either your heart yearns for the presence of God, or for something else. You can’t yearn for God and something else. There is only room for one true, lasting, consistent, and permanent desire in the heart of man, and the actions, words, and lives of those claiming to desire Him above all else betray the truth they hope to keep buried.

Job had nothing to gain by pretending otherwise. He wasn’t trying to put on airs or pretend to be more spiritual than he was. He was beyond pretense, beyond caring what his friends thought of him. Even if he still cared, they’d already made up their minds.

In the depths of his despair, when everything that could be taken had been taken from him, when his strength had abandoned him and his body given to putrefaction, when breathing itself became a burden, he did not yearn for restoration of his wealth, restoration of his health, restoration of his respect or authority, but that he would know the presence of God, and behold Him.

That sentiment alone should serve as a rebuke to most spiritual leaders today if they were still capable of blushing. Alas, they’ve chosen their master; the desire and yearning of their heart is plain for all to see, and those of like mind gravitate to them as though drawn by some unseen force.

Tell us good things. Tickle our ears. Tell us that feeling in our gut that all the play-acting we’re doing, pretending to worship and adore Him, isn’t the Holy Spirit urging us to repentance, but the byproduct of an overactive mind. Tell us we’re fine just the way we are, duplicitous and lukewarm, faithless and hedonistic, and in exchange we will make you rich beyond your wildest dreams. Tell us lies, and we’ll believe them even though deep down we know they’re lies, because we love our lives too much to lose them.

We’ll take heaven as long as it requires no sacrifice. We’ll take sanctification as long as it requires no repentance, but if you want to keep your jet and your mansion, don’t you dare tell us we have to surrender the smallest of creature comforts the flesh has become so accustomed to. That is one bridge too far, and you know it!

It won’t take prison, torture, internment camps, or martyrdom to cause much of what calls itself the church in the West to abandon Christ, deny Him, and pretend they never knew Him, but simply the threat of having their toys taken away because they were always the true yearning of their hearts, and not Jesus. It’s the stuff they’ve always longed for. Jesus was just a convenient means of attaining it.

Give me Jesus, give me Jesus, you can have all this world, but give me Jesus! If only we meant the songs we sang. If only they were the genuine cry of our hearts rather than words that passed our lips. Wouldn’t that be something?

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.