The Last Days Of The Church XIX

 The only type of love the church doesn’t seem to be in short supply of is eros, and that’s not really love; it’s more akin to lust. As far as agape, philia, or storge, those are getting hard to find, and harder still to find them with any type of consistency. It’s easy enough to drone on about how we love everybody, even about how we love love, but words are meaningless when there is no action undergirding them and when, if there are any to be had, the actions themselves do not spring forth out of love.

We’ve all seen the busybodies handing out bracelets to starving homeless people, thinking themselves magnanimous, and telling anyone within earshot how good and noble they are even though the root of their largely pointless act is to highlight their own goodness. Likely, we’ve also all had similar reactions to it. You gave someone who needs a meal a piece of string, and it was for no other reason than to emphasize your own graciousness. Three bracelets and six thousand photos later, they can tell the world how good of a person they are for the next decade.

If someone is hungry, feed them. If someone is thirsty, give them a drink, even if they happen to be your enemy. Sending warm thoughts and positive vibes, as has become the nomenclature of our modern day, will not fill someone’s belly or keep them warm in the cold nights of winter.

When we first arrived in America, we didn’t have much. Truth be known, we didn’t have anything other than the green shag carpet that came with the apartment we were brought to, but even in those early days when my grandfather and I would go dumpster diving for aluminum cans so we could turn them in to buy a loaf of bread and some milk, no one left our home without being fed. Somehow, there was always enough, even though, on occasion, the soup was more water than broth, or the crepe filling as nothing more than a dollop of honey or a bit of strawberry jam from a jar that was so thoroughly scraped one wondered if there were glass shards somewhere in the mix.

You know you’re poor when other immigrant families show up at your door with blocks of government cheese. We were that kind of poor, yet every time, without fail, if someone visited, they’d sit down for a meal.

Given all the other things that will be vying for supremacy within the church during the last days, why is men being unloving one of the saddest and most tragic ones? Because of how the Word defines love and what the absence of love implies.

1 Corinthians 13:1-3, “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains but have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing.”

At the core of all we do, there must be love. The motivation, the driving force, the impetus, and the purpose must be tethered in love. Otherwise, it is all for naught. You can speak with tongues of men and angels, prophesy, have faith, and bestow all your goods to feed the poor, but if love is not the spring from where it flows, it is pointless and profits nothing.

Because the men of the last days will be unloving, using, abusing, and exploiting their fellow man will be par for the course, something so often practiced as to become normal and expected.

Titus 1:10-11, “For there are many unruly and vain talkers and deceivers, especially they of the circumcision: whose mouths must be stopped, who subvert whole houses, teaching things which they ought not, for filthy lucre’s sake.”

The intent of the heart matters. Some men teach what they ought not for filthy lucre’s sake, thinking nothing of the souls they hurt, damage, or lead to perdition. All that matters is the bottom line, and they’re more than willing to use the notion of love as a foil in order to achieve their ends but never have a genuine and authentic love.

It’s not as though the early church didn’t have to deal with those who saw the household of faith as an opportunity for profit or the unloving in their midst, but what were once exceptions have now become commonplace and emblematic of the times we are living in. What Paul says regarding the unruly, vain talkers and deceivers isn’t that they should be ignored, placated, or otherwise allowed to continue in their deception but that they must be stopped.

On its face, Paul’s counsel doesn’t seem very loving. What do you mean they must be stopped? Can’t we all just get along, as Rodney King once famously queried? Can’t we just agree to disagree and leave it at that? The short answer is no. The answer is no because those who would teach something other than the truth of Scripture are not innocuous, harmless, or inoffensive. They subvert whole houses and teach things which they ought not for filthy lucre’s sake and so must be called out.

Since birds of a feather often flock together, these men whom Paul warns of have decided to capitalize on their shared penchant for fleecing the flock and use each other for what amounts to a peer review of their heretical teaching, getting two thumps up from their contemporaries and doing likewise for them. They preach each other’s pulpits, talking each other up to the heavens and beyond and telling the sheep of each respective church how blessed and lucky they are to have such a forward-thinking and visionary shepherd leading them. It’s all a big con, and the sheep are starting to notice.

It doesn’t matter if a thousand men approve of something if the Bible doesn’t. It doesn’t matter how many well-known names lend their support and validate something if the God of the universe stands against it.

We are living in an unprecedented time when many believers are suffering some sort of spiritual Stockholm syndrome, defending their abusers, and turning a blind eye to the inconsistency of their walk. As more stories come out of spiritual leaders who’ve been in sin and rebellion for decades yet somehow still retained their position within the body, one can’t help but wonder how many people turned a blind eye or aided and abated the practices because they deemed the individual more important than the truth.

It’s undeniable that celebrity culture is alive and well in the church, and those whose intent is not pure and who possess no love for the household of faith in their hearts have capitalized on the trend to the utmost.

But you don’t get it. He’s so special, so anointed, so mightily used of God that God Himself gave him a hall pass. Says who? Not God. God established the standard of what a servant who is called into leadership must live up to, and if today’s pastors, evangelists, and self-titled men of God were held to that standard, there would be many a church with empty pulpits. To say there would be a shortage of qualified pastors is an understatement. However, perhaps that’s what’s needed in order to salvage what remains of the modern-day church.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

The Last Days Of The Church XVIII

If a little leaven leavens the whole lump, then a bit of the profane bespoils the sacrosanct. We have been witness to the downward spiral of churches and denominations once they set upon the path of compromise, and unless a bold stand is made and there is a demand to return to the Biblical foundations they abandoned, their ruin is assured.

When you read Paul's detailed list of what many claiming to be believers will be like, it’s more akin to an open, festering wound than anything wholesome, resplendent, or beautiful. We’re not even halfway through the list, and if we look upon the contemporary church with a critical eye, we are able to check off every one of the things Paul has mentioned thus far, as not only being present therein but growing and flourishing.

One cannot overstate the metastatic nature of such things since they tend to spread throughout a body like a brushfire in a dry and arid climate. Unless stopped, they will consume everything in their path and utterly destroy the host because that is their singular intent. One act of disobedience and rebellion turns into five, then fifty, then a hundred, and before you know it, you have entire congregations denying the Lordship, supremacy, and inerrancy of Christ, forging idols that they then declare sacred and worthy of worship and subservience.

The further I get into this study, the less I want to write it because it causes me discomfort and is draining beyond anything I can verbalize. I take no pleasure in it nor write it with glee because it heralds a spiritual darkness that will blind countless souls to the reality of their rebellion and subsequent judgment.

Would I have preferred that Paul wrote about a sweeping revival that would turn nations toward the love of Jesus? Would I have preferred that he had said countless millions would fall on their faces in repentance? Of course, any of us would, but what is written is written, and we must abide by it, preparing for its eventuality. Our expectations of the future cannot be contrary to Scripture, nor can we discount the Word of God in lieu of pipe dreams and misplaced hopes. If for no other reason, I will finish this study for posterity’s sake. That, and because I want to stand before my God with clean hands, knowing that through my journey here on earth, I rightly divided the Word and deferred to Scripture as the final authority.

That men would be unloving during the last days is yet another sign that will become evident. Whether one takes it to mean that men would be without natural affection, as is one of the interpretations often subscribed to being unloving, or that they would not possess love for their fellow man in their hearts, both of these interpretations can be readily seen within what calls itself the church in our current age.

The main characteristic of one who is unloving within the body of Christ is that they will use the rest of the body as a means of achieving their own ends. Every bright smile and lupine sneer you see on your television screen insisting that the way to heaven is through your wallet and that the condition of your heart is of little consequence as long as you give and give until it hurts is, by definition, unloving. To know that someone is still shackled and a slave to sin, yet your singular purpose is to separate them from their money rather than point the way to Jesus, who can facilitate their freedom, is the epitome of being unloving.

A spiritual leader who is not concerned with your spiritual well-being is nothing more than a wolf pretending to be a shepherd. They can say they love you in ever more poetic and enigmatic ways, all the while sharpening their sheers and preparing to fleece you of your wool. You tell someone a painful truth because you love them enough to do it. You perpetuate a lie and coddle their sin, omitting what the Bible has to say about it because you have no love for them in your heart and are just using them as a walking ATM.

There is a nefarious purpose in our attempt to redefine the meaning of words, and in twisting them to mean something they were never intended to. We’ve come to the point where it is deemed loving to cheer on those who are hellbound and the heights of hatred and intolerance when you dare to point to the precipice they’re about to go over and warn them before it’s too late.

Love does not equal acceptance of sin or validation and celebration of perversion. Telling someone who is drowning that they’re doing it masterfully isn’t loving, but the polar opposite. Love, true love, is pointing the way to Jesus and telling people how they can be free of the soul rot that has consumed their being and to which they have become slaves.

During the last days, Paul tells us that men will likewise be without natural affection. Even among the godless, there used to be this unwritten rule that you defend the innocent, protect the helpless, and defend life whenever it is threatened. That you would have supposed pastors and spiritual leaders of certain denominations decrying any attempt at prioritizing the sanctity of life tells you all you need to know about the time you’re living.

When the murder of the unborn and unbidden access to it becomes the rallying cry for the church and animates them to a far greater degree than defending the gospel or the name of Jesus, there can be no denying the corruption, the decline, and the evil festering in the hearts of those claiming to be His own.

Are you saying the metric for being a believer is being pro-life? I’m saying the metric for being human and in possession of natural affection is being pro-life. Why this is a debate within the church is beyond me. Why entire denominations would be advocating for the murder of the helpless and innocent is downright diabolical and beyond my capacity to process. Unless you are the giver of life, you have no right or authority to determine when that life is snuffed out. That should be the end of the discussion, but here we are, living in perilous times, and the hearts of many have turned to stone.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

The Last Days Of The Church XVII

 Once the stain of unholiness makes its mark upon a heart, it tends to bring along friends. It doesn’t like being alone and fears that the individual in question might see the error of their rebellion and seek repentance, returning to the light. As such, it is often that the tendency of the unholy is to likewise be haughty, headstrong, unloving, and unforgiving. They are so certain of their truth and the deception they’ve allowed to take root in their heart that they will not hear any contrarian voice without growing exceedingly angry and bitter. They are quick to slander anyone who points to sin and calls it sin, calling them unloving, while they themselves exhibit the characteristics of the unloving.

It’s a trick that is also successfully implemented in modern-day politics, wherein those accusing the other side of the most treasonous crimes are usually guilty of them and worse. You don’t have to be obsessed with the day-to-day goings on of the power brokers of our day to see that the most vocal detractors of some individual or another are later found guilty of doing precisely what they railed against with such vehemence.

The church has followed suit, and there are certain practices, sins, and vices regarding which dissent is no longer allowed in certain denominations because those at the top are openly practicing them. If you are unwilling to toe the line and agree with the lunacy being peddled as normal, you are summarily shown the door and asked never to return. We don’t need your negativity, no sir. Who are you to judge? I’m nobody, but the God of the Bible is somebody, and He judges without regard for men’s opinions or how engrained their deception might have become. You can’t identify as a believer; you must be a believer in word and deed.

An unholy individual will always strive to satisfy the desires of his flesh. He is by all accounts a slave, shackled to the thing that has brought him low, always attempting to excuse and justify the vapid emptiness of their existence, pretending that a momentary, fleeting sin satisfies the deepest longing of their soul. It is a lie, for sin can never satisfy the overriding need for the presence of God in a man’s heart. The absence of God makes man less than a man, and that some are willing to turn their backs on Him in order to satisfy urges and desires, even among those who name the name of Christ, is the emblematic tragedy of the last days of the church.

The unholy feel no shame and lack decency. They seek pleasure in abnormal and unnatural pursuits, surrendering their hearts to them. Eventually, that perversion or unnatural pursuit becomes the core of their existence, and everything revolves around it. Their identity becomes synonymous with their proclivity, and they become subject to its whims. That’s not to say the unholy can’t feign religiosity when it suits them or even quote scripture out of context to bolster their arguments. They are well versed in appearing to be something they are not, and whenever they feel as though they are losing the argument, their fallback is always victimhood. It is neither hateful nor unloving to call sin what it is, nor is the individual practicing the sin being persecuted when they are called to repent of it.

When preachers, pastors, or evangelists go out of their way to mollycoddle sin, prioritizing feelings over men’s souls, they are not doing the lost any favors, nor are they exhibiting the love of God. To the world, it may seem thus. To God, it is a betrayal of one of the fundamental tenets of the faith, wherein an individual must repent and be born again into a new life in Christ.

An infection requires antibiotics to go away, and sin requires repentance to cease having sway over the individual. If repentance is not forthcoming, the person in question will eventually return to it and grow ever more in thrall to it because once it returns, it brings reinforcements. It’s no mystery why so many today return to bondage, sin, and ungodliness. There may have been an emotional response to God, but there was no repentance, and so the sin lingered, latent for a time but ever ready to resume its corruption.

That the unholy would not be outside the camp but within is the new wrinkle that will appear and become ever more evident during the last days. Again, because context matters, and when these things were written undergirds their prophetic nature, Paul wrote these words some two thousand years ago.

It used to be that the godless and reprobate remained so until stirred to repentance, but once repentance occurred, their lives were forever transformed. They walked in the light, pursued holiness, desired godliness, and grew in God. That has been turned on its ear in our modern age, wherein men want the security of the promise of heaven while remaining fully shackled and subservient to hell.

Matthew 6:24, “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.”

When Jesus said no one could serve two masters, He did not intend it to be taken as a challenge to try and prove Him wrong. Evidently, that’s what much of the church took it as. We know what you said, but we think we can swing it. It’s not so much about having hate for one and love for the other; that’s so binary and minimalistic. Why can’t we view it more along the lines of joint custody? You get us on weekends; the world gets us the rest of the week; that way, everyone’s happy.

We’ve convinced ourselves God is willing to play such childish games when He clearly isn’t. When He declared in His word that attempting to serve two masters never turns out well, it was not because it wasn’t His best for you but because it was impossible. To put it into perspective, while one gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him would not perish but have everlasting life, the other walks about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. Who do you think has your best interests at heart? Who do you think wants the best for you? Is it the one who seeks your destruction or the one who seeks your salvation? Even so, the unholy will find a way to justify their rebellion because the singular desire of their heart is not to serve God but rather their flesh, and if disregarding the consequences of their actions is required in order to achieve their goal, so be it.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

The Last Days Of The Church XVI

 As we go down the list of the things we will see within the church during the last days, Paul points to men being unholy as one of the signs that will be evident. God never expected the godless to be holy, but He does expect His children to exhibit holiness. This is yet another one of those terms that have fallen out of favor with the contemporary church, accompanied by others such as repentance, sanctification, and righteousness, which, if spoken of or insisted upon, will have the pastor answering to the elder board for having hurt the feelings of one individual or another.

That the message of the cross, the gospel of Christ, and the Word of God were meant to be inoffensive, all-inclusive, permissive, and innocuous is yet another lie that has crept within the household of faith and declared to be the truth. God did not take my feelings or yours into account when He inspired the writing of the Bible via the Holy Spirit. He didn’t give a second thought about how it would make men feel when He called them wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked. God’s not looking for your affirmation, approval, or vote, so He doesn’t have to soften blows or try His best to make you feel warm and fuzzy.

He is God! The Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the omnipotent, omniscient Creator of all that is and who spoke the universe into being.

1 Peter 1:13-16, “Therefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and rest your hope fully upon the grace that is to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ, as obedient children, not conforming yourselves to the former lusts, as in your ignorance; but as He who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, because it is written, ‘Be holy, for I am holy.”’

Given that God said to be holy and that the men of the last days claiming to be of God will be unholy, we would do well to define what unholy means before going any further. Some synonyms for unholy are profane, indecent, absent shame, blind to modesty, blind to decency, lacking purity, or absent of righteousness. The unholy of the last days won’t be one of these things but an amalgam, a mixture of all of them, whether profaning the Word of God by declaring it said something it didn’t while being shameless in doing so, living in open sin while calling themselves men of God, lacking decency, modesty or righteousness, or just working against the plan and will of God believing themselves to be above the Word.

What Paul declared as future tense is now present tense, and you don’t have to look far to find a handful of examples from any given denomination. You wouldn’t have to go back far. A few weeks would suffice, and if you counted on your fingers how many elders, children’s pastors, senior pastors, evangelists, and ministry leaders were arrested for bonafide crimes, you’d need more fingers.

Every new day seems to be another heartbreak, another black eye, another individual exposed for the unholy conduct in which they have engaged, thereby bringing shame to the household of faith.

If Paul were writing about the godless in his letter, there would have been nothing revelatory in saying that during the last days, they would be unholy. You don’t say! The godless will continue to be godless, and the unholy, unholy. Will water also continue to be wet, and fire continue to burn?

The tragedy of it is that he was writing about the church of the last days and all the festering boils, putrid wounds, and spreading stains that would be evident during the last days, not only from within but also from without. The godless are noticing the hypocrisy of those who beat their chests, insisting that they are godly. The godless are wrinkling their noses as pastor after pastor gets exposed for being an unrepentant pervert or gets arrested for doing things even most of the godless cringe away from. Tell me we’re living in the last days without telling me we’re living in the last days.

That the guy who kissed dating goodbye also ended up kissing Jesus goodbye, or that one of the lead singers for Hillsong, Hillsonged himself into the mud from which he’d claimed to have been set free are the tame ones. It gets worse, much worse, and it’s not hard to find the stories, confessions, half-hearted apologies, and outright renunciations of Christ as Lord.

Before the other denominations begin to point out that this is a charismatic problem, you would do well to do some research and see how many progenies of some of the most well-known names in your denomination are avowed atheists who are doing their utmost to turn the young and impressionable away from the light and the truth of Christ as the only way to the Father.

Whether Baptist, Methodist, Reformed, Pentecostal, Lutheran, or any other of the major denominations one could think of, the unholy aren’t just a negligible minority. There is a groundswell of godless people insisting that they serve God, even though the god they serve is of their own making. To such individuals, Jesus is whatever they want Him to be, and the deeper the depravity of their hearts, the more depraved their definition of Jesus. They are irreverent to the utmost, profane, and lacking righteousness or purity, yet there they stand, insisting that their Jesus is just as divine as the Christ who said, go and sin no more.

This is the natural decline and end result of a church, denomination, or generation whose singular pursuit is watering down the gospel and nullifying the need for repentance and the blood of Jesus to make one clean, whole, and regenerate.  

An unholy man or woman will always prioritize their wants, desires, and lusts over the will and Word of God. Their identity is not in Christ but in some other thing to which they have surrendered and are now ruled by their predilections in perpetuity. While the Word of God tells us that without holiness, no one will see the Lord, holiness is the furthest thing from their hearts and minds, and if anyone dares to point to Scripture, they mock, scoff, and obfuscate. They will always find others who will justify their rebellion and celebrate their sin because birds of a feather flock together, and those who have been given over seem to find each other readily enough.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

The Last Days Of The Church XV

 Many things had to go wrong for the contemporary church to find itself in the spiritual condition it finds itself in. Perhaps one of the most insidious of these was the idea that we can attract those of the world by becoming more relevant, seeker-friendly, and less biblical. If we can dilute it, water it down, remove the bits the world deems unsavory and intolerant, then we’d really leave our mark. The reason people weren’t coming to church was because there was too much Jesus there. That’s an easy fix, then, isn’t it? Put Jesus in an attic somewhere and only bring Him out on special occasions. Birthdays and special events only; other than that handful of times, we can focus on the ministry of tithing and hundredfold returns.

It worked, didn’t it? Mega churches started sprouting up all over the place, people were filling the seats and overflowing the offering buckets, and we thought we’d cracked the code. We’d finally done it! Paul must have been wrong in his first letter to the Corinthians after all. I guess it was a limiting belief when he said that the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God and not the way things really were.

1 Corinthians 2:14-15, “But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. But he who is spiritual judges all things, yet he himself is rightly judged by no one.”

No, Paul wasn’t wrong. That’s the tragedy of it. The natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God. However, there are countless souls who, still being in the flesh, believe the lie that they have become spiritual by osmosis while retaining the natural man fully intact and unregenerate. You cannot be of the light and of the dark simultaneously. You cannot testify the truth with your lips while your heart is full of evil and deceit. That thing about repenting, therefore, wasn’t an option or some extra credit you could earn; it is mandatory and non-negotiable.

One of the reasons for the great peril of the last days and the spiritual condition of the church during that time is that those who insisted they were preachers of the gospel really weren’t, and rather than doing the thing the Bible told them they needed to do, they took it upon themselves to jigger with the Word and insisted they were supposed to save the world. Men preach; God saves. If you preach the truth, those saved are being transformed, renewed, regenerated, and born again. If you preach a lie, those thinking they’re being saved really aren’t because you never told them what they needed to do to be saved.

John 3:1-3, “There was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. This man came to Jesus by night and said to Him, “Rabbi, we know that You are a teacher come from God; for no one can do these things that You do unless God is with him.” Jesus answered and said to him, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”’

Nicodemus was a Pharisee. He knew the law, lived the law, and was even a ruler among the Jews. He acknowledged that Jesus was a teacher come from God, as had the other Pharisees. Nicodemus was a religious man, likely a moral man, a keeper of the law, and had ‘accepted’ Jesus as being sent from God, yet Jesus still said, you must be born again, for unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

It’s not my job to convert you; it’s my job to preach the gospel to you. The rest is between you and God. When we begin to poll test the gospel message and remove the things unspiritual people find uncomfortable, we are diluting the very essence of the gospel. It’s not as though we did it with God’s permission or consent. It’s not as though He changed His mind or lowered His standard, so why are we surprised at the lethargy sweeping the Western Church? The gospel is not a commodity to be tested but a divine message of salvation to be embraced.

This generation insisted on duplicity; don’t resent God for maintaining His standard of righteousness.

You can’t have God on your terms. No matter how special you might consider yourself to be or how entitled you might feel to a special exemption wherein God has to dance to your tune and accept you without being born again, it will not be so. You can have God on His terms, and His terms are clearly spelled out in the Word.

But that would mean that far fewer people than we thought are genuinely saved and sanctified. Isn’t that what the Bible says?

Matthew 7:13-14, “Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.”

Departure from the truth has facilitated all the things Paul lists as the source of peril within the church in our last days. Had we remained in truth and prioritized men’s souls over men’s wallets and quality over quantity, we would not be in the predicament we find ourselves in. We would not be on the threshold of the falling away or the shockwave of animosity and vitriol that will follow on its heels.

You cannot have a Christless gospel and still call it the gospel or have any expectation that it will save or lead you to life. There’s no such thing as a Christless truth, and any way that promises you life without Jesus is a lie and a deception. This is basic Christianity, yet pastors of all denominations and stripes are going out of their way to avoid this singularly crucial truth: Jesus is imperative! He’s not just some auxiliary figure in the Bible that we can ignore whenever it suits us. He is the gospel. Without Him, there would be no gospel, nor would there be a way to be reconciled with the Father.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

The Last Days Of The Church XIV

 If you’ve ever gone out of your way to help someone and did your best to do so, and the only feedback you received is that it wasn’t nearly enough, you know how disheartening unthankfulness can be. It’s also why I don’t subscribe to the mindset that whenever someone with means makes a sizeable contribution to some project, whether it’s to dig wells or build homes, the immediate reaction should be that they could have done more.

Coincidentally, that is always the narrative from the nosebleed section, no matter how unmatchable by us common folk the generosity of those they look their noses down upon happens to be. These are the same people who do absolutely nothing for that particular cause except wait feverishly beside their keyboard until someone does so they can belittle the size of their contribution. It’s not up to me to decide what another should do for the poor; it’s up to me to decide what I will do for them since they will always be among us.

A sense of entitlement is kryptonite to thankfulness and a debilitating poison for men’s souls. When an individual believes that whatever they receive from the hand of God is owed to them, that simply by raising a hand in church, they are entitled to all the riches of earth, however God chooses to bless them, it’s never enough, and they are never thankful.

Being unthankful in the little things will eventually lead to being unthankful in the big ones. If you are not thankful for everything, eventually, you will be thankful for nothing. We form patterns, and before we realize it, they become habits, and once that habit is formed, it takes some sort of event to snap us out of it and make us realize what we’ve been doing. Being unthankful can become habit forming, and when unthankfulness takes root in men’s hearts, their attitude is one of perpetual ingratitude.

Bless me, Lord. They cry aloud, and God answers, I have. To that, they arch their eyebrows and wonder aloud, how so?

Psalm 103:1-5, “Bless the Lord, O my soul; And all that is within me, bless His holy name! Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits: Who forgives all your iniquities, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from destruction, who crowns you with lovingkindness and tender mercies, who satisfies your mouth with good things, so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.”

That’s all well and good, but why does my neighbor have a newer car, a bigger house, fancier toys, and more money than me? That’s the answer of the unthankful heart whenever God reveals all that He has done. It’s never enough; it’s never sufficient because they’re always comparing their status with someone else’s, and it’s never with the individual who has less.

Of all the things David mentioned in his hymn of thanksgiving, not one was tethered to the material. You couldn’t buy any of the things he was thankful for, no matter how much you were willing to spend. That’s the thing the unthankful never seem to realize: that the benefits God reserves for His own are priceless and not within man’s ability to acquire by any other means. You can’t buy forgiveness or healing; you can’t purchase redemption from destruction; you can’t join a club, no matter how exclusive, to receive His lovingkindness and tender mercies. To access any of these things, you must be His, belong to Him, serve Him, and obey Him.

What many in the West define as poverty, the rest of the world deems unattainable luxuries. If you have running water, a roof over your head, a means of earning your daily bread, and a means of transport, you’re doing better than most people living in the world today. There are currently over one billion people living on less than a dollar a day, yet we still find reasons to be unthankful more often than many of them.

The reason for this is simple: men’s sense of entitlement has reached such monstrous proportions that the daily blessings others would weep in gratitude toward God over, they dismiss offhand. Being unthankful has always been a mark of the godless. Only within the last few decades has it become a staple within the church as well. Standing before God with our hands out, asking for more, even though we have more than enough, has become a mainstay of the modern-day church. If what we were asking for was more faith, more power, more virtue, more righteousness, more obedience, or faithfulness, it would be all well and good. We’re not, though. We’re not asking God for the refiner’s fire; we’re praying money down from heaven and flocking to anyone who would promise us life on easy street.

Being thankful is a choice. Being unthankful is likewise a choice. We choose to see the blessing and providence of God every day or to compare ourselves to others and feel as though we’ve been shortchanged somehow.

Not only are we to be thankful for God’s blessings, but we must also be thankful for the trials He allows in our lives. It’s a big ask when most people aren’t even thankful for their blessings, but when we realize that the trials He allows bring us closer to Him, teach us to be more dependent upon Him, and facilitate our seeing His mighty hand at work in our lives, we become thankful even for them.

An unthankful heart will always have a reason to grumble. It will always have some complaint or another because it is never satisfied. There will always be something more it desires, refusing to consider all it has received. The attitude of ‘what have you done for me lately’ defines the unthankful heart, as though Jesus and His sacrifice on the cross were not enough.

Being around unthankful believers is disheartening. Their attitude is akin to a perpetual dark cloud that saps your joy and your peace. Every day is a new misfortune, a fresh reason to gripe, to insist that they are unloved by God because there’s a pebble in their shoe, rather than being thankful that they have shoes and shaking out the pebble.

If we cannot be thankful in times such as these, how will we be thankful when times get hard? If we cannot be thankful in seasons of plenty, how will we be thankful in seasons of famine?

2 Corinthians 4:16-18, “Therefore we do not lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal.”

How many churches today can honestly say this is the standard they live by? How many believers can read these words and see their hearts mirrored therein? Never mind that Paul’s definition of light affliction was within the context of being hungry, thirsty, cold, naked, shipwrecked, beaten with rods, and stoned. An unthankful heart will always focus on the temporary, the things that are seen, the things they can touch, drive, wear, and brag about. The thankful heart understands that come what may in this life, including trials and momentary afflictions, are working for us an exceeding and eternal weight of glory.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

The Last Days Of The Church XIII

 Children being disobedient to parents is self-explanatory enough that it does not need to be plumbed. Once again, we see the fulfillment of Paul’s prophetic warning playing out before our eyes. Rebellious children are not only a heartbreaking tragedy for the parents in question, but they are also a sign of the last days of the church. It seems as though the age range when children begin to think that they know better than their parents is decreasing perceptibly with each passing year.

Since the aim of the godless is the corruption of innocence and destruction thereof at as early an age as possible, seemingly out of nowhere, there is a chorus of voices insisting that a three or four-year-old has the mental wherewithal to decide upon issues that they will have to contend with for the rest of their lives, and acquiesce to irreversible procedures which will haunt them until they breathe their last.

The world encourages parental disobedience, from former Vice Presidents telling auditoriums full of preteen children that their parents know nothing and that it is their responsibility to enlighten their mothers and fathers to entire governmental bodies being created with the singular purpose of negating wise counsel and stripping parents of the ability to teach their own progeny.

There is a well-thought-out, concerted, and diabolical effort afoot to circumvent and nullify parental counsel. Laws are being passed in certain states that prohibit teachers and counselors from reaching out to parents if their child is troubled and encouraged to keep the knowledge of the child’s problems hidden from them. The state now deems itself the defacto parent of every child and encourages the aforementioned disobedience shamelessly and vociferously.

Unless the parents are fully engaged and are wise to their child’s emotional instability, by the time they figure out what’s happening, it’s too late to do anything about it. Even then, if attempts are made to reason with their offspring, the state is quick to swoop in and go as far as removing the child from the home because they deem a loving parent who wants the best for their child a threat to their health and happiness.

The enemy is fully aware that if the pattern of being disobedient to parents can be established in the hearts of the young, they are more likely to be disobedient toward God when they are grown. God is not the author of confusion, but the devil surely is. If he can plant the seeds of rebellion early, they are likelier to be deeply rooted by the time the individual in question is called upon to make choices of eternal consequence.

Access to technology by kids barely out of diapers has given them a false sense of omniscience, and they’ve come to believe that Wikipedia is a suitable replacement for life experience. Due to an increase in children being disobedient to parents, they refuse to listen to the voice of experience when it comes to practical life matters and suffer the consequences of the choices they make needlessly. It’s no longer enough that mom and dad say you shouldn’t touch the stove when it’s hot; they have to confirm it for themselves, and many have the scars and burns to prove it.

The gray hairs around your father’s temples prove that he knows more than you and is wiser than you. It’s not me saying it; it’s the Bible. Proverbs tells us that wisdom is the gray hair unto men, and an unspotted life is old age.

It is foolhardy to reject advice and counsel from someone twice your age because although they’ve been where you are, as yet, you’ve not been where they’ve been. Disobedience also begets dishonor, and the Word is clear regarding the honoring of your father and mother.

Ephesians 6:1-3, “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and your mother,” which is the first commandment with promise: that it may be well with you and you may live long on the earth.”

Think back on how many heartaches and heartbreaks you would have been spared had you listened and obeyed your parents in the Lord. Think back on how many pitfalls you could have avoided, how many tears you would have never had to shed, and how much disappointment you wouldn’t have had to wrestle with.

That whole nonsense about not doing anything different given the chance is nothing more than a coping mechanism for people who refuse to admit they made mistakes. Most people can think of a dozen things they would have done differently off the top of their heads, perhaps not life-altering, but likely beneficial to their overall well-being.

Conversely, most people can think of a dozen things they’re thankful for having heeded when it came by way of counsel from a mother or a father.

I remember being in my first year of Junior High, and the electives I had to choose from were either typing or wood shop. I got home from school and offhandedly mentioned it to my mother, to which she said that typing would be the better choice since it seemed more useful to her than carving your initials into a block of wood with a band saw. Plus, typing didn’t pose the risk of cutting off a finger if you weren’t being careful.

I was all of eleven at the time, and the idea of taking typing classes was not at all appealing to me. I explained to her why I thought the wood shop class was a far better idea. She retorted with why she didn’t, and we went round and round for a solid half hour with nobody making any headway.

Finally, exasperated, she sighed and said, “Do what you want, but I’m going to pray that you get put in the typing class.”

I thought nothing of it until I went to school the following day, excited to pick wood shop as my elective. I was told that the class was already full, and the only option left to me was the typing class. Having resigned myself to the idea, there was no point in getting angry or complaining, and a week later, I was the only boy sitting in a classroom full of girls banging away on selectric typewriters.

In hindsight, it was the best decision I made at any point during the entirety of my junior high years, even though, technically, the choice was made for me. At the time, it was grueling, and I didn’t much like it, especially the first couple of weeks when you had to get comfortable with the finger positioning on the keyboard.

A few months later, when I started translating my grandfather’s autobiography and typing out the ministry's newsletters, I had to admit to myself that my mother was right, and it had been the best decision for me.

At the moment, a parent’s advice or counsel might seem antiquated and old-fashioned, but if we’re honest with ourselves, we will realize that however it may have seemed at the time, it was good, solid advice that would have paid dividends had we followed through.

Unlikely as it might be that I have a gaggle of young readers, children, obey your parents. It is a Biblical mandate, and as Paul wrote to the Ephesians, the first commandment with promise.

God doesn’t make empty promises, nor does He promise something He can’t deliver on. Do what God says, and watch what He does. Obey your parents in the Lord, honor them, and the fruit of this obedience will carry you through life.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.