Job CCLXXI

 Job 27:1-6, “Moreover Job continued his discourse, and said: ‘As God lives, who has taken away my justice, and the Almighty, who has made my soul bitter, as long as my breath is in me, and the breath of God is in my nostrils, my lips will not speak wickedness, nor my tongue utter deceit. Far be it from me that I should say you are right; Till I die I will not put away my integrity from me. My righteousness I hold fast, and will not let it go; my heart shall not reproach me as long as I live.”

Integrity is not situational. If you can claim integrity and denounce it depending on the situation, like putting on and taking off a coat or a pair of socks, then you have no integrity. If integrity is absent in one’s life, then nothing is permanent, nothing is consistent, nothing is stable, and everything becomes fluid, negotiable, and flexible to the point that if God doesn’t give me what I want when I want it, I’ll find someone who will. Your love, loyalty, and affection are not hostages to be used as leverage against God to get what you want, nor are any of us in a position to demand ransom from Him in exchange for our fealty, fidelity, or devotion.

When we begin to place conditions on our obedience and faithfulness, when we begin demanding things in return for our service, we are proven to be nothing more than hirelings and mercenaries, selling our loyalty to the highest bidder for as long as the checks clear. If we are motivated by anything other than love and a sincere desire to serve God, whether money, fame, or the acceptance of the godless, the question isn’t if but rather when the offer to compromise and betray the truth will be made.

Men don’t unwittingly begin to teach another gospel. They choose to dismiss what the gospel says while attempting to rationalize their betrayal of truth. If I keep insisting on sanctification, righteousness, holiness, prayer, fasting, study of the Word, and intimacy with God, I will never grow my church or my ministry. Nowadays, people want something new, fresh, and instant. They’re unwilling to take the time to press in, to grow, or build up their most holy faith. They need something immediate, instantly gratifying, something that moves at the speed of their busy lives.

If I keep calling sin what it is and not attempt to soften the blow of what it means to be in rebellion toward God, the handful of people who have expressed displeasure at being convicted will end up leaving, then what will I have?

Either trust God or don’t. Either cling to your integrity and stand on the truth of Scripture or do as so many others have and take liberties where the Word offers none, and twist the gospel to suit men’s lukewarm state rather than admonishing them to awaken from their slumber and pursue God purposefully and with pure intentions. Just make sure you understand one thing: when God gives someone over to uncleanness, when men exchange the truth of God for the lie and worship and serve the creature rather than the Creator, it is no less than the manifest wrath of God upon them.

That’s what Paul tells the Romans within the first chapter of his epistle. The suppression of truth in unrighteousness isn’t liberty, or a new way of solving an old problem; it is the wrath of God being revealed against all unrighteousness and ungodliness of men. Judgment begins in the house of God for a reason. If you haven’t noticed, the house of God has been under His judgment for some time now.   

In the physical Job had every reason to be angry, bitter, and disillusioned. It’s not as though he’d forgotten the man he’d been, the children he’d buried, or the fortune that had disappeared overnight. Even so, he declared with all the force he could muster that his lips would not speak wickedness, nor his tongue utter deceit. When we commit our ways to the Lord, what is happening around us, or even to us, cannot sway or affect our commitment to Him. The devil can’t make us be disloyal to God, nor can he make us speak wickedness or utter deceit. He facilitates the environment for us to make that choice, putting his finger on the scale as heavily as he is allowed to, but ultimately, the choice is still ours as individuals.

Adversity tests integrity. Seeing the dreams, plans, and aspirations you’ve worked toward your entire life implode within the blink of an eye isn’t easy; it’s not something one receives with a smile on their lips and gladness in their eyes, but it’s those moments that define us, mature us, and grow us in ways nothing else can.

More often than not, integrity comes at a price. There is a cost attached to it, whether that cost is losing friends, being shunned by family, or being seen in a negative light by those around you. It’s far easier to capitulate, to give in, to go with the flow, and be just another face in the crowd than it is to stand firm in your convictions and refuse to be swayed.

Job knew full well he could put an end to this entire drama by acquiescing and telling his friends they were right, or at least that they’d made some valid points. He could have been the peacemaker, but doing so would have come at the cost of his integrity, and admitting to something he knew himself to be innocent of, and that was something he was unwilling to do, and rightly so.

The sad reality is that the squeaky wheel often gets the grease. It’s those who are loud, brash, and hyperbolic who often get their way because they’re willing to talk over anyone trying to make a valid point or insist upon facts and evidence rather than feelings or emotions. Yes, we should always strive to reason together, but for that to occur, both parties must be reasonable and willing to consider the possibility that they are wrong. Job’s friends would not. They would rather believe that their friend was a man of such wickedness as to deserve worse than he was experiencing than allow for the possibility that they’d erred in their judgment.

Job’s integrity was built upon the foundation of having had a protracted relationship with God. Our integrity, likewise, must be rooted in God’s Word, and what it says, rather than our own machinations or vain imaginings. It is the only sort of integrity that will weather the storms, that will remain steadfast and unmoved, because it is tethered in the truth of He who abides.    

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

Job CCLXX

 Yes, we should be in awe of the God we serve. Yes, we should be humbled by the beauty that surrounds us, a beauty that He spoke into existence, a beauty that makes the greatest works of Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Monet, DaVinci, and Vermeer seem like nothing more than a toddler’s finger-paint art in comparison. Yes, there should be wonder and a humbling delight in the knowledge that we were fearfully and wonderfully made by His hand.

If one were so inclined, they could spend a lifetime plumbing the depths of this one chapter in the book of Job. Every God-inspired revelation regarding His nature, character, and all-encompassing power is so layered in profundity and wide-reaching in its implications that one could readily be stunned into silence as to how a man who lived four thousand years ago could grasp wisdom on this level. The icing on the cake, however, comes toward the latter part of the chapter, wherein, after numerous mind-expanding and reality-shattering revelations, Job says, “these are the mere edges of His ways.”

We haven’t even scratched the surface, never mind plumb the depths. These are the peripheral attributes, the mere edges of His ways. Stunning. Humbling. For a man to so poetically and beautifully encapsulate the attributes, nature, and sovereignty of God, then acknowledge that this was far from a complete rendering of His might, power, and wonder, can do nothing less than humble us into the dust and show us how little we truly know.

Tell me again about the pet dinosaurs and body part rooms in heaven, or perhaps about the bottomless ice cream sundaes. God forgive us!

When taking into account the historical context of Job’s timing, his insights into everything are deeper still. Men used to believe that the earth was supported by four elephants standing on the back of a turtle, yet here comes this man who says that God hung the earth on nothing. Revolutionary statement for its time, to be sure, but much of what Job said about the universe God created has been proven out by science in our modern era. Such things could not have been conceived by the mind of man, but by a God-breathed revelation into the inner workings of the world, the seen and unseen realms alike.

How could Job know that God drew a circular horizon on the face of the waters at the boundary of light and darkness unless God revealed it to him? It’s not as though he could pick up a telephone and call the other side of the world to determine that while it was light where he stood, darkness was all-encompassing beyond what his eyes could see.

When we view the things Job said through the prism of modern invention and understanding, perhaps his statements aren’t quite that impressive. When we acknowledge that he spoke these things four thousand odd years ago, it takes on a whole new level of astonishment.

Some of the things he spoke of remain a mystery to us to this day. Did you know heaven had pillars, and they tremble and are astonished at God’s rebuke? Science can neither prove nor disprove this, but we know it is true not only because the Word of God says it is, but because many of the other statements Job made have been proven factually true in our modern era.

God has both power and authority over all of creation. Can we even fathom what sort of power is required to stir up the sea, or to break up the storm by will alone? Can we even begin to guess at what it implies that God’s hand pierced the fleeing serpent?

All these things, the fathomless, wondrous, glorious things, and yet these are the mere edges of His ways, and how small a whisper we hear of Him.

But sure, let’s bicker endlessly about whether wearing a necktie is a sure sign that you’re headed for hell because it’s pointing down, or if wearing a wedding band is evidence that you have not purged your heart of the desire for silver and gold. Let’s beat each other over the head and denounce each other over tertiary issues that hold no salvific weight, while ignoring the majesty of the God we serve, which is on full display every single day.

Depending on how one views Job’s statement, we either know and understand so little of God as to perceive the mere edges of His ways, or man’s capacity and ability to understand Him are so small and stunted as to make a greater understanding of Him impossible to the human mind. Either way serves to deflate our bloated sense of self, wisdom, and understanding, but one thing is certain: if you seek God, you will find Him. If you knock, He will open. If you desire to know more of Him, He will reveal Himself to you on a deeper and more profound level.

If a man whom God deemed blameless and upright can conclude that what he knows of God are the mere edges of His ways, then no man living or dead can claim that they know God fully, completely, in all His fathomless glory. It may sound good to the ears of the easily impressed when men boast of being all-knowing, but they are empty, baseless boasts that have no anchor to reality.

We hear a small whisper of Him, and some wrongly assume that’s all there is to know of Him. Job insists that there is much beyond the small whisper, all the way to the thunder of His power, and concludes his soliloquy with a rhetorical question: But the thunder of His power, who can understand?

We can understand His love because it was personified in Jesus, we can understand His grace because He plucked us from the darkness and brought us into the light, we can understand His mercy because, as faithless as we are, He still contends with us, but the thunder of His power, who can understand?  

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

Job CCLXIX

 All of creation, and every created thing, tremble before the Almighty, whether seen or unseen, whether known by the minds of men or kept a mystery to them, because they know the fathomless power of the Alpha and Omega, the One who was, and is, and is to come. All are fully aware of His all-encompassing authority, that by His Word He spoke the universe into existence, that to this day He speaks and it is done, commands and it stands fast, except for mankind; dull-witted, self-important, prideful, arrogant, disobedient, rebellious, mankind.

We think nothing of dismissing His omnipotence, being flippant about His glory, elevating ourselves while diminishing His attributes to the point of thinking we are on equal footing, ignoring all that He has done, and mocking His lovingkindness, because all we’ve ever been taught of the God we purport to serve is that He is love, and love alone.

We have stripped Him of His majesty, His power, His glory, His might, and His supremacy, because we’ve convinced ourselves into believing that the smaller we make Him, the less likely it is that He has the power to judge the living and the dead. If it is so, then it’s less likely He will hold us to account for our willful disobedience, less likely that He sees, hears, and knows all, and we convince ourselves that we can get away with being duplicitous, half-hearted, and faithless servants.

The dead, the living, the very pillars of heaven tremble, but not us. Is it because we do not have a right understanding of who the God of the universe is, or because we refuse to acknowledge His power in all things?

God sits upon His throne, not a rocking chair! He is supreme, Most High, and sovereign, not some age-spotted, sickly figure bowed by the passage of time, so desperate for a game of checkers that once in a while He plucks random individuals out of porta-potties and translates them to the halls of heaven to alleviate His loneliness.

All one needs to do to see how thoroughly we’ve abandoned the fear of the Lord is juxtapose Job’s description of God with any one of a dozen descriptions gleefully regurgitated by modern-day fable tellers.   

Job 26:10-14, “He drew a circular horizon on the face of the waters, and the boundary of light and darkness. The pillars of heaven tremble, and are astonished at His rebuke. He stirs up the sea with His power, and by His understanding He breaks up the storm. By His Spirit He adorned the heavens; His hands pierced the fleeing serpent. Indeed these are the mere edges of His ways, and how small a whisper we hear of Him! But the thunder of His power who can understand?”

One can’t help but notice that Job paints a very different picture of God from the one we hear described today. Omniscient, omnipotent, sovereign, and supreme sounds nothing like what some insist God is like in our modern era.

Well, you see, God misplaced His beard comb, so I got to sit on His lap and braid His beard, and I did such a good job that He thought I should have a crack at running the universe while He went fishing! Right. Got it. Thanks for playing, and here’s your parting gift. If you don’t like white, the strait jacket also comes in black and fuchsia.

What’s troubling isn’t that people have the gall to say such things, take such liberties, and be so presumptuous in their self-aggrandizing; it’s that others believe them, take them at their word, and don’t bother to search the Scriptures and see how true men and women of God reacted to getting a glimpse of God’s glory.

When was the last time you trembled before God? When was the last time you were overcome with His presence? These are questions we would do well to ask ourselves, because if all creation trembles at His presence, yet we do not, can we honestly say we have a true understanding of the God we serve?

There are those who claim to come in the name of the Lord, and then those who come in the name of the Lord. You can tell the real from the fake because those who come in the name of the Lord and don’t simply claim to, walk in the fear of Him. A king is still a king even if he is familial with you. You don’t stop showing deference, reverence, respect, allegiance, or loyalty because He has drawn you close, or has tasked you with a particular duty. Serving at the King’s pleasure does not make us de facto kings.

If you come in the name of the King, you deliver His edicts, His commands, and His messages. They originate from Him, and are not to be interpreted, redacted, countermanded, or dismissed.

Imagine if a messenger were sent with a message from the king, and, rather than deliver it, they stood before their audience and declared, “The King has sent me to inform you that I am now your new king.” At some point, someone would inquire of the true King whether He had indeed abdicated His throne and chosen this individual as His successor. They wouldn’t just take the messenger’s word for it because the message would be incongruent with what they knew of the King they served.

Galatians 1:8-9, “But even if we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel to you than what we have preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again, if anyone preaches any other gospel to you than what you have received, let him be accursed.”

We serve a God of wonder, power, majesty, and glory. It is a truth revealed to us throughout Scripture each and every time without fail. That any man or woman would take it upon themselves to diminish the wondrous majesty of God, insisting He is anything less than the Word tells us He is, isn’t just telling a fanciful tale, but preaching another gospel.

Beware of those who claim to come in the name of the Lord while doing everything they can to elevate themselves to positions of equal authority with Him. Beware of those who claim to be preachers of the Word, but the word they preach is starkly different than the Word of God. The times are perilous, and the devil is on the prowl.

With love in Christ, 

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

Job CCLXVIII

 What do you know of God? He judges the wicked! That was what Bildad, as well as his other two friends, kept circling back to. There were variations on the theme, but the theme itself remained immovably consistent. God sees the wicked, He judges the wicked, He punishes the wicked, and if you’re being sifted, you too must be wicked. They were so focused on one facet of God’s nature that they failed to see or acknowledge anything else about Him beyond that.

After attempting to exhort his friend to look inward and see whose spirit had come from him, Job gives a masterclass on the multi-faceted nature of God, which, given his condition and the time he lived in, is nothing short of inspired, God-breathed, and beyond the scope of human understanding.

It’s riveting, awe-inspiring, epic in its scope, transcendent in its blending of the seen and unseen, and so layered with profundity as to make one wonder why God had not singled out Job’s wisdom along with his blamelessness and uprightness.

Long before telescopes, microscopes, understanding of cumulus, stratus, and cirrus clouds, or even a rough outline of the spiritual realm, Sheol, or the deep, Job laid out the majesty of God and His all-encompassing sovereignty with such brilliance as to make Rhode’s scholars blush with shame and seethe with envy.

It proves that Job did not possess simply a rhetorical understanding of who God was, but had spent his life in awe of the Lord of his heart, knowing Him more and more with each passing day as He revealed Himself. You don’t come to understand God the way Job did, tangentially, or through infrequent contemplation of Him.

You can tell when someone has been in the presence of God, walked with Him, and grown in Him, and when they’re regurgitating things they’ve heard or appropriating experiences others have had in hopes of impressing strangers. Job was not boasting about his understanding of God, nor pointing to it as a means of validating his righteousness. He just laid out the thesis of who the God he served was, and how far His powers stretched. He didn’t make it about himself, nor draw attention to himself. In his mind, he was simply stating a fact.

Job 26:5-9, “The dead tremble, those under the waters and those inhabiting them. Sheol is naked before Him, and Destruction has no covering. He stretches out the north over empty space; He hangs the earth on nothing. He binds up the water in His thick clouds, yet the clouds are not broken under it. He covers the face of His throne, and spreads His cloud over it.”

It is a dangerous thing to attempt to place limitations on God or to dictate what He can and cannot do. It is likewise folly to insist that God must do a certain thing in the manner we see fit, at the time of our choosing, for the purposes we define, and within the parameters of what we determine as acceptable.

Men taking liberties with imposing their will on the omnipotent God of all that is isn’t something new. Many have tried throughout the ages, and all have failed in spectacular fashion because God does as He wills, not as man demands.

What Job had started to describe regarding the God he served was not a rough outline. It was not one facet of a multifaceted God, but a deep and profound rendering of the One at whom the dead tremble, as well as those under the waters and those inhabiting them.

Job lived in the desert. He was well versed in sand, sandstorms, blistering heat, and ever-present water shortages. The things he begins to enumerate regarding the omnipotence of God are so far removed from his lived experience that they could only have been divinely inspired; a revelation rather than a retelling of what he’d seen or witnessed.

The presence of God is transformative. The knowledge of Him stretches us beyond our mental or intellectual capacities to perceive the divine, because the things Job spoke of God were beyond man’s ability to reason or understand. How exactly could Job intuit that Sheol is naked before God, and Destruction has no covering, or that He hangs the earth on nothing all on his own? The short answer is he couldn’t have. None of the things he describes in his opening salvo could have been gleaned organically.

When Jesus asked His disciples who men said that He was, the answers varied from John the Baptist, to Elijah, to Jeremiah, or one of the prophets. He then focused in on the group of men before Him, and asked, “Who do you say that I am?”

That’s when Simon Peter took up the charge and answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

Rather than praise his intuitiveness or ability to logically conclude who He was, Jesus answered Peter and said, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father who is in heaven.”

Some things can only be perceived by divine revelation. Even after all the teaching they’d heard from the lips of Christ, and after having witnessed numerous miracles at His hands, it was God who revealed the reality of who Jesus was to Peter.

Job could not have known the things he was speaking save by divine revelation. This was God’s curriculum vitae, and He used Job as a means of delivering it at a time when most of what he mentioned could not have been revealed by flesh and blood.

Even broken and bleeding, bereft and stripped of all his earthly possessions, God chose Job as the vessel by which He described Himself because He found him worthy of this great honor.

On a broader theme, and one that is relatable to each of us, it doesn’t matter who others think or say Jesus is; what matters is who you believe Him to be. If it has been revealed to you, and you believe, that He is the Christ, the Son of the living God, then your life must reflect that reality in the good fruit that you bear. One cannot come to the knowledge of the truth of who Jesus is and remain unchanged, indifferent, or aloof. A good tree bears good fruit; a bad tree deflects and accuses others of the selfsame wickedness it’s rooted in that prohibits it from producing good fruit.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

Job CCLXVII

 Proverbs 29:20, “Do you see a man hasty in his words? There is more hope for a fool than for him.”

That was the synopsis given by Solomon, a king whom God deemed the wisest of his generation, excelling all the men of the East and all the wisdom of Egypt. Solomon prayed to God for wisdom and an understanding mind, and by God’s own assessment, he got it in spades. When weighing a pronouncement, it’s always wise to determine the source, who said it, and where it’s coming from. Yes, even a fool can say something profound once in a while, but it’s more likely that wise words will come from the lips of a wise man rather than a fool.

Fools try hard to sound wise and fail miserably. One blessed with wisdom speaks words of wisdom without looking as though they’d been harried, composing word salads that have nothing to do with the topic at hand. A former Vice President who recently ran for the presidency comes to mind.

Once in a while, I enjoy watching debates. Not political ones, mind you, since I find them trite and obnoxious on the best of days, but ones between Christian scholars and atheists. There is a man by the name of John Lennox who, among other things, is a lay theologian. The ease with which he dismantles his opponents and pokes holes in their theories is a joy to behold. You can tell he’s not trying to be brilliant; he simply is, and he doesn’t have to use big words to prove big ideas. He is a calm, thoughtful, grandfatherly type who doesn’t react in the heat of the moment, but even when his opponents grow belligerent and aggressive, he keeps his cool and thinks before he speaks.     

We all know that one individual in our sphere who tends to fly off the handle. It’s inevitable that we know such a person, someone whose words spill from their mouth without ever taking a pause to consider what they’re saying, or even if it makes sense, and if we can’t think of anyone, it’s probably us.

Job’s answer to Bildad could have been far harsher than it was, but in his quest to open the eyes of his friends to the possibility that they were wrong in their assessment of him, Job, once again, attempted to compel his friends to think, to ponder, to take the time and think the situation through rather than hastily say the first thing that came to their mind.

We’ve all had those moments when, in hindsight, we would have said something different than we did had we taken the time to consider it more thoroughly. Whether with friends, family, brothers, sisters, wives, or children, there are bound to be those moments when rather than being logical, reasonable, even keeled, and not reacting out of emotion or frustration, we say something we wish we could take back, something we know we shouldn’t have said, and the reason this occurs is because we speak in haste.

If ever this becomes a pattern, it’s time to consider Solomon’s words, and rather than continue down the path of speaking before we think, learn the gift of bridling our tongues, and weigh every word that pours from our lips, ensuring that they are spoken with grace and seasoned with salt.

That should be the aim, always, and without fail. Some try to season their words with honey, likely because they have an ulterior motive for doing so; others with vinegar, because they have heart issues that compel them to be bitter, but the aim should always be salt. Speak the truth, but speak it in love. Even when the need arises that we must speak rebuke or correction, it must be with grace.

Modern convenience being what it is, we’ve forgotten the value of salt, something those who came before us were keenly aware of. In the days before electricity, refrigeration, and the ever-present Piggly Wiggly, salt was valuable enough that it could be used as money, a value of exchange, and something highly prized.

A few weeks back, I was at the grocery store picking up some things for the house, and while walking the aisles, my wife texted that we needed salt. Trying to be a bit cheeky, as is my inclination, I texted back: “What kind of salt? There’s pink, black, coarse, flaky, kosher, sea salt, Himalayan, smoked, seasoned, and pickling; you need to be more specific.”

Evidently, she wasn’t in the mood for my elevated sense of humor because all she texted back was, just salt!

Thankfully, there was a generic box on the shelf that just said SALT, and since I aim to please, I bought it. It didn’t hurt that it was also the cheapest salt product in the store.

Although I pleaded ignorance in jest, knowing full well what type of salt my wife wanted, there are those who plead ignorance in earnest regarding what it is to speak our words with grace and seasoned with salt, not because they don’t know what this means, but because they prefer to speak hastily.

You can tell the difference in the exchange between Bildad and Job. While Bildad was focused on accusing Job of wickedness, Job was focused on compelling Bildad to some much-needed self-reflection, not attacking him personally but pleading with him to look inward and determine where he was in his walk with God.

Perhaps the most poignant question of the six that Job asked Bildad was the last, because it goes beyond the words that were spoken to something deeper: Whose spirit came from you?

Whenever we open our mouths to speak, before we utter a word, it would be wise indeed to determine whose spirit is animating us and insisting that we speak the words that are on the tip of our tongue. It can only be one of two sources: God’s spirit or the spirit of the god of this age. Only one of the two is proper, seasoned with salt, and should be verbalized. It is our duty as sons and daughters of God to hold every thought captive, to bridle our tongue, and to speak only the things He would have us speak with His spirit as the source. My feelings don’t count, my powers of deduction are irrelevant, and precedent is inconsequential.

Is what I am saying coming from God, or my flesh? Is what I am speaking in harmony with God’s Word or with the musings and machinations of the spirit of the god of this age? Is the prism through which I filter my thoughts before they get past my lips godliness, grace, wisdom, temperance, and Christ's likeness, or does the filter short-circuit altogether if we get overheated or our pride is bruised?     

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

Job CCLXVI

 Job 26:1-4, “But Job answered and said: ‘How have you helped him who is without power? How have you saved the arm that has no strength? How have you counseled one who has no wisdom? And how have you declared sound advice to many? To whom have you uttered words? And whose spirit came from you?’”

You can push a man farther than you thought you could, but eventually, if you keep pushing, you will push a man too far. Everyone’s got their limits; everyone has a point beyond which they can no longer remain silent, unperturbed, or calm.

If ever there was an apt analogy, this was the straw that broke the camel’s back when it came to Job’s patience, and rather than answer Bildad, he turned the microscope on him and gave him a taste of his own medicine.

Although it seems Zophar had already given up trying to persuade Job and convince him of the wickedness he knew himself to be innocent of, this was Bildad’s third attempt at bat, and not only had he swung and missed, but he’d gotten enough of a rise out of Job where he was no longer on the defense, but went on the offense.

It’s a lot easier to lob unsubstantiated accusations, draw conclusions based on no evidence, and stand rigidly upon the self-righteous soapbox we all carry around in the hope that we can put it to good use than it is to be the object of the selfsame scrutiny we gleefully foist upon others.

Contrary to his three friends, Job did not level ad hominem attacks against Bildad, or accuse him of wickedness, but asked him a series of poignant questions that demanded answers, answers which could not be honestly given unless some soul searching and introspection took place.    

Let’s set aside the unfounded accusations of wickedness, let’s overlook your digs at my integrity, let’s gloss over your unwillingness to take me at my word, and pretend as though you never called me a liar to my face. What have you done, exactly? How have you helped him who is without power? How have you saved the arm that has no strength? How have you counseled one who has no wisdom?

These are questions we would do well to ask ourselves any time we have the inclination to demand that others do more.

I’ve been in ministry for thirty-nine years. I started at age 12 and am now eligible to join AARP. No, I’m not of retirement age, not quite yet, but the AARP is dedicated to persons over the age of fifty, and I qualify.

Throughout these almost four decades, I’ve seen a lot. Some things I remember fondly, others I wish I could forget, but the one thing that broke my heart every time was seeing decent, well-meaning men and women burn out not because of something God demanded of them, but because they gave in to the voices and the pressure within their respective circles to do more.

By all means, walk in the calling to which you have been called. Do what God commands you to do, but don’t take it upon yourself to try and speed up the process, accelerate growth, expand, diversify, or any of the other buzzwords being bandied about in ministerial circles nowadays.

It’s not your place to have a five-year plan, target demographics, increase your visibility, market share, or digital footprint. Walk in obedience to God, and He will grow you at the pace He decides, in the manner He decides, and by the means He decides.

If God called you to preach the Word, then preach the Word. It shouldn’t matter if it’s to five people or five thousand. You’re doing the thing God called you to do.

When we give in to the pressure of trying to please people rather than pleasing God, it never ends well. From broken marriages to wayward children to once prominent leaders walking away from the faith, this was never God’s plan or purpose.

It was men who decided to draw outside the lines, to stretch beyond their calling, to get ahead of God, and they paid dearly for it.

Every couple of weeks, I get an email from someone that, although varying in tonality, has the same underlying premise: if I were you, I’d be traveling and preaching nonstop! If I were you, I’d release all the dreams and visions for public consumption. If I were you, I’d focus on deliverance, prophecy, preaching, teaching, impartation, and a handful of other things that to the individuals in question seem more pertinent and important than what I am currently doing.

Rarely is there someone who says just do what the Lord told you to do, because that’s just the nature of modern discourse.

We are all called to serve, follow, and obey Jesus. That’s the baseline for every individual calling themselves a son or daughter of God. What He calls us to do beyond that, in whatever capacity, for whatever length of time, is intimate and personal, between the individual and God, and no man has the right to impose his will on that individual's calling.

I get that most people are well-meaning, but there are a handful who would rather judge another’s garden than tend to their own because it requires less effort to do so. Rather than focus on what someone is or isn’t doing, or insist that they should be doing more of what they already are, perhaps our time would be better spent asking ourselves the questions that Job asked Bildad: How have I helped? How have I counseled? How have I declared sound advice to many?

We all will stand before God one day, and we will not be judged by men or the opinions of men, but by the sovereign, omniscient Creator of all that is, and in His righteous judgment He will determine whether we were faithful servants, doing what He commanded, or faithless, double tongued, rebellious goats who exploited the people of God and supposed that godliness was a means of gain.

Just remember, it’s binary: left or right, sheep or goat, beloved or cast out, obedient or faithless; there is no in-between.      

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

Job CCLXV

 It takes humility to acknowledge how little we know, and for Bildad, humility was in short supply. Only God can rightfully claim the title of omniscient. All others may claim full knowledge of their particular field, or a topic they’ve studied and researched ad nauseam, but as far as omniscience goes, it’s defined as all knowing, or knowing everything about everything. It’s not guessing, assuming, gauging probabilities, or calculating the odds; it’s full and complete knowledge of all things, whether hidden, secret, or out in the open.

Bildad and his friends were big on assumptions, correlations, and by all accounts worshiped at the altar of causality with such rigidity as to make a monk seem flighty and erratic. To them, the simplest explanation was always the right one, but what made it worse was that no other reason for Job’s suffering would be entertained or considered.

The sad reality is that Bildad was not the exception to the rule. We, each, in our own way, adopt this mindset whether frequently or infrequently, and conclude that if something hasn’t happened to us personally, if we’ve not experienced something ourselves, then it can’t be true for anyone else, no matter how different our circumstances or situations.

Whether the issue is prophecy, dreams, visions, or the gifts of the Holy Spirit, they are dismissed by a large swath of the contemporary church for the simple fact that they’ve never experienced them themselves. It’s like saying that just because I never jumped out of an airplane, anyone who insists they have must be lying.

When you insist that they, too, can have the same experience, that it’s not secret or hidden, and a drive to their closest small airport will likely give them all the proof they need, they will deflect, citing time constraints, a busy life, or some other arbitrary reason for not getting to the truth of the matter for themselves.

The gifts of the Holy Spirit are no longer acquirable!

Have you asked God? Have you gone before Him and sincerely desired the spiritual gifts of which Paul speaks?

No, why should I? They aren’t available, so why should I waste my time?

But who said they’re no longer among us?

My denomination, of course, and our doctrine of covenants are sacrosanct.

That’s usually the way the conversation goes, and it’s no less myopic than Bildad’s stance that righteousness cannot be attained by anyone born of a woman, even though God Himself may have declared him as such.

Make sure the hill you’re willing to die on is a hill worth dying on. Make sure the person, institution, or doctrine you’re defending is one worth defending. Men and women throughout history have gone to their deaths with praise on their lips, not for some arbitrary, tertiary issue concerning some vague interpretation of a verse conveniently taken out of context, but for the sake of Christ Jesus their Lord.

It’s not only off-putting but downright suspect when anyone chooses to defend a theological position with more fervor, passion, and determination than they would the lordship of Christ.

What about Jesus? We’ll get to Jesus eventually, but first, you have to agree with me on this one issue, whether that issue happens to be the timing of the Lord’s return or that a particular denomination is superior to another.

We get so wrapped up in the minutiae that have nothing to do with salvation, regeneration, sanctification, or rebirth that, at some point, it becomes our de facto identity. We are no longer bondservants of Christ or followers of the Way, but Baptists, Pentecostals, Lutherans, Methodists, pre-tribbers, and post-tribbers. We insulate ourselves to the point of existing in an echo chamber, where everyone we come in contact with agrees with us on that one issue, never once concerning ourselves with whether or not they are serving and following Christ. They must be pure of heart and righteous beyond measure; they agree with me on my pet doctrine after all.

It’s one of the reasons so many wolves stand behind pulpits victimizing the sheep today. We are more concerned with whether they graduated from the right seminary than we are with whether they are above reproach. We are more concerned with how they dress and how much gel they use in their hair than with whether the Spirit of God resides in them and the words they speak are spoken in power.

We focus on the superficial, the irrelevant, the tertiary and secondary issues, while ignoring the things that matter because were we to hold our leaders to a biblical standard, we too would be called upon to live up to the same.

Bildad could not allow for the possibility of a man being righteous before God, because if he did, it would mean it was attainable, and something he knew himself not to be.

God doesn’t do that anymore, not because He can’t, not because He’s changed, but because He’s not doing it through me, and if He’s not doing it through me, He can’t be doing it through anyone, anywhere, at any time.

That type of self-importance is galling, but it also goes a long way into revealing how such individuals view themselves compared to their fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. It’s never said outright, but always implied, that they are by far the most righteous people they know, and if they have not experienced the power and presence of the Holy Spirit, then what hope do the rest of us have? It’s in God’s best interest to pick the best, and if He hasn’t picked me, He likely hasn’t picked anyone.

Luke 18:10-14, “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, ‘God, I thank You that I am not like other men – extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I possess.’ And the tax collector, standing afar off, would not so much as raise his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me a sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.