Incongruity

 There’s good reason for the visceral reaction some have to irrelevant, self-diluted people telling them what they must do to save the planet, the rainforest, or the chickadee. At the same time, they themselves feel exempted from doing likewise, and while they’re puttering about in private jets, going to climate action conferences, it’s you who must stop driving your Hyundai to work every day; otherwise, the blood of billions is on your hands.

It’s the hypocrisy, I think, but also the condescending, elitist, snobbish way they go about telling you that rather than turn the heat on in winter, you should dress in layers while the voltage needed to illuminate their mansions could power an entire region in Papua New Guinea. No, I’ve never been, but I hear it’s the place to be if you like taro root.

One thing I’ve always respected about Paul was that he wasn’t the type to insist that those to whom he was writing do as he said, not as he did. Coincidentally, neither was any individual who, by inspiration of the Holy Spirit, was compelled to pen what would later become books of the Bible. There’s no sense they are of the mindset that those who can’t do teach in any of their writings because it’s hard to write about something you don’t know, have never been, or fail to understand.

I am not an island unto myself. I don’t think I know it all or that I have no need of spiritual succor myself, so whenever I have some free time, which is as rare as an honest politician, I try to find a sermon to listen to on the interwebs. One thing I’ve noticed, especially with the up-and-coming, young guns of evangelicalism, is that you can tell they’ve never experienced or lived what they’re attempting to teach others.

They quote the right verses well enough and say the right things for the most part, but there is no passion in the delivery, and there is no hunger, yearning, or desire to experience what they are attempting to relay. It’s a guy in skinny jeans with a neck tattoo being professorial, not divinely inspired, and it shows that they’ve never been near Jesus, walked with Him, or known Him.

The presence of Christ in your life is transformative. You cannot remain as you were, doing as you did once you have an encounter with Jesus. That transformation comes through, whether consciously or unconsciously, and it’s never forced or fabricated. When it is, when men are pretending to be something they’re not, if you listen hard enough and long enough, you begin to spot the contradiction.

If Jesus is Lord, and He redeemed you from eternal destruction, why do you talk about yourself so much? Why do you try to elevate your stature while minimizing Christ? If it is Him working through you, why do you appropriate what He has done as though it were your own?

If heaven is your ultimate destination, and being in His presence for eternity is your ultimate goal, why focus on the things of this earth so consistently as to make yourself predictable every time you open your mouth?

If I were to insist that I loved my wife, yet every other day I was seen out on the town with another, would anyone believe that I loved my wife?

In a nutshell, that’s the answer to why how we conduct ourselves matters. People watch, people see, and people draw conclusions based on the aggregate data they’ve collected. There’s a reason we are told that our conduct must be worthy of the gospel of Christ because nothing is more off-putting than someone whose consistent actions betray him as being a hypocrite at heart.

I’m not telling you to follow me; I don’t want you to follow me. I’m just a guy working out his salvation with fear and trembling; no more. So again, don’t follow me, but for your soul’s sake, don’t follow them. Before you ask who you should follow, follow Jesus. There’s a novel idea. Don’t follow men who insist they can get you an audience with Christ; don’t follow individuals promising you a face-to-face with Jesus; go straight to the source because if you knock, He will open. You do not need an intermediary.

Thirty-seven years is a long time to see people shipwrecked, heartbroken, and disillusioned because the guy they thought was the next messianic figure for the ages turned out to be a perv who liked getting rubdowns from gay men. Yes, that’s how long I’ve been in ministry. Yes, I’ve seen it all, and most of it isn’t good.

Humility and faithfulness are not bombastic enough for the average Christian. You need an edge, an angle, something to get people’s attention, something to draw the eye, something to get them talking about you. Maybe a first tattoo in your seventies while knocking on death’s door with all the vigor your bony fingers could muster. I don’t know; I’m just spitballing.

Entertainment is all well and good; who doesn’t like a laser light show with a fog machine as backup? But that’s not why you go to church. Your first question shouldn’t be how long the service is, how far you have to drive, whether the sermon made you feel good, or if the pastor is hip enough to have an Instagram account. Your first and only question should be whether it is Biblical. Is it Christ-centered, Christ-focused, Christ-glorifying, and Christ-exalting? Did the message focus on Christ and the cross or man and the things of this earth?

Not all the fault lies with the mealy-mouthed, duplicitous, half-hearted, lukewarm pulpit pimps. If there were no demand, there would be no supply. If you want truth, you need look no further than your Bible. If you’re looking for voices telling you that’s not what the Bible means, even though that’s what it says, there are plenty of those as well. As always, the choice is yours.  

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

Salt & Light

 Salt is a preservative. Light is a disinfectant. Both aid in eliminating, or at the very least, the slowing down of corruption. Their absence precipitates and speeds up the process of decomposition, so without their presence in a community or nation, things fall apart far faster than they would have had they been present. You can tell when a nation has moved away from God because the corrosive properties of sin intensify and metastasize simultaneously. Sin gets more perverted and hedonistic while at the same time corrupting more and more souls. Sound familiar?

There. We’ve solved the riddle. It wasn’t rocket science, after all. It no longer remains a mystery as to why there seems to be an escalation in evil, godlessness, and all manner of perversion, both in speed and level of depravity. The less salt there is in the world, the faster and more pronounced the corruption. The less light there is in the world, the more extreme the infection.

The rate at which culture collapses is a good indicator of the church's health. If the pace is slow and the corruption is held in check, then there is still enough salt and light doing what they do: They’re keeping the corruption at bay and slowing down the process of decomposition. If, perchance, it seems as though the bottom dropped out and there’s no end in sight, with everything collapsing in hyper speed, then you know that the salt has lost its flavor and the light has been dimmed.

I understand that this generation, being more audacious than any other that came before it, finds nothing wrong in looking their noses down at giants of the faith such as Paul, Peter, Luke, John, Jude, James, Timothy, or Matthew. However, using the metric that Jesus set forth, where do you think we score as far as spiritual health is concerned?

Matthew 5:13-16, “You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt loses its flavor, how shall it be seasoned? It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men. You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do they light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. Let your light so shine before me, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.”

One of the most destructive teachings to ever find a place in the doctrinal narrative of certain denominations is that you are not accountable to God for anything; nothing is required of you, and you have no duty to perform other than the tithe check every thirty days. It made people lazy and slothful and kept them ignorant of their responsibilities toward God and their fellow man.

Like the five-minute abs and the four-hour workweek, the idea that heaven was free rather than priceless found an audience. It spread like wildfire because who doesn’t like something for nothing, especially if that something is fire insurance at a giveaway rate?

It wasn’t love for Jesus that drew men; it was fear of hell. It was a deal they couldn’t pass up even if they were dubious about the whole God, devil, heaven, hell thing. Raise a hand, and you’re on the list. You get on with your life, making no change, seeing no transformation, feeling no different. Then, because something still gnawed at them, given that they inherently understood there had to be something more to the whole thing than just repeating a prayer once, they were told there wasn’t a hell anymore so that fixed it mighty quickly.

We pronounce people saved in perpetuity before they even understand from what, by whom, and for what purpose. It’s the only way we can brag about ten thousand people finding Jesus on a given Tuesday, but if this is the case, and every other Tuesday the army of God grows by ten thousand souls, why is everything getting worse, and those bold enough to say they follow Jesus dwindling?

The church is supposed to impact the world, not the other way around.

You are salt. The world is supposed to perceive you as an irritant because you are. Salt impedes the process of corruption, and those already corrupted and seeking to corrupt despise you for standing in the way of their plans. If your nature does not grate on the devil, the salt has lost its flavor. There’s no other way of interpreting this verse, and if this is the case, then it opens up a whole new batch of uncomfortable questions.

Why are some spiritual leaders today more comfortable in the presence of the godless than the children of God? Why are some preachers and pastors exalted by those who have no fellowship with the light? Why do certain denominations run interference for perversion, attempting to normalize it in the eyes of their parishioners?

The litmus test for salt is that it retains its flavor. If it doesn’t pass the test, then the only thing it’s good for is to be thrown out into the street and be trampled underfoot. It sounds a bit harsh, but they’re not my words. They are the words of Jesus, and no, they are not incongruent with His nature. They are incongruent with who this generation says Jesus should be: an awe shucks, go along to get along, lovey-dovey we’ll get you in through the back door sort of guy.

Jesus isn’t slashing prices because the big day is drawing near, and there are still seats to be filled. He’s not looking to make a deal just to pack out the venue. The roadmap for man’s salvation was laid out in the Bible, as were God’s expectations of those who would call themselves His. Anyone who thinks they can circumvent the Word is only fooling themselves.

John 14:6, “Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.”’

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

Falsely

 I always find it off-putting when men of supposed spiritual renown attempt to use a carefully edited piece of scripture to defend their actions. Usually, it’s something gnarly enough that it leads to tears, divorce, defrocking, and federal indictments.

There’s evidence of some kind, most often the video with crystal clear audio, so they can’t deny it. They’re not politicians; they don’t yet have the gull to insist people don’t believe their lying eyes.

And so they take a Bible to the butcher block, and just by removing a handful of words from a passage, they can change the entire meaning. Because they trust that their flock is biblically illiterate and the only time they touch a Bible is to wave it in the air on a given Sunday, they speak lies with confidence and conviction, usually to the raucous applause of their parishioners and spoken promises of standing with him in this time of persecution.

Getting caught being a dirty birdy with a secretary half your age is not being persecuted, Bishop. Getting caught using the church’s building fund for going on island adventures with ten of your closest friends isn’t the devil attacking you, Deacon.

If we bothered to read our Bibles, we’d see that Jesus was specific about what qualifies as persecution. Why does this matter? Because if you are truly being persecuted, it’s a good thing, and Jesus even goes so far as to say you are blessed.

Matthew 5:11-12, “Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for My sake. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

Usually, it’s that first part people quote with passion and conviction, not so much the second part. For you to be blessed when you are being reviled and persecuted and when all kinds of evil are said against you, it must be false. All the nasty things they say must be false, and for His name’s sake, for you to qualify for blessing.

If what is being said is factual and accurate, then it’s not persecution. The individual is being exposed for being a duplicitous windbag who exploited the Word of God and the people of God for filthy lucre and took advantage of their position as a spiritual authority to destroy innocent people in his orbit just because he couldn’t deny his fleshly urges.

You can’t conflate the two and place them under the umbrella of persecution.

If Bishop Earl got caught being a perv on Skype after the online service, that’s not persecution, that’s not someone you should defend, and the only prayer you should pray on their behalf is that they find repentance, not that the matter gets swept under the rug.

My grandpa had a story he liked to tell of a city fellow going to a fish market, trying to pick out a fish, and pretending like he knew what he was doing. He walked up and down the aisles, with stalls to either side and the fishmongers keen for his business. He’d nod occasionally but never broke stride, and the men grew eager, waiting for him to stop and pick a fish.  He stopped by a stall with a handful of pike sitting on crushed ice, then bent forward and began to sniff the tail of the biggest one on offer.

His curiosity getting the better of him, the fishmonger behind the stall bunched his eyebrows and said, “If you don’t mind my asking, what are you doing, sir?”

“Why, checking for freshness,” the man answered.

“If you want to check for freshness,” the fishmonger said, “you don’t sniff the tail; you sniff the head. The head is always the first thing to go bad on a fish; if the head is rotten, the rest is not far behind.”

If someone is claiming victimhood and that they’re being persecuted when what they’re being accused of is demonstrably factual, that head is already rotten. Don’t defend a rotten head because the disease will spread to the rest of the body, and all you’ll end up with is another statistic. All you’ll have is another story the godless can play on a loop, point fingers at, and mock, and we’ve had plenty of that to last us a lifetime just in the past couple of months alone.

Real persecution is a given. Jesus said when, not if, but that’s another thing the contemporary church has conveniently overlooked because it stands in opposition to their version of the gospel, that is another gospel and not the Gospel of Christ.

It’s hard to prepare a congregation for persecution when all you’ve ever preached is prosperity, yet Jesus said, blessed are you when they revile and persecute you. As far as Jesus was concerned, persecution is a matter of when.

You’ll know it’s real persecution when what you are being accused of is a lie and also when it is being done for His sake. Your association with Jesus, your allegiance to Him, and your worship of Him will ignite the hatred against you.

Those who do not serve Him have nothing to fear of real persecution, but they have every reason in the world to fear standing before God one day and hearing Him pass sentence. I would rather endure persecution today and rejoice in it, knowing I will hear well done than align myself with those who will be told to depart just to spare my flesh. That’s just me, though; everyone must make their own choice.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

My Pillow

 Spiritual slumber is the gateway to spiritual death. Stay asleep long enough, refuse to awaken, and do everything you can to ignore the blaring alarms, and eventually, your breathing slows, your organs begin to shut down, your conscience is seared, and death is breathing down your neck and whispering in your ear. As Newton so aptly surmised, an object at rest remains at rest, and an object in motion remains in motion. The more you sleep, the more you’ll want to sleep. It’s the way it’s always been, and it won’t change even if you have the nifty Apple watch that tells you how much REM you got or how many times a minute you breathe while you’re counting sheep.

Most people who are spiritually asleep don’t know that they are. Even those who are grudgingly starting to admit to themselves that what they believe is contrary to the Bible don’t like to be called on it. If you try to point it out, they get angry and lash out as though you were trying to steal their pillow. Who are you to judge? Have you checked the beam in your eye? What’s the harm in believing this or that aberrant doctrine not in harmony with the Word?

First off, judging and warning are two different things. To judge another is to conclude that they are guilty and pass a sentence. To warn another is to love them enough to point out the precipice they’re heading toward while whistling all the live long day. It’s easier to deflect than to own up to certain things. It’s why so many of us think the dryer is purposefully shrinking our shirts and not that we’ve put on a few pounds.

Granted, you kind of are trying to take away their pillow or make them very uncomfortable while laying on it, but it’s not out of a sense of acrimony or because you’re trying to be needlessly insensitive. You admonish people to wake up because now’s not the time for sleep. It’s one thing not to want to wake up; it’s another seeing the person trying to wake you up as your sworn enemy.

Perhaps it’s due to ignorance of how dangerous spiritual slumber is that they see you as a foe whenever you attempt to awaken them. Even when you’re just quoting scripture, someone inevitably takes offense because we’d rather not be stirred awake, we’d rather not rub the sleep from our eyes, and we’d rather not have to contend with the reality staring us in the face.

We’ve taken to believing God’s warnings have a snooze feature, and they don’t. When God commands us to awaken from our sleep, we can’t just roll over and think that we will do it eventually, perhaps when we hear the birds chirping outside or when the sun begins to shine through our window. There must be an urgency to our reaction to the Word of God. When God says today, He doesn’t mean tomorrow. When God says now, He doesn’t mean later.

Romans 13:11, “And do this, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep; for now our salvation is nearer than when we first believed.”

You never take advice from your enemy. That’s a hard and fast rule that’s never let anyone down. If the devil wants you asleep, you should do your utmost to remain awake because he’s not trying to do you any favors. He’ll even seem empathetic and conciliatory. He knows you’re tired, and it’s taking longer than you thought, and you deserve some rest. And look at all the other people that are asleep, and they seem to be doing just fine. Lay down, close your eyes, tune out the alarm bells, and rest awhile.

Not only does the Word of God tell us that we should wake out of our sleep, but it also tells us what we should awaken to. Being awake just for the sake of being awake won’t do much for your spiritual man. It’s better than not being asleep, but we’ve all had those mornings where, even though we’re fully awake, we’re unmotivated and end up lying in bed staring at the ceiling for far longer than we should.

1 Corinthians 15:34, “Awake to righteousness, and do not sin; for some do not have the knowledge of God. I speak this to your shame.”

If you are awake, be awake with a purpose. Awake to righteousness, and do not sin. But that’s legalism! That’s works salvation! Who would dare pen such constraining exhortation? It must have been that Peter fellow; he was always on some holiness kick or another. Actually, it was Paul, the same Paul whose writings some use as an excuse for a libertine and sin-laden life because, you know, grace.

Just because, even at your best, you’re not good enough to enter heaven, it doesn’t mean you have a license to live at your worst. We all need the grace of God because, on our own, without grace, we are incapable of achieving perfection. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t strive, or as Paul puts it, awake to righteousness and not sin.

Those who slumber will continue to do so unperturbed. They neither strive nor fight the good fight nor run the race that they might obtain the prize. They are unconcerned with anything other than their comfort because it directly affects their ability to sleep.

Those who have awakened must then pursue righteousness because it is when we knock that He opens, and when we seek that we find Him.

Ephesians 5:14, “Therefore He says: awake, you who sleep, arise from the dead, and Christ will give you light.”

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

Data Points

 The entire purpose of a consumer-driven society is to make it as easy as possible for the individual consumer to willingly part with his hard-earned money in exchange for things he doesn’t need, will never use, and will end up either in a landfill somewhere or donated to a thrift store upon their death, where another less affluent consumer will repurchase it for pennies on the dollar.

Buy one box of toothpicks from someone, and for the rest of your life, every other day, you’ll get invited to participate in a survey to tell them how to better serve you, how to make your buying experience better, and what they can do to keep your business.

Taco Bell is worse. They offer you a free burrito for participating in their survey. Like anyone wants to be reminded about the near-death experience from the last time they dared to chase the refried burrito dragon or repeat the experience. For most, the ruination of their bowels and a perfectly good pair of pants doesn’t need a sequel.

The customer is always right is not just a slogan anymore; it is gospel, and if you challenge the customer in any way, shape, or form, he’ll just go somewhere else. Do you want to return half-used deodorant a year after purchasing it because you just didn’t like it? By all means, we’ll even send you a prepaid label. All you need to do is put it in a box, slap the label on it, and we’ll process your refund as soon as we get it back.

The moment the modern-day church began implementing consumer-driven principles to increase attendance was the moment it began its inevitable decline. Not at first. Not in the beginning. When it all started, it was a novel idea. The sheep finally got a say as to what they were fed, and if the shepherd didn’t comply, they’d just go somewhere else.

Their opinion finally mattered. Their elevated view of themselves was finally validated. Every week, they’d get a card in the seat pocket in front of them asking what they’d like to hear being preached from the pulpit, and the answer was rarely, if ever, more Jesus, more holiness, more righteousness, and more obedience.

If they were going to spend a couple of hours each week sitting in a pew, they might as well get something practical out of it. The shepherds acquiesced. The customer, after all, is always right, so rather than preach Jesus, they began doing series on how to budget your household income, how to keep the spark alive in your marriage, and even those couldn’t be wholly biblical because telling people divorce and remarriage was a sin upset too many customers.

The sheep ate it up. Everything was about the here and now. Everything revolved around the flesh. Everything was about having more, getting more, and being more, but not of the spiritual because getting more of the spiritual requires sacrifice and mortifying the flesh, which was a deal breaker.

They were no longer convicted of their sin when they walked into the church; they no longer had to contend with things such as repentance or faithfulness; they got everything they ever wanted, and it turned out that what they wanted was poison for their soul.

A new survey done by Gallup shows that belief in God is at an all-time low in America. It’s no surprise, not when you keep giving people everything they want and nothing of what they need. The novelty has worn off, and the sheep have come to realize that they can get everything they want on YouTube without leaving their home or ponying up ten percent of their income to do it.

The church stopped providing the one thing exclusive to the church: spiritual succor. We stopped preaching the gospel and rightly dividing the word; we stopped feeding men’s souls, and it shows.

A starving man will only show up to get fed so many times, with nothing to show for it, before he stops showing up. It’s not worth the effort if he leaves in the same state he arrived week after week.

It’s easy to try and blame the world, but it’s not the world who failed the church; it’s the church who failed the church. Our goal became something other than men’s souls, and everything turned into a numbers game. How big a sanctuary can we build? How many people can we get to come? Was the offering this week more than last week’s? 

The questions all along should have been, are we preaching the gospel? Are we preaching a risen Christ? Are we preaching repentance? Are we feeding men’s souls? But the data points told us we shouldn’t. The sheep wanted a departure from green pastures and living waters. We had to give them what they wanted.

A backlash of biblical proportions is just around the corner. It is inevitable. The same sheep that demanded that the gospel stop being preached are those who will look for someone to blame for feeling hopeless, empty, and unmoored.

And that’s not the worst of it. Not by a country mile. Imagine being responsible for shipwrecking thousands upon thousands of souls. Imagine not having the constitution and fear of God necessary to disregard what the sheep wanted and giving them when they needed. Imagine putting profits before people, sheckles before souls, and the world’s validation before God’s approval. Imagine standing before God with blood on your hands. Just imagine.

Matthew 18:6, “But whoever causes one of these little ones who believes in Me to sin, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were drowned in the depth of the sea.” – Jesus

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

Follow Through

 What would have happened if Noah hadn’t acted on what God told him to do? What would have happened if, having heard that the end of all flesh was near, Noah would have shrugged his shoulders and gone about his business as though nothing out of the ordinary had occurred?

What God commanded Noah to do was no small thing. He was not commanded to build a toy boat to sail around the lake; he was commanded to build an ark big enough to hold two of every sort of living thing, plus food rations, plus Noah and his family.

Although opinions vary on how long it took Noah to build the ark, there is a consensus that it took over fifty years, fifty being the minimum and as long as seventy-five. After God gave Noah his instructions, the Word does not infer that He checked up on Noah occasionally or gave him a pep talk every so often.

God told Noah what He planned to do, gave him the blueprint for what he needed to do, and Noah went to work.

Genesis 6:22, “Thus Noah did; according to all that God commanded him, so he did.”

Not only did Noah get to work, he did so according to all that God commanded him. He didn’t try to cut corners, make the ark shorter by a few cubits, or fail to cover it with pitch on the inside and outside. God’s instructions were specific, and Noah’s follow-through was likewise specific.

I’ve always found it peculiar when God speaks to someone, giving them specific instructions, they come nowhere doing what God told them to do but still expect God to keep His end of the agreement and intervene on their behalf. There’s a reason God uses ‘IF’ in the Bible so often. You can’t circumvent the conditionality of Scripture when it comes to certain promises God makes.

Had Noah not done what God commanded, as He commanded it, would Noah and his family still have been saved? There’s a question that should keep you up at night if you’re not walking in the will of God.

We all know that if His people who are called by His name will humble themselves and pray and seek His face, He will heal their land, but will they? The entire promise of restoration hangs in the balance, contingent on those two letters: IF.

I don’t know if Noah ever saw rain or not. We like to speculate on the matter, but what we know with certainty is that it hadn’t rained before the fall of Adam and Eve. Whether it rained after and Noah had seen rain is irrelevant to me. Even if it poured every other day, the man still labored for fifty years based on one instruction he’d received from God.

Even if Noah had seen rain, that it would rain so much for so long that every living thing on the earth would perish was still something he had to take on faith.

Because the ark, the flood, and the animals two by two are the focal points of the saga, we tend to gloss over the amount of faith Noah possessed to do what he did while being mocked, ridiculed and whispered about behind his back by the people of his time.

It didn’t matter to Noah who said what about him. He had a duty to perform a job to finish, and day after day, he went at it with the zeal and gusto of a new hire at his dream job.

Fifty years minimum. Toil and sweat and countless hours sawing and hammering, measuring and cutting, all off of one encounter with God where He revealed His plan to Noah. He wasn’t even teleported to heaven to sit on God’s lap, as some modern-day soothsayers insist is happening to them every other day and twice on Sunday. God spoke to Noah, and Noah listened. Then Noah did what God told him to do.

He didn’t start a prophecy school, nor did he put together a course on how to hear the voice of God for yourself; he obeyed, not for a season, not for a year, not until the novelty wore off, but until he finished; until he was done. Until there was an ark to God’s specifications, fully functional and complete.

Noah was a just man who walked with God, perfect in his generation, before being tasked with building the ark. The righteousness was a prerequisite for the instruction he would receive to save himself and his family. It’s not semantics. It matters because we’ve grown used to doing nothing but the bare minimum and even less, if possible, sort of faith because we believed the voices who insisted that God no longer has a standard.

Noah was perfect in his generation before God put him to work for over half a century. That should give us all reason for pause, especially if we’ve come to believe that all that’s required of us is walking the aisle and saying a prayer.

There’s a difference between an act of obedience and walking in obedience. Between an act of faith and walking in faith. Noah walked in both obedience and faith, doing as God instructed for as long as he needed to until the job was done. For His role, God stayed the rains until Noah finished, then once everyone was aboard the ark, He shut the door so that no one could enter anymore.

Everyone wants a seat on the lifeboat once they see the waters rising. You don’t have to take it on faith anymore; then again, at that point, it’s not faith. It’s instinctual self-preservation. People don’t want the lifeboat because Jesus is in it; they want it because it will spare their lives.

Are you reacting in fear or faith to the things you see around you? Are you reacting out of obedience or a sense of self-preservation? If God commanded you to do something that you and your household might be saved, have you followed through, or are you focusing on something else that human reason insists will work better? So many questions, so few answers. Such is life sometimes.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

Triage

 The shadows grow long, and the day is almost done. It’s something everyone is feeling to a greater or lesser degree. Perhaps it’s just my circle of friends and the people I interact with, but I have yet to meet someone over the last couple of years who believes that the world is headed in the right direction or that the church is doing what it was tasked with to its fullest.

The night comes just as Jesus said it would, and of late, I’ve been wrestling with the question of how to best redeem our time before the moment comes when no man can work. That’s another thing Jesus said would happen: no man can work when the night comes. It’s a heady thing to consider that at some point in the near future, it will become impossible to carry out our duties, work, and be effective for the Kingdom. It’s not like we will have lost the desire; it’s that we will be unable to.

Imagine the sort of control that will blanket the world, both in real life and on the interwebs, where everything will be censored to such an extent that the algorithm will shut you down the moment you say anything deemed inflammatory, divisive, or unacceptable. The technology already exists. They’re just waiting for the right moment.

While mulling over this most important of questions, I got an e-mail from someone I hadn’t heard from in a long time. We used to run into each other often when I lived in California, and every time the conversation would turn to faith and God, he’d make some snide comment about spaghetti monsters, zombies, and all the other things immature petulant children say about things they possess no understanding of.

Even after I moved, from time to time, I’d write him an e-mail reminding him that he needed Jesus. While most of the time, he wouldn’t reply, when he did, it was with the same worn and stale lines the formerly chic and currently pathetic and underwhelming atheist class regurgitates at the drop of a hat.

Then, around a year ago, I stopped. No more e-mails. Cold turkey. I have enough on my plate on any given day that I only get half done, and I realized that try as I might, there was no getting through to him.

Then, a few days back, I opened my e-mail folder to find an e-mail from him titled, ‘You stopped writing.’ The e-mail itself was congenial enough, asking how I’d been and if I was still on the Jesus train, then he asked why I’d stopped writing and telling him that he needed Jesus. Not that he’d do anything about it, mind you; he was just curious why I’d stopped.

I wrote him back, letting him know I was well enough and that we’d just returned from a trip to the home country; then, as far as why I hadn’t reminded him he needed Jesus was concerned, it was because he already knew. I’d said it often enough in enough ways with enough passion and pathos that there was no confusing the message.

There comes a point where you’ve done all you can, and it’s time to shake the dust off your feet. I realize this may sound calloused to some, but it’s a matter of maximizing your time and resources, and to do that, sometimes triage is necessary.

As with most things in life, this, too, is situational because a mother will never stop praying for her son, nor will a father stop praying for his daughter, but that’s not what either I nor the Bible is suggesting.

It’s one thing to pray for someone, asking God to intervene and show them the truth; it’s another to approach them daily with the same message only to be rejected and mocked. The time you spend repeatedly intreating the same individual to no avail could be allocated to telling ten other people about Jesus, one of whom might just repent and surrender their life to Him.

Matthew 10:14, “And whoever will not receive you nor hear your words, when you depart from that house or city, shake off the dust from your feet.”

Jesus didn’t say that if someone refused to receive or hear your words, you should camp out in front of their house and remind them of what you said the previous day for as long as it takes. Our duty is not to bang our heads against an iron heart, hoping it will soften over time. Although He didn’t say how long we were supposed to try, He made it clear that there would be a time to depart, and when you do so, shake the dust off your feet.

It’s a big world with many lost people; some just want to roll in the mud without accountability or a desire to change. It’s like the person who goes to the doctor only to be told they need to change their diet and lifestyle if they want to live past the new year, and they go home and continue doing the exact same thing. Upon going in for their follow-up, the message is the same, and still, there is no change. Eventually, they’re just wasting the doctor’s time and their own because they are unwilling to make the necessary changes.  

I don’t know who this was for, but it was for someone. Yes, there comes a time when you depart and, upon so doing, shake off the dust from your feet.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

Harmonies

 History rarely repeats itself, but it harmonizes more often than we would like to admit. Not everything plays out exactly as it did in prior iterations, but the similarities and similitudes are undeniable in the aggregate. If it happened once, it’s likely to happen again, and the reason is man's unyielding, unchanging nature. By nature of our flesh, we are stiffnecked and stubborn to the point of hurting ourselves and those we love just to say we got the upper hand in an argument.

If someone is willing to go scorched earth when the stakes are something as irrelevant as who left a wet towel on the floor, what do you think some people will do when the stakes are power, prestige, and more money than they could earn honestly in a hundred lifetimes?

We may like to think we are different from our forefathers, more erudite and contemplative, more world-wise and discerning, but other than a few gadgets and an alarming decrease in testosterone when it comes to young men, we are the same, ever-bumbling about, ever trying to stand out, ever trying to be one rung above our contemporaries.

We may bathe more and smell a bit better, but we are no different than those who came before us, and more than anything, this is why, even without prophetic insight, the future is somewhat predictable. The only unknowns are what some have taken to calling black swan events, and those usually throw a wrench in the works, but all things being equal, barring a cataclysmic natural disaster or a world war, the following year is relatively easy to map out.

Since I have neither the time nor the inclination to cover the world, we’ll stick to our side of the hemisphere and focus on some of the things we will likely see play out over the next twelve months or so. This isn’t prophecy; it’s what I personally see happening, just so we’re clear.

That some will likely take this article and spin it enough to make it their own and then decree that it was a message from on High is beyond my control. We all have to answer for what we do and the words we speak in His name, so I’ll leave them in God’s hands.

When propagandists see that their propaganda isn’t working as effectively anymore, they can only double down on the propaganda and simultaneously attempt to silence anyone with an opposing viewpoint. What we are likely to see sooner rather than later is a ratcheting up of the propaganda and a renewed concerted effort to silence anyone with an audience who does not toe the line and parrot the narrative. Fear is a tool that has worked well in the past, so I wouldn’t be surprised if another heretofore unheard-of deadly pathogen were to emerge and make its way around the world in less time than it would take you to read the book of Obadiah.

It will be unprecedented and horrible beyond belief, and the only surefire cure will be to vote by mail in the next elections. The pieces are already being moved into place, and the board is set for a repeat of 2020. Indeed, the dead shall rise anew to vote for the most popular person ever to wear adult diapers. Before you judge the dead, just remember he’s the only one who can see them. On more than one occasion, the man, the myth, the legend that was the vanquisher of none other than Cornpop has shaken hands with people who weren’t there. It’s a gift not all possess.

I don’t see a return to lockdowns, not because they wouldn’t love to replay that particular classic, but because not enough people will comply again, and the economy couldn’t handle the stress of another two years of people doing nothing but binge eating Doritos and developing an alcohol problem. They may float a trial balloon or two, but when it gets soundly rejected, they’ll compromise as long as they can interpret the election results in a manner most fitting with their agenda. Yes, that’s a nice way of saying steal it.

Those in power have one overarching purpose and desire: to remain in power, consolidate their power, and amplify their power. Their need to rule is so single-minded that though they rule a heap of ashes, it will have been worth it.

Whoever they choose to go after first will be made an example of so that none of the peasants even think about providing a counterargument to their insanity. It’s a jarring thing to have the full force of your government attempt to crush you underfoot. That they are aided by private sector platforms and entities who make a good chunk of their money from government contracts only adds to the already long odds of surviving such a purge intact.

They’ve concluded you’re too dumb to hear opposing views. It may cloud your judgment, and you might bristle at the idea of wearing a face diaper until the day you die. Soon, even the corpses will be wearing face masks at the open casket viewings. They must be remembered in death as they were in life, and for some, no one’s seen what they look like below the bridge of their nose for years.

This will be the first salvo in a multi-layered conflict in this nation. It will not be the last; the closer we get, it will only intensify. I share these things not to scare or cause you distress but to prepare you. It may feel like a thorn in the eye presently, but I would rather know what follows and prepare for it than live in a state of unfounded optimism that will never materialize.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

Silence

 If your convictions are determined by what the world finds acceptable, popular, or noteworthy, you have no convictions to speak of but rather a duplicitous sense of self-preservation that keeps you silent when you should speak up. Turning your head and pretending not to see the horrors unfolding in real time does not make them go away or alter their reality.

This isn’t the Matrix; we can’t pretend there is no spoon, and the church cannot remain insulated from the consequences of its silence. The pendulum has swung to such an extent that we’ve gone from wondering why the church isn’t saying anything to hoping it shuts up. The silence was better. At least we knew who the cowards were and steered clear of them. Nowadays, you have pastors pledging fealty to drag queens from pulpits, and the lemmings in the pews follow along, repeating the lunacy as though it were a perfectly normal occurrence. They’ve gone from neutral observers to picking a side, and it’s not the side of righteousness, light, or truth.

If you have no clue what I’m talking about, look it up; it’s on the interwebs. It’s nigh to unbelievable, but it's real, and it’s happening, and fake shepherds are leading ignorant flocks to the gates of perdition and waving them through, insisting it’s really heaven in disguise.

You no longer have to wonder at what the Bible meant by individuals calling good evil and evil good. You are seeing it happen, and there’s no denying it. When culture dictates doctrine, what you have is no longer a church but some hideous monstrosity sown together with faux love and excessive tolerance.

Remember back in the olden days when everyone was screeching about coexisting and allowing for different viewpoints? Remember when certain individuals who will remain unnamed warned that once they got enough power, that would no longer be the case?

To the devil, tolerance is a one-way, dead-end street. He cannot abide the light. He cannot abide the truth, and he cannot abide righteousness, but endlessly drones on about the children of God needing to be tolerant, accepting, and validating of every perversion under the sun.

To those falling all over themselves wanting to be seen as allies, know that to be an ally of darkness is to be an enemy of the light. To be an ally of sin is to be an enemy of righteousness. To be an ally of the devil is to be an enemy of God. You’ve gone from neutrality to being an enemy of the cross while insisting that you are still an ambassador of God’s kingdom.

It’s not an issue of never having known the truth but rather rejecting it while knowing full well that it was the truth you were rejecting.

Hebrews 10:26-30, “For if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful expectation of judgment, and fiery indignation which will devour the adversaries. Anyone who has rejected Moses’ law dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. Of how much worse punishment, do you suppose, will he be thought worthy who has trampled the Son of God underfoot, counted the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified a common thing, and insulted the Spirit of grace?”

It used to be we had to take much of what the Bible said about the last days on faith. We believed it because it was the Word of God, but we had difficulty seeing how some of the things it said could play out. From a great falling away to children betraying parents, wives betraying husbands and vice versa, to those of the household of faith calling good evil, to global control to such an extent that you will neither be able to buy nor sell unless you submit to a mark, these were all things we knew would come, but could not fathom the mechanisms by which they would arrive.

Now, the how of it is clear. What seemed fanciful and impossible two decades ago is being implemented and rolled out. What we thought could never happen in the church is happening because His Word is true, and He knows the end from the beginning. We knew it would be so; we just couldn’t wrap our minds around how it would come about.

I’ve been accused of being unloving because I refuse to spend time trying to convince those who have trampled the Son of God underfoot that they did something wrong. They already know. Reminding them of this will do nothing to change their trajectory because they’ve already chosen their master knowingly, willingly, and voluntarily.

The ones we must strive to pull out of the fire are those ignorant of the truth, not those who have willfully returned to the darkness after having received the knowledge of the light. There is a distinction there that we must be aware of lest we tilt at windmills for the rest of our days with no fruit to show for it.

But that’s impossible; you can’t fall away, fat man. Says who? The Bible says you can; people are doing it every day, and rather than try to twist myself into a pretzel and eliminate rational thought just to make a round peg fit into a square hole, I think I’ll just believe the Word and acknowledge the existence of backsliders.

Yes, there are evil men in pulpits today. Yes, there are enemies of the cross pretending to be servants of Christ. Yes, deceivers are pretending to be what they are not in order to ensnare the gullible and unsuspecting in their traps. We knew it would be thus. We have been warned. Whether we heed the warning or pretend that everything is all right and we’re about to course correct is another matter entirely.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

Help!

 I’ve held on for as long as I could. I was halfway hoping this past weekend would make it a non-issue since the buzz about being raptured was at a fever pitch again. I even waited an extra day just to make sure it wasn’t an issue of time zones, but I woke up this morning and had to admit that it wasn’t Sunday anywhere anymore, so we’d likely be here for a bit longer.

I went and told my neighbor he couldn’t have my lawn mower after all and started paying off some past-due bills I was hoping I wouldn’t have to pay because, you know. It’s not like I would have left a forwarding address, and Heaven’s a big place, so I don’t know how likely it was that they’d find me.

Could you imagine, though? You’re sitting down for a conversation with Paul, or Timothy, Jeremiah, or Daniel, and suddenly, a phone rings. When you answer, you hear, “I’m calling about your past due bill for the George Foreman grill you committed to purchasing for six easy payments of $19.99, plus shipping and handling.”

I know what you’re thinking: phones in heaven? If a modern-day prophetess – and I use the term as loosely as humanly possible - is insisting that we’ll have pet dinosaurs in the great beyond, why not phones? Is it really that much of a stretch from pet dinosaurs to mobile phones in heaven? Just a thought, but I digress.

I’ve said all that to say this: I need your help!

I’ve been alternating between the Book of Job and the Epistle of James for my morning reading, and there is much to be plumbed from both books. With the Epistle of James, there would be a continuity of sorts from the Epistle of Jude since they were siblings and half-brothers of Jesus. With the book of Job, there would be a fountain of wisdom on suffering well and would serve to dispel many myths getting passed around as gospel truth today.

I’m at a crossroads, and I can’t decide. As such, this is my ask. Leave a comment with one word, either James or Job. I’ll tally them, and then we will pursue the book that gets the most votes. It would be too complicated to alternate between the two in real-time, but once the first is done, we will jump into the second. Until one of the two books is the clear winner, I will post standalone musings, whatever they might be. Either way, it promises to be an eye-opening journey, just from the handful of notes I’ve jotted down the past few mornings.  

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

Training

 You can run away from the fight or toward it. One is inherent; the other is training. You can run away from danger or jump headfirst into its maw, knowing that it’s having stood that was the test of your bravery, not whether you vanquished your enemy or whether he bruised you. Then, after a handful of battles are under your belt and you’ve fought your fair share of enemies, you realize the victory was never yours. You were just the servant the Master used to push back the darkness and advance the light.

Running toward danger is not inherent in us. It is a learned reaction, something we do after many repetitions because it takes training to go against your sense of self-preservation and ignore your baser instinct for comfort, safety, and warmth.

Many years ago, I went to work at Walmart for three months. I wanted the worst possible job at the worst possible hours because I wanted to cement my conviction that I never wanted to work for anyone for the rest of my life. I ended up working the third shirt, stocking shelves for ten hours straight and six days per week, and even that was something I needed a couple of weeks of training for. You take the item out of the box and put it on the shelf. It was pretty self-explanatory, but for two weeks, I had to answer surveys and watch videos about distance, proximity, expectations, and other such mind-numbing things.

Apparently, spiritual warfare is the one thing in the world you don’t have to train for anymore. You sign up for a course, pay your fee, and get your diploma certifying you to be a demon slayer extraordinaire even though you haven’t the slightest clue what it is or how it’s done. If you run across a demon, you just wave the diploma in their face. I hear it’s the diplomas printed on an old dot matrix HP that really scares them, not the power and authority of God.

Unscrupulous profiteers are telling people they have abilities they don’t and send them out to confront the enemy. Imaginary power against a real foe never ends well. That should have been the lesson we ought to have learned from the sons of Sceva, but then again, they didn’t have the degree.

We can’t butcher what Jesus said to suit our ideology. Yes, Jesus said we would heal the sick and cast out demons, but before that, He informed His disciples that they would be given the authority to do so. They weren’t being sent out on their own; authority had been given to them to do these works. Their authority did not come from a diploma or a course but from Jesus Himself.

Luke 10:18-20, “And He said to them, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. Behold, I give you the authority to trample on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall by any means hurt you. Nevertheless do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rather rejoice because your names are written in heaven.”’

No man can train you to do these things; Jesus must give you authority. Your training does not consist of sitting in a workshop listening to some bored gray-bearded individual drone on about theoretical authority. Actual spiritual training, the kind that is practically applied, the kind that makes the devil quake, is done on your knees, in His presence, building yourself up in the faith, learning to hear His voice, and walking in His authority.

Just as you can’t rush getting your doctorate in medicine, you can’t rush being ready to do battle against the darkness. There’s no fast pass, no skipping the queue, no cutting in line. You have to put in the time. You have to grow, mature, receive knowledge, have wisdom, and understand that it’s not you; it’s His authority in you that makes the darkness flee.

I’m concerned for folks who’ve been saved less than a month talking about tearing down strongholds and casting out devils. That’s like taking an anatomy class in Junior High and walking around telling everyone you’re a heart surgeon. It’s all well and good until someone talks you into cracking a chest open, and you have no clue what you’re doing. Not only will you likely have blood on your hands, but someone who trusted you to save their life will lose it to your hubris.

I keep thinking back to the sons of Sceva and how long they likely pumped each other up and worked themselves into a lather before they went to cast out a devil just because they’d heard someone somewhere had done it.

Either you’re walking in His authority, or you aren’t. There’s no in-between, and there’s no middle ground. You don’t hope you are or think you are; you must know that you are because finding out that you aren’t once you’re face to face with the enemy will not end well.

Individuals who feel the need to tell others how powerful they are, how anointed they are, how used of God they are, and how effective and world-changing they are usually aren’t. Those with actual power, those with true anointing, and those whom God uses are humble and self-aware enough to acknowledge it’s God’s doing and not their own. They won’t seek confrontation but won’t back down from a fight, either. They have a duty to perform, and they perform it. No bells, no whistles, no exaggerated mannerisms to draw the eye, no inflated sense of purpose or ego. It’s not a magic show; stop acting like it is.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

Control

 The biggest challenge to total control of any populace is in the implementation phase. Once you have control, it’s easy to maintain it, especially if those you seek to control have no way of resisting. As is the case with anything, if you have a monopoly, have done away with any competition, and are the sole purveyor of whatever the masses demand, you can set your price, set your rules, and ration to your heart’s content.

It’s hard to make three hundred million plus people come to heel when they can go to a dozen different places to get what you’re threatening to withhold from them. When you’re the only one, and no one can get what you’ve got except through you because you’re the only one who’s got it, it’s a whole new ballgame with new rules.

The first eureka moment the communists of old had was the idea that the more centralized something is, the easier it is to control. Decentralization is the enemy of control, and if a society is decentralized enough, controlling it is nearly impossible.

We saw this recently when the governor of New Mexico woke up one morning and decided to ignore the Constitution and the Second Amendment and create new laws for everyone on a whim. Sheriffs throughout her state put the kibosh on her proclamations by refusing to enforce her unconstitutional edicts. She jumped the gun. She was too excited at the prospect of playing queen and began to decree before control was acquired.

It’s hard to effectively control when you have too many brains trying to think. Not that they’re good at it, but dumb people will offer an opinion far quicker than a smart one because the smart one takes the time to think things through and consider consequences before letting something they can’t take back spill out of their face. The fewer individuals in the command and control structure, the better for them. Ideally, if you have one geriatric diaper wearer who doesn’t know who or where he is half the time to rule them all, that’s all you need, or at least a puppet to do your bidding while you pull strings in shadows. That is when control becomes achievable.

 Their second eureka moment was that to make the people compliant, you had to eliminate every source of hope they could run to. They couldn’t have people getting ideas. They couldn’t have people hope for something more than waiting to die and dreaming their children’s children may glimpse better days. The reason the old communist regimes detested religion was because it provided hope. The reason they hated Christianity worst of all was because it offered hope not in this life only but also in the life to come. If your hope is anchored in eternity, then there isn’t much the godless can do to rob you of your peace.  

It wasn’t an issue of principle or dogma. Christianity impeded their control, so it needed to be eliminated. You could be a drunkard, a wife beater, a liar, a cheater, or even a politician, but being a Christian was unacceptable. Being a Christian meant you had morals and principles. It meant that you had character and enough dignity that you wouldn’t sell out your neighbor for a half loaf of bread or a sack of flour. They were a constant reminder to everyone around them that you could be better, decent, moral, upright, and joyful even in a gray, grim place such as a Communist-run nation.

The third thing they realized was self-evident, so no lightbulb moment was necessary. It was also the hardest to implement, especially with people living in the villages or the rural areas. The third thing was scarcity. They had to have scarcity, whether real or contrived, so the people depended on the system, the government, and the selfless public servants in middle and upper management. It’s been long enough, and we’ve seen enough of what our fellow man is capable of to intuit that the whole notion of public service is a fanciful lie, for the most part.

If you lived in the city, it was easy for them to tighten the screws to the point that the stores looked like they’d been ransacked by a mob of starving savages. Empty shelves, empty glassed-in refrigerators, empty counters, empty everything except for the lady in the white smock and the paper hat behind the counter because even though she had nothing to sell and there was nothing to buy, she still had to show up for work.

It reached the point that government officials were going through the villages, counting how many chickens farmers had in their coops and how many heads of cattle they had grazing in the fields. It had to come to the point that the average citizen could not survive without the government because only then could the government unleash the tyranny it had always planned on unleashing.

Yesterday, I read that the mayor of Chicago wants to open city-owned grocery stores now. I had to chuckle. They’re not even trying to hide it anymore. Why am I telling you all this? Because once you see it, you can’t unsee it. I was only nine when I left Communist-run Romania, but I’ve read as much as any historian on what they did to bring about the consolidation of power and the subjugation of tens of millions of people. That less motivated and intelligent people are trying to do the same in America is troubling because it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that this will end badly for all concerned.   

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

Where To?

 There’s a difference between being where you want to be and where God told you to be. That’s the thought I woke up with ringing in my mind, and throughout my morning ritual of making coffee, cracking my Bible open, reading for some while, then sitting down and writing until the girls woke up, I kept returning to it. Where you want to be is easy. Where He wants you to be is often hard and, at other times, seemingly downright impossible.

Yes, I am well aware that some go where they are told to go joyfully and without complaint, but it’s usually the people who insist that God sent them to Fiji to do missions, or Hawaii, or the Bahamas. When you ask them why they’re only posting pictures of themselves with umbrella drinks the whole time, they rebuke you, insisting that they were just whetting their whistle before all the ministering, binding, loosing, and decreeing.

They would have likely won the island for Jesus had it not been for the dreaded sunstroke. It was a demonic attack, to be sure. The enemy lulled them to sleep on the beach, and they had to spend the rest of their ministry time rubbing aloe on their blistering skin. We’ll get them next time, though. The soil is fertile, and another couple of weeks of feeling the sand between their toes is just what the doctor ordered before all the seed sowing can commence.

I’m not saying island nations with picturesque white sand beaches don’t need missionaries, but so do countries like Pakistan, India, China, and Nigeria, not to mention America. You don’t even need a passport or to learn Swahili to be a missionary to America, and not the pretty parts either, but the ones where the smell is a little ripe, and the people have hurt etched on their faces as though they were wearing death masks. I don’t see a line forming for any of those nations.

Where God tells you to be will always challenge your flesh. It will always stretch you and force you to step out in faith. Those who insist otherwise might just have been in Tarshis all this time, thinking they were in Nineveh doing the hard work, so far removed from the voice of God that they assumed wherever they ended up is where they were meant to be, so might as well get to it, and get a suntan for Jesus.

God will usually send you where you are not wanted but where you are sorely needed. For the most part, the people you are to speak to and warn will not welcome you with parades, aplomb, or a horn section. You will be ignored until they can’t ignore you anymore, then they’ll attempt to silence you, and if you’re stubborn enough to say what God told you to speak despite their threats, then they’ll get physical.

Do you think Jonah would have been hesitant if he thought they’d take him out to the Golden Corral and pat him on the back after delivering a message whose central theme was their imminent destruction?

The people of Nineveh were the extremely rare exception and not the rule. People usually don’t heed warnings, they usually don’t repent in sackcloth and ash, and the messenger isn’t left to go on his merry way after telling a city it will be no more.

Jonah panicked because he considered the people’s reaction and placed fear for his own safety above God’s instructions. Don’t let fear of what could be keep you from walking in obedience. Even if it turns out your worst fears were true and those to whom you are called to speak reject the message and persecute the messenger, your obedience didn’t go unnoticed, and one day soon, the Master and His reward will appear in the clouds.

We don’t do what’s comfortable, we don’t do what’s easy, we don’t do what’s convenient, popular, or socially acceptable; we do what we are commanded to do, what we have to do.

I never was, nor ever wanted to be, a morning person either, but nowadays, if I’m still in bed by 4, I feel spoiled. Like it’s my birthday, and I got to sleep in. It wasn’t always this way. There’s a reason my bedroom had blackout curtains. It’s not something I set out to do or planned on; it just happened because it was necessary, and I could not think of any other chunk of time to carve out to do what needs doing.

Does my flesh like it? Absolutely not. I like to sleep as much as the next guy, and if I get five hours per night with everything I need to do on a given day, it’s an asterisk in the win column, and I count myself fortunate.

When God calls you to a work and tells you to go and do, preach, and warn, there’s never a caveat that it will be easy or that you won’t have any roadblocks along the way. It’s because of who told you to go that you overcome the fear and the doubt, you banish the uncertainty trying to worm its way into your heart, and you do what God told you to do.

Or, you don’t. That’s the thing. Sometimes, men hear the voice of God give clear instructions, and when the cabby asks where to, they say they want to go in the opposite direction from where God instructed them to go.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

Ripples

 If you’ve ever thrown a pebble into a still body of water, whether a pond, a lake, or a bucket, you know the effect one small stone has on the whole. The pebble itself will sink to the bottom, but the damage done to the stillness of the water continues to expand outward, creating bigger and bigger concentric circles. It takes a long time for the water to calm itself anew and for the peace and stillness to return.

Many pebbles were cast into the stillness of the contemporary church’s mind that, though released decades ago, continue to ripple and disturb the peace and tranquility. They shatter the stillness and bring about torrents of confusion and endless, fruitless debates about the most tertiary issues.

Those who cast the stones are long forgotten or barely remembered by those who would make idols out of men, but the negative effect of their teachings continue to reverberate and echo, bringing disorder and division on topics that ought to be straightforward enough if we would go to the Word, read it, and believe it.

Because the initial idea was weighed down with implications, and because people received it as gospel truth, they will deny the words of Jesus and the Word of God because of that initial declaration they latched onto decades ago.

Even though the Bible says all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution, because of the prosperity doctrine that has so been embraced by today’s church, Christians, especially in the West, reject the idea so thoroughly that they look down and mock those who are being persecuted and martyred for their faith.

Any pebble that disrupts the peace and stillness of the Word of God in your life must be looked upon with a critical eye, and its source must be traced back to its origin.

You can read the frustration in Paul’s exhortation when he was writing to the Galatians because even though they’d started on the right path, and their progress had been promising, some errant doctrine had seeped its way in and robbed the church of its peace.

Galatians 5:7-9, “You ran well. Who hindered you from obeying the truth? This persuasion does not come from Him who calls you. A little leaven leavens the whole lump.”

Those are Paul’s words. He uses the past tense when referring to the Galatians running their race, lamenting that they had run well, but something had hindered them from obeying the truth. We’ve opened up enough cans of worms recently, so we don’t have to rush to open this one, but Paul is warning the Galatians that it doesn’t take a lot to ruin the whole. A little leaven over time, and eventually, the whole lump is leavened. The heart is not compartmentalized. It is a whole, and whatever you allow in it will affect the entirety thereof.

It’s easier to focus on the wrong thing when the wrong thing does not challenge us or threaten our status quo. We make fanciful excuses, insisting that we’re eating the meat and spitting out the bones, but Paul insists that it’s more than likely you’ll miss a bone and choke on it at some point.

You’ve been persuaded, but by whom and to what end? Those are the hard questions, and the answers may be harder still, but we have no choice but to ask them of ourselves. We have no choice but to confront the things we’d rather not because the danger they pose grows and multiplies. It is compounded and exponential. It’s not just one little thing; it’s one little thing that dominoes and cascades into bigger things until the confusion is so profound that anyone with a smooth tongue, white teeth, and an expensive suit can convince you of anything.

Disturbed men with a messiah complex don’t come right out and introduce themselves as messiah the first time they meet someone. It’s a slow process, one small lie after another, then the lies get bigger and more unbelievable until a nearsighted buffoon who played guitar badly talked a bunch of people into believing he was the Messiah. Not for nothing, but the coke-bottle glasses should have been their first clue that perhaps he wasn’t who he claimed to be.

True followers of Jesus will never attempt to replace Jesus with themselves. They will not claim to be on equal footing with Him or strip Him of glory that they might clothe themselves in it. We glorify Him, we worship Him, we follow Him, and we obey Him. Anyone who attempts to insert themselves into the position Jesus holds in your life should be rejected wholesale, without concession or compromise.

Jesus warned time and again not to make it about other men but about Him and His sovereignty and supremacy, but that would mean obedience and humility, and we’re not so good at either nowadays.

If you’ve ever played chess, you know all the pieces must be in the right place, on their designated square, for the game to begin. You can’t just place the pieces anywhere on the board and start moving them around; they have to be in the correct starting position to make it a valid game.

All the pieces are in the right place, and the game is set to begin. You’ll have peons making the preliminary moves, but as the game progresses, you’ll have rooks and bishops, knights, queens, and kings plot, plan, and execute attacks because their purpose is to win and to win, you must be vanquished.

I’m waiting for someone to ask me what advice I’d give to a believer, but they never do. It’s usually about end-time prophecy and the heralds of the last days. However, if they were to ask, my advice would be to understand the times you’re in and live accordingly.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.