Job CXCIII

 Job 18:17-21, “The memory of him perishes from the earth, and he has no name among the renowned. He is driven from light into darkness, and chased out of the world. He has neither son nor posterity among his people nor any remaining in his dwellings. Those in the west are astonished at his day, and those in the east are frightened. Surely such are the dwellings of the wicked, and this is the place of him who does not know God.”

Save for the affront at concluding that Job perceived him and his other two friends as stupid, Bildad spent the rest of his monologue describing what the ultimate fate of the wicked is. There are a few things he said that stand out because they parallel our modern-day culture to the point that one must acknowledge that while he was wrong about Job being wicked, the general demise of a wicked man, or a wicked nation, for that matter, was on point.

What resonated more than anything is that what this present society sees as progress, liberation, freedom, progress, and choice is no less than the punishment of the wicked, as detailed by Bildad. Whether it's being uprooted from the shelter of his tent, having those who are not of his dwelling therein, or having neither son nor posterity among his people, all these things are God’s punishment on the wicked. You may have come a long way, baby, but it’s the wrong way, and it’s a way that leads to desolation, destruction, and death.

When a nation is overtaken, and those who are not of that place dwell in the tents of those they once belonged to, it’s not an accident or a fluke, but God’s punishment upon the wicked. When the citizenry of an entire nation seems to be under such grand delusion as to choose not to have sons or daughters, ensuring that there is no future generation, no continuity of their bloodline or heritage, having to bring in strangers from other places with differing cultures, oftentimes hostile to them just to keep the numbers stable, it’s a sure sign that God’s punishment is being manifest against the wickedness they embraced. Couple that with the needless, senseless, soulless, inhuman murder of innocents in the womb, and what you have is a recipe for a judgment that not only can’t be averted, but the magnitude of which will stun the world into silence.

We can call it shifting demographics or natural migratory flows, but that’s because we refuse to acknowledge what it really is due to the underlying implications. What is happening in many first-world Western cultures is nothing less than God’s punishment upon the wicked. If we were to acknowledge this reality, we would have to conclude that we are not the righteous nation we thought ourselves to be, nor a shining light upon a hill, but the embodiment of the Laodicean church Jesus spoke of through John the Revelator.

It’s a hard pill to swallow for many who’ve been fed a steady diet of being told how special, unique, blessed, and highly favored they are for the past few decades. We continue to see ourselves as rich, wealthy, and in need of nothing when in reality we are wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked.

We continue to beat our chests, insisting we are the pinnacle of human achievement, all the while spiraling further into darkness and hedonism, abandoning the things that lift up and elevate a people and embracing those that lead to their destruction. This is not accidental. It is a byproduct of rebellion. It is the ripple effect of a nation not heeding the warning to be zealous and repent, choosing instead to point at its wealth as a sure sign of God’s favor.

Hubris is a powerful drug. It causes men to ignore the obvious signs of decline, whether in their families, churches, or societies, clinging to a handful of things that serve as confirmation bias for what they see themselves as, rather than what God sees them as. I’m rich, therefore I am favored. I’m successful, therefore God’s hand is upon me. My church is growing, so I must be doing something right. I have a blue passport, so I won’t have to wait in line with all the peasants once I make it to the pearly gates. Red carpets and preferential treatment are in my future; God knows better than to spurn me. I’m a wizard at leaving Yelp reviews!

There is a standard. There is a plumb line, and it is not man who determines whether he is walking uprightly and in the will of God, but God. If God calls us to repentance and we reject the call because we insist that not being behind on bills is proof positive of our righteousness, all we’re doing is rationalizing disobedience and rebellion to ourselves. It will not convince God to see it our way, it will not trick Him into seeing us as obedient servants, and it will not hold back His judgment when it commences.

Bildad wasn’t wrong about the lot of the wicked; he was just wrong about Job. His misstep was insisting that the wicked and Job were interchangeable, one and the same, for surely no righteous man would suffer in the manner Job did.

If God gives grace to the humble, which the Word says He does, then whenever we are faced with situations that aren’t clear, cut and dry, and demonstrably verifiable, our best course of action is to possess enough humility to acknowledge that we haven’t arrived, we don’t know it all, and any judgment we pass may just be a faulty assumption on our part.

God knows all things fully, completely, with no missing pieces and no hidden secrets. Nothing is hid from His eyes, though much is hidden from ours, and as humble servants who understand He will judge all of creation with righteous judgment, may we have the wisdom to defer to Him whenever something is unclear.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.            

Job CXCII

 Even after all three of Job’s friends had each had their turn, and Bildad takes up the charge anew, I still can’t wrap my mind around the heel turn they made in their collective purpose. While they set out to comfort him, each coming from afar and traveling to meet him where he was, they ended up putting salt on his wounds, and being miserable comforters if that was still their goal.

It’s like setting out for Florida and ending up in Wyoming. Instead of beach and palm trees, all you see is white capped mountains and rocky terrain. Yet, none of them had the wherewithal to take a pause and see how far they’d strayed from their intended purpose. If you show up with the intent to help and end up making the situation worse than how you found it, you’re not really helping.

You can insist that it’s still what you’re trying to do, you can excuse and justify the behavior and words that heaped pain, discomfort, and scorn upon the individual you set out to comfort and encourage, but as always, the proof is in the pudding. You can tell me you’re trying to help me see better until you grow hoarse, and I still won’t believe you if all you’re doing is poking me in the eye repeatedly and with ever-increasing pressure and precision.

If the individual you’re trying to help insists that you’re not helping but rather making the situation worse, then stop helping. But you don’t understand. It’s my duty to help them, and I am helping them; they just don’t see it. That’s not the way it works.

For the past forty years, we’ve been conducting outreach to the poor and destitute in Romania and neighboring countries. We’ve learned a lot over these four decades of ministry, but perhaps the most important lesson of all is that every individual and family has a different need, and we must be sensitive to the specifics of that need in order to be a blessing.

If a family needs a new roof, it’s pointless to offer to build them a well because they already have one. The immediate need is the roof, and that is where the help is most appreciated. If someone’s hungry and you offer them a box full of board games, unless they can boil the cardboard and plastic pieces and make a meal out of it, perhaps save the games for when they have a bit of flour and rice in their cupboard.

Giving someone an espresso machine when they don’t have electricity isn’t as nice or thoughtful a gift as one might have assumed. What’s the point? Meet people where they are, not where you want them to be. If someone is hurting, be a comfort. If someone is hungry, buy them a meal. If someone is cold, give them a coat. Be aware. Be practical. Be the kind of friend you would like the person in question to be if you were going through what they were going through.

In Job’s case, he was desperate for some relief and a bit of comfort, but it was nowhere to be found. All that he was faced with was a concerted effort to make him admit to something he hadn’t done, not because it would make him feel better or bring him peace, but because it would validate his friends’ conclusions.

Beware of the man who thinks he knows it all. Eventually, what they claim to know as absolute truth will be proven less so, and when challenged, being incapable of admitting that even the most learned of us know in part, and that includes themselves, they will lash out in anger and vehemence because their fragile egos can’t accept that they’re nowhere near the godlike understanding they claim to possess.

Correction is not exclusive to the young. While the wise man seeks understanding in the things he acknowledges are beyond him, the fool insists that there is nothing new they can learn, they have all wisdom safely tucked away in their fanny pack, and if what they’ve a concluded is challenged, they’re suddenly on the defensive trying to undermine the individual who corrected them rather than challenge the veracity of the claim that they were wrong.

There was nothing special about Bildad. He was a common man, though likely more learned than most of his contemporaries, but his reaction to having his conclusions challenged by Job proves that the vanity of his ego was still well intact and held sway over his empathy, or desire to comfort Job.

We don’t outgrow correction. It’s not as though we reach a certain age, and from that point onward, we never make mistakes, come to the wrong conclusion, or misread a situation. Although correction is still forthcoming, sometimes from the most unexpected of places, when we are wise in our own eyes, we simply reject it wholesale. It’s that men reject God’s correction as their hearts grow cold, it’s not that they’ve outgrown it, or have surpassed a level of maturity wherein correction is no longer warranted.

Fatherhood has taught me more about the heart of God than reading a library’s worth of books ever could. As my girls get older, every time I try to show them the proper way of doing something, whether it’s slicing an apple, peeling a banana, or folding a shirt, more often than not, I get the patented, “I know how to do it already” with a side of “it’s not that complicated.” If you know how to do it, then do it right. Currently, you’re not doing it right, and that’s why I had to step in, point it out, and show you the right way to do it.

Especially when it comes to using sharp knives, I’m not correcting them just to see an eye roll or hear the “I got this, I know what I’m doing” refrain, but because I don’t want them to cut off a finger while slicing an apple. When God corrects us, it’s not because He is nitpicking or trying to prove He’s smarter than we are, but because what we are doing will lead us to a place we never intended to go, and He loves us enough to say stop.   

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

Job CXCI

 Job 18:10-16, “A noose is hidden from him on the ground, and the trap for him in the road. Terrors frighten him on every side and drive him to his feet. His strength is starved, and destruction is ready at his side. It devours patches of his skin; the firstborn of death devours his limbs. He is uprooted from the shelter of his tent, and they parade him before the king of terrors. They dwell in his tent who are none of his; brimstone is scattered on his dwelling. His roots are dried out below, and his branch withers above.”

A caustic ‘tell me how you really feel’ jape would be appropriate right about now, but Bildad wasn’t done, not by a long shot, and whatever self-control he’d had over his tongue up to this point is nowhere to be found. He needed Job to understand and acknowledge that he was a wicked man, and the need became near to overwhelming.

I can’t say I’ve insisted on another’s guilt with such determination even when I knew them to be guilty. Not assumed, or guessed at, but in possession of literal evidence of their guilt. When they didn't acknowledge it the first or second time and insisted on trying to justify their actions rather than fess up and admit guilt, the only option left to me was to terminate their employment and inform them they’d been fired.

What if the photos of them taking money out of the drawer were doctored, and someone was trying to frame them? This was the early nineties. Sci-fi was still reserved for Star Trek and their flip phones getting beamed up by Scotty. The photograph in question was taken accidentally by the photographer of a wedding party who happened to be my friend, and thought it was suspicious that the person taking orders at my mom’s bakery was putting the money they got from customers in their pocket, going into the register to make change, then putting the extra they’d extracted from the register into their pocket as well.

The it wasn’t me line wasn’t working. The face was clear, as was the fistful of cash they were stuffing in their shirt pocket. Had they owned up to what they’d done, made full restitution, and promised not to do it again, a second chance wasn’t just on the table, but likely. Why? Because all of us have been given second chances at one point or another in life. Perhaps not for taking something that wasn’t ours, or committing petty larceny, but if we think back, it’s likely we’ll remember something.

Perhaps it was the first impression we made on our potential future in-laws, or someone accepting an apology when we jumped to conclusions that turned out to be fallacious, we’ve all been given second chances, and I do not subscribe to the theory that once a thief always a thief because if that were the case, then all we’d be in life was the sum of our mistakes without the possibility of redress.

Will some of those to whom we extend grace and offer a second chance disappoint us anew? Yes, some will, perhaps most will, but there are also instances when that one act of kindness or grace will have such an impact on the individual that it will change the trajectory of their entire life.

Given that for the past thirty years our ministry has run an orphanage, and we’ve had hundreds of children pass through our doors, I can confirm that some of the worst cases, those deemed troubled souls whose final destination would likely be prison, were utterly transformed by the love, care, compassion, and patience extended to them by those who labored on their behalf.

Especially when it comes to the young with histories of abuse and family trauma, the idea of being loved is such a foreign concept at first that they don’t know how to react or process the notion that someone genuinely cares for them.

For someone with no baseline and no understanding of what love is, telling them that Jesus loves them and that you love them too may yield no immediate results. To them, it’s just another word, absent context or understanding, but as time passes and the word becomes action, demonstrated repeatedly in real-time, the walls they’ve built up around their heart begin to crumble, and they allow themselves to feel this once alien concept for themselves.

God didn’t just say He loved mankind. He demonstrated His love by sending Jesus, who likewise demonstrated His love by freely giving His life so that all who believe in Him would not perish but have everlasting life. Love is not a word; love is an action.

You can tell someone you love them a thousand times, and they may doubt you, but show that you love them once, and they will know with certainty that you do. We don’t have to guess at whether God loves us or not. He has proven it, beyond a shadow of doubt, and even in the worst of circumstances, we have full assurance that it is so. There is nothing more God can do beyond what He has already done to prove His love for you and me. That manner of love demands reciprocity. It demands fidelity and loyalty, obedience, and faithfulness.

1 John 3:1-3, “Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God! Therefore the world does not know us, because it did not know Him. Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.”   

Bildad’s words were not anchored in love. Even though love is often corrective, this was not the case, as his pride and arrogance in his own self-assessed wisdom and his presumption that Job had done wickedness drove his actions rather than a genuine desire to see Job restored. 

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

Job CXC

 If Bildad’s words were not targeted at Job, but rather proffered as a generalization regarding the way of the wicked, they would have made for a decent proverb, perhaps even one of the great cautionary summations of all time regarding wickedness and why it should not be entertained, practiced, or pursued.

Try as one might to put lipstick on a pig, in the light of day, it’s still a pig. Try as the wicked might to insist that wickedness is not something to be shunned but rather embraced, not something to flee from but pursue, the walking disasters they eventually become nullify their insistence that the fleeting momentary pleasures to which they succumbed were worth losing their wives, husbands, children, dignity, or purpose. The world is full of cautionary tales from all walks of life as to what wickedness produces in the hearts and lives of men.

Although their journeys might differ, and the paths they chose may be dissimilar at their genesis, their destination is always the same. Wickedness cannot produce nobility. Wickedness cannot produce virtue. All that wickedness produces is pain, loss, bitterness, and death.

Trying to cope with the aftermath of what sin has wrought in the lives of those who gave into it has become a cottage industry nowadays. You don’t have to look hard to find countless individuals trying to smile through the tears, insisting that although they’ve made a mess of their lives and their choices brought them lower than they thought they could ever descend, it’s still the path they would have chosen given the benefit of hindsight, because they cling to the misguided hope that they will rebuild themselves on their own having grown from the experience of self-sabotaging their entire existence.

They refuse to admit that they got played. They refuse to acknowledge that they cannonballed into a snare set out by the enemy because they were not being watchful or perceptive enough to realize where their choices were leading them.

It’s a hard sell on the best of days. You’re trying to convince everyone, including yourself, that the best possible choice you could have made put you in a position where, if you are diligent, disciplined, and self-aware, it will take you a good decade to claw yourself back to even. Then again, for most today, accountability is like kryptonite, and they’d rather muddle through life suffering endless defeats than humble themselves in repentance at the foot of the cross.

Some people don’t know how good they have it or how blessed they are until what they took for granted slips through their fingers, and it's gone. Whether it’s a good husband, a good wife, a good job, good health, or a place to call home, it’s the most important things that we often take for granted, assuming they will always be there, within reach whenever we require them, failing to understand the fleeting nature of everything.

Failing to acknowledge that, save for God, nothing we assign permanence to is guaranteed to remain as it is, we don’t appreciate or show gratitude for the countless blessings bestowed upon us on a given day, allowing our hearts to gravitate toward the dangerous environment of feeling as though we are entitled to everything and more.

If you have a good marriage, consistent employment, a home, mobility, or the blessing of waking up on a given morning without your body making noises reminiscent of breaking celery sticks, it’s all grace. It’s not something we earned, deserved, or merited; it’s something God gifted us. Every sunrise, every sunset, and every breath in between is a gift! We do not serve God because of what He gives us, but for who He is. It’s His presence we yearn for and desire, not some material thing we think we can get if we pretend to love Him.

Although Bildad is right about the lot of the wicked, he only paints half the picture. It’s like seeing a painting of a sandy beach, with palm trees off in the distance, but there being no sky, or clouds, or sun in the upper portion. You realize something is missing immediately, and it’s not difficult to determine that it’s incomplete.

Suffering, hardship, trials, and travails are not exclusive to the wicked, but the presence of God is exclusive to the righteous. The Word of God does not promise us a life of ease and comfort, absent valleys, testing, or adversity, but it does promise us that when we pass through the waters, He will be with us, and when we walk through the fire, we will not be burned.

There is never an insinuation, implicit or explicit, that the children of God will circumvent both the water and the fire. We were never promised to be spared these things. What we were promised is that God would be with us every step of the way, and when all seems lost, when the last tethers of hope seem to be unraveling, we will see His mighty hand at work, and though we walk through the fire that every sense is telling us will consume us and turn us to ash, not only will we not be burned, but the flame will not scorch us.

There is a growing sentiment within the household of faith that God owes us something. What that something is varies from individual to individual, but the overarching theme is that we are owed, and anything we receive is just a debt God decided to pay. It would have been nice if He’d tacked on some interest, too, but maybe what we got is just the first installment. What those who share this sentiment fail to realize is that if we got what we deserved, there would be a few billion piles of ash scattered about the earth, and not much else.

If the attitude of the heart is not right, nothing else is right. Not your prayers, not your worship, not your praise, not your giving, none of it! If the attitude of the heart isn’t right, nothing else can be! 

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

Job CLXXXIX

 Job 18:5-9, “The light of the wicked indeed goes out, and the flame of his fire does not shine. The light is dark in his tent, and his lamp beside him is put out. The steps of his strength are shortened, and his own counsel casts him down. For he is cast into a net by his own feet, and he walks into a snare. The net takes him by the heel, and a snare lays hold of him.”

Generally speaking, what Bildad was saying was not untrue. In this particular instance, because what he was saying was targeted at Job, a man whom God deemed blameless and upright, it was. We can’t broad-brush every situation and draw conclusions based on historical precedent. There are times when exceptions to the well-established rules arise, and if we harden our hearts and shut up our ears, refusing to hear those we are accusing, we just might be judging wrongly, and inconsistently with the heart of God.

But I’m just defending the truth, brother! It may be that it’s how you see it, but you’re insinuating that because the light of the wicked goes out, and the flame of his fire does not shine, and this is occurring in real time to someone, they must be in the camp of the wicked, and you allow for no other explanation.

There are absolute truths we must defend to our dying breath, such as Jesus being the way, the truth, and the life, and that no man can come to the Father but by Him, but defending these truths and insisting upon someone’s wickedness because they are suffering or going through a trial are two separate issues. When we’re quick to accuse, assume, insist, and insinuate upon another’s sin or wickedness, yet become timid and reticent to defend the name of Jesus, it’s not only telling, but something that ought to be so alarming to us that we search our hearts and see if there are any deep-seated issues we must deal with.

It’s easy to kick a man while he’s down because odds are he can’t defend himself. You don’t run the risk of getting bruised, beaten, or vanquished by lashing out against someone who is defenseless, as you would if you stood toe to toe with the enemy of your soul. It takes a special kind of cruelty to relish the thought of heaping scorn upon someone who’s already scraping the bottom of the barrel when it comes to hope, but some souls feel vindicated in doing so, believing that they will be deemed more righteous still if they gleefully kick at the man lying in the dirt waiting to die.

There is something to be said for extending grace to those who are at their wits' end. I’m not talking about condoning sin, but rather about not jumping to conclusions and insisting that someone has sinned just because they are going through a season of trial. These are two separate issues, and while we are to confront sin in the camp, expose it, and tear it out from the root, it is unbiblical to become the accuser of the brethren because we’ve concluded that wickedness must exist because otherwise the individual in question would not be tested to such extremes.

If you can’t tell the difference, if you don’t know which is which, silence is your best course of action until the evidence supports your conclusion on the matter. If no evidence is forthcoming, then you must allow for the very real possibility that there is no wickedness, and what is occurring is something beyond your understanding.

This isn’t communist Russia. Our position ought not to be ‘show me the man, and I’ll show you the crime’, but rather ‘Lord, shed light on this matter, and let your heart be my heart in this situation.’

To Bildad and his friends, being right was the only thing that mattered. They took their initial impression of the situation and built a case against Job to confirm their prejudices, not allowing for his words, his pleas, his tears, and his prayers to sway them because it wasn’t about whether or not Job had sinned, but rather proving that he had sinned because they deemed he had.

Some people will continue to insist they are right even when they’re proven wrong because allowing for the possibility that they misread a situation, that there was a blind spot in their understanding, or that they jumped to conclusions before there was clarity is incomprehensible to them.

About two years into our marriage, my wife and I were living in Romania, and one day, I got a call from my dad asking if I could go pick up a cousin of mine at the train station. My dad’s entire family lived on the opposite side of the country, and one of his nieces had decided to visit. Since I had nothing planned that couldn’t wait, I told him I would and showed up at the station a few minutes before the train was to arrive.

My cousin got off the train, we hugged, I led her to my car, and we drove to the orphanage where I knew my dad to be. Within that fifteen-minute window, someone who knew my wife and me, and had seen me at the station, took time out of their busy day to hurriedly call my wife and insist that I was stepping out on her.

“I saw him, Monica. I saw him hug another woman, and they got in his car and drove away!”

My wife had already gone to work by the time my dad called, so she didn’t know anything about the cousin or that I had to pick her up from the train station. Even so, she knew me well enough to know that what I had been accused of was uncharacteristic of my nature.

The seed had been planted, however, and that night as we were getting ready for bed she innocently asked, ‘What did you do today?’, to which I answered, ‘I picked up my cousin from the train station, took her to the orphanage, spent some time there, then went to dinner with her and my dad.’

The next day, she called the friend who felt the need to call her and tell her she’d seen me with a strange woman, and explained the situation, to which the friend answered, ‘That was quick thinking on his part. I’m sure there’s something more to the story.’

That was the day my wife stopped calling the individual her friend. Just because you want to be right about someone or something, it doesn’t mean you are. Be humble enough to admit when you are wrong, if you are wrong, and wise enough to keep silent before you know all the facts of a given situation. Wise as they thought themselves to be, by their actions and harsh words, Job’s friends proved that wisdom had eluded them.  

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

Job CLXXXVIII

 I recently had a protracted conversation with a brother about Christ’s warning to His followers to take heed that they not be deceived, and whether the current state of the contemporary church is due to catastrophic failure to heed His admonition on this matter. It was not a lighthearted or easy conversation to have because the first words out of my mouth were that what the church is currently experiencing isn’t deception but willful, open rebellion against the truth of the gospel. Deception and willfully disregarding what you know to be the truth of Scripture are two different things. Unless it’s self-deception, to be deceived requires a third party and an ignorance of the truth. 

When you know what the Bible says on a given topic, but you choose to disregard it, or do the opposite of what it says, it isn’t that you were deceived; you chose to reject the truth. What is happening isn’t deception due to the absence of the knowledge of truth, but a conscious choice to reject it and embrace the lie because they delight in wickedness.

If a preacher tasked with rightly dividing the word of truth delivers messages contrary to it, in opposition to it, and denouncing it, then by their actions, they unmask their true heart and are confirmed to be servants of their father, the devil. It’s not an oopsie. It’s not as though they didn’t see a pair of dark socks in a load of white laundry. It is a concerted, ongoing, deliberate effort to abandon truth, preach lies, and deceive those of the household of faith.

Unless someone can honestly say that the thousands of people sitting in the pews listening to someone preaching heresy never once cracked open their Bibles, never once read Scripture, never once happened upon the countless verses that contradict the words of the lauded man behind the crystal pulpit, then they’re willful participants in being led astray, and not innocent victims of deception.

Back in the day, shortly after communism fell and tourists began flocking to Romania because it was cheap and its geography had broad appeal, attracting both those who prefer the mountains and those who enjoy the sea, three-card monte became all the rage. For those with quick hands and no moral core, it was the sort of ‘business’ that required no upfront investment save for a cardboard box and a deck of cards. When something requires no barrier to entry and the upside potential has no ceiling, it will attract the worst society has to offer, and Romania was no exception.

The premise of the hustle is simple enough: you have three cards, usually two jacks and a queen, or two kings and a queen, facing down, and after the individual shows you the placement, he shuffles them around, and if you can pick the queen you win whatever money you were willing to bet that your eye was quicker than their hand.

You can honestly say that the first few people were deceived because they’d never happened upon anything of the sort; it seemed easy enough, and they were already counting their winnings before they walked away with empty pockets. After the first few, when those who had been tricked, deceived, and separated from their hard-earned money stuck around pleading with passersby not to participate because it was a trick, it was no longer deception but willful ignorance.

The promise of easy money was too tempting, and one after the other, people would sidle up and lose time and again, always justifying the loss as something other than what it was, an in-your-face, unapologetic con.

The same is true for those who having read, and having heard that you must walk circumspectly, be sober-minded, humble yourself, pick up your cross, crucify the old man, and deny your flesh, happen upon a peddler of sloppy grace, cheap salvation, and perpetual fire insurance. Even though they know the Bible says different, even though they’ve heard sermons on righteousness and holiness unto the Lord, the idea that they can have the best of both worlds and still be welcomed to the marriage supper of the Lamb is just too tempting a proposition to discount outright.

They talk themselves into believing that they can do what no one else has: have a divided heart, ride the fence, dip their toe into the mire without getting any mud on their feet, and still be in right standing with God. The promise of everything the world has to offer, and everything God has to offer, without there ever being a conflict of interest, is just too good to pass up, and that’s when the devil sees his opening.

I’ve known men who have gone down the slippery slope of just a little here and a little there that ended up being husks of their former selves, so far removed from truth, so resentful toward Scripture, so acrimonious toward God, that their new mission in life is to prove God wrong about something, anything, thinking if they can get one through the net they open up the possibility of Him being wrong about other things as well.

Just as no one who gets entangled with a con man dealing three-card monte ever walks away a winner, no man who sets himself against God and resists the truth will come out ahead. They may prosper for a season, their congregation may balloon, and money will flow like it was nothing more than printed paper, but in the end, it is destined to crumble for nothing that is built upon a lie, nothing that sustains itself with deception and deceit can hope to survive in the long run.

The cracks are already starting to show. Angry congregants are already beginning to shout down their supposed shepherds for not seeing the thousand-fold return in their bank account, for not seeing their breakthrough, or the infusion of prosperity promised to them if they helped pay off the ministry jet, or buy their bishop the watch that cost more than their entire house. It hasn’t even gotten bad yet, at least not if we believe what the Bible says about the last days.

How do you think these shepherds will fare when true famine sweeps across the land, and the just will live by faith? You spent decades selling people on a pipe dream, on fanciful tales, and vain imaginings, while you could have been preparing them for what the Word says is to come. Now that they have neither prosperity nor faith, now that the Father they claim as theirs, the Father you insisted will take them as they are for the low price of a hand wave, will not acknowledge them as His own because He never knew them, how will you be able to stand under those bright lights and stare them in the face?

Truth is lasting. It has permanence, and while others flounder in their rebellion and self-deception, grasping at straws, looking at yet another date upon which they will be disappointed and their hopes crushed, those who stand firm on the foundation of Scripture will weather the storms, look up, and see their redemption drawing near.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

Job CLXXXVII

 Generally, men react in one of two ways when confronted with wisdom beyond their capacity to process and understand. The first way is to pause, consider, and acknowledge that their understanding is limited, and that, within that limited knowledge, they are unable to grasp the full breadth of what is being said. They’re humble enough to admit that they don’t know everything, and there is still wisdom to be learned. So they ask follow-up questions, clarification, and detail, as was the case with Nicodemus when he came to Jesus by night.

Nicodemus was a Pharisee. He was no fool, nor one for whom wisdom was out of reach, yet the first words that Jesus spoke to him left him scratching his head, all his amassed wisdom no more than a ruin, because he could not wrap his mind around the idea of being born again.

The other way is to condescend, demean, brush off, and patronize, slinging insults as was the case with Festus upon hearing the wisdom of Paul.

Rather than admit to their own ignorance, those who think highly of themselves would rather react with scorn and ridicule because it keeps the image they have of themselves intact, even if it’s empty words and make-believe.

Hundreds of years after Job’s interaction with Bildad, Paul faced a similar retort after passionately detailing his conversion and the sacrifice, resurrection, and Lordship of Christ Jesus, before King Agrippa. A man named Festus spoke up and loudly said, “Paul, you are beside yourself! Much learning is driving you mad!”

What sparked Festus’s outburst wasn’t the concern that too much learning was driving Paul mad, but that what Paul was saying could not be found in the tomes he, too, had studied. This was wisdom and knowledge on another level, and it made Festus feel small and inferior. He had to save face. He was, after all, in the presence of the king, and it seemed as though Paul was making headway. That could not stand. If anyone were to be seen as a man of wisdom, it would be him, and if you can’t surpass another on merit and skill, you drag them down to your level because it’s the only option afforded to you.

It was the same spirit, just in a different context. There are only so many ways you can call a man a fool, a madman, someone who’s had a break from reality and is now in the throes of madness. Neither Job nor Paul was mad. Neither had lost their mind nor had they broken from reality. Their understanding of the spiritual, the supernatural, or God’s faithfulness in a given situation was simply beyond the level of those they addressed. As a universal defense mechanism, the spiritually inferior parties went on the attack, insisting that what they were saying could not be so because they did not concur or see it in a similar light.

Thankfully, in our day and age, we have a standard for the truth, a standard for godly wisdom, and a standard for knowledge, and though those who are perishing might still see it as foolishness, it is nothing less than the power of God. It’s not access to truth that transforms a man; it is the knowledge thereof, coupled with action, wherein once we know the truth, we are accountable to live it, submit to it, and follow its precepts.

The Bible is the only thing in existence whose widespread availability does not diminish its inherent value. Usually, the rarer something is, the more valuable it becomes, and the more of something you can find at your local five-and-dime, the less value it holds. While you can get a pair of decent sneakers for the price of a not-so-gourmet meal at Olive Garden, people are paying five and six figures for rare pairs of Jordans.

The same cannot be said for the Word of God. Whether, as is the case in certain parts of the world, it’s rare to the point that people will write entire books of the Bible by hand, as individual pages get passed through the community so that they can be copied, or you find one in the nightstand of every motel you spend the night in, the value inherent in Scripture remains constant, undiminished, and priceless.

Men who understood the true worth of the Bible sacrificed livelihoods, freedom, and even their very lives for its sake, making it their mission in life to get as many Bibles into the hands of as many hungry souls as they could. Some spent years in prison, others were not so fortunate and succumbed to the torture and privation they underwent for the high crime of being branded a Bible smuggler.

They were tireless in their endeavor, and no sacrifice was too big. It wasn’t because they treated the gospel as any other book, but because they understood that there was no other book in the world that came close to equaling the power it held, and the wisdom it contained.

To this day, men and women in certain parts of the world are laying down their lives to spread the message of the cross to any who would hear, as well as those who risk a life sentence or worse just to possess a copy of the book that many in the West treat so flippantly.  

That we would spend more time arguing endlessly over things that hold no eternal weight rather than studying the Word of God isn’t just telling but tragic. That we would ignore, dismiss, or disregard the Word for which so many have suffered in lieu of feelings, opinions, fanciful tales, fables, and vain imaginings is simply criminal.

This generation has much to answer for, for it was given much, far more than any other generation that came before it, yet they did nothing with all that they’ve been given. We have encyclopedic amounts of wisdom at our fingertips, everything from the Bible itself to Greek and Hebrew translations, to a glut of commentaries for every book of the Bible. Yet, we’re more confused, lukewarm, undecided, duplicitous, hypocritical, and situational about the faith than any generation to come before us.

We are reticent to obey, unwilling to sacrifice, and have come to believe that humbling ourselves at the foot of the cross is somehow beneath us. Yet, we’re always first in line when it comes to claiming blessings, prosperity, and insisting that we will be caught up first, before any untoward event could impress upon us the need to endure and overcome. 

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.