Job LXII

 There is bound to be someone in everyone’s life who is quick to remind them of who they were before they encountered Christ. Whether it’s a misguided attempt to keep you humble or they’re just trying to bring you down a peg, when someone insists on dragging up who you were and inferring that it’s still who you are, your only reaction should be to continue picking up your cross, walking humbly with your Lord, and working out your salvation with fear and trembling.

Trying to convince someone that you’re a different person when they’re set on remembering you as you were, without allowing for the possibility that you are a new creature, is an exercise in futility. They will not see you as God sees you, as having been reconciled to Him, because they don’t want to.

In the early 90s, our ministry funded, participated in, and put on a lot of crusades in Romania. Communism had fallen, the gospel was free to be preached wherever someone would rent you a hall, and it didn’t take a genius to see that the harvest field was plentiful. Since it was not about an individual person but rather about preaching the gospel to the lost and highlighting Jesus, we made use of local pastors and preachers whenever possible. More often than not, my grandfather was there as an auxiliary, either praying for people or passing out Bibles, but as far as the preaching went, he was happy to let the local brethren do the heavy lifting.

On one such night, we were in Tirgu Frumos, back before they fixed the roads a good hour’s drive from Botosani, and we’d just gotten done with a crusade where the local church pastor had preached. He was a man well into his fifties, and just by the look of him, you could tell he had a past. His nose had been broken at some point and hadn’t been set right, likely more than once, since it was ridged and flattened, giving him the look of a bulldog. He was broad-chested, with that hunched-over appearance guys who wrestle tend to adopt, and if not for the light in his eyes, one would be hard-pressed to stay on the same side of the sidewalk if they saw him coming from the opposite direction.

As we were shaking hands and saying our goodbyes, getting ready to go back home, a man walked up to the pastor and poked a finger into his chest.

“What makes you better than me? I remember when we used to get drunk together, and I couldn’t even hold a candle to you; what gives you the right? How do I know this isn’t all a farse? Are we just supposed to take your word that you’ve changed?”

Every couple of words, as if to emphasize his point, the man would poke the pastor in the chest. His voice got progressively louder, and his jabs more violent, but the pastor didn’t move; he didn’t back away or try to constrain the man and his stabbing finger in any way.

 When the man stopped long enough to catch his breath, the pastor looked into his eyes and, in a soft voice, said, “You and I both know that if I were still the man I used to be, you’d have a broken finger and a few less teeth. Now do you want to have a conversation, or do you want to keep poking me in the chest?”

I could see the wheels spinning, the man’s realization that had this now pastor been the man he’d known before, he likely wouldn’t be standing. taking a step back and arching his brows, he said, “I’ll take the conversation if you don’t mind.”

When we surrender, submit, repent, and begin the journey of denying ourselves and picking up our crosses, we’re not simply identifying as Christians; we are becoming Christ-like in every area of our lives. We are being transformed from glory to glory into the image of Christ. If the extent of our Christianity is claiming that we are Christian, while none of the transformation is taking place within and without, we will be counted among those who say Lord, Lord, but whom He never knew.

There is no sin in remembering where we once were and acknowledging how far God has brought us. Every journey has a starting point, even the journey of faith. We don’t look back at the starting line with longing or a desire to return to it but merely to gauge how far we’ve come while keeping our eyes firmly affixed to the finish line.

Even one such as Paul wasn’t shy about owning up to what he had been, admitting in his letter to the Galatians that he once persecuted without mercy the church of God and did his best to destroy it. He could have obfuscated or whitewashed his past, but what would be the point? He was no longer the man he had been, and now, rather than seek to destroy it, he made it his life’s mission to grow the church and comfort the brethren. That’s what God does. That is the transformative power of His presence in the heart of man, and to take that glorious transformation and say it’s no longer required, but that all we need do is say a few words and raise a hand at a crusade is not only foolhardy but unbiblical.

Matthew 7:21-23, “Not everyone who says to me ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’”

What does this have to do with Job? Only that his relationship with God and the faith that he’d built up over the years aided him in weathering the storm when it would have utterly broken any other man and brought them to the point of sinning against God with their lips. It’s who you are in Christ that will give you the strength to abide, endure, and persevere, not who you are in yourself.

It doesn’t matter how tough and strong we think we are in our constitution, how high of a pain threshold we have, or how unaffected we are by the circumstances of life; without God, everyone breaks at some point. With God, however, all things are possible.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

Job LXI

I can’t say I’ve ever been so low as to curse the day I was born. Job was. It’s easy to sit in judgment and find reasons to look down on the man or say he was being overly dramatic, but if you’ve never walked a mile in someone’s shoes, then your judgment is unfounded. I can’t quantify another’s pain, nor can you quantify mine. It is relational to me alone, and only God knows it fully. Each of us carries a unique burden of pain, a weight only we and God can truly understand.

Sometimes, a man’s countenance and what’s going on in his heart are two wholly different things. It’s guaranteed that you’ve run across someone who put on a brave face and smiled at you while their heart was in turmoil, a vortex of grief and pain that had you seen, you would have recoiled from. On occasion, you get the sense of it, whether it’s a look in their eyes or the fact that the smile is contrary to their overall countenance, but more often than not, we ignore it because we all have our own problems, our own grief, our own disappointments in life, and we’ve been conditioned to turn off our empathy for those around us while expecting them to show it at the slightest need.

No man is an island, but those who deem themselves the overlords of molding society would love nothing more. It’s easier to control someone who has no tribe, no friends, no one they can rely upon, confide in, or pour their hearts out to. They want to be the ones you run to, and they’re quick to offer you the drug cocktail du jour to numb you to the point of indifference toward everything that’s going on around you. Take this fistful of pills, and you won’t feel the grief anymore. Will it make it go away? No, it will still be there, but rather than dealing with it, going through it, letting time heal the wound, we’ll just numb all of you, and you’ll feel nothing at all. Of course, there’s a cost; there always is, and in this case, the cost is your lucidity, your self-awareness, your sense of purpose, and your peace.

Counterfeit peace or counterfeit joy are just that, counterfeit. They’re fake, they’re not real, and as soon as you run out of your prescription, the grief returns fivefold because it’s been building up with no pressure valve to release it and no true comfort to lessen it. What the world offers is not a cure but a way to manage it. The only one who can deliver on the promise of healing a broken heart is God, even if it takes time to do it. Wounds take time to heal. When you cut your finger, even if you wash out the wound, lather it in Neosporin, and bandage it, it won’t heal overnight, even though the healing process has already begun. You don’t go back to the wound, open it up, squeeze the sides, and make it bleed every few hours, wondering why it’s not healing. You do what you can do to keep it from getting infected, then let time do its thing and scab it over, then let it heal altogether, then when it’s done, you’ll have the scar to remind you of it for the rest of your days. Healing takes time, but it does come.

Scars remind us of the wounds we’ve suffered and the valleys God has carried us through. They’re a permanent reminder that God can bind up the wound and heal the broken heart because He’s already done it, and we carry the evidence of it with us throughout.

We tend to hide our scars, not realizing they make us who we are. Our scars are a testament to all that God has delivered us from, and they are not something to be ashamed or embarrassed of but rather something to showcase as evidence of His unwavering faithfulness.

Every scar I have directly correlates to an event in my life, whether for good or ill, depending on how I look at it, and each one is a constant reminder that though it wasn’t easy, God got me through it when everyone looking from the outside in had written me off already. This goes for spiritual scars as well as physical ones. Life is a tapestry of joy and pain, victories and defeats, times of plenty and times of famine, and each thread makes up a whole, a complete picture that, looking back on, one can clearly see the hand and providence of God throughout.

When you’re in the middle of the ocean, bobbing along on the waves, doing everything you can just to keep your head above water, it’s difficult to be introspective. You’re in survival mode, and everything you do is solely focused on staying alive. Eventually, after the lifeboat arrives and throws you a life preserver after you’re dragged on board, have a moment to catch your breath and know that you are safe, you get a chance to reflect and consider how much worse it could have been had the lifeboat not arrived when it did.

It’s only in our day and age that people turn around and sue individuals who save them from drowning or burning, citing that they were too rough in their efforts, but any rightly thinking, reasonable, logical individual would only show gratitude for having been saved, even if they got a bruise on their hip from being dragged into a boat, or out of a burning building.

Whenever God delivers you from a situation or a predicament you know full well you could have never delivered yourself from, the only attitude you should have is one of gratitude and thankfulness for His intervention. When I know that of my own accord, through my own strength, and by my own wisdom, I could not have navigated a situation satisfactorily, yet God intervened and made a way when there seemed to be none, anything less than me falling to my knees and thanking Him for His intervention is unseemly and less than He deserves. Gratitude is not just a feeling; it’s a way of acknowledging the divine intervention in our lives.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

Job LX

 Tomorrow, my youngest is turning seven. It puts a lot into perspective. It’s not that you don’t notice you’re getting older if you don’t have children. There will always be the odd gray hair or the rickety back to let you know you’re getting on in years, but when you have children, it’s a direct and constant reminder of the passing of time. Tempus Fugit, indeed, like it was doing industrial strength speed and washing it down with a six-pack of Red Bull.

The more they grow, the older you get because nothing stops time except for a dirt nap, and in that case, time stops only for the one in the ground. It goes on for everyone else.

It’s odd that while generally speaking, life is a short and fleeting thing, there are moments in life that seem to transpire in slow motion, wherein an hour feels like a day and a day feels like a year. It’s never when we’re laughing, smiling, enjoying the sun on our faces and the breeze in our hair, or in my case, my shaven scalp. Those days seem to zip by, and you look back on that five-day trip four days in and realize that it’s almost over, done with, and you’ll have to get back on that plane, likely with the same people, because most of them bought the same five-day package, and return to packing lunches, school drop off lines, dentist appointments, violin and cello practice, working your first job, then your second job, wondering if you could fit in a third job but just part-time because you want the kids to remember who you are and not call the police when you wander into the house exhausted.

The coo-coo clock doesn’t go any faster or any slower; it keeps perfect time, yet depending on what we’re going through at the time, you wonder where the time went or can’t believe it’s only been three minutes since the last time you looked at your watch. Yes, I know most people don’t have watches anymore, except for those thrall collars that tell them they need to walk three thousand more steps, go to the bathroom, drink more water, and breathe; that last one’s important. Don’t forget to breathe.

How did we manage before we were so laden with gadgets that we emanate low-frequency radiation even when we’re not around them? Don’t get me wrong, I like the convenience of not having to trek to an outhouse in the middle of the night or empty a chamber pot every morning, but what was meant to be a convenience has now become an obsession, an addiction, a prison cell without bars, to the point that if we wind up in an area without bars for more than thirty seconds, we start to sweat, and think it’s the end of the world. You’re three minutes from home, and you’ve driven the same road a thousand times, you’ll be okay. When what was sold as a tool to make your life easier turns into an albatross around your neck, without which you don’t feel normal or at ease, you are no longer mastering the tool; the tool is mastering you.

Job had none of the distractions we’ve become accustomed to. He was alone with his grief, with his pain, with the ever-present reality of his loss, and it’s very likely the days dragged on at a snail’s pace for him. It’s unlikely that time flies by when all you have is a potsherd with which to scratch at yourself and a heap of ashes upon which to lay your head.

Even when his friends showed up, they could do nothing more than sit with him in silence, seeing that his grief was very great. How do you console a man who was on top of the world one day, then the next, all he has left is the pain with which he has to contend?

There’s pain, then there’s pain. Physical pain is one thing; the pain of the heart is something wholly different. If your joints ache on a given morning, you can pop a couple of aspirin or lather yourself in icy hot and make it through the day, but when your heart is broken and shattered, there is no remedy for it but God.

Men try to find other ways to mute or numb the pain of the heart, as they have since the beginning of time, whether giving themselves over to wine, crawling into a bottle, taking pills and powders that are likelier to kill them than make them feel better because that soul-crushing pain of the heart is so unbearable as to make any physical pain pale in comparison.

For many, just having one of the things that happened to Job happen to them would be enough to throw them into an endless spiral of self-destruction, never mind loss upon loss, grief upon grief, and pain upon pain.

Job was within his rights to lament. He was within his rights to grieve and pour out what he’d been holding in for so many days.

Oftentimes, we have unrealistic expectations of those whom God has called to service. We expect them to be superhuman, beyond feeling or emotion, always rising above the circumstances of their existence, and when they do show emotion, when they mourn, and weep, and cry out, we think less of them.  

God never called anyone to be unfeeling, emotionless, or robotic; He called them to be obedient. Rather than look down on a brother who is grieving a loss while continuing to walk in obedience, we should encourage them, be there for them, and comfort them because even in their pain, they’re doing what God called them to do.

My grandfather took my grandmother’s passing hard. She’d been the love of his life, and when she died, a piece of him died with her. While still in mourning, even before we had the wake, a lady from Kansas came to visit because she’d heard about the ministry and she was in the area. We honored her request and gave her our apartment address; even in the midst of all the tumult, my grandfather and I made time for her, and we spent a good thirty minutes talking; we said a prayer, and she left. We thought nothing of it, busy making the arrangements to ship my grandmother back to Romania, which in itself required jumping through so many hoops you’d think you were in the circus. A month or so later, we got a letter in the mail from the aforementioned lady informing us that she was underwhelmed by the experience, didn’t feel welcome when she visited, and that we could have been more hospitable.

If she hadn’t known of the situation and that my grandmother was lying in a casket at a funeral home, I would have seen my way to being more gracious in my response, but she did; it was the first thing I informed her of when she walked into our apartment.

I understand that this may come as a shock to some, but it’s not always about you. The world doesn’t revolve around your happiness, and sometimes, the people you interact with who seem distant or distracted are going through their own version of hell and doing their best to just keep it together.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

Job LIX

 Job 3:1-3, “After this Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth. And Job spoke, and said: “May the day perish on which I was born, and the night in which it was said, ‘a male child is conceived.’ May that day be darkness; May God above not seek it, nor the light shine upon it. May darkness and the shadow of death claim it; may a cloud settle on it; may the blackness of the day terrify it.”

Although we do not know how much time passed between Job’s friends hearing of his travails and making their way to him, it was likely more than a couple of days. Considering that news of his hardship had to travel to them first, then they had to get together and decide to go to him, and then the journey itself, it was not something quick or instantaneous.

Once again, historical context matters. There were no phones, no e-mail, no air travel, no rail, no cars, and the three friends likely rode camels to come and see Job. It all took time, and enough time had passed that when they saw him, Job was unrecognizable.

I was in the United States when my mother went to her reward. She was hosting a group of friends in Romania and was in the process of making breakfast for them when her race was done, and she crossed the finish line. Within minutes, I got the call, and an hour later, I was on my way to the airport. Within twenty-four hours, I was on a different continent, and after an eight-hour drive from the airport, I was in Botosani. Although we take such conveniences for granted and rarely consider how easy traveling halfway across the world has become in our modern age, even fifty miles back in the day would have taken considerable time to traverse.

Throughout all this the only conversation we are privy to, the only words it is documented that Job uttered was the interaction with his wife. It wasn’t drawn out or protracted; it was just a handful of words followed by silence. A man alone with his grief, a man alone with his pain. Even after his friends arrived, there were another seven days of silence wherein they just sat on the ground with him, no one speaking to him or having a conversation.

Throughout all this time, the pressure was building. Just because he hadn’t said anything, it doesn’t mean Job had nothing to say. Silence doesn’t always translate to everything being okay. After almost twenty-five years of marriage, I can tell when my wife’s mood is off, even if no words are spoken. If you’re a married man, you know the insidiousness of the silent treatment, and if you are wise, you will brace yourself for the inevitable blow-off top pressure release.

During the first few years, whenever that sense that something wasn’t right would tickle the back of my neck, I’d just ignore it, only to have it spill over a few days later. Being older and wiser nowadays, the instant I feel something is off, I start the conversation because I know if I allow it to fester and don’t deal with it when it finally comes to a head, it will be far more dramatic than it would have earlier on.

It’s usually a small thing, something that hadn’t even registered, but something that stuck in her craw, and once we talk about it and discuss it like rational adults, it becomes a nonissue. Unless there is infidelity involved, marriages don’t crumble and fall apart overnight. Avoiding necessary conversations might delay uncomfortable situations, but it will not make them go away. The longer you wait, the longer you put it off, the more you ignore that sense of unease wafting off your wife or husband like steam off a hot kettle in the middle of winter, it will be all the worse when you finally deal with it. It doesn’t even have to be something big or a major issue, but a lot of small things that build up over time, and eventually, there’s always the proverbial straw that breaks the camel’s back, and the floodgates give way to hours of back and forth when it could have been dealt with in five minutes flat at the moment of inception.

Shortly after we got married, we were on our honeymoon, and I decided to splurge and rent a convertible for the few days we were away. I still remember it. It was a canary yellow Camaro, and since it was summer, the moment I got behind the wheel, I put the top down. A day or two into our trip, my wife asked if she could drive, and I said no, not because I don’t trust her driving, but because my name was the only one on the rental agreement, and if anything happened, insurance would not cover it.

I didn’t take the time to explain this; I just said no, and we went on with our day. I felt something was off, but didn’t know what, so I just ignored it. Six months later, as we were sitting down for dinner, out of nowhere, my wife asked, “Why didn’t you let me drive the car?” It had been six months. I had no clue what she was talking about or what she was referring to, but it was something that she’d held onto all this time.

I asked what car, which made it worse because I should have known exactly what she was referring to in her estimation. When she reminded me of our honeymoon, I informed her that her name was not on the rental agreement and so wasn’t covered by insurance, to which she replied, “Oh,” and that was the end of the conversation.

Job had spent a considerable amount of time in silence, even after his friends arrived, but this did not mean that he was not vexed or that his pain had lessened. After sitting in silence for seven days with his friends, and Lord knows how many days before that, Job finally spoke, and he had a lot to say. The lesson here is clear: don’t let issues fester in your relationships. Address them in a timely manner before they escalate and become more difficult to resolve. Once Job got started, if not for the dark undertones, his monologue could be seen as poetic. Everything he’d been thinking in silence came out in a rush, and for an entire chapter, he unburdens himself of all the pent-up emotions. 

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.       

Job LVIII

 Job’s friends heard of all the adversity that had come upon him and took action. They mobilized, each one coming from his own place, and made an appointed time to come and mourn with him and to comfort him. When we hear of someone’s woes, our reaction to them will tell the tale of our character and virtue. Job’s friends could have heard what happened to him, shrugged their shoulders, thanked the Lord it wasn’t them and continued with their lives. They may have spared him some thoughts and prayers, as has become fashionable in our day and age, but as far as going out of their way and carving out a time in which to come and visit him, they could have easily found excuse upon excuse not to do it.

We have families of our own, businesses to run, things to do, and sheep to shear. It is a horrible thing what happened to Job, but such is life; we wish him well.

The three men held Job in enough esteem and considered him enough of a friend, wherein they put their lives on pause and came to be with him. If your friends, or those you consider your friends, are unwilling to go out of their way to be a comfort in your time of hardship or to mourn with you in your time of mourning, perhaps the relationship is not reciprocal.

There is the comfort friends and family can bring in times of distress, and such comfort is not without its benefits, being as a salve on an open wound, but the comfort others can bring pales in comparison to the comfort God can bring. If you find yourself without friends who are willing to comfort you in your time of hardship, know that God is always willing and able to comfort you beyond what any man can do.

The most difficult time of my life was dealing with my grandfather’s passing, closely followed by my mother’s. It may sound odd to some to put his loss above the loss of my mother, but throughout my life, my grandpa was a constant. He was the person I spent the most time with. My grandpa taught me how to ride a bike, shoot a slingshot, bait a hook, honor God, love the Bible, and even tried to teach me noodling, although that particular skill never took. To my young eyes, he was the coolest grandpa in the village, the only man I’d ever met with a tattoo, which he’d gotten in the Navy. He was my best friend from as early as I can remember, and that carried through pretty much for the rest of my adolescence and into adulthood.

From the age of twelve and well into my twenties, I spent at least nine months out of the year on the road with him, the other three being spent either coming home for a fresh change of clothing or spending just enough time in Fullerton to put the newsletter together. I loved my mother deeply, but my relationship with my grandfather was far deeper, more established, and fleshed out than it was with her. She was busy with working, raising my little brothers, keeping the home, and doing everything else, so as far as spending a lot of time with her one-on-one, that only happened later on in life.

When my grandfather passed, to their credit, friends and family did try to comfort me, but I was inconsolable. Even with having received a word from the Lord that he would be allowed to choose whether he remains or goes on to his reward, the loss was something akin to taking a cheese grater to an open wound.

During that time of grieving, the only thing that brought me comfort was being alone with God and pouring out my heart to Him. It wasn’t so much that the pain of loss went away; rather, it was muted, and the peace of God was an ever-present companion that kept me from despondency. We’ve all experienced loss. We’ve all grieved or mourned the passing of a loved one, and in those moments, the presence of God is a fount of untold comfort.

Although none of us can honestly say we’ve experienced Job-level hardship, we’ve all experienced some sort of difficulty in life. The sun shines on the just and the unjust alike, but what the just have is the presence of God in their lives, something the unjust can never experience unless they humble themselves and repent, thereby becoming just.

Not only did Job’s friends put their lives on hold and come to be a comfort to him, but they also spent seven days and seven nights with him, sitting down on the ground, not speaking one word to him. Could you imagine sitting on the ground for an entire week and not speaking one word? It’s not as though they had cell phones or YouTube to keep them busy; they didn’t have television to make the time pass a bit faster; they didn’t bring books along or do their taxes while they sat; they sat in silence for an entire week.

This shows the depth of love the three friends had for Job. How many people can you think you’d be willing to sit with for seven days and seven nights without uttering one word? Not on a couch or in some comfortable chair, but on the ground, next to someone covered in boils, sitting on an ash pile, unrecognizable from the person you once knew?

If ever there was a question about the affection Job’s friend had for him, their act of kindness and willingness to go beyond what anyone would expect of them should dispel any doubts. They saw his grief was great and knew that no words they could have spoken would have consoled him. Although in a pitiable state, Job did not pity himself or invite the pity of others. He accepted the situation for what it was, never once sinning with his lips.   

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

Job LVII

 True faith and dependence upon God are sustaining. Trusting in His sovereignty removes the burden of second-guessing ourselves or playing the ever-horrendous what could have been game within our minds. I used to do that when I was younger, wondering what would have been had I turned left when I turned right, and realized that it was both wasted time and wasted effort.

The past is the past, the present is the present, and the future is God’s territory. Throughout the years, I’ve learned not to dwell on the past, to live in the present, and to trust God in all things when it comes to the future. I’ve found it’s the only way to be surefooted and retain the joy and peace of God through the ups and downs of life.

It’s easy to get caught up in what will be or what could have been and miss out on what is, fail to live in the present, focus on today, this moment, and what we can do to further the kingdom of God. For the longest time, I was stuck in my own head, not starting a new project for fear of not being around to finish it. I usually don’t write books someone can leaf through in a few hours flat. Most of the books I’ve written are a few hundred pages, and every new book starts with a blank page, the first words, the first paragraph, and the first chapter.

I struggled with this for the longest time until one day, I saw my next-door neighbor planting some trees. His name is Bob, and he is no spring chicken. Bob also had open heart surgery a few years back, so it’s not as though he is in tip-top shape, yet there he was, shovel in hand, digging a hole, planting a tree, and going on to the next.

A Greek proverb that has made its way through the ages says a society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they will never sit. I realized the truth of it and came to terms with the reality that my duty is to run the race faithfully. It is up to God and God alone when I cross the finish line.

The next morning, I started writing again, and six books later, I still haven’t stopped. Sometimes, it’s more about starting something than being bogged down with the question of whether you’ll be around to finish it or not. If God has called you to a work, even if you are fully aware it will not be completed in your lifetime, put your hand to the plow and start doing what God has called you to do. Tomorrow comes with its own problems; it will worry about its own things. We have today, and none of us are guaranteed a tomorrow, but if today is the day I am to meet my maker, I’d like it to be while I am busy doing His work.

I realize full well that, in hindsight, it’s easy to give advice, but there were a good two years when I was just spinning my wheels, and the thought of not being around to finish what I had started haunting me to the point of paralysis. Granted, it was during the time when everyone thought the human race would go extinct from the sniffles, but if it had not been that, it likely would have been something else. I never understood the trope of being self-aware enough to get out of your own way until I did. It was an aha moment, an epiphany of sorts, both profound in its implications and humbling in its simplicity.

Sometimes, you just have to put your head down and put one foot in front of the other without any guarantees other than the knowledge that you’re doing what you’re meant to do. Even when you feel like you’re not making any progress or nothing is coming of it, press on, be diligent, and eventually, you will see it was not for naught.

It’s tempting to put off what you know you’re meant to do until the stars align, and everything clicks into place, until there’s nothing else vying for your time, and you have no worries or concerns. Everyone has their idyllic scene well fleshed out in their mind, mine being a log cabin, a crackling wood fire, the scent of cedar in the air, a hot cup of coffee, with snow gently falling outside the window, quiet, with a pet pug sleeping on a worn carpet at my feet.

I’ve got two rambunctious daughters, no pet pug, and live in a subdivision in Wisconsin. Far from idyllic, but I wake up every morning and do the work. I’ve come to realize that there will never be a perfect time except for that moment to lay aside the concerns and worries about tomorrow and what it will bring and be faithful in the present.

Job received no revelation that eventually things would turn around; an angel did not appear to him, and there was no burning bush or a voice from heaven encouraging him to press on and persevere. He’d lost everything, his health was declining with each passing day, he sat on an ash heap scratching at his boils with a potsherd, and the only thing in his future, as far as the eye could see, was more pain. All that Job had was the moment, that inhalation and exhalation of breath, and in the moment, he chose faithfulness over despondency, integrity over surrender, and trust over bitterness.

When we are anchored in faith, we are not cast to and fro by the storms of life. We remain steadfast even at our lowest, knowing the nature and character of the God we serve and standing on the promise that all things work together for good to those who love God and to those who are called according to His purpose. That’s the critical point many ignore: for all things to work together for good, you must love God. Likewise, you are called according to His purpose and not your own.

Jesus never promised an easy way or a way without trials and testing, but He did declare that He was the only way and the only means by which man can be reconciled to God and be restored to a relationship with Him. There is no other way, and if you love God and are called according to His purpose, know that whatever it is you may be struggling through today, it will work together for good.      

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

Job LVI

 Solomon once wrote that he who walks with wise men will be wise, but the companion of fools will be destroyed. You don’t get to pick your family but you can select your friends. If you find yourself surrounded by fools, it’s nobody’s fault but your own because you chose it, attracted it, and embraced it rather than seek out wise men who would have made you wiser instead.

I cannot boast of a panoply of friends, but the friends I do have, I’ve chosen purposefully. My intent was never to surround myself with yes men or those who would agree with me on every topic, but rather those who would challenge me and, as iron sharpens iron, seek to grow together and hold each other accountable.

One of the worst things a pastor or a preacher can do is surround themselves with sycophants who think they can do no wrong. No, you’re not the second coming of the Messiah, you don’t walk on water, you do have flaws, and it’s good to surround yourself with people who keep you humble.

Some of the biggest scandals within the church of late have come about because rather than love their soul enough to call them out on their sin, the governing body, the elders, deacons, and those with knowledge of the moral failures of their leader, swept it under the rug and pretended as though it never happened. They were more concerned about their paycheck than they were about the spiritual condition of the man in charge, so rather than deal with the festering wound, they set about protecting an image. When your friends, the elder board, or the governing body of any given work are more concerned about image and what exposing sin might mean for the revenue than they are about the truth, it’s a problem that won’t go away.

In hindsight, they all concur that it would have been better to rip off the band-aid and deal with the situation when it arose, but now, months, years, or decades down the line, it’s only gotten worse, deeper, more diseased, and the fallout will be all the greater.

Job was a wise man, and he surrounded himself with wise friends. Teman, the region Job’s friend Eliphaz was from, would later be associated with wisdom itself by none other than God when He queried through Jeremiah whether wisdom was no more in Teman. It had been centuries since the time of Job, and it seems there had been a decline in wisdom in Teman, but during his time, it was a valued and sought-after virtue.

In our modern era, Solomon’s words have been retooled and simplified, wherein the brilliant minds of our day have concluded that you are either the average of the five people you spend the most time with or the better-known adage, show me your friends, and I’ll show you your future, but the genesis of this logical deduction can be traced back to the Proverbs of old, which are included in the Book so many ignore and despise today.

The Bible is a wonderland of wisdom, and more often than not, every epiphany and every quip that resonates, for which men take credit as being the originators of, can be traced back to it in some form or fashion.

It’s no accident that the further a society draws away from Scripture, the less wisdom there is to be found in it. When you do away with the light, when you do away with the Word of God, only darkness and foolishness remain. We can see what society has become in real-time over the last few decades, and the core reason for all this is that we have strayed from God. There is no wisdom to be found in the world or its ways. Every wicked thing that is presented as being the new way to fulfillment and wholeness is discovered to be vapid and substanceless, and those who chased after it, thinking it would make them whole, found themselves more despondent, disjointed, and discombobulated than ever before.

Throughout history, we’ve seen that a renaissance of wisdom began with one man. It didn’t take a village to come together and decide they would pursue it; it took one man whose desire for wisdom was such that he let nothing stand in his way of acquiring it. That desire inspired others, and eventually, there was a movement, a groundswell of souls who were tired of wallowing in the ignorance they’d become accustomed to and hungered for something more. Any quest whose purpose is wisdom will eventually lead to the foot of the cross. It will lead to the Word of God because it is wisdom distilled. The Bible is the source of all wisdom and the only thing we need to be counted among the wise.

There are those who are wise and those who profess to be wise. There is a marked difference between the two, for while the truly wise have their wisdom tethered in truth, in the Word of God and His ways, those professing to be wise become fools trusting in their own wisdom.

Romans 1:22-23, “Professing to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man – and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things.”

This is what your own wisdom gets you: foolishness. All the wretchedness, silliness, foolishness, confusion, and aberrant behavior we are seeing are merely symptoms of the underlying disease. The underlying disease is a departure from godly wisdom for the truth of God’s word and the light of Scripture. The resulting symptoms are readily visible in our modern culture, and until the disease is dealt with, the symptoms will morph, and new variants will appear, all worse than the previous iterations.

Spiritual problems require spiritual solutions. In order for the current problem to even begin to be rectified, we must distance ourselves from those professing to be wise when they are demonstrable fools and return to the wisdom of the Gospel, submitting to it and doing as it commands. We have the prescription, but simply having the prescription will do nothing to alleviate the disease. We must take the medicine that is the Word of God and allow it to purify us from within. Am I preaching to the choir? Perhaps, but I’ve seen far too many seemingly stable believers go off into the weeds, believing things the Bible never speaks of and finding their faith shipwrecked as a consequence.   

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.