Job CXCIX

 Whether spoken in frustration, pain, or desperation, if Job truly believed the words he’d spoken regarding God having abandoned him, and what’s more, being actively against him, he would have called it quits right then and there. If you’ve got nothing left to cling to, what’s the point? If the faith you placed in God was shaken and shattered, the pieces scattered by the winds, and all that remained was despair, why go on?

Blameless and upright, he might have been by God’s assessment, but Job was still human. Things still got under his skin, he still reacted to his friend’s barbs, and he grew ever more uncomfortable to the point of despondency in the silence that followed his cries. This wasn’t about putting on a brave face or about projecting strength. Job was being honest, raw, open, and vulnerable. He expressed his inner turmoil, his frustration, and even his doubt that God was still in his corner.

We all like to see ourselves as the Stonewall Jackson of Christianity, unflinching and resolute, taking wound after wound but still remaining upright, often failing to see the forest for the trees, in that if we still stand, it’s not in our strength but His. Every man’s strength fails him; God’s strength never does.

It doesn’t matter who we point to as the pinnacle of spirituality; in the end, they were still men, they had insecurities and fears, they had moments of hardship and pain to the point of wishing they were no longer among the living, but what sets them apart is that they knew where their strength came from.

Yes, they were bold, heroic, resolute, having resolved to go to the death if need be for the cause of Christ, but in the darkest, most desperate of moments, it was still God who sustained them, it was God who breathed strength into their bones, and comforted them in their pain.

Everyone knew the instant they went beyond their own strength or ability. They understood it was not their words being spoken, but His words through them. It was not their strength being brought to bear, but God’s strength operating in them. That’s why you’ll never see a true man of God boast of his victories, because they weren’t his. They were humble enough to serve and committed enough to obey, no matter what was required of them.

A wise man is self-aware enough to know the limitations of his own abilities and give all glory to God when those abilities are exceeded through them, not of their own but via the Holy Spirit dwelling within. One of the most corrosive mindsets we can possess as servants of God is that it is we who are accomplishing the things only God could, taking credit for them, and assuming that we are irreplaceable.

Taking the glory rightly due God and appropriating it to oneself is akin to playing with fire while doused in gasoline. You may not go up in flames the first time your hand flutters across an open flame, perhaps not even the second or the third, but eventually it will catch, and the kingdom you’ve built for yourself will be reduced to ash and rubble.

We’ve seen it play out so often as to be undeniable, predictable, and expected. God builds a work, man takes credit for the work, he uses worldly means to build it beyond what God desired it to become, then suddenly, it all comes crashing down. Was God in it at the genesis of it? Likely, when the man was humble, and pointed to Jesus, and preached the gospel without equivocation, He was. But then something changes: the pride of man takes root, and you can see incremental shifts in their demeanor, delivery, and what they choose to speak about, as well as what they choose to omit. It becomes more about showmanship than rightly dividing the Word, more about the man than the God the man claims to serve.

It doesn’t matter how many followers you have, how many people think you’re the bee’s knees, how often you are lauded or praised, always keep the words of Jesus at the forefront of your mind: without Me, you can do nothing!

John 15:4-6, “Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered; and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned.”

There are many branches, but only one vine. Independent of the vine, the branches cannot bear fruit, no matter how much they might want to, or what lengths they might go to in order to manufacture them. Jesus is the only indispensable factor in this parable. Whether many or few, the branches are still branches, and they must remain in the vine in order to produce fruit.

Although I’m the first to admit I neither have a green thumb, no take much pleasure in the task of tree pruning, I’ve been around some individuals who are adept at both, and a few summers back, as I took the girls apple picking at a local orchard, I overheard a man explain to a mom and her two sons why some trees fail to produce apples while others were heavy laden with them.

Apparently, there’s a term for it, and it’s called improper tree vigor. When this occurs, the branches are so focused on growing their length and thickness, expending all their energy in this singular pursuit, that they fail to produce flower buds. Although I have no plans of becoming an orchardist, I found the conversation and subsequent explanation fascinating.

A branch can be so obsessed with building itself up that it fails to fulfill its primary purpose, which is to produce fruit. There’s a profound lesson in this, the depths of which are waiting to be plumbed, but the overall warning is clear and succinct: be more concerned about bearing fruit than how far your branch spans, or how thick it is. Be more concerned with being in the vine than outshining the vine. Never forget; it is the vine that gives life and allows for the production of fruit.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

Job CXCVIII

 If you want a God who will fix your problems and leave the rest of you as you are, without transformation, rebirth, or the presence of Christ in your heart, what you’re seeking after isn’t salvation, or eternity in the presence of God, but a remedy to your earthly concerns.

God is not a therapist, a cheerleader, a life coach, or a magic genie. He is the sovereign creator of all that exists, the God who breathed life into dust and made man, the Alpha and Omega who knows the end from the beginning. When we approach Him with anything less than the reverence due Him as God, when we diminish who He is because it makes us feel as though we are on equal footing with Him, we will always find an excuse not to humble ourselves and obey Him.

We wrestle with God; we grapple with shadows; we exhaust ourselves chasing rumors, innuendo, fictitious assumptions, and rabbit trails, when by submitting ourselves to His guiding hand, we can enter into His rest and have peace that surpasses all understanding.

When we are in Christ, we have peace about today and about tomorrow. Our focus isn’t on unraveling the Gordian knot of geopolitical affairs, or being beside ourselves as to when the other shoe will drop, and some new crisis will eclipse the old crisis, but on worshipping, serving, praising, and fellowshipping with He who has us sheltered under the shadow of His wing.

Foreknowledge, or prophecy for that matter were not intended as a source of fear for the children of God, but rather a reassurance that He knows the end from the beginning, and in that assurance, we can be at rest. When what God foretells comes to pass, it serves as a further cementing of our trust in Him. It allows us to realize that if He was right about one thing that, to the human intellect, seemed improbable or even impossible, then He was right about everything, including the return of Christ and the reward of the righteous.

God isn’t guessing about what tomorrow might bring. He is certain, without a shadow of doubt or turning, because He is not constrained by time as we know it.

Job 19:7-12, “If I cry out concerning wrong, I am not heard. If I cry aloud, there is no justice. He has fenced up my way, so that I cannot pass; And He has set darkness in my paths. He has stripped me of my glory, and taken the crown from my head. He breaks me down on every side, and I am gone; My hope He has uprooted like a tree. He has also kindled His wrath against me, and He counts me as one of His enemies. His troops come together and build up their road against me; they encamp all around my tent.”

Even when the night is dark and overcast, it doesn’t mean the stars beyond no longer exist. It just means we can’t see them in the moment. They remain, ever present, and though our mind might tell us the stars are no more, because our eyes cannot see them, we know that they’re still there, and we will see them anew once the clouds pass by and the skies clear.

The same can be said of God sometimes. In the midst of our trial, in the midst of our suffering, in the midst of our pain, it becomes difficult to see the plan of God, or see His hand upon us, but they are real and present nevertheless. Job had come to believe that God was against him. He’d cried out, and there had been no response; therefore, he’d concluded that God had not heard. Just because God does not answer within the time we think He should, it doesn’t mean He hasn’t heard us. It’s one of those truths we do not want to dwell upon, especially in the midst of a trial, but it is, nevertheless, true.

God is not blind to our struggles, He is not deaf to our cries, He is not indifferent to our situation, and whenever such thoughts begin to assail us, we know where they originate from. It’s the enemy attempting to stifle our hope, to choke our faith, to convince us to give up, pack it in, and surrender to despondency. Only in knowing the nature of the God we serve can we retain faith in the midst of trial, and hope in the midst of hardship.

I know the God I serve! I know He sees, I know He hears, I know He is neither indifferent nor unconcerned, and this awareness of His character gives us the strength to endure, to press on, and to acknowledge that whatever hardship we may be enduring presently is only temporary. Yes, faith is tested. It must be tested so it might be proven.

Our focus as children of God must be on what the testing will produce in us rather than the hardship of the test itself. Everyone wants to see the view from the mountaintop, but not everyone is willing to make the climb. Given that this is common knowledge, there are those who prey upon the household of faith by promising them the view in all its glory without having to exert themselves with the climb, insisting there is a way of bypassing it, avoiding it, and not having to endure it. What those who fall into this snare end up getting is a poor imitation. A picture of a picture, another who took the time to grow, took once they ascended to the peak, not understanding that the reward is in the journey. It’s not enough to nurture ourselves with the testimonies of others. We must be willing to endure and obey so that our lives might also be a testimony of God’s goodness, protection, provision, and deliverance.

We grow with every step we take toward sanctification. We grow with every step we take toward complete obedience and trust in God. Without the journey, there is no maturing. Without the climb, there is no added strength and endurance. We may save ourselves a bit of struggle by attempting to find alternatives to the pruning, the forming, and the forging, but what we lose out on is the fellowship and intimacy that can only come about by consistently following after Him.   

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

Job CXCVII

 Pain, whether physical or the pain that comes with the loss of a loved one, is hard enough to process and deal with without a chorus of voices insisting that you deserve it, you had it coming, and that it’s no less than God’s justice manifesting itself in your life. It compresses your universe to a pinprick, and all you know in the moment is that. If mourning, all you know is that hollow feeling that comes with the reality of separation. If bedridden due to some ailment, the bed soon feels like a prison, and the fresh air one took for granted, the sunsets and sunrises they rarely acknowledged, become untenable dreams and yearnings to be experienced again.

There is a difference between having to endure the consequences of the choices one makes in their life and what Job was going through. If you spent the last forty years on a steady diet of booze and not much else, when the doctor tells you that your liver’s shot, it’s not God punishing you, it’s the consequence of the choices you made time and again.

I am fully aware that accountability is as popular as foot fungus with a side of hives nowadays, but seeing what lack of personal accountability has wrought upon this present generation, perhaps we would do well to reacquaint ourselves with it while there is still time.

What’s worse is that many within the household of faith would rather deflect and pass the buck, blaming everyone from God to the devil to their next-door neighbor for the choices they knowingly and willingly made, growing bitter when walking the aisle and raising a hand doesn’t turn out to be the cure-all they were promised it would be.

God’s job isn’t to fix your life, it’s to save your soul. If He chooses to intervene and clear up some of the mess you’ve made, that’s His decision, His prerogative, and He does so not because we are deserving of such grace, but because He wills it so.

Have you come to the foot of the cross and humbled yourself because the love of Christ was made real to you, or because you wanted an easy fix for the problems that were piling up? Have you repented, picked up your cross, and followed after Him in the hope of being served, or out of sincere desire to be His servant?

There are those who inquire about Jesus because they’re curious, others who are desperate, and others still who are looking for an escape from their current circumstances, but the only ones that stick, the only ones that remain, the only ones that go the distance and live out their days in obedience to Christ are those who acknowledge that they are lost, broken, bruised, beaten, shattered, hopeless, and need a savior. They’re not looking for a temporary reprieve or an escape from the consequences of their choices, but true transformation, rebirth, and sanctification.

It is those who acknowledge that they cannot save themselves, and who are willing to surrender their pride, their ego, and their flesh, abandon aspirations and esteem for their positions and possessions, and submit wholly to His will, pruning, molding, and chiseling that go beyond the superficial, and come to experience the glory of having Christ dwell in their hearts.

There is nothing casual about authentic faith. There is nothing casual about true intimacy with God. The term casual Christianity is a misnomer of the highest order, one that readily passes the lips of a slew of people who use it as an identifier. There is no such thing as casual Christianity! True commitment isn’t situational. It’s not something that only applies when you’re in the majority, or when there are no headwinds of persecution in sight.

Eternity beckons and calls to us with each breath we take. With every sunrise and sunset, we are one day closer to shuffling off this mortal coil, and the last breath we take will be the last time we will be able to choose whether we will be welcomed into His kingdom or sent away. Eternity is what it’s about. It’s what it’s always been about, and the constant calls to embrace prosperity, which is nothing more than cloaked hedonism by those who ought to know better, aren’t doing the sheep of God’s pasture any favors.

Philippians 3:7-11, “But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith; that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection of the dead.”

These words were not penned by a nobody. They were penned by a man who showed such promise and brilliance in his youth that at the age of thirteen, he was sent from Tarsus to Jerusalem to study under the preeminent theologian of the time, a man named Gamaliel. His career path was set, and his entire life was before him. He would be a Pharisee, a high office to aspire to, but one encounter with Jesus made him count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus. 

Paul understood what so few truly grasp, that this journey called life is about the eternity that follows. This is the goal. This is the prize. Not earthly treasures, or temporary comfort. Job understood that life was finite. It has a beginning, and it has an end, and what we do in the short time we are here has eternal consequences, whether for good or ill. As far as Job was concerned, his life was already forfeit. He could not see a way out of his current predicament, yet his hope in the God he served remained intact, understanding that the day would come when there would be no pain, no sorrow, and no tears but for tears of joy.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

Job CXCVI

 Job 19:1-6, “Then Job answered and said: ‘How long will you torment my soul, and break me in pieces with words? These ten times you have reproached me; you are not ashamed that you have wronged me. And if indeed I have erred, my error remains with me. If indeed you exalt yourselves against me, and plead my disgrace against me, know then that God has wronged me, and has surrounded me with His net.”

Sticks and stones may break your bones, but sometimes, given the gravity of the situation, words can break your spirit just as readily. You don’t need to beat someone to a bloody pulp in order to hurt them; a careless, well-placed, intentionally hurtful retort will cause nearly as much pain without the relief of a salve, a balm, or a poultice a wound would enjoy. Job found himself in just such a situation, where the relief he hoped he would receive from his friends turned to torment, and the comfort he assumed would come from their lips turned into a torrent of accusation.

For Job, they weren’t just harmless words that rolled off his back like water off a duck, but a torment for his soul, and something that, by his own words, broke him to pieces.

Although there are many deep and profound spiritual lessons to be found in the book of Job, there are also many practical lessons we would do well in heeding one of which is to think before we speak, especially in volatile or pain-riddled situations, because our intentions might not match our words, and we will end up doing more harm than good.

Job’s three friends had gone beyond not bridling their tongues or letting something hurtful slip out in the heat of the moment. Their effort was concerted and well defined, and though Job’s strength was all but exhausted, he still had the presence of mind to understand what they were trying to do and what their aim was.

Even in his condition, Job kept track of how many times his friends had addressed him reproachfully. It’s an odd thing what the human mind chooses to remember, and what it forgets. You can go on an impromptu treasure hunt fifteen minutes after you lay your keys down, scouring the house, growing ever more frustrated until you realize they’re in your pocket, but remember with stark clarity what someone said fifteen years ago because what they said and the way they said it caused a wound.

Job had been aware that his friends had reproached him ten times, not nine, not eleven, but ten, remembering each of their words in turn and being aware of their ever-increasing tenor and vitriol.

Although this chapter begins in a similar fashion to the previous ones in which Job answered his friends, toward the middle and latter parts, it becomes, what is objectively, one of the great chapters of the Bible for its depth and insight.

What Job details in this nineteenth chapter goes beyond human reason or understanding and transcends into pure revelation. In the midst of his suffering, reproach, loneliness, trial, and pain, he utters some of the most beautiful words ever recorded regarding hope, assurance, and the future glory he will receive at the hand of a just and loving God.

One cannot read this chapter in its entirety and not conclude that Job’s words were divinely inspired. Especially given his condition and the state he was in, the beauty, poetry, truth, and divine insight are both humbling and encouraging for anyone experiencing a season of trial, sorrow, or hardship.

The shift from Job’s machinations to divinely inspired oratory is so evident as to be jarring. What begins as a rebuke of his friends turns into a crash course on the sovereignty, goodness, mercy, grace, justice, and faithfulness of God.

It’s easy to forget that Job was human, with human feelings, emotions, and pain. Given what his three friends had already said, it’s understandable that he would feel the way he felt about them, and since it was his turn to address them, he began by attempting to get them to see what had transpired through his eyes, rather than their own.

Nothing humbles you faster than walking a mile in another’s shoes. It’s an uncomfortable spot to be in, especially if we’ve already made up our minds about the situation, but sometimes just taking a breath and honestly ascertaining how we would react in a similar situation is enough to stir both empathy and compassion in our hearts.

We may think we know, and some of us do, but most of us don’t. Not really. Unless we’ve been in the same situation, there is no way to articulate the hollowness, emptiness, desperation, and the desire for nothing more than an end to the pain, however that end might present itself.

One of the most haunting images I’ve ever witnessed, and one that will stick with me for the rest of my life, took place this summer while we were visiting Romania. I had taken my daughters to see where their grandmother was buried, the cemetery being adjacent to the Hand of Help orphanage, and as we were walking back to the car, I saw a woman, dressed in black, sitting next to a fresh grave, the look on her face so wrought with pain that I couldn’t help but flinch. The headstone told the rest of the story: it was a young child who had recently been interred, and, given her countenance, it was hers.

My wife and I looked at each other, having the sort of silent conversation only a couple who have been together for many years can have, and we both knew there were no words we could say to this woman that would lessen her pain in the moment. There was nothing we could have done or said to comfort her, so we took our daughters by the hand and respectfully passed by, allowing the silence and the chirping of the birds in a nearby tree to continue uninterrupted.  

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

Job CXCV

 If we possess the heart of Christ, if we have been born and made a new creation in Him, then our response and reaction to the suffering of others must be rooted in compassion. Whether it was for a multitude or an individual, whenever Jesus acted, the Word always prefaces it by saying He was moved with compassion for them.

Cruelty is not a virtue. Dismissing someone’s pain or insisting that they deserve to drink the bitter cup down to the dregs because you’ve deemed it so is neither noble nor charitable. What’s worse, by far, is that it’s not Christlike. We say we want to be more like Jesus, but the way we react to another’s need, the way we interact with our fellow man, the compassion and empathy we fail to exemplify say otherwise. Or is it that we just want to open the eyes of the blind or walk on water? The secret is that you can’t have the authority of Christ without possessing the heart of Christ. You cannot journey through life absent love for the lost, affection for the downtrodden, and compassion for those in need, yet wield His power at will. Stunted spirituality is just that: stunted.

We are witnessing a generation become ever more callous, cruel, unfeeling, and retaliatory, and it’s happening with such speed and ferocity as to make one wonder what the end result of it all will be.

It’s understandable that the world rewards and gravitates toward the edgy, the controversial, and those who heap scorn upon anyone within earshot with all the glee of a toddler knocking down a wall of blocks because they are unregenerate, and in watching others wound their contemporaries they get to vicariously experience what it’s like to wield the power of the tongue in the most destructive manner possible.

Whether true or not, whether deserved or not, it seems that once one wound is inflicted, the mob can’t resist picking up stones and joining in. If there’s blood in the water, there will be a feeding frenzy. It’s nature taking its course. It’s both predictable and inevitable.

They convince themselves that whatever horrors the individual set upon will suffer are well deserved, and that they’re doing God’s work by kicking a man while he is down without ever taking the time to figure out whether he should be in the dust, gasping for breath to begin with.

What isn’t as understandable is when those who ought to have new minds and new hearts, those who ought to operate from a position of compassion and see those within the household of faith as members of the same body, take to imitating the world with the same glee and enthusiasm as the world.

When someone in a church body is hurting, grieving, or growing weary, to heap more pain upon their sagging shoulders is akin to taking a hammer to your own thumb, not accidentally, but on purpose. Again, we’re not talking about unrepentant sin or open rebellion, but the trials of life that buffet each of us sooner or later.

Neither Bildad nor Job’s two other friends could identify a sin or any wickedness in his life that warranted the level of hurt, pain, and loss he was enduring, but that didn’t stop them from concluding that he was deserving of worse still. Though they claimed to be his friends, they displayed no compassion when it came to Job’s suffering, and that is very telling as far as the condition of their hearts is concerned.

They wanted Job to be guilty of something because it would tie everything up in a nice little bow while simultaneously confirming their conclusions. There would be no need to ponder the notion of heretofore unseen mystery, nor acknowledge that they may have been wrong in their assertions that Job had done wickedness. There would be no need to humble themselves and admit that perhaps they didn’t know everything, after all.

Humble pie never goes down easy. For some, it’s downright unpalatable, and so they do everything they can to avoid it. They would rather falsely judge a situation or an individual than admit they were wrong and need to repent.

When compassion or love for the brethren is the driving force behind our actions, the hope is for comfort, encouragement, and restoration rather than insisting that it is within our right to be both judge, jury, and executioner. It strokes the ego to no end to pretend we were a version of Ceaser in Rome, where a man's life hung in the balance, determined by the flick of a wrist and the positioning of a thumb. An upward-pointed thumb and you are judged innocent. A downward-pointed thumb, and you are judged guilty, no matter what defense you mount or the insistence with which you decry the lack of evidence.

High horses and soap boxes are all well and good as long as you’re the individual astride them, passing judgment, but the day will come when another will sit astride the horse, or stand resolute upon the soapbox, and it should come as no surprise when you are judged with the judgment with which you judged.

Matthew 7:2-6, For with what judgment you judge, you will be judged; and with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you. And why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye but do not consider the plank in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me remove the speck from your eye’; and look, a plank is in your own eye? Hypocrite! First remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.”

One cannot be merciless and demand mercy. One cannot be callous and expect comfort. Jesus Himself said that with what judgment you judge, you will be judged, but few nowadays take that into account when their blood gets hot, and the need to be right overshadows everything else.

God was not deaf to what Bildad and his friends were saying to Job. He hadn’t tuned out, waiting on the sidelines to see how this would play out, and as we progress further into the book of Job, we see that God has much to say to both Bildad, Eliphaz, and Zophar.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

Job CXCIV

The only one within His right to absolutism in any given situation is God. When Bildad declares that surely such are the dwellings of the wicked, and that this is the place of him who does not know God, he is appropriating the omnipotence of God and supplanting His authority by declaring that his wisdom and God’s wisdom are on equal footing, and he has as much right to pass judgment on Job as God would.

We have different versions of the selfsame mindset within the household of faith nowadays, and it’s as dangerous now as it was when Bildad uttered the words assuming the authority reserved for God alone. The ‘I declare’ movement has been picking up steam recently, a retread of the word of faith debacle, also known as the name it and claim it shtick that attracted millions of followers and made some shady, unscrupulous men who would otherwise have had careers as used car salesmen richer than they could ever have envisioned.

While it is given to us, as children of God, to walk in His authority, it is also incumbent upon us to submit to His sovereignty. The two are not mutually exclusive, but they work in tandem because, oftentimes, our ways are not His ways; what we envision for ourselves is not the path He would have us journey upon. When such situations arise, His will must supersede our own, and we must submit to Him.

If the Son of God, who declared that He could call on His Father and He would provide Him with more than twelve legions of angels prayed that the Father’s will be done even though He would have preferred that the cup pass from Him, when we do not submit to His will for our lives what we are doing, in essence, is insinuation that we are superior to Christ Himself.

Christ’s declaration regarding the legions of angels was no empty boast. He was not trying to impress His disciples, or insist upon something that was untrue. Contrary to popular opinion, a legion during that time was not one hundred soldiers, but rather fifty-two hundred at a minimum, with the potential of rising to six thousand in some instances. Even though Jesus had full assurance that if He asked the Father to do so, He would send somewhere in the neighborhood of sixty-two thousand angels to His defense, His submission to the will of the Father was so complete as to declare His own will irrelevant in the matter, and that the Father’s will was of absolute import.

Humility and submission are two of the greatest lessons Jesus teaches those who would pick up their crosses and follow after Him, and tragically, they are the two lessons most often dismissed, ignored, and minimized. Why would you choose to feed the hungry when you can dine with royalty? Why would you choose to wash men’s feet when you can wear royal robes? Why would you choose to submit and obey when you can rule with a rod of iron?

It’s just common sense, after all. You have to look successful to reach successful people, don’t you? Tell that to John the Baptizer, who was clothed in camel hair with a leather belt around his waist, ate locusts and wild honey, and preached in the wilderness of Judea. If only he’d had the playbook of the modern-day soothsayers, he would have known that the wilderness is no place for ministry. You have to go where the action is, where you can reach the influential, and preach to those who can help you grow your brand.

We can’t just pray and fast and rely on God. We have to make it happen; otherwise, it never will. Yes, I know, the little ladies with the summer hats used to sing in His time, in His time, He makes all things beautiful in His time, but we’re not getting any younger, and His timing seems to be stuck in first gear when we should be in fifth by now.

Even though it’s purely ego-driven, such individuals are quick to insist that it’s all about the Kingdom. If it were, then you would be operating within the rules and parameters that the King of the Kingdom you claim fealty to set forth.

Then, when ultimately doing it on our own sets us back further than when we started, we shake our fists at the he heavens and grow resentful toward God because here we were burning the candle at both ends, spending time away from our families, walking around in a haze, bleary eyed, and exhausted because we’re putting in eighteen hour days, with less than nothing to show for it. We stepped up, and for what?

For those who are self-aware, there is an inevitable moment of epiphany where they realize all the things they were doing weren’t what God had asked them to do. It was them taking the initiative and racing ahead of God, rather than patiently waiting upon the Lord. It was them making assumptions, appropriating authority, and insisting that their vision was in line with God’s vision, for surely the Lord would want them to succeed.

The Lord wants what He’s always wanted: faithful, obedient servants who set aside their self-importance, who crucify their flesh, who mortify their ego, and do what they were called to do, go where they were called to go, and speak what they were told to speak.

If your actions are not rooted in obedience, you may think you’re helping, but you’re not. Wanting to win the world for Jesus may be a noble endeavor on its face, but God told you to win your neighbor first. If you are faithful in the little things, you will be faithful in the large ones. This is a principle Jesus laid out that holds to this day, for no one who is faithless in the small things will be faithful in the greater ones. God tests the hearts of men. They are either found faithful and obedient, or they aren’t; there is no middle ground.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

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.