Proof The Bible Is True

 Job 33:1-7, “But please, Job, hear my speech, and listen to all my words. Now, I open my mouth. My words come from my upright heart; my lips utter pure knowledge. The spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty gives me life. If you can answer me, set your words in order before me; take your stand. Truly I am as your spokesman before God; I also have been formed out of clay. Surely no fear of me will terrify you, nor will my hand be heavy on you.”

In contrast to Job, who was humble enough to know what he didn’t know, Elihu was a young man whose self-assurance and self-importance were ones for the ages. It wasn’t God who declared Elihu a man of upright heart, but Elihu himself, unlike Job, whom God deemed blameless and upright.

Grandiose doesn’t come close to describing Elihu’s attitude, because he didn’t just consider himself a man of upright heart; he also believed that his lips uttered pure knowledge. Every word that comes out of my mouth should be carved into stone to be remembered for ages to come, in my humble opinion. Can anyone validate my claim that my lips utter pure knowledge, you ask? No, then again, they’re all beneath me, so why would I consider their input?

Try as one might to see Elihu as a sympathetic figure, his words and attitude make it difficult, if not outright impossible. How would you react if, after a lifelong relationship with the Almighty, having lost everything, lying in the dust, scratching at yourself with a potsherd and barely clinging on to life, someone came along and insisted that they were your spokesman before God?

But I speak to God every day. I entreat Him to show me the error of my ways, if any error is present; I long to feel His presence and have fellowship with Him. How is it that you’ve appointed yourself my spokesman before God?

On the one hand you say we’re the same, both formed out of the clay; on the other you position yourself as spiritually superior, insisting I should fear you and that your hand would not be heavy on me. Who exactly are you? Why should, after all I’ve been through, endured, and suffered, be at all concerned with the weight of your hand on me? These are all valid questions Job could have asked, but Elihu was not interested in having his bona fides questioned. His only concern was that Job take his stand and answer him as though he were judge, jury, and executioner all rolled up into one.

There are a handful of practical yet important lessons in what not to do regarding Elihu’s approach, demeanor, and overall delivery of what he had to say that would serve any of us well as a cautionary tale.

The first of these is to reject the often appealing sense of self-importance. Not only did Elihu consider himself a man of upright heart, but he also insisted that his lips uttered pure knowledge. That’s quite a boast, one not even Job had made, yet Elihu felt perfectly comfortable making it.

Whether it’s Robert Tilton back in the day claiming to be the apple of God’s eye, or the more recent individuals who have no qualms about declaring themselves the solitary conduit of wisdom, knowledge, and prophetic insight, anyone who attempts to elevate themselves and claim exclusivity regarding an attribute that God gave to the household of faith as a whole is suspect and should be engaged with caution if at all.

If one such as Paul dared not elevate himself beyond the station of bondservant of Christ, what gives any person living today the right to make claims and boasts of such grandiosity as to make one think they were interchangeable with the Almighty Himself?

The second thing that Elihu did, that we should avoid at all costs, is presume to know the mind of God, and assume that He thinks as we do, judges as we do, or sees things through the same prism and the same light as we do.

Isaiah 55:8-9, ‘“For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,’ says the Lord. ‘For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.’”

If Job didn’t know why he was going through the things he was, surely Elihu didn’t have a clue. Yet, in his hubris, he was fully assured that he knew the right of it, and all that was left was to convince Job of it. Set your words in order before me, answer me, take your stand; I will determine whether you speak the truth, I will determine whether you are innocent, and will eventually prove your guilt.

Elihu wasn’t without his bias. He had already made up his mind regarding Job, and had concluded, as had Job’s three friends, that he’d done something truly wicked to suffer in such a manner. He presumed to know the inner workings of the mind of God Himself, and was not reticent in declaring as much.

The third thing we should avoid, and one that has become epidemic within the household of faith, is claiming titles God never gave you, or offices to which you were never called. Elihu had assigned himself the position of Job’s spokesman before God. God never called him to be so, nor had Job solicited his aid in beseeching God. Elihu took it upon himself to claim something to which he had no right, and many today are doing the same thing within the context of ministry.

Everyone and their grandma is suddenly an apostle or prophet, not because God called them to be, or equipped them to be, but because the title gives them clout and perceived authority. It hits different when a message comes from a supposed prophetess than from Aunt Midge with the sixteen cats and neon hair, doesn’t it?

In the end we will all be called to account for the lives we’ve lived, the titles we claimed, the authority we misappropriated that was never ours in the first place, the boasts we made, the words we spoke, the pride we felt, and the glory we took for ourselves that rightly belonged to Him.

While the humble, obedient, and faithful cry out, Come quickly, Lord Jesus, there are those within the household of faith who look upon that day with dread and great terror because they know God knows, and their farces have not fooled Him in the least.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

 No one asked him to do it, no one inquired of him, but Elihu took it upon himself to educate Job and his three friends, and he had nothing good to say about any of them. Job had offended his sensibilities by declaring his innocence; the three friends had offended him by being unable to challenge Job’s assertions; and, of all the men present, he thought himself the sole possessor of wisdom and understanding.

With the advent of modern technology, it has become far easier to highlight one’s ignorance and put it on full display for all to see, and the chorus of those screeching “Listen to me, I also will declare my opinion” has become the soundtrack of life, ever present in the background, like the buzzing of a hornet or the stridulation of a grasshopper. You try to tune them out, even succeed on the good days, but more often than not they get so loud as to become impossible to ignore, a cacophony of noise with no underlying substance.

The first impulse is to add our own noise to the chorus, to speak our mind, to have our say, to throw our two cents in to a growing mountain of pennies. Surely, if the guy with the squeegee, offering to clean your windshield for some spare change, has an opinion on geopolitics and global affairs, you should have one too; at least you own a car, and technically, delivering DoorDash to lazy people is a job, so you have one of those too. Yep, that’s what I’ll do. I’ll give him a piece of my mind and tell him what I think because I have just as much right to an opinion as he does to his, and my opinion is likely the correct one anyway.

If we surrender to that first impulse, all that occurs is that our voice is added to the noise, and we find ourselves trying to talk over others, each holding to their position, becoming ever more impatient, erratic, and vitriolic. Soon enough, it’s no longer about the position, but about the person, and the ad hominem attacks come in hot and heavy, focusing on the individual rather than their premise, because if the message is bulletproof, the messenger likely isn’t.

I’ve found that the wisest thing to do in such situations is refuse to participate entirely. People who’ve made up their minds about one thing or another are rarely willing to hear dissenting opinions, or allow for their minds to be changed on the matter. If I’m asked my opinion, I will give it, but beyond that, I refuse to engage in a war of words that will likely produce nothing but bitterness and animosity.

If the matter is of a biblical nature, then all I can do is point to what Scripture says, because I am subordinate to it, and not it to me. If it’s a trivial matter, we all have our preferences and will not judge another for failing to tuck in their shirt or wear khakis to the park when it’s blistering hot outside. Do I think that wearing knee-high socks with open-toe sandals is a good idea? No, but it will neither bring one closer nor distance them from Jesus, so why should it matter to me?       

Job 32:15-22, “They are dismayed and answer no more; words escape them. And I have waited, because they did not speak, because they stood still and answered no more. I also will answer my part, I too will declare my opinion. For I am full of words; the spirit within me compels me. Indeed my belly is like wine that has no vent; it is ready to burst like new wineskins. I will speak, that I may find relief; I must open my lips and answer. Let me not, I pray, show partiality to anyone; nor let me flatter any man. For I do not know how to flatter, else my Maker would soon take me away.”

For well over half of the book of Job, no one even knew Elihu was present or that he even existed. His name had not been brought up, he had not been included in the conversation, none of what was said pertained to him, yet he was full of words, and the spirit within him compelled him to speak. Which spirit, I wonder?

This wasn’t about giving an arbitrary opinion on the weather; it wasn’t as though he was asked to chime in, but Elihu took it upon himself to speak; otherwise, he would burst. In his mind, what he had to say mattered so much that had he kept silent, he would find no relief.

If you’ve ever had someone jump in mid-conversation without understanding the context or knowing what was said before they decided to give their hot take, you know what Job and his three friends felt like. I’m sure you’re right, and Fords are unreliable, but the conversation wasn’t about cars. You misheard “afford” and thought it was “Ford”, and now we’re onto a whole new topic when the initial conversation centered around how no one could afford health insurance anymore.

There is wisdom in the admonition that one ought to be slow to speak and quick to listen. Granted, Elihu had been listening to the back and forth between Job and his friends, but he had no reason for injecting himself into the conversation save for hubris and the elevated opinion he had of himself and his opinion.

He knew what he was going to say before he said it, and likewise knew it would not land well, so he couched his words in a self-serving, “I’m just being honest, not looking to flatter, or show partiality” preface before launching into his diatribe. Even giving him the benefit of the doubt, believing him at his word that his desire was not to show partiality to any one individual over the other, the question remains: why say anything at all? It’s not as though Job asked him to jump into the conversation, nor had his three friends enquired of his opinion or asked for his aid in convincing Job that his uprightness was an illusion. Even so, in Elihu’s mind it was either speak, or burst like a new wineskin, and there was no in between.    

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

 As we proceed further into the chapter, we are made aware of a fifth individual, one who, up until this moment, had watched and heard the interaction between Job and his three friends but had remained silent.

We are informed that he is Elihu, the son of Barachel the Buzite, of the family of Ram, and by all accounts, he was an angry young man. His wrath was aroused against Job, against Job’s three friends, and as any youthful hubris is likely to do, he thought he knew better than everyone and proceeded to set them straight. He’d held his tongue up until this point. Perhaps his parents had taught him to respect his elders, and although he’d been present for the back and forth between Job and his three friends, and managed to hold his tongue and not speak, that time had come and gone, and now he would give them a piece of his mind.

His wrath was aroused against Job because he viewed Job’s discourse as justifying himself rather than God, and against his three friends because they found no answer, yet condemned Job. Young Elihu was an island unto himself and had convinced himself that he knew better than everyone, and he’d prove it.

Evidently, it’s not just this generation of young people who think they know better than those with decades under their belt. It’s not a new malady, it seems, but something that has been around for thousands upon thousands of years.

The first words out of Elihu’s mouth could readily be seen as an insult to the other four men, calling them very old, rather than wise or experienced. If you have children of a certain age, you’ve likely had at least one such conversation wherein the things they said revealed a lack of practical life experience. When we were children, we all thought as children. Tragically, even though fully grown, some men still think as children, but generally speaking, the way of things ought to be that the grayer your temples, the greater the wisdom you possess.  

There are no substitutes for some things. While you can substitute sugar for Splenda or coffee for tea, there are no substitutes for lived experience, and the wise among us tend to learn from the mistakes of others instead of making the same mistakes themselves.

There are countless examples in which the good advice parents gave their children was summarily ignored, only for the very same children to come back years later and grudgingly admit that their parents were right. Perhaps the face tattoo wasn’t the best idea. Perhaps mom and dad were right, and gainful employment did have its benefits, like not starving, after all.         

Job 32:10-14, “Therefore I say, ‘Listen to me, I also will declare my opinion.’ Indeed I waited for your words, I listened to your reasonings, while you searched out what to say. I paid close attention to you; and surely not one of you convinced Job, or answered his words – lest you say, ‘We have found wisdom’; God will vanquish him, not man. Now he has not directed his words against me; so I will not answer him with your words.”

No one asked it of me, but I will, nevertheless, give my opinion, and you have no choice but to listen to me. Although the Word does not go into detail about who this young man was, other than that he was from the family of Ram and the son of Barachel the Buzite, it seems he thought highly of himself and was not shy about it. It’s one of the things the household of faith contends with more and more these days, because everyone not only has an opinion about everything, but they feel it is within their right to voice said opinion, and insist that everyone listen.

It’s one of the reasons we have strayed so far from Biblical truth that we now require a roadmap just to get back to its general vicinity. It may deflate some egos, but when it comes to Biblical truth and what the Word of God says, your opinion is irrelevant. I know, but I’m me, and I’m important, and people should listen to everything I have to say, even if it contradicts Scripture itself.

As I heard a young man ask the cashier at the local grocery store when she denied his coupons because they’d expired, “Who you is? Who do you think you is?”

We have foregone discipleship, seasoning, maturing, studying, learning, and growing, because those things take too long, and we have a five-year plan for our ministry. I got saved on a Wednesday, and started teaching the Word on a Sunday, even though the first time I ever cracked open a Bible was the previous Thursday, but listen to me, and I also will declare my opinion!

Then they start playing their own version of “Did God really say?” with scripture that is obvious and unambiguously declares what God said, because in order to stand out, you have to put a new spin on the old text, and in order to do that, you must go beyond the bounds of what it states.

Now that you’re old, you just have a problem with young people in ministry. Not so, but I do take issue with brash young people in ministry who attempt to twist the Word of God to fit their reimagined version of what they think Christianity should be instead of what the Bible says it is. Being loud doesn’t make you right; it just makes you loud.

Speaking of things that can’t be substituted, discipleship is one of those things, at least if the desire of your heart is authentic ministry and not just a get-rich-quick scheme you’ve dreamed up. Who one chooses as their mentor in spiritual matters tells me everything I need to know about the true desire of their heart. There are those who follow after Christ, laying aside their plans, dreams, aspirations, and desires in the process; then there are those who pretend to follow Him to fulfill their plans, dreams, aspirations, and desires. One will lead to a humble, well-lived, obedient, and Biblical life. In contrast, the other will lead to compromise, because being Biblical will never draw the crowds that being worldly will, and if the heart is set on the things of this world, then every decision will focus toward that end.

The worst thing the young can do is seek to be discipled by flash over substance, unless what they really want is to mirror the flash, without regard for what the Bible says a bishop, elder, or teacher of the Word ought to be. We’ve seen the consequences of these choices time and again, and we’re just getting started.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

 Job 32:1-9, “So these three men ceased answering Job, because he was righteous in his own eyes. Then the wrath of Elihu, the son of Barachel the Buzite, of the family of Ram, was aroused against Job; his wrath was aroused because he justified himself rather than God. Also against his three friends his wrath was aroused, because they had found no answer, and yet condemned Job. Now because they were years older than he, Elihu had waited to speak to Job. When Elihu saw there was no answer in the mouth of these three men, his wrath was aroused. So Elihu, the son of Barachel the Buzite, answered and said: ‘I am young in years, and you are very old; therefore I was afraid, and dared not declare my opinion to you. I said, ‘Age should speak, and multitude of years should teach wisdom.’ But there is a spirit in man, and the breath of the Almighty gives him understanding. Great men are not always wise, nor do the aged always understand justice.’”

If you can’t win an argument on merit, if you can’t accuse someone of wickedness based on the evidence, the only thing left to do is start slinging mud and frame the individual in question as either pompous, elitist, or self-righteous. You don’t see things the way I do; you don’t come to the same conclusions as me, so there must be something wrong with you. We can’t put our finger on it; we can’t identify what it is, but sure as the sun shines, something is amiss; otherwise, you would have relented and acquiesced to our judgment. That’s what Job’s three friends had concluded, and, comforting themselves with the notion that he was being righteous in his own eyes, they ceased answering him.

The easiest way to see someone’s true character is to disagree with them on some small matter that in the great scheme of things is tertiary and irrelevant, and watch their reaction to it. People who think they’re always right can never admit to it when they are wrong. In their minds, being wrong is an impossibility, and so they eliminate the possibility thereof altogether. It’s never considered, it never enters the equation, and so they have to rationalize it to themselves by finding reasons to support their conclusion.

I don’t think it was ever intentional, but my grandfather had a gift for putting people on the back foot and watching them react. He wasn’t mean about it, just honest, but even back then, some took honesty as an affront and an insult. For all the years we lived in California, we didn’t have a dedicated ministry office or a dedicated line. Everything was run out of the two-bedroom apartment seven of us lived in, and the ministry line was the same as our home phone number, which became a bit of a nuisance when it would start ringing as early as four or five in the morning because those calling hadn’t figured in the time difference between the East Coast and the West Coast.

One morning, we got such a call with someone asking if they could drop by for a visit, as they were traveling to California the following week, and since we are the hospitable sort, we told them they could drop by any time, and we would have a prayer, a meal, and a talk.

He showed up four days later, and immediately, one could tell something was off. There are humble, pious people, then there are those who pretend at it, and this man was the latter, both in his mannerisms and the condescension he exhibited at seeing the humble apartment we lived in.

“You live here?” he asked, arching his eyebrows and wrinkling his nose.

“Indeed, we do,” my grandfather answered in Romanian, and I dutifully translated into English.

We invited him in, pointed to the table, offered him a chair, and suggested that if he wanted to place the large bundle he was carrying under his arm against the wall, he was more than welcome to do so.

“Oh, this is far too important to lay on the floor,” he said, and placed it across his knees as he sat.

My grandfather pulled up a chair across from him. I sat next to my grandfather, and we waited to see what the man wanted. Meanwhile, my mother was busy making lunch in the kitchen, and since it was a small apartment, you could hear the sizzling of the pan and the clanging of the pots, to which he said, “Can she be a bit less noisy? I have an important message to deliver to you.”

“She’s doing her best,” my grandfather said, a look of annoyance flashing on his face, “what brought you to our humble home?”

“I am here to reveal to you that I am King David, and you are to be Prince Moses, and we two are to be the voice of God throughout the land. As he said this, he reverently lifted the bundle from his knees and placed it on the table between us.

“This is your staff, Moses,” he said.

My grandfather arched his brows, shrugged his shoulders, and, without missing a beat, asked, “Why do you get to be a king, and I a lowly prince? I want to be king.”

The flush in the man’s face was instant. “No, that’s not the way it works,” he spluttered. “I’m King David, and you’re Prince Moses. That’s the way it works.”

I translated what he’d said, trying not to grin, and after taking a deep breath, my grandfather answered and said, “I have already received my marching orders, I already know what my duty is to God, and if there were to be a change of plans, He would have told me as much. I cannot be the Moses to your David, but you’re more than welcome to break bread with us, have a time of prayer, and fellowship.”

“I will do no such thing,” the man answered, pushing his chair away from the table, “I’ll shake the dust off my feet, is what I’ll do, you are not the man I thought you to be.”

“That’s fine,” my grandfather said, “my daughter will vacuum later.”

To that, the man stood and stormed out of our apartment, without another word, leaving the staff of Moses behind in his haste. It turned out to be a nice walking stick, ornate and beautifully carved, that my grandfather used on occasion when his gout and arthritis got to be a hindrance.

The point of the story is simple: the man had walked in with a preconceived notion, an assumption that he was certain was the right one, and would not allow for the possibility that he was mistaken. When his assumption was challenged, there was no introspection, but rather angry retorts and combativeness. Be humble enough to allow for the possibility that you misread a situation, that you prejudged someone not based on evidence but on emotion, and if you discover this to be the case, be humble enough to repent of it.    

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

 Job 31:33-40, “If I have covered my transgressions as Adam, by hiding my iniquity in my bosom, because I feared the great multitude, and dreaded the contempt of families, so that I kept silence and did not go out of the door – Oh, that I had one to hear me! Here is my mark. Oh, that the Almighty would answer me, that my Prosecutor had written a book! Surely I would carry it on my shoulder, and bind it on me like a crown; I would declare to Him the number of my steps; like a prince I would approach Him. If my land cries out against me, and its furrows weep together; If I have eaten its fruit without money, or caused its owners to lose their lives; then let thistles grow instead of wheat, and weeds instead of barley.”

An innocent man is just that: innocent. He is not someone who’s been able to hide his transgressions, sins, or wickedness from the eyes of others, for while others may not see what he does in the dark, God sees all and knows all. Job was able to declare his innocence because he was innocent of wickedness, innocent of sin, and not pretending to be.

You can’t go a week without reading some new, horrible, bile-producing headline of someone in spiritual authority being exposed for the wickedness they tried their best to cover up. The thing about sin is that it’s not your friend. It will whisper sweet nothings in your ear, it will insist this is the thing you’ve been missing out on all your life, it will present itself as fulfilling and something you can’t live without, until it has you in its clutches, then the mask comes off.

The devil plays dirty, and there is no empathy or compassion to be found in him. Sin is a snare, a trap, something the enemy uses time and again to stall forward momentum. The same thing that was used to tempt and entice, once committed, will be used to shame, humiliate, and discredit because that was the devil’s plan all along.

Especially when it comes to hidden sin, or sin one has not repented of, it’s not a question of if, but when the other shoe will drop. It’s the ever-present sword of Damocles hanging by a horse hair over one’s head, and though they may be surrounded by opulence and luxury, though they may have the best the world has to offer, the sword is still hanging overhead, ready to fall at any moment, making any sweet thing taste bitter on the tongue. As Cicero once wrote, nothing is happy for him over whom terror always looms.

The thing the foolhardy believed would give them wings, joy, and boundless pleasure soon becomes a millstone around their neck, a mire from which they cannot extricate themselves, and what’s worse, they can’t call out for help for fear of being found out and exposed for being the thing they railed against so passionately.

If you speak against the thing you’re doing, you’re a hypocrite, and sooner or later that hypocrisy will be on full display. If you preach righteousness, strive for righteousness. If you preach purity, be pure. Otherwise, it’s only a matter of time before the thing you tried to hide and cover up will be the thing that will define your existence, and the world will know of it in all its gory detail.

Unfortunately, so many names spring to mind that I would need four more arms to count them on my fingers, not because I’m keeping a tally but because once what was done in the dark is brought to light, the enemy does his utmost to gleefully point to it over and over again.

Funny how you never see a news segment about the true men of God who live the lives they’re preaching others ought to live. Funny how the selfless, the Scripturally sound, and those who rightly divide the Word never get any airtime, but the tumors and the cancers seem to be ever-present.

For those quick to roll their eyes at the mention of the fear of the Lord and the shunning of evil, say what they might, they can’t deny the results. The proof is in the pudding, and though these two pursuits are proven to work, as evidenced by the life of Job, all the other half-measures, machinations, justifications, and twisted interpretations they’ve attempted to foist upon the household of faith have fallen woefully short of the mark.

The fear of the Lord is a necessary virtue in the life of a believer, and it walks hand in hand with the shunning of evil. One who fears the Lord will shun evil because they acknowledge they serve a holy God, one who has declared that nothing wicked or defiled will enter His kingdom. It’s simple enough, obvious enough, self-explanatory to the point that anyone insisting that they can live in darkness yet claim to be of the light isn’t doing it out of ignorance but because they love their sin too much to repent of it, turn their back on it, and follow after Christ.

They will gravitate toward anyone giving them permission to remain as they are while vilifying those who, in love, insist that they must repent and turn from their wickedness because, as long as they cling to the illusion of being in right standing with God, there is no need for transformation, a new mind, a new heart, or a new purpose. They want to remain as they are while retaining the full benefits of sonship, because although heaven is appealing, their sin is more so.            

Some men think it’s a game and treat it as such. Others understand that it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God and live their lives accordingly.

Job knew himself well enough to know that he wasn’t faking it until he made it, he wasn’t putting on airs, he wasn’t pretending to be something he was not, and laments that if only his Prosecutor had presented any evidence He might have against him, he would gladly wear it as a badge of honor, not because he was proud of his wickedness but because there was no wickedness to be had.         

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

 The things that will grow your spiritual man are always the hardest things for the flesh to get behind, accept, and practice. The flesh knows you’re trying to kill it; it knows that the more you grow in the virtues of prayer, fasting, reading the Word, the likelier you are to bridle your tongue, make a covenant with your eyes, love your enemies, and pray for those who spitefully use you.

Not only did Jesus say we are to pray for those who use us, but who spitefully do so. It’s a turn of phrase that I’ve spent some time pondering, because ever since I could remember, words and the meaning of words have fascinated me. As one of the greatest wordsmiths of recent years was fond of saying, words mean things.

The addition of the word spitefully adds a whole new layer of intrigue because not only do some individuals take advantage of others, but they also harbor animosity and malevolence toward those they use, abuse, and exploit.

The very individuals who insist that the surefire way to prosper is to send them a sacrificial gift harbor resentment and dislike toward those they dupe into financing their lifestyle. There is no love, charity, kindness, or empathy in them, but a constant churning of spite because the feeling of self-loathing has to have a release valve, and they can’t run the risk of looking in the mirror and seeing themselves for what they truly are.

A hireling does not care about the well-being of the sheep as long as they can fleece their wool. Concern for the sheep’s spiritual health, however, is top of mind for any true shepherd. One need only look to spot the difference. A hireling does not care where the sheep graze, what they consume, or how many predators are circling them, as long as, at the end of the day, the check clears and the money hits their account. Some sheep have even taken this permissiveness as an expression of love instead of what it really is, which is indifference to their spiritual health and well-being.

I love my pastor. He never rebukes, he never chastens, he never corrects, he never admonishes, and we’re in and out of service in forty minutes flat. There’s never any of that heavy talk regarding hell or accountability; he keeps it light, and I appreciate it. Why, just last week, he gave a twenty-minute talk on how one jalapeno pepper has like fifty seeds that can each grow a new jalapeno. I never knew that. I learned something without feeling bogged down with thoughts of eternity and such. It's more like a variety show than anything else, really.

John 10:11-14, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd gives His life for the sheep. But a hireling, he who is not a shepherd, one who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees; and the wolf catches the sheep and scatters them. The hireling flees because he is a hireling and does not care about the sheep. I am the good shepherd; and I know My sheep, and am known by My own.”

It is a shepherd’s duty to corral the sheep, to keep them from wandering off into the woods, or grazing beyond the pasture where they might consume something that will make them sick or outright kill them. The Word of God has guardrails for similar reasons, and what is good and what is evil is clearly delineated therein.

We often point to the parable of the good shepherd leaving the ninety-nine to go in search of the one, failing to acknowledge that what the parable is really about is the goodness, mercy, love, and kindness of the shepherd rather than the obstinacy of the sheep who chose to go where he wasn’t supposed to be in the first place and got himself in trouble for the effort.

Even so, heaven does not rejoice for the sinner that remains a sinner, but for the sinner who repents. It’s not a distinction without a difference; it’s the difference between life and death.     

After declaring that he neither rejoiced in the destruction of those who hated him, nor lifted himself up when evil found them, Job turns his sights on the stranger, the sojourner, the traveler, those who would come and go, likely never to be heard from again, and insists that he opened his door to them, and did not let them lodge in the street.

Once again, context matters, and given that Job likely lived among nomadic people, and there were those who were constantly moving, never staying in one place for too long, it was a much-appreciated kindness to have someone feed you and give you a place to sleep for the night. What the sojourner did not do was claim Job’s tent as their own, demand that he feed them, or attempt to displace Job and become permanent fixtures in his house.

Job knew what was his, and willingly shared what he had with those who encountered him in their travels. He was not practicing socialism as some have quipped. Rather, he was being a gracious host willing to share a meal with a traveler and give them a place to rest for the night. It is a dangerous thing to force one’s worldview into the lives and times of individuals who lived thousands of years ago and insist this ought to be the way of things today.

Yes, be gracious, be kind, be giving, be charitable, but all those things require that one has a choice in the matter. Forced redistribution of goods isn’t charity, it’s legalized theft. That is not what Job was practicing, nor do I believe he would have stood for it were that the case.

Certain people with demonstrable and well-defined agendas have gotten brazen when it comes to coloring outside the lines, insisting that Jesus would do what the Word declares He never would, accept as virtue what He called sin, and this extends to every pet issue or pet doctrine one might cling to rather than to Him. Men will twist Scripture to make it fit into their worldview rather than allow Scripture to transform them into the likeness of Christ, and the only foreseeable outcome for such brazenness is utter destruction. 

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

 Two noteworthy virtues, often overshadowed by his suffering, stand out when contemplating Job’s life: he never forgot who God was, and he never lost his awe of the God he served. A man who had everything he could ever want or desire still observed the sun when it shone, and the moon moving in brightness, and was in awe of God’s creation. He understood how small he was in relation to how great God was, and the majesty of all He’d spoken into being continued to humble him, no matter how far he’d come or how much he’d been able to amass.

When we sing How Great Thou Art we should mean it because it’s factual. It is the truth. We serve a great God, a God of wonder and majesty, and we can never lose sight of this lest we descend into the preposterous mindset that we can view God at eye level rather than looking up.

The fear of the Lord that Job possessed was a healthy one because of his awareness of who God is. He knew God to be both more precious and more reliable than gold, and so placed his confidence in Him. He knew that all his eyes saw, everything that surrounded him, whether the moon, the stars, the sun, or a blade of grass was fashioned by His hand. He would not take credit for the things God had done because he could not.

Job never patted himself on the back or saw himself as the architect of his existence. He did not view himself as a little god, nor as one who determined the course of his life. If he was blessed, it was not by his own hand, or his prowess in business, but by the providence and good pleasure of the God he served.

This is the proper attitude of the heart that we, as servants of God, must possess. Not demanding, not feeling entitled, but exhibiting awe and gratitude for His guiding hand upon us, whether that hand leads us through the valley or over the mountaintop. We are either spoiled children or soldiers of the cross. The difference between the two is that while a spoiled child stomps their feet and acts out when they don’t get their way, a soldier follows orders and carries on even if the way is hard.    

Job 31:29-32, “If I have rejoiced at the destruction of him who hated me, or lifted myself up when evil found him (indeed I have not allowed my mouth to sin by asking for a curse on his soul); If the men of my tent have not said, ‘who is there that has not been satisfied with his meat?’ (but no sojourner had to lodge in the street, for I have opened my doors to the traveler).”

Even Job had his detractors. Even he had men who hated him, for whatever reason, but he did not return their hatred in kind. Yet another good, noble, virtuous, and practical lesson we can learn from the life of Job. Even when destruction came upon them, Job did not rejoice. Nor did he lift himself up when evil found those who hated him, insisting that whatever befell them was well deserved because they chose to pick a fight with him.

I’ve heard it from the mouths of those who ought to know better, and it’s off-putting every time. You know what happened to so-and-so? They crashed their car, their cat died, their house burned down, but they got what they deserved because they said that one nasty thing about me that one time.

It’s easy to love your friends. It’s a lot harder to love your enemies. The uniqueness of Job rests in the fact that he was doing intuitively what Jesus would command His followers to do two thousand years later. Job didn’t have a template. He didn’t have the law, he didn’t have Scripture, he didn’t have the words of Jesus; he was a man living in the desert who desired a pure relationship with God, and from that desire, he followed through and did all that God inspired him to do.   

Matthew 5:43-48, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet your brethren only, what do you do more than others? Do not even the tax collectors do so? Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect.”

Job could have rightly pleaded ignorance of the notion of loving one’s enemies since he had no instruction manual to tell him otherwise. If you try to put Ikea furniture together without an instruction manual, can anyone really fault you when what ought to have been a dresser ends up looking more like a coffin?

We have no such excuse, yet we’re always looking for an out, a cheat code, a way to circumvent what Jesus said we must do, because blessing those who curse you, doing good to those who hate you, and praying for those who spitefully use you and persecute you is hard. Yes, it’s hard. Anyone who says it isn’t is either lying to you or lying to themselves.

I’ve lived long enough to know betrayal by those I’ve considered brothers in the faith, not for some noble reason, but for the basest reason of all, trying to take for themselves what God gave to another. Few things in life hurt worse, and demoralize you to that extent. In the moment, I would have rather moved the Great Wall of China stone by stone without the aid of oxen or carts than prayed for those who spitefully used me, but I did it nevertheless because it’s what Jesus commanded. The first prayer was the hardest, and I felt no relief or release; the weight of it was still heavy on my heart, but then came the second prayer, and the fifth, and the tenth. At some point, I stopped counting and was surprised to find that the pain had subsided, and my heart no longer felt like it was wrapped in barbed wire. It was heavy no longer.  

Do not rejoice at the destruction of him who hates you, do not revel in their downfall when evil finds him. Do not ask for a curse on their soul, or entertain the desire of seeing evil come to him. It will only serve to pollute your heart. Rather, rest in the knowledge that you serve a just and righteous God, who will do as He wills when He wills it, for you are not justified in the sight of men but in the sight of God.  

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

 Just as there are plenty of examples of men projecting an image of righteousness rather than pursuing and aspiring to it today, I’m sure there were such individuals in Job’s day as well. Unless you’re one of those odd ducks like me, you enjoy the odd compliment or individuals speaking well of you. I’ve never been able to take a compliment. I don’t know how to react to one.

The reason stems from my awareness that whatever was said in a sermon or written on a page that moved someone to the point of coming to thank me wasn’t my doing. It did not originate from me, so accepting praise for it seems a tad disingenuous if not outright dishonest. If I know I didn’t do something, whatever it might be, then I shouldn’t be taking credit for it.

Men who crave acknowledgment usually aren’t deserving of it, nor have men demanding of praise done anything to warrant it. By all means, thank the Lord, praise the Lord, acknowledge Him in all things, but as far as an individual, no matter how gifted or talented they might be, it wasn’t their talent that grew the ministry or the church, but the providence of God.

This is why so many churches and ministries crumble and are no more nowadays. Because rather than being built on the sure foundation of the gospel, rather than having the Word as their foundation, they were built upon the charisma, charm, or magnetism of an individual. When the figurehead no longer figures into the equation, when they go the way of all things, then whatever it is they’ve built goes with them. Only what is built upon the lasting, timeless, and eternal can sustain beyond the lifetime of an individual because it’s God who does the sustaining and not man.

Yes, there were likely men in Job’s generation who pretended at virtue, uprightness, or even righteousness as we’ve come to understand it, but for some vested interest rather than for righteousness’ sake. Of all the men of his day, God singled out Job because, knowing his heart, seeing what motivated him, God concluded that there was no ulterior motive for Job’s ceaseless kindness, obedience, and faithfulness.

Granted, to the person being fed or clothed, the motivation of the individual doing the feeding matters little. They were hungry; now they are hungry no longer. They were cold, now the coat they received keeps them warm. To God, however, motivation matters and is taken into account.

There will be individuals on that day of days who will stand before His throne and speak on all the noble things they’d done, up to and including prophesying, casting out demons, and doing many wonders in His name, yet told that Jesus never knew them, not because the things they’d done, in and of themselves weren’t virtuous but because the intent with which they’d done it was for something other than the glory of God.

Objectively speaking, they’d checked off a lot of boxes. They’d done the things they did in Jesus’ name, they exhibited power by doing wonders, prophesying, and casting out demons, but the underlying reason for doing these things was to elevate themselves, bring honor to themselves, or make themselves out to be more than they were supposed to be which is a vessel, a servant, one who does the bidding of his Master out of faithful obedience rather than some perceived benefit to themselves. They neither lived as a true follower of Christ nor walked in His way. They pretended to, and the power they exhibited was not due to their righteousness, but because there is power in the name that is above all names, the name of Jesus.

They were attempting to take credit for what they hadn’t done, had no ability to do in and of themselves, and knew full well they had no right to appropriate God’s glory for their own. I know my limitations, and you should too. When anything occurs that exceeds those limitations, give credit where credit is due. Don’t fall into the snare of appropriating what God did, claiming it as your own, because He is a jealous God and will not share His glory with another.    

Job 31:24-28, “If I have made gold my hope, or said to fine gold, ‘You are my confidence’; if I have rejoiced because my wealth was great, and because my hand had gained much; if I have observed the sun when it shines, or the moon moving in brightness, so that my heart has been secretly enticed, and my mouth has kissed my hand; this also would be an iniquity deserving of judgment, for I would have denied God who is above.”

If we were to encapsulate Job’s words into one big idea, it would be that everything comes from God. He is the author, creator, and giver of all that is, and as such, it is in Him that we must place our hope rather than the things He freely gives us. Job viewed placing one’s hope and confidence in anything other than God as iniquity deserving of judgment, because it would imply that His hand was not in it, and He had no control over it.

Humbling as it might be for some, whatever heights of success you may have reached, however many zeros you have in the bank, it wasn’t you. It was His goodness, His providence, His purpose, and if ever you begin to place your confidence in the things rather than the God who gave you the things, it’s the genesis of a slippery slope whose terminus is the bottom of the pit of despair.

I’ve known men who’d amassed fortunes only to lose them on one bad investment, and because their confidence was in the net worth they’d been able to amass, the loss broke them. I’ve likewise known men who lost it all, and because their hope and confidence were in God, they retained their peace, joy, and faith. You can’t have it both ways. You can’t trust both in the arm of the flesh and in God. You must make the conscious choice to trust and hope in one over the other, and Job had made his choice. Had his confidence been in gold, had his hope been tethered to his great wealth, Job would now be a hopeless ruin, and a byword to be pitied. His hope and confidence, however, had always been firmly anchored in God, and though the storm buffeted him and the waves crashed upon him, he was not carried away by its incessant force.

You can trust in one or the other, but you can't trust in both. You can either trust in God, who has proven His faithfulness time and again, or in the things that are even now passing away. While for some this is no choice at all, for others it is an issue they wrestle with more frequently than they would ever admit. God is faithful, eternal, and omnipotent. The same can’t be said for the buckets of gruel you’re being encouraged to put on a credit card by unscrupulous individuals who see you as nothing more than a payday. Choose wisely!    

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

 Job 31:16-23, “If I have kept the poor from their desire, or caused the eye of the widow to fail, or eaten my morsel by myself, so that the fatherless could not eat of it (But from my youth I reared him as a father, and from my mother’s womb I guided the widow); if I have seen anyone perish for lack of clothing, or any poor man without covering; if his heart has not blessed me, and if he was not warmed with the fleece of my sheep; if I have raised my hand against the fatherless, when I saw I had help in the gate; then let my arm fall from my shoulder, let my arm be torn from the socket. For destruction from God is a terror to me, and because of His magnificence I cannot endure.”

One cannot fault Job’s righteous anger in defending his innocence against what he knew to be baseless accusations. A guilty man would shrug his shoulders and attempt to justify his actions, trying to explain why he did what he did. An innocent man, however, sees the accusations as an insult and a sleight against his character, thereby mounting a defense not of himself but of his integrity.

Job wasn’t being flippant about his integrity, nor was there anything in his life that he knew he’d done wrong, to have to couch it in a lengthy explanation. He got down to brass tacks, stripping away platitudes or unnecessary verbiage, to the point that his directness would be considered blunt by today’s standards. So sure was Job of his innocence and uprightness that some of the things he said should happen to him had his actions been otherwise are truly horrific.

He started out tame enough, insisting that if his heart had walked after his eyes, or if any spot adhered to his hands another should eat what he had sown, and his harvest should be rooted out, but as we progress further into the chapter, he insists that if he had done any of the things he’d been accused of, his arm should fall from his shoulder, and torn from the socket. These are no small things.

It’s not as though he said that if his character was in any way sullied or his integrity compromised, he should get a mild headache or a hangnail. He did not minimize what he thought his punishment should be, knowing that he would have to endure it, but, certain of his innocence, he insisted that, were he guilty, it should be the worst thing he could envision at the time.

He was already covered in oozing boils, sapped of strength, barely hanging on, and in his state, the thing he considered worse still was that his arm be torn from the socket if ever he’d raised his hand against the fatherless, or ignored the poor.

Job said these things in light of knowing who God was, and understanding that God had the ability to follow through, were his words not honest, sincere, and forthright.

Throughout his life, Job had never seen the poor, the widow, or the fatherless as a burden, nor had he seen helping them as a chore. He hadn’t gone out of his way to avoid them, ignore them, or pretend they weren’t there, but whenever the need arose, he was there to meet it, knowing it was the right thing to do.

I’ve been blessed to know a handful of people who go out of their way to ensure that the hungry are fed, the naked are clothed, the cold are provided with a blanket, and the fatherless are protected from being exploited by the cold and callous among us. Such individuals never acted out of largesse or abundance; they shared the little they had, sacrificed, and went without so that someone could have a hot meal or a warm bed to sleep in.

Yes, by all accounts, Job had been rich, the richest among the people of the East, but that only revealed his nature, character, and integrity when it came to how he saw his fellow man, and the lengths to which he went to ease their suffering, fill their bellies, and show kindness.

Contrary to popular belief, wealth does not change a man; it merely reveals his true heart and character. Job insists that from his youth he reared the orphan as a father, and from his mother’s womb he guided the widow. That he should be generous with what God had given him had not been an epiphany he’d had in his latter years, but from his early days, he saw the need to protect the innocent and show kindness to those whom the world was doing its best to pretend did not exist.

Job wasn’t looking for accolades or plaques thanking him for his donation. He was a present help to those in need, even when no one was looking, even when there wasn’t a crowd of people gathered to witness his kindness.

It didn’t matter to him if someone witnessed his feeding the hungry or clothing the naked because he knew God saw, and that was enough for him. Any time we do something on behalf of another, hoping others see it, it pollutes the intent of the heart with which it was done. We become as Cain, grudgingly doing it out of duty, rather than sincerely desiring to be the means by which the hurting are comforted, and the hungry are fed.

Job did what he did from a clean heart and pure intentions, and seeing his declaration, both of his innocence, as well as how tirelessly he helped those from whom he had nothing to gain, we come to understand that God’s assessment of him being an upright and blameless man was not inflated or blown out of proportion. God saw Job as he was. It wasn’t a soft spot for him that compelled God to declare him to be a man who feared the Lord and shunned evil, but a true description of who he was.

The difference between men declaring someone a good man and God declaring someone blameless and upright is that God knows all, while men see only what they want to see. The two are not the same.

The question that begs to be asked, and one we must answer as individuals, is whether we strive to be seen as noble and virtuous by others or by God.   

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

 I respect those who struggle, who persist, who endure, who get knocked down only to get up again, shake the dust off, and keep pressing on. It takes grit, determination, and a clearly defined purpose to brave the headwinds, to keep pushing forward when everything seems to be resisting you, and when you know full well that abandoning course would be the easy thing to do. The expectation of living life on easy mode once we encounter God and having no less than the best of everything until we breathe our last, is neither biblical nor is it the environment in which true spiritual growth can occur.

Fire refines and burns away the dross. Pressure turns pieces of coal into diamonds. Resistance forces the body to adapt and grow stronger. All of these require some type of discomfort, unease, and opposition to facilitate the becoming of something superior to what was.

Faith is tested that it might be proven. Warriors engage in battle so that they might earn the name to which they aspire. When the avoidance of battle becomes the end goal rather than victory, whatever claims one might have made regarding being a warrior fly out the window and are proven to be hyperbole.

We are neither sellswords nor mercenaries. We do not offer our fealty to the highest bidder, nor do we abandon our principles the moment they begin to cost us something. We stand on truth because truth abides, and when everything else is stripped away, truth remains.

It’s not so much that past generations were built differently. Since the dawn of creation, from generation to generation, men have shared the same traits, attributes, sensibilities, virtues, and shortcomings. What has changed, especially with this last generation, is our willingness to justify cowardice, double-mindedness, hypocrisy, and indifference, and to convince ourselves that our time would be better spent watching the surf than engaging in battle.

Even in the deplorable state everything finds itself in, many are reticent to step up, be active, and defend the truth of the gospel unashamedly and unapologetically. We submit, we cower, we compromise, not because it’s the right thing to do, but because it’s what will require the least amount of effort on our part.       

Situationally moral, self-serving, unregenerate men have convinced an entire generation to cease resisting the wiles of the enemy, to give up, surrender, throw in the towel, and allow themselves to be carried away by the tempest. Why swim against the current when the current can do all the work for you? Because the current you’re allowing to take you where it wills will inevitably lead to the rapids, and beyond them, the lethal plunge to the rocks below.  

The Word tells us that God is a present help in time of trouble. It tells us that He will make a way even when, to the eyes of men, there seems to be no way. In some respects, this life is a war of attrition. Everything seems to be trying to wear us down, gradually, incrementally, and for many, each new day is a battle they must wage, not having recovered from the exhaustion of the previous one. The only way to continue forward, undeterred, and undaunted is to know what we’re fighting for, and recognize that each new day brings us that much closer to the finish line, to Jesus, and the prize to which we aspire, and for which we run this race.

Job 31:13-15, “If I have despised the cause of my male or female servant when they complained against me, what then shall I do when God rises up? When He punishes, how shall I answer Him? Did not He who made me in the womb make them? Did not the same One fashion us in the womb?”

Long before Christ’s sermon on the mount, Job encapsulated the idea of doing unto others as you would have them do to you by acknowledging that, whether master or servant, prince or pauper, the same God fashioned each and every one of us in the womb. No man is born better than another, more noble than another, more virtuous than another, and the same God who made the beggar in the womb made the prince in the same manner.

It is man who assigns titles, looks to pedigree, places people in castes, and, by their hierarchical view of society, assigns more value to one group than the other. Job viewed the whole of mankind as having been created equal, regardless of their station or their nationality, and treated those who served him with kindness and compassion.

There isn’t much that gets under my skin anymore. The years have mellowed me to the point that even when offense is intended, I take no offense, because life’s too short, and I’d rather smile than frown. It is said it’s better for the soul. The one thing that still rankles me, even after all this time, is when I see someone disrespect or outright verbally abuse another person because they think themselves entitled to do so or perceive the person as being beneath them. It’s something I can’t abide.

When we first came to America, my wife worked as a waitress for a little while. During that time, I heard enough stories of people being unkind, entitled, rude, and unreasonable to fill an encyclopedia, and looking back, I think it’s why I have such strong emotions when I see someone berating a cashier, a server, or the guy earning eight bucks an hour trying to keep up with coffee orders during morning rush.

A kind word, a smile, a thank-you, and “have a good day” don’t cost you anything, but they may well be invaluable to the person in that moment. Our being a peculiar people, set apart and altogether different from those of the world, must extend beyond the fish sticker on our car or the WWJD bracelet, to the character we exhibit, the kindness we show others, and the way we interact with those around us. Job was just such a man, one who was transformed for the better through his relationship with God, and it showed in every area of his life.  

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

 Job held himself to a high standard, knowing it was nothing less than what God expected. Becoming a son or daughter of God in truth, being born again and sanctified, comes with a wide array of privileges to be sure, top among them the honor of calling Him Father, and He, in turn, knowing you as one of His own, but it also comes with a code of conduct and responsibilities for which we are accountable and to which we must adhere. Chief among these is to deny ourselves, pick up our crosses, and follow after Him who hung on the cross that we might be reconciled to God.

We are duty-bound to walk circumspectly, to search our hearts regularly, ensuring that Jesus sits upon their throne, and resist the devil that he might flee. God can’t resist the devil on our behalf, nor, for that matter, can your pastor, elder, bishop, cousin, or next-door neighbor. He can put guardrails and limitations on what the enemy can do to a specific individual, but the active resistance of his devices is on us.

We’ve all heard some variation of the worst advice one human can give to another, which is to follow your heart. Job understood that the heart is influenced by what the eyes see, and what the ears hear, and declares that if ever his heart had walked after his eyes, may others eat what he had sown. Unless a heart is regenerated, made new, and imbued with Christ, it is flesh and as such will lead you to what the flesh desires.

Every great country song and human tragedy is the direct result of following one’s heart, based on what the eyes saw and what the ears heard. True biblical counsel isn’t to follow your heart, but to follow Jesus. Even if your heart resists, even if it tries to tell you that you’ve got plenty of time to right the ship and find your way to His loving embrace, it isn’t doing it for the benefit of your spiritual man but for the benefit of your flesh. Follow Jesus even if your heart protests and your flesh bristles, because the flesh does not want to die yet knows it must for Christ to live in you.   

Because he feared the Lord, Job knew himself to be a man of clean hands, one who shunned evil, and whose step had not turned from the way. There was no fakery in his worship, devotion, or service to God, and all that he did he did from a pure heart rather than the thought of what others would say or how they would view him.

A relationship, by definition, cannot be performative. I love my wife. I don’t pretend to love her, or simply speak the words once in a while; I genuinely, truly love her, and my actions day in and day out prove that reality. Many men have said they love God, but their actions proved otherwise. Many have said they serve Him, only to be proven that they served no one beyond themselves. Job knew God, and God knew Job, and from the onset God validated Job’s uprightness, judging him to be blameless.

When men only pretend to love God, it shows in their conduct, their choices, and how they spend the time they’ve been given. Some men have even convinced themselves that they love God. Yet, if they took a breath to employ pattern recognition and assess whether they spend more time watching sports than reading the Word, or if they’d rather go fishing than spend time in prayer, they would soon come to realize that their words have no follow-through. Their declarations of love were empty and baseless.

We must know that we love God with the same certainty that we know God loves us. There is no doubt or shadow of turning in our resolute certainty that God loves us. There is no ambiguity there; we don’t have to guess at whether God loves us or not, or wonder if His love is genuine. He proved it two thousand years ago to such an extent that it is undeniable.

John 3:16-17, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.”        

God’s love for Job was not unrequited. Job prioritized God above all else because he, in turn, loved God. There was a reciprocity of affection, but even so, Job did not attempt to exploit it or think himself above others because of it. He understood that God was God, and he was a man, Creator and creation, and one must submit to the authority, will, and purpose of the other in all things.

Because of this foundational relationship with God, Job knew what wickedness and iniquity were, and guarded himself against them with the tenacity of a man keeping a pack of wolves at bay. He understood the implicit and explicit dangers of sin, knew that if he allowed it to worm its way into his heart, it would dampen his relationship with the Almighty, and made it a priority to keep his hands clean and his heart pure before Him.

Job did not sin, hoping his relationship with God would keep him from judgment, banking on the idea that God loved him too much to punish him were he to stray or turn from the way. He knew himself to be a man of integrity who rightly acknowledged that had he committed wickedness, had he done iniquity, it would be deserving of judgment regardless of how intimate he had been with God.

Closeness with God is not a license to sin without consequence or repercussion, as some insist. The closer we draw to God, the more we are refined and purified, as the fire of His holiness burns away the dross, the excess, the worthless, and the temporal.

God doesn’t need me enough to overlook wickedness or iniquity in my life. He does not make exemptions or concessions when it comes to one’s obedience to His word and will. If nothing wicked or defiled will enter the kingdom of heaven, what makes anyone think that God will overlook wickedness in the lives of those who claim to be not only His servants, but also His ambassadors and representatives?

Yes, there is room for grace. We’ve all fallen short, but one cannot willfully continue in a pattern of sin, abusing grace, and thinking themselves immune from God’s righteous judgment. Job wasn’t asking for special treatment, nor did he attempt to leverage his relationship with God, hoping He would overlook wickedness in his life. He was asking to be weighed on honest scales, that God might know his integrity.    

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

This chapter could adequately be described as Job’s innocence checklist. He begins with the covenant he made with his eyes, but does not stop there, and by the time he reaches the end of it, Job concludes that not only is he innocent of sensual sin, but also of abusing his power, trusting in his wealth, and even of not caring for his enemies. He didn’t focus on the one thing he didn’t do while minimizing the ones he did, but went through the list, proving his innocence to anyone who would hear.

He wasn’t, as has become customary in our age, attempting to highlight his own righteousness by pointing to what everyone else was doing that he wasn’t, but searching his heart to see if there was any sin or practice displeasing to the Lord that he had yet to identify and root out. He wasn’t being a Pharisee about his inward searching. He wasn’t attempting to look his nose down on those around him while simultaneously elevating himself by highlighting his virtues. This was not a contest between himself and his contemporaries, but an honest assessment of his life, the choices he’d made, and the way he’d lived in light of his understanding that God saw his ways and counted all his steps.

When we search our hearts, or ask God to search us and see if there is any wicked way in us, it’s not to prove ourselves more virtuous than others, or to boast of our righteousness to any who would hear, but to walk in obedience and faithfulness seeking to bring glory to His name.

Everyone who asks is secretly hoping that God will say there is nothing in need of remedy, nothing they need to repent of or turn away from, but such individuals are so rare as to have entire books of the Bible with their names on them. I’m not in that category, and neither are you, no matter how much we’d like to think otherwise. We’ve all fallen short, whether in attitude, consistency, priorities, or managing emotional reactions to something someone said or did that got under our skin.

In reality, the closer we draw to God, the more intimate we become with His holiness, the more we acknowledge that our righteousness is as filthy rags, and there is always something in need of pruning. Whether it’s the quick temper when seeing bad drivers on the road, or judging someone for buying ‘I can’t believe it’s not meat’ instead of a piece of chicken at the grocery store, we constantly find ourselves keeping the flesh in check and bridling it so as not to give it the opportunity to get a foothold.

One of the many profound lessons we learn from the life of Job is that we must understand the danger sin poses in the life of the believer, as well as be purposeful in our actions when guarding against temptation, whatever form that temptation might take.

Job 31:5-12, “If I have walked with falsehood, or if my foot has hastened to deceit, let me be weighed on honest scales, that God may know my integrity. If my step has turned from the way, or my heart walked after my eyes, or if any spot adheres to my hands, then let me sow, and another eat; yes, let my harvest be rooted out. If my heart has been enticed by a woman, or if I have lurked at my neighbor’s door, then let my wife grind for another, and let others bow down over her. For that would be wickedness; yes, it would be iniquity deserving of judgment. For that would be a fire that consumes to destruction, and would root out all my increase.”

In order to grasp the profundity of Job’s statement, one must take into account his knowledge of God, both as a righteous judge and as sovereign over His creation, as well as his omniscience, understanding, fundamentally so that God knew his life in its entirety and there was nothing hidden from His sight. In light of this, Job had the wherewithal to declare after his self-assessment that if he had walked with falsehood, or if his foot had hastened to deceit, he was open and accepting of being weighed on honest scales, and judged that God may know his integrity.

This was neither an empty boast nor a feigned attempt at projecting righteousness. Job wasn’t hoping God had been too busy to see his life, weigh his deeds, and overlook his absence of integrity. As Paul pointed out to the church of Corinth, if we were to judge ourselves, we would not be judged, but few among us take that admonition to heart and search ourselves as Job searched himself.

If we are more permissive toward our own pet vices, sins, failures, and shortcomings, justifying them to ourselves, while we demand perfection from everyone around us, all it does is make us hypocrites, one who refuses to acknowledge the plank in our own eye, while looking at the speck in our brother’s eye.

My first duty is not to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, but to work out my own salvation with fear and trembling. All will be held to account, and there is nothing that God missed, failed to see, or failed to consider.

It is because man’s view of who God is has been diminished and whittled down that some have talked themselves into playing games with Him, thinking nothing castigatory or punitive will ever come of it. They figure they got away with it once, perhaps twice, perhaps even ten times, and if there was no voice from heaven, no thunderbolts, or quaking earth, then God must have been too busy to notice. Willful sin reveals one’s true heart and the opinion they hold of God. Though they might say it with their lips, willful sin reveals that they do not believe Him to be holy, righteous, omniscient, omnipotent, and just. Were it not so, they would tremble before Him. Were it not so, true repentance would be forthcoming and quickly so.

Anyone who has to get caught and exposed before they give a tepid apology for the sake of damage control does not possess the fear of the Lord, know the God of the Bible, nor was there any reverence for His holiness in them. They may have feigned it well enough when the bright lights and the stage demanded they perform their role, but as far as true devotion, surrender, and obedience, it was now wholly absent if ever it existed.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

 Job 31:1-4, “I have made a covenant with my eyes; why then should I look upon a young woman? For what is the allotment of God from above, and the inheritance of the Almighty from on high? Is it not destruction for the wicked, and disaster for the workers of iniquity? Does He not see my ways and count all my steps?”

One of the most dangerous environments for one’s spiritual man is passive indifference. Tragically, it’s what’s being taught from many pulpits, throughout a large swath of denominations, because those who look at the numbers and see the incoming and outgoing have determined that the lower you set the bar, the more likely it is that someone will throw a few bucks in the collection plate. In the end, that’s what it’s about. Not about souls, but about legal tender, and since the customer is always right, and the customer wants neither accountability nor conviction to be preached from the pulpit, that’s what the customer will get. Just because something sounds cynical, it doesn’t mean it isn’t true.

The direct correlation between the diluting and watering down of Scripture and burgeoning coffers is undeniable, and if what this life was about was fancy cars and expense accounts, then by those metrics alone, the church of today is prospering like none other in the history of mankind. Blessed coming and going, pressed down and shaken together, what could be better?

It’s nothing new; the Laodicean church believed itself to be prospering, rich, and in need of nothing, until Christ Himself dispelled them of that misnomer, revealing them to be wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked. There’s what man can see and how he judges a situation through the prism of his carnal intellect, and what God sees and how He judges, and the two are often very different, substantively speaking.

Due to the constant need to pander to men’s baser instincts, and the fear that were they to preach the whole counsel of God, unadulterated and unredacted, they would likely lose the support they’re banking on, few preachers nowadays get up the courage to speak on man’s duty to guard his heart, but not just.

By the time it gets to the heart, whatever the enemy is attempting to sow has already gotten by at least one of three other sentinels that ought to always be standing at the ready, and rebuffing his offensive. A wise man guards his eyes, his tongue, and his ears first, understanding that if they are well guarded, then nothing can make its way to the heart except for what’s supposed to be there, which is the presence of God.

If you guard your eyes, your ears, and your tongue well, the things you will have to contend with, prune, and pluck, will be far easier to be done away with because they did not take root in the heart, and had not established themselves therein.

If the heart is likened to a garden that must be constantly tended to, then the eyes, the ears, and the tongue determine what is being planted in said garden. If you plant good seed, it will grow into a good tree that will produce good fruit. If you plant bad seed, no matter how much one might want the outcome to be otherwise, it will grow bad trees that will produce bad fruit. If you plant crab apple seeds, you’ll get crab apple trees that will produce crab apples, no matter how much you might wish them to produce Honeycrisp apples.   

My zero-tolerance policy when it comes to sin among those who deem themselves the shepherds of God’s people has been seen by some as being unloving. More often than not, a snippet from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians is included in the body text, reminding me that he who thinks he stands should take heed lest he fall, which is good counsel indeed, but contextually inapplicable within the topic of conversation, namely that the individual in question did not take heed, did not guard their eyes, their ears, their tongues, or their hearts, and didn’t so much fall into sin as cannonball into it.

You can’t tell me you never intended to go for a swim in the ocean if you drove a thousand miles to get there for the explicit purpose of going for a swim. You didn’t just make one conscious choice to go to the beach; there were multiple choices, strung together that brought you from the middle of Kansas to the shores of the Pacific or Atlantic.

You called in sick to work, gassed up the Pinto, packed your swim trunks, stopped to get some SPF 50 sunscreen, pointed the car in the direction you wanted to go, and floored it. But that was never your intention, though? You never thought in a million years that if you kept driving toward the ocean, you’d reach the ocean, and once you reached the ocean, you’d dip your toe in? Then once you dipped your toe in, well, you were already wearing your trunks; it would be a shame to waste the opportunity, wouldn’t it?

Once temptation worms its way into a heart, once it makes it past the eyes that ought to be the sentinels and guardsmen of the temple, the rationalization is inevitable and begins in earnest. Well, they invited me to this place I know I shouldn’t go to, but it would be rude of me to brush them off. We all have to make an effort to fit in; God knows my heart, I’ll go, but I won’t enjoy it. Okay, I’ll enjoy it a little bit, but not too much. I find myself enjoying it more than I should, but I’ll repent of it later.

I know what’s on the screen isn’t appropriate, nor beneficial to my spiritual man, but I’m halfway through the movie already, and it would be a shame not to know how it ends. Maybe I’ll just close one eye until the inappropriateness passes.

I know she knows I’m married; she sees the ring on my finger. Why is she in my personal space, laughing so much harder than my joke about chickens wearing sombreros warrants? I wouldn’t want to give offense; I’ll just play along.

All the denunciations, the halfhearted apologies, the excuses, the justifications, the shame brought upon the household of faith, and the inevitable broken families and ruined testimony could have been avoided had the individual in question guarded their eyes, made a covenant with them as Job did, and resisted the proffered temptation before it became their downfall.

What such individuals seem to forget is what Job so clearly declares: God sees their ways and counts all their steps. For good or ill, toward glory or shame, God sees our ways and counts all our steps.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

 Job 30:24-31, “Surely He would not stretch out His hand against a heap of ruins, if they cry out when He destroys it. Have I not wept for him who was in trouble? Has not my soul grieved for the poor? But when I looked for good, evil came to me; and when I waited for light, then came darkness. My heart is in turmoil and cannot rest; days of affliction confront me. I go about mourning, but not in the sun; I stand in the assembly and cry out for help. I am a brother of jackals, and a companion of ostriches. My skin grows black and falls from me; my bones burn with fever. My harp is turned to mourning, and my flute to the voice of those who weep.”

Transient comfort is a small price to pay for eternal glory. I realize it sounds simplistic, and there are likely a handful who read the previous sentence and immediately roll their eyes, thinking to themselves that I can’t possibly know what they’re going through and so I could not by all rights make the judgment that I did, and to that I say, I may not know your struggle, but I do know, if in broad outline, what eternal glory will be like, and that should suffice.

What do I mean by that? We know the worth of heaven is priceless and inestimable. We likewise know that, as the old hymn goes, when we all get to heaven, it will be a day of rejoicing. That day, however, will not be a day, but an eternity in His presence, beholding His glory. There, tears will be no more, pain will be no more, loss, separation, injustice, hatred, betrayal, mockery, and loneliness will cease to exist. When compared to the blink of an eye that is this existence, can anything we might endure while here outweigh what awaits us there?

We cannot allow the present to blur the reality of what awaits. We cannot allow the now to blind us to the reality that Jesus went to prepare a place for us, so that where He is, we might also be. This present life is transient, temporary, fleeting, and finite. As Job said, there is a house appointed for all the living, and there is nothing the living can do to avoid it. It’s what comes after that should concern us more than what is presently, because the after is for all eternity, while the present is for but a breath.

Revelation 21:1-4, “Now I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. Also there was no more sea. Then, I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, ‘Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people. God Himself will be with them and be their God. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.’”

Although Job had been millennia removed from the writing of the book of Revelation, he had unflinchingly declared that one day he would see His redeemer face to face. Amid the pain, the struggle, the loss, the mockery, the edges of that reality had begun to blur in Job’s mind. It had not disappeared, it had not abandoned him, but it was shimmering like some oasis in the desert, and no longer as vivid or crisp as it once was.

His resolve was being whittled away with each passing day. Incrementally, slowly, perhaps even imperceptibly to the naked eye, but by his own words, we see that Job’s hope was running on empty, and after days, which turned into weeks, that turned into months of him waiting for light and only seeing darkness, after looking for good only to be met with evil, he was a man hanging on by the merest of threads.

Even the strongest of men gets worn down over time. It’s one thing to be met with a trial or to suffer a tragedy, and then to go through the process of mourning, acceptance, and healing. It’s another to see oneself growing weaker with each passing day, wherein one’s heart is in turmoil and cannot rest, and time is but a weight pressing on one’s chest, keeping them from taking a full breath.

Not only did Job have to contend with God’s silence, but he also had to contend with the attitude of those around him, remembering that though he’d wept for him who was in trouble, and his soul grieved for the poor, now that he found himself in a similar situation, there was no one weeping and grieving for him.

That’s one of the hard lessons of life each of us must learn at some point: just because you show kindness, empathy, and respond to the plight of the downtrodden, it is folly to expect the same from others if ever you find yourself in need of comfort and encouragement. The only one we can depend on is God, for He is faithful, just, loving, and merciful. Even when He is silent, He is present. Even when He seems afar off, He is near. God knew of Job’s every pain, hurt, tear, disappointment, and distress. He was not ignorant of them, nor had He turned a blind eye to Job’s suffering. There would be a time when restoration and healing would come, but that time was not yet.

What we choose to focus on, what we choose to cling to, will determine whether we finish well and run our race to completion or give up along the way. If I focus on my present circumstances rather than the promises of God, on the things which are seen rather than those that are not, the exhaustion will become overwhelming to the point of inhibiting me from pressing onward. If my eyes are firmly set upon the author and finisher of my faith, if Jesus is all I see before me, then I will continue to press in, knowing that He will keep my feet from stumbling and my steps from slipping.

2 Corinthians 4:17-18, “For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal.”

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

 Job 30:16-23, “And now my soul is poured out because of my plight; the days of affliction take hold of me. My bones are pierced in me at night, and my gnawing pains take no rest. By great force my garment is disfigured; it binds me about as the collar of my coat. He has cast me into the mire, and I have become like dust and ashes. I cry out to You, but You do not answer me; I stand up, and You regard me. But You have become cruel to me; with the strength of Your hand You oppose me. You lift me up to the wind and cause me to ride on it; You spoil my success. For I know that You will bring me to death and to the house appointed for all living.”

If Job had counted on his friends, neighbors, or acquaintances to be there for him rather than on God, his story would have ended far differently than it did. He was now a man who saw himself as discarded, written off, a cautionary tale for anyone who knew of him, of the prominence he’d once held, and the things he’d once possessed.

The world has changed, but man hasn’t. Deep down, we’re still petty, judgmental, and vindictive, just as those of Job’s day, and for many, dissecting and then reveling in the fall of once prominent men has become a hobby all on its own. I’m not referring so much to those once in spiritual authority who allowed sin to take root, then destroyed their lives, but whether it’s athletes, Wall Street tycoons, or once esteemed trailblazers of some sort that aren’t quite as popular, sought after, or well regarded as they once were, it’s astounding to see men relish their downfall as though their descent was the one thing keeping them from ascending to new heights.

Your contentment ought not to be based on the success or failure of another. Relishing someone’s downfall doesn’t make you the better person, or the bigger person; it just makes you petty and small, not realizing that any one of us, no matter how certain we are of future success, is one calamity away from being looked upon by our contemporaries as Job was by his.

No matter how intuitive, forward-thinking, or perceptive he might have been, he couldn’t have seen this coming, not in his wildest, most dreadful imaginings. It wasn’t just one thing, or two, that went sideways; it was everything.

Every single thing that could have gone wrong in Job’s life did so, and at an accelerated rate. From the outside looking in, we understand the devil had a hand in it and was the cause of Job’s demise, but it was not something Job ever imagined as being a possible future for himself.

This is why foundation matters. Whether your house is built upon shifting sand or the Rock becomes relevant, and all-important during the storm, not during fair weather. Whether you know God as Father, and He knows you as son or daughter, is the determining factor between whether you will stand or fall when the storms arrive. If you belong to Him, even if you are shattered into a million pieces, He will put you back together. If not, then one hairline crack will be enough to cause you to crumble into the dust because standing in our strength is no strength at all, and the slightest disturbance will send shockwaves through our well-sorted lives.        

By his own assessment, his soul had been poured out because of his plight, and the days of his affliction had taken their toll. This was not hyperbole or exaggeration on Job’s part, nor did he try to put on airs pretending to be stronger than he was.

We all have some version of a dream scenario when it comes to this present life, and rarely does the dream scenario play out. We can either put one foot in front of the other and press on, or sit in the dust and reminisce about what could have been, might have been, and in our moments of hubris, what we think should have been.

Job’s consternation wasn’t about what he could have done differently to avoid the situation he was in. His lament was that though he cried out to the God he served, He did not answer. He remained silent, and His silence was, to Job, the worst he had to contend with, even though he lay in the dust and ashes of his former life, scratching at his boils with a potsherd.

Job wasn’t lamenting the loss of his health or his wealth; he was acknowledging them. He wasn’t pretending that he wasn’t going through what he was going through, but what affected him more than any of those things was God’s silence. He missed the fellowship most of all, and though his bones pierced him in the night, and his gnawing pains knew no rest, God’s absence is what caused his consternation and unease.

When God speaks, it is with a purpose. When God is silent, it is likewise with a purpose. These things we know to be true, yet when we’re in the midst of the threshing, when we are being sifted, when the walls seem to be caving in, and there seems to be no way out of our current predicament, we sometimes lose sight of these realities.

Job had concluded that God had become cruel to him, and opposed him with the strength of His hand, not because he hadn’t known the goodness of God throughout his life, nor because he was unaware of His character, but because it’s hard to see the light when you’re at the bottom of a well, and Job had been at the bottom for some time now.

The self-righteous among us will be quick to declare that Job should have known better, that he shouldn’t have accused God of casting him into the mire, but neither you nor I were ever in Job’s position. We haven’t had to walk a mile in his shoes, nor can we come close to understanding all that he had endured up to this point. Blameless and upright he might have been, but Job was not perfect. None of us is. Throughout history, whether recorded or otherwise, there has been only one who was perfect: the Christ.

If anyone claims perfection, they’re either deceiving themselves or knowingly attempting to deceive others. Every one of us needs God’s grace. Every one of us needs God’s mercy, and as any good father would, when we lash out and say things we later regret, if we repent, He is faithful and just to forgive us.  

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

 Job 30:9-15, “And now I am their taunting song; yes, I am their byword. They abhor me, they keep far from me; they do not hesitate to spit in my face. Because He has loosed my bowstring and afflicted me, they have cast off restraint before me. At my right hand the rabble arises; they push away my feet, and they raise against me their ways of destruction. They break up my path, they promote my calamity; they have no helper. They come as broad breakers; under the ruinous storm they roll along. Terrors are turned upon me; they pursue my honor as the wind, and my prosperity has passed like a cloud.”

Men will flatter you, defer to you, feign respect, and speak smooth words to your face for as long as they believe they have something to gain from doing so. Those who do so with a vested interest or an ulterior motive were never truly friends or brothers but opportunists who will turn on you, savage your reputation, and spit in your face the instant they can no longer profit from your position, largesse, influence, or authority.

It is a hard-learned lesson that many once influential people, whose influence has waned, have had to learn the hard way, because true friends, friends who are there through the ups and downs, the thick and thin, the feast and the famine, are hard to come by, more so today than ever before.

Everyone seems to have an angle of some sort, and they feign friendship not because they want to be your friend but because they think you are the means by which they might attain what they really want, whatever that thing might be.

I’ll be the first to admit I have very few friends. The older I get, the fewer friends I seem to have, but those I consider friends, I’ve known for years on end. It’s not because I’m unfriendly, but because there is truth in the adage, once bitten, twice shy.

I’ve lived a long life in a short time, and events of the past left their mark. I would be a fool not to have learned from past experiences, and I’ve come to the point in life where calling someone a friend means something, and isn’t a word I throw out willy-nilly. If I deem someone my friend, then they’re my friend, and they remain so for no other reason than that I value our friendship.

The men of Job’s day had concluded there was nothing more they could gain from showing him deference, respecting him, or seeing him as an equal, and they cast off restraint before him. In modern parlance, they revealed their true nature, told him how they really felt, and there was no kindness or empathy in their judgment of him.

One of my biggest pet peeves and something I cannot abide is when a supposed friend exploits another whom they likewise deem a friend. Every time I hear someone ask for a service, then follow up with, “Can I get the friend discount?” it doesn’t sit well with me because if someone’s my friend, my purpose shouldn’t be to try to shortchange them.

I would have needed the job done regardless, whether by him or another, so my asking for a discounted rate just because we are acquainted only goes to show how much value I place on the relationship.

Whether it's car repair or lawn maintenance, I do my best to give my business to people I know and deem as friends. Never once have I gone in for an oil change or had someone come and spray for weeds, only to turn around and demand a discounted rate because we’re friends. They have families to feed and roofs to keep over their heads, and if I am in a position to hire them for the job, I expect no special favors because of our friendship.

Some have even offered to cut me a deal, and I politely declined because our friendship meant more to me than the five bucks I would have saved had I accepted. By the same token, I expect the friends with whom I do business to be fair and not upcharge me just because of our friendship. I’ve had that happen a time or two, and the instant I discovered it, our friendship soured and was never the same again.  

One knows their true friends in times of hardship and adversity. When he was the greatest of all the people of the East, there was no shortage of men trying to ingratiate themselves with Job. Now that his prosperity had passed like a cloud and there was nothing they could gain from him, they abhorred him, kept far from him, and spat in his face.

Job’s character had been consistent throughout. Theirs had not. He had done nothing to warrant their animus or their taunting. He had not changed; they’d just revealed their true selves in the absence of any perceived gain from pretending to be his friends.

If you’ve ever had someone you deemed a friend turn their back on you, and wracked your brain as to what you may have done to cause such drastic change, it likely wasn’t you, and it was nothing you did. All that happened is that they concluded they could not gain what they’d planned on gaining from the feigned friendship, and as such, let the mask slip and revealed their true nature.

As children of God, it is our duty to employ wisdom in all things, and that includes choosing our friends. Choose your friend wisely because if you fail to do so, if the day ever comes when you will have to count on them, they’ll vanish like fog in the midday sun.

As my wife is fond of saying, a true friend isn’t someone who shows up for the feast, but someone who helps clean up after. When all the revelers have gone, full bellies and engaging conversation in tow, it’s the couple of people that stayed behind to help with the dishes and the trash and the disarray of it all that are true friends. If you don’t know someone like that, then be that someone, and if you’ve fallen short of being that someone, it’s never too late to start.  

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

 Job 30:1-8, “But now they mock at me, men younger than I, whose fathers I disdained to put with the dogs of my flock. Indeed, what profit is the strength of their hands to me? Their vigor has perished. They are gaunt from want and famine, fleeing late to the wilderness, desolate and waste, who pluck mallow by the bushes, and broom tree roots for their food. They were driven out from among men, they shouted at them as at a thief. They had to live in the clefts of the valleys, in caves of the earth and the rocks. Among the bushes they brayed, under the nettles they nestled. They were sons of fools, yes, sons of vile men; they were scourged from the land.”

When being mocked, ridiculed, or looked down upon, it matters who is doing the mocking and ridiculing. If it’s coming from someone you respect, someone you deem an equal, or someone you look up to, whatever they might say holds more weight than if it were someone you never knew, or someone who has, over time, proven themselves to be undeserving of your reaction to their mockery.

It’s not so much that hurt people hurt people; it’s someone looking for an axe to grind who will use every opportunity to do so, and Job’s current situation was the perfect opportunity for those who had felt slighted by him in any way throughout their existence to lash out and do their worst.

Job was fully aware of who was mocking him. He had identified them, knew them from his life before he’d lost everything, and there was no reason for him to feel hurt by what they said because they were neither men nor the sons of men he’d respected.

Some might look at Job’s words, a man whom God had deemed blameless and upright, and conclude that his words regarding how he viewed his mockers were a bit harsh, but we don’t know what was said about him, for how long, and how vociferously. Armchair quarterbacking might give someone an inflated sense of their own importance, but it’s rarely factual, true, or warranted.

The thing about mockers is that it’s never a one-and-done endeavor. It’s not as though they say one mean thing and then go on about their lives, especially if the person their barbs are aimed at doesn’t react the way they would like him to.

Job had enough on his plate where it is a logical conclusion that, though he’d heard their mockery, he had not reacted to it. That only emboldened them all the more, and they likely doubled down on their invectives toward him.

If you don’t respond to their attacks, it just makes them angrier and more rabid. If you do respond, it makes them louder and less logical. There’s no winning when it comes to mockers and their desire to put you in your place, at least as far as they see it, because they operate from a position of indignation and pour all the resentments of life, resentments you likely had no hand in causing, into their desire to bring you down a peg.

Sometimes they get so spun up that by the end of it, they see you as the cause of every calamity they’ve endured from the moment of their birth to the present, even if you’ve never met them in person or looked them in the face. You’re just a convenient target, and as far as Job was concerned, he was a target they did not think had enough strength left in him to put up a defense.      

Evidently, not only had their words reached his ears, but Job was able to identify who the words belonged to, and in a cutting retort, he reminds those within earshot that he used to disdain putting these selfsame individuals’ fathers with the dogs of his flock. These were not the offspring of men he’d respected, nor were they individuals pregnant with wisdom, for they were younger men than he, and he knew the stock from whence they came.

If the book of Job were set in the Wild West rather than in the desert four thousand years removed, a good comparison of what he said regarding those who mocked him would be “I knew your daddy when he begged to polish my boots, and even that he wasn’t good at.”

Know who it is that’s leveling accusations, mocking, and talking behind your back, and determine their motivation, as well as whether they’re worth the time to acknowledge their backbiting. Is it someone you respect enough to make their words cause you hurt, or is it someone who’s just trying to get attention by using you as the means to do so?

It’s a practice that has become commonplace of late, where someone no one’s ever heard of starts leveling attacks on people they’ve never met, hoping that their attacks will gain the traction they’re dreaming of and elevate them to some level of prominence.

If a teaching is unbiblical, by all means, prove it biblically, but there is a difference between ad hominem personal attacks regarding a personal preference that the Bible never weighs in on and false teaching or false doctrine.

We are called to defend the truth, we are called to stand for it, preach it, teach it, and obey it. We are not called to mock someone endlessly because they wear bolo ties instead of neckties, or because their preferred footwear is cowboy boots rather than Italian loafers.

Job assessed those who mocked him and concluded that they weren’t worth his time. They were gaunt from want and famine, and plucked broom tree roots for their food. They were driven out from among men, sons of fools and vile men who were scourged from the earth, so what did it matter what they thought of him? What did it matter what they said about him?

His own friends, men he respected, men who by their own words were proven to retain a modicum of wisdom, had done their best to dispirit Job, and it hadn’t worked, so why would the words of those who were driven out from among men and shouted at as at a thief have an effect on him?

The only opinion that mattered to Job was vertically focused, and not horizontally. What God thought meant everything. What men thought meant less than nothing. Value the opinion that matters, and the only opinion that matters is God’s.   

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

  Job 29:18-25, “Then I said, ‘I shall die in my nest, and multiply my days as the sand. My root is spread out to the waters, and the dew lies all night on my branch. My glory is fresh within me, and my bow is renewed in my hand.’ Men listened to me and waited, and kept silence for my counsel. After my words they did not speak again, and my speech settled on them as dew. They waited for me as for the rain, and they opened their mouth wide as for the spring rain. If I mocked at them, they did not believe it, and the light of my countenance they did not cast down. I chose the way for them, and sat as chief; so I dwelt as a king in the army, as one who comforts mourners.”

True contentment is a jewel, a priceless treasure that, although often sought, is rarely found. As Job looks back on his life, he declares that once he had committed to causing the widow's heart to sing for joy, putting on righteousness as a cloak, and being a father to the poor, he had found his purpose, and in that purpose he’d found true contentment. There was no more for him to do than to keep doing what he’d been doing. Now that I’ve acquired this treasure, now that I’ve obtained this contentment, I shall die in my nest and multiply my days as the sand.

There was no bucket list; there wasn’t anything he felt he needed to do left undone; he wasn’t scrambling to acquire more, nor was he dissatisfied with what God had already given him. He was a man at peace, a man content, a man who’d found his purpose, and that purpose was to serve others, to help wherever he could, and to defend the innocent and vulnerable from the wicked.

I’ve known people who had next to nothing yet had contentment in abundance, and people who had more than they could ever spend who were miserable and perpetually anxious for fear of losing what they’d amassed.

Even at his apex, when Job was the greatest of all the people of the East, he was not defined by his wealth, nor did he see what he possessed as the thing that gave him meaning and purpose. Rich or poor, covered in fine linens or sitting in the dust covered in boils, his heart’s desire was to know the presence of God and have fellowship with Him.

What matters isn’t the number of zeros in a bank account; it’s who is sitting on the throne of your heart. Men spend their entire lives chasing zeros on a screen only to find themselves empty, rudderless, hopeless, joyless, and dissatisfied with life, even though, objectively speaking, they have all that one would ever need to attain happiness if happiness were found in possessions.

Job acknowledges that men deferred to him, listened and waited, kept silent for his counsel because of the position he held, but that was how they viewed him, rather than how he viewed himself. You can’t help how people see you, how people judge you, how much people respect you, or don’t. If your focus is on others rather than on God, you will inevitably steer toward becoming a people-pleaser, saying what they want you to say and doing what they want you to do, rather than what God would have you do and say.

Job knew full well he wasn’t making any friends by breaking the fangs of the wicked. It was likely fellow men of means with whom he tussled in his attempt to pluck the victim out of their teeth, and more than likely, they resented him for it, even hated him on some level, but felt compelled to bite their tongue because his status was superior to theirs.

If one could have been a fly on the wall of any of those noblemen’s homes after Job lost everything, the things one would have heard would confirm that they reveled in his demise, and the merriment and glee with which they recalled his downfall would have been stomach-churning.

Because they saw his demise through the prism of their self-interest, they likely also concluded that Job had gotten what was coming to him. He had stood in the way of what they deemed progress, had hindered their plans to exploit the widow and orphan to their dark purposes, and now the chickens had come home to roost, and he was getting exactly what he deserved.

On the one hand, you had Job’s friend who had concluded he was getting his just deserts for being wicked; on the other, you had wicked men concluding the same, only not because Job had committed wickedness, but had hindered them in theirs.

You can spend your time and energy worrying about how others see you, or you can dedicate that time to growing in God, building up your faith, and learning to hear His voice. The net benefit of doing the latter rather than the former is astronomical, and you will learn some powerful and indispensable lessons along the way.

The first lesson you will learn is that men’s opinions, whether for good or ill, should in no way affect you positively or negatively. Someone who praises you today will drive a dagger into your back tomorrow because man is fickle and self-serving. God, on the other hand, is faithful, and the more we cling to Him, the more He will cling to us.

The second lesson you will learn is that the things you once thought mattered, didn’t, the things you believed were of great import really weren’t, and when the dust settles and you look back on life, the only thing that will stand out as worthwhile and worth the investment was the time you spent in God’s presence, and the things you did to further cement that relationship.

Every noble virtue, every good thing in your life, every act of kindness, empathy, or selflessness, if pure, flows from one’s relationship with God. Yes, godless men perform acts of kindness once in a while, they show empathy here and there, but the purpose for which they do it, the reason behind why they chose to be charitable, is tainted, having some ulterior motive, whether the praise of their contemporaries, or the desire to be seen as noble and virtuous. Intent matters, and if what we do, whatever it may be, whether giving water to a thirsty soul or giving a hungry man a meal, stems from obedience to God, He will reward it in kind.           

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

 Job 29:13-17, “The blessing of a perishing man came upon me, and I caused the widow’s heart to sing for joy. I put on righteousness, and it clothed me; my justice was like a robe and a turban. I was eyes to the blind, and I was feet to the lame. I was a father to the poor, and I searched out the case that I did not know. I broke the fangs of the wicked, and plucked the victim from his teeth.”

It’s the things that define you, that you value, that you see as worth remembering that reveal your character more than any words you can speak. Job didn’t say he had his name on a building, drove a Ferrari, or had the fastest camel in the city. Whatever possessions Job was blessed with were not the things that he valued, nor were they the things that defined him or gave him worth as a person.

He wasn’t remembering designer sandals, or that one time he bought a gold-etched, personalized chariot with cash, he wasn’t reminiscing about his walk-in closet full of linen tunics, or how the only drink to pass his lips was grass-fed, pasture-raised, organic goat’s milk. None of that pasteurized stuff, no sir, fresh from the source is the only way to go.

What he did remember, what he thought worthy of mention, was that he’d caused the widow's heart to sing for joy, and the blessings of a perishing man had come upon him. By the latter, Job did not mean that he received reciprocity from God for his generosity toward a perishing man, but that a perishing man showed gratitude and blessed him for not walking by, ignoring him, or pretending he wasn’t there, and actively doing what he could to keep him from perishing.

I’ve not yet reached the age when what I’ll be remembered for weighs on me, but I know that season is coming and well on its way. For now, I’m more in the camp of asking myself what I’d like to be remembered for rather than what I’ll be remembered for in truth, and I can’t think of anything better I’d rather be remembered for than what Job desired, which was that he heard the cries of the desperate and saw the needs of the widow. Not a jet, not a mansion, not a watch that costs more than an entire neighborhood, but that my heart was tender enough to be a help to the helpless and give of my bread to feed one hungrier than myself.

For the believer, it’s not about leaving behind a legacy but about leaving behind a testimony of what Jesus can do in a life wholly surrendered to Him.

Last year, my father went to his eternal reward. He never amassed a fortune, never had his name up in lights, never rubbed elbows with the elites, yet he left behind a testimony of service, of pouring love into the lives of those without, and of being about the Father’s business with the consistency of a Swiss timepiece.

What you do with your time, how you steward what God has given you, the things you prioritize in this life, all come down to individual choice. Men choose to be selfish or selfless, self-serving or sacrificial, givers or takers, and the testimony they leave behind will be reflected in the choices they made along the way.

It’s not a judgment on anyone. I don’t subscribe to the idea that I have the right to tell another who has earned their money with the sweat of their brow how to spend it, or decide when they’ve bought enough homes or enough cars. I can, however, say, based on the historical data available and what the Bible says, that while cars rust, and homes crumble and decay, causing the widow’s heart to sing for joy will be remembered beyond this life by the One whose memory does not deteriorate with time, and who keeps pristine accounting of all we do in His name.

Throughout his discourse, Job did not boast of his possessions but rather of what he did with the things God entrusted to him, and it is a beautiful synopsis of a life well lived in service to others, not to make a name for himself, not to rise higher in the eyes of his contemporaries, but to be eyes to the blind, feet to the lame, and a father to the poor.

Given what Job says, we can also deduce that there were those in his time who exploited the poor, abused them, and discarded them. Rather than being indifferent to their mistreatment of the widow, the orphan, the lame, and the poor, Job says he broke the fangs of the wicked and plucked the victim from his teeth.

Job was not passive in his defense of the helpless. He was not one to sit idly by and see the wicked devour the widow and the orphan, but actively sought to defend and protect them. For those inclined to imagery, Job breaking the fangs of the wicked is by no means something timid, gentle, or mild. He both made his feelings known regarding the wicked who victimized the weak, as well as the lengths to which he had gone, and would again if the need arose to pluck them from their teeth.

Indifference is by far worse than ignorance, because indifference presupposes that one knew of a situation and chose to do nothing about it, while ignorance implies that one was not aware of the situation at all. While some attempt to mask their indifference by claiming ignorance, God still knows the truth of it. Job saw the poor, the hurting, the widow, and the orphan; he saw the attempts of the wicked to exploit them, and neither flinched away from doing what he knew to be the right thing, nor did he feign ignorance of their plight.

If one’s steps are ordered by the Lord, as Scripture tells us they are, then that person needing comfort you ran into wasn’t by accident, nor was the person needing a meal, a coat, or some encouragement. The truth of it, uncomfortable as it might be, is that even many believers today are so self-absorbed that they can’t be bothered to show kindness to strangers. They are so myopic in their quest to amass, acquire, and squirrel away all that their eyes see that they fail to recognize the moments when God Himself arranged a divine appointment so that they might be a blessing, a comfort, and a helping hand.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

 Job 29:7-12, “When I went out to the gate by the city, when I took my seat in the open square, the young men saw me and hid, and the aged arose and stood; the princes refrained from talking, and put their hand on their mouth; the voice of the nobles was hushed, and their tongue stuck to the roof of their mouth. When the ear heard, then it blessed me, and when the eye saw, then it approved me; because I delivered the poor who cried out, the fatherless and the one who had no helper.”

Job wasn’t a nobody who stayed a nobody. He was a somebody who became a nobody in the eyes of his contemporaries. It’s the difference between falling off a stepstool and falling off the roof of the house. Neither is pleasant, but one will hurt far worse than the other.

Job had been a man of great influence in his city, one who garnered respect and admiration, so much so that when he was present, even princes refrained from talking and put their hands on their mouths. Even the nobles were hushed in his presence, and their tongues stuck to the roof of their mouth, because even in their hubris, they realized Job was a notch above their station, whether in possessions, position, or authority and influence.

Even though he was the greatest of all the people of the East, he did not use his wealth to subjugate the weak, nor was he a man lacking in character and morals. He did not look down on the poor, the fatherless, and those who had no helper, but delivered them.

Because his relationship with God defined him, Job was a man with a heart for the hurting, one who, out of his own largesse, helped those who had no way to repay his kindness. His inclination was not to hobnob with the nobles or ingratiate himself with those in power but to show kindness, empathy, and charity to those who went largely ignored and seen as a nuisance rather than fellow human beings.

There is no way of knowing if Job had always been kind, generous, and charitable, but what we can know with certainty is that his relationship with God amplified these qualities in him, as God’s presence always does.

The presence of God transforms a man from the inward parts. A heart of stone is replaced with a heart of flesh, an indifferent posture toward the needs of others transforms into a desire to reach out and help those who are hurting, not because there is something to gain from showing kindness to strangers, or because it will polish one’s image with the public, but because it has become one’s nature to do so.

When Job delivered the poor who cried out, or the fatherless who had no helper, he wasn’t doing it because there were cameras present, or because a news crew had just arrived, and it would elevate his status with the masses if they saw him being magnanimous. It wasn’t about him or his image but about being obedient to the voice of God, and doing the things he knew would be well pleasing to the Lord.

It’s not so much that the presence of God makes you the best version of yourself as some are fond of saying, but rather the presence of God transforms you into a likeness of Him, which transcends who you are or what you could become on your own.

Some of the most impactful testimonies I’ve ever heard had to do with the juxtaposition between who someone was before Jesus and who He transformed them into after His indwelling presence. Men, once given to violence, anger, and malice, became gentle and meek by the transformative power of Jesus, not because they tried really hard to be better men, but because God made them better men.

From the outside looking in, such a transformation makes no sense and seems impossible. For those still in darkness, even the flicker of a candle can be blinding. Eventually, some get up the courage to ask what the secret is, what steps the person took to turn his life around. Was it meditation, reflection, journaling, therapy, pharmaceutical-grade anti-depressants? And there’s your window. There’s your opportunity to speak the name that changed your life for the better, that transformed you, and set you on the path of righteousness: Jesus!

Job’s discourse does not come off as a lament over the loss of his possessions, his status, or the way others viewed him. His singular desire was the knowledge of God, and for such a man, what others say about you, whether for good or ill, doesn’t affect you or impact you, whether positively or negatively. He was looking back on his life and stating facts. He didn’t try to make himself out to be more generous, influential, or respected than he had been; he was looking back on a life well lived and remembering.

There are those who amplify and trumpet the smallest of kindness they show toward others, then there are those who do the heavy lifting, who give, and sacrifice, and understand that God sees the truth of it, He sees the heart with which we help the poor and the fatherless and though we may help in secret, the Father who sees in secret will Himself reward us openly. Job wasn’t praise-farming, nor was he trying to elicit a positive response from his friends. By this point, they’d already made up their minds; they thought him a wicked man, and nothing he could say would change their minds. If for nothing else, then for posterity, Job took a stroll down memory lane and remembered those he helped along the way, who would likely be dead and gone if not for his godly heart.  

 If, as God Himself clearly stated, the fear of the Lord is wisdom, and to depart from evil is understanding, why are these things so sparsely, anemically, and infrequently taught in the modern-day church? We go out of our way to repackage and rebrand humanism and present it as wisdom; we twist ourselves into pretzels trying to circumvent the fear of the Lord and the need to depart from evil, while still insisting we can attain it without these two pillars. We regurgitate tropes and mantras that time has proven to be worthless and ineffective, all to avoid addressing these two biblically sound truths.

Why are the fear of the Lord and departing from evil avoided like the plague in the contemporary church? Why are we so reticent to preach the whole counsel of God, and rather choose to cherry-pick passages that do nothing to challenge us, chasten us, or correct us? There could only be one of two answers to this question: either those responsible for rightly dividing the Word do not want those under them to attain wisdom and understanding, or they do not believe God at His word. Either one is bad optics on the best of days, and rebellious disobedience on the worst.  

Job 29:1-6, “Job further continued his discourse, and said: ‘Oh, that I were as in months past, as in the days when God watched over me; when His lamp shone upon my head, and when by His light I walked through darkness; just as I was in the days of my prime, when the friendly counsel of God was over my tent; when the Almighty was yet with me, when my children were around me; when my steps were bathed with cream, and the rock poured out rivers of oil for me!”’

When the presence of God is a constant in one’s life, any deviation from it, any absence of it, even a temporary one, is like a hammer blow. It is likened to suddenly having your airflow constricted and not being able to take your next breath. Everything was normal, life was as life is, then suddenly, you exhale, and try as you might, you can’t catch your next breath.

People who don’t miss the presence of God never had it to begin with. That may sound harsh, but it is nevertheless the truth. If one wanders from the way, if one ceases to have the fear of the Lord, or no longer departs from evil but instead surrenders to it, and they do not feel God’s absence, then they never truly felt His presence. They may have had some emotional reaction to a sermon or a hymn, it may even have elicited tears, but as far as the abiding presence of God, if it was present and begins to wane, or is absent altogether, alarm bells would be going off, and the only thing on their mind would be to return to their first love, and reestablish fellowship with the Almighty.

Job knew what was missing because he’d lived with God’s presence for years on end. He did not know the reasons behind why he felt abandoned and forsaken; he just knew that things were not as they were, not because of the things he’d lost but because of the absence of His presence.

Perhaps God’s presence wasn’t absent altogether, and Job still saw glimpses of Him through the haze of his pain and loss, but what was once a raging bonfire was now mere embers, and Job remembered the fire. He remembered the warmth of it, the brightness of it, and knowing what had been and comparing it to what now was, tore at him.

Job was not vague about what was missing. The specificity with which he detailed these things only proves the depth of devotion, fellowship, and relationship Job possessed. He knew God had watched over him, but felt it no longer. He knew God’s lamp shone upon his head, and that he walked through darkness by His light, yet now, things were dim, and he was no longer sure-footed. The friendly counsel of God once over his tent was no longer present, and he felt the loss of all these things.

It wasn’t a tingle in his toes that Job was missing; it was verifiable attributes of a true relationship with the Almighty that Job no longer felt. It didn’t matter what area of his life he was referring to, Job acknowledged God in every single one. It was by His light that he walked through darkness, not by his sharpened senses, not because he’d bought the newest flashlight, not even because the ground he trod in the darkness was so well known to him that he knew where every loose stone and pebble was. His dependence was not on his own faculties to guide him through life, but on the God he served, trusting Him to light the way.

As a father, I also found it highly relatable that, of all the things he’d lost, the one thing he remembers with both sadness, fondness, and regret was the times when his children were around him. He makes no mention of the oxen, goats, camels, or earthly possessions he’d been stripped of, but he does mention his children, remembering the time when they were around him.

The world makes treasures of worthless things, of baubles and fool’s gold, while dismissing the true treasures, those things that come from the hand of God, that bring joy, fulfillment, and wholeness in ways no material things can. You can lament for those still blind to life’s true treasures if they are still of the world, but as sons and daughters of God, we should know better and use our time accordingly. It’s the things that don’t have a price tag, that aren’t exclusive to the elite, that aren’t reserved for the rich that reveal the majesty of our creator God, from the flutter of a butterfly’s wings, to the smile of a newborn babe in swaddles.

Not only was Job a blameless and upright man, but he also had his priorities in order and valued what truly mattered in this life. Most people read the book of Job and conclude that it is the quintessential prototype of how to suffer well, but it’s these small glimpses into his life that reveal there was more to him than the ability to endure hardship, and more lessons could be learned from his life than submitting to God’s sovereignty in all things. Yes, that one lesson stands head and shoulders above the rest, but we dismiss the others to our detriment.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

 It goes without saying that none of the attributes Job ascribed to God were because Job was an autodidact, because even though he might have been, there was nowhere he could go to glean such wisdom during his time. Whether opining on God making a law for the rain, or establishing a weight for the wind, these were revelatory in nature, of divine origin, a truth breathed into Job, not of himself or his own wisdom.

It is intriguing, to say the least, that four thousand years later, what we deem scientific breakthroughs corroborate the statements made by a man living in the desert, without claiming the title of scholar or wise man, but who God Himself said feared the Lord and shunned evil. That was the extent of his education, the extent of his pedigree, yet he spoke of things so far removed from the learned men of his time that millennia had to pass for scientific discovery to catch up to him.

For the vain and the proud, those who lean on their understanding, such insights are irrelevant and readily glossed over, because were they to take the time and consider the implications of the words Job spoke without having the natural ability to know these things, it would point to the reality of God, His presence, and His wisdom.

Those who refuse to acknowledge God will find ways around having to contend with the truth that Job knew things he had no way of knowing, at a time when such wisdom was impossible to acquire via natural means.

For those willing to humble themselves and see the truth of what Job says, he answers two all-important questions that men have been asking for millennia. The first question he answers is from where does wisdom come. The second question he answers is what is wisdom.

Anyone who can’t answer these two questions will forever be likened to a blind man groping in the dark when it comes to wisdom. There is no true wisdom to be had without the presence of God in one’s life. Men can be learned, men can possess vast quantities of useless facts, they can boast of diplomas and degrees, but as far as true wisdom goes, it is only found in one place, and as Job so poetically tells us, that place is in God.

Some two thousand years later, James, the half-brother of Jesus, even goes so far as to give us step-by-step instructions as to how we can acquire this oft-sought-after but rarely found wisdom.

James 1:5, “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him.”

There it is, simple and direct. If you lack wisdom, ask it of God, and He will give it to you. The reason so few find wisdom nowadays is twofold: first, they don’t know where to find it, or if they do, they’re unwilling to humble themselves enough to ask it of God, and second, they believe true wisdom to be something other than what the Word of God says it is.

If you are looking for a specific thing and there is only one place to find it, then the way forward is clear enough. I know where to find a decent burger in the town I live in. If I’m in the mood for a burger, I won’t go in search of one at the local Mexican joint, nor will I try to hassle the people at the Chinese buffet into making me one. I will go where I know I will find what I’m looking for, without wasting time trying to get it where I know it isn’t.

The Word of God is prescriptive. It tells us where to go and what to do to attain what we are seeking. Granted, one must possess enough self-awareness to know that they lack wisdom, but once that hurdle is overcome, the rest is as easy as asking God, who, as James says, will give it liberally and without reproach.

This means that God will never look down on you for asking Him for wisdom. He won’t browbeat you or shame you for lacking it, but will gladly give it to you. All you need to do is ask.

We have not, because we ask not; and sometimes, when we ask, we do so without faith, doubting that God will give us the wisdom we’re asking for. We can ask in full faith and assurance that God will give us wisdom, because He has promised to do so. We don’t need to go down rabbit trails or start playing the what-if game with ourselves. God said He would give it if we ask in faith, and that’s all there is to it.

So what is wisdom? When you ask God for wisdom, will you suddenly be able to do quantum equations in your head, or understand the intricacies of theoretical physics? Will you suddenly know all there is to know of horticulture or apiculture? Will you be able to finally solve that Rubik's Cube that’s been gathering dust in a drawer because the kids decided it would be fun to play with it, and you couldn’t figure out how to put it back the way it was? No, most, if not all, of these things can be learned through diligent study, and though they contain knowledge, they are not wisdom.

God Himself defined true wisdom. Not a preacher, a teacher, an evangelist, or some third party that thought they knew better, but God Himself. He said, “The fear of the Lord, that is wisdom, and to depart from evil is understanding.”

Some bristle at the idea of the fear of the Lord because they do not understand it. They associate the fear of the Lord with the fear one expresses toward someone who is violent toward them, or is liable to fly off the handle at the drop of a hat and beat them senseless.

Within the context of Scripture, the best way to define the fear of the Lord is as a reverential awe, rather than the constant terror of waiting for the other shoe to drop and for violence to ensue. He is God, and I am not. He is the Creator, and I am creation. He is sovereign, supreme, and omnipotent. My having the fear of the Lord does not stem from an expectation of being pummeled into the dust by His unseen hand, but from who He is and the authority rightfully His. I am in constant, reverent awe of the God I serve, who He is, what He has done, and the lengths to which He went that I might be reconciled to Him.             

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

 I am not what one might call a meticulous planner or orderly when it comes to my personal space. At a glance, it looks like some small explosive device has gone off, and what remains are the scattered remnants of something that was once a workspace, but for me, it’s just another Tuesday. I know where everything is amidst the clutter that is my desk, whether a napkin with a few thoughts from a year ago, or a complete manuscript from a month ago, it may not seem like it to any sane person that happens to see it for the first time, but the chaos is an illusion.

Whether one calls it controlled or ordered chaos, it’s only so because they were not the ones responsible for putting everything where it lies; I was, and as such, I am the only one who knows where to find anything I’m looking for in the manner of a heartbeat or two.

Because it’s my desk, and they’re my things, I also know if anyone moved anything while I was not present. It doesn’t have to be an entire reshuffling of the clutter for me to notice; just a pen, a piece of paper, or some small thing out of place is enough for me to notice that things are not as I left them the last time I was there.

Whether man sees it or not, whether he chooses to acknowledge it or not, there is a divine order to all things on the earth, beneath the earth, in the realm of the seen and unseen alike, perfectly established and well thought out. What may seem chaotic to us, given our limited ability to perceive such things, is nothing less than the perfect synchronicity of billions upon billions of moving parts. You can take one thing on its own, like the human body, and be in awe of its complexity, all that is required for it to function optimally, and everything that takes place at a cellular level every time you inhale and exhale. That complexity, that wonder, is replicated a billion times over in everything that surrounds us, while being interdependent, wonderfully woven together, harmonious, and complementary.

In his ignorance, man can brush it off as a cosmic accident, but Job gives credit where credit is due and reveals the meticulous thought process that went into what we take for granted most days. This was no happy accident. This was the master architect, artist, and creator, looking to the ends of the earth, seeing under the whole heavens, establishing a weight for the wind, and apportioning the waters by measure. There were no overlooked details, there was nothing left to chance, and everything was put in its appropriate place, established, and spoken into existence.

From the first chapter of Genesis, we read the history of creation, and although it was no great feat for God, it was no great feat because He is God. None other could speak the universe into being, none other could speak light into existence, or separate the waters from the waters by speaking the firmament into existence. All that we see, from the grass to the trees, to the abundance of the creatures in the sea, and the birds flying in the air, the cattle, creeping things, and the beasts of the earth, were spoken into existence by the God we serve.

Yes, He is worthy of glory, He is worthy of praise, our awe of Him is justified because He is awe-inspiring. Man’s limited understanding of Him does not limit God. He is sovereign and supreme over all creation, and that includes man, try as man might to think himself on equal footing with Him.

This same God who spoke creation into being, this same God who made a law for the rain, and a path for the thunderbolt, turns His focus on His creation, and speaks to man directly. There is no mystery in His declaration; it’s not something that requires a degree to understand, because God does not speak in riddles, He does not needlessly complicate the way we ought to follow, nor does He have any ulterior motives when addressing the crown jewel of His creation, and the only one made in His image.

And to man He said, ‘Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom, and to depart from evil is understanding.’

It couldn’t be that simple, could it? There must be more to wisdom than the fear of the Lord, mustn’t there? Perhaps some astrological charts having to do with planetary alignments, some grafts pertaining to interdimensional travel, or perhaps a white paper on multiverses, but it can’t be as simple as the fear of the Lord. It is because God declared it so.

He saw wisdom and declared it, and what He declared is that the fear of the Lord is wisdom, and to depart from evil is understanding. Nothing of what anyone else says matters on the topic because God has established the truth of it, and declared it to be so.

When we attempt to overcomplicate matters or weigh in with our minuscule intellect, insisting that God didn’t mean what He said, we fall into the same snare as Eve did when encountering the serpent in the garden. Had God indeed said that the fear of the Lord is wisdom? Yes, He did! That should be the end of the conversation, the end of the debate, and the end of the discussion.

What God commanded Adam and Eve was clear enough, yet the enemy was able to convince Eve that God hadn’t said what He clearly had by planting seeds of doubt and reshaping the narrative to reach his intended goal. The same tactics are employed to this day, wherein men take the Word and twist it to fit their predetermined narratives rather than submit to its authority and obey it as it ought to be obeyed.

To know what God said, you must know what God said, and you can know what God said by knowing His Word. The easiest prey the enemy catches in his snare are those who do not know the Word of God for themselves. They do not take the time to read it, know it, understand it, or hide it in their heart, and when he comes along whispering an approximation of truth but not the truth, they get caught up in his net, soon to be devoured if they do not find a means of escape.   

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

 Where can wisdom be found? From where does wisdom come? Two questions that Job answers conclusively, but first, he tells us where wisdom is not, cannot, and will not be found. It is not among the living, it is not in the deep, it is not in the sea, it is concealed from the birds of the air who soar high above the earth, and though Destruction and Death have heard a report about it with their ears, they cannot lay claim to it, or pretend as though they possess it.

By this point, we’re running out of runway. One after the other, the places where men think wisdom might be found have been thoroughly eliminated, until only one place remains: in God! One source, that’s all. Not multiple sources gushing forth the same wisdom, but one source that possesses true and divine wisdom. Anything else, anyone else, any other god trying to lay claim to possessing wisdom is no less than a liar and a deceiver.

If God is unwilling to share the throne or allow for the possibility that wisdom can be found anywhere but in Him, why are those who insist they are following after Him so quick to try to do it on His behalf? It’s not as though God gave them a special exemption to try and make a deal on His behalf, and it required that He share authority and wisdom with lesser gods. It’s likewise not as though God has had a change of heart, and what He would have never done a few thousand years ago is something He might be considering now.

It has not gone unnoticed that Destruction and Death are capitalized, implying that they are independent, individual entities of some kind, rather than merely vague, opaque terms for something in the general ethos of men throughout. It doesn’t matter where you’re from, how you grew up, or what your level of education is; everyone understands the idea of destruction and death.

Whatever form destruction might take, whether earthquake, hurricane, volcano, or tornado, it is well defined and recognizable. The same can be said of death, wherein no matter what form it takes, it is readily seen for what it is and recognized as such.  

As Job describes them, they are not just abstract ideas, but Destruction and Death are distinct, whether creatures or creations, and given what we know of both death and destruction, it is not as though they are without power of their own. Even so, they cannot claim to possess wisdom, only that they’d heard of it.

Only after firmly establishing where wisdom cannot be found does Job pull back the curtain and reveal that of all that exists in this universe, whether seen or unseen, only God understands its way and knows its place. That’s it: one of one.

Psalm 104:24-26, “O Lord, how manifold are Your works! In wisdom You have made them all. The earth is full of Your possessions – this great and wide sea, in which are innumerable teeming things, living things both small and great. There the ships sail about; there is that Leviathan which You made to play there.”

Few passages in scripture encapsulate the sovereign power, creation, and creativity of God better than the hundred and fourth psalm, and the underlying foundation that holds it all together is that God made all things in wisdom. Whether great or small, of the sea and without, everything God spoke into being was purposeful and precise, well-ordered and established that they might not only survive but thrive in the places He created for them.

Even trying to understand and perceive all the interdependent ecosystems operating in tandem on this earth is enough to make one’s brain freeze and give up altogether. Yet we are expected to believe that all of this, from the blade of grass to the bumblebee to the teaming ocean life to man himself, was a happy, fortuitous, even serendipitous accident.

Well, you see, there was a bang, but not any bang, a big bang, and then millions of years later, whammo-blammo, here we all are screaming at the barista because she ran out of soy milk before it was our turn. Intelligent design? Nah, that’s just for the uneducated, the knuckle draggers, the rubes, the people who need to believe in a higher power to give their lives meaning. By the way, how do you like my third septum ring? It goes well with the new shade of blue I painted my hair, don’t you think? But as I was saying, only the unintelligent cling to these patriarchal norms about divinity and God, because they feel like they have to fit in.

It takes more faith to believe that everything we can see was a happy accident, that everything came together perfectly, seamlessly, and singularly all on its own for no other reason than happenstance, than it does to believe that God spoke it into existence, making everything in wisdom.

For the last couple of years my wife has gotten into bread-baking aggressively, so much so that she has her own sourdough starter, experiments with different types of flour, half the fridge is usually full of resting dough because apparently that’s a thing, but I could just imagine what her reaction would be if I were to one day open the oven, see a beautiful bread, and exclaim, “who put that there? That’s a lovely bread, what are the odds that it came together all on its own?”

Absurd, I know, but it’s not far off the mark when considering the way some people view creation, the world, and the universe beyond. We see it, have no clue the painstaking effort it took to bring it together, shrug our shoulders, and say, wow, lucky us this thing magically pulled itself together in such a way as to keep us from being incinerated one moment and turned into icicles the next. What quirk of fate, that. Would have hated to see what would have happened if any of the hundred billion billion things that could have gone wrong had gone wrong. I guess we’re just lucky none of them did. Happy accident, indeed.

Psalm 14:1-2, “The fool has said in his heart, ‘there is no God.’ They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none who does good. The Lord looks down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there are any who understand, who seek God.”

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

 Job 28:20-28, “From where then does wisdom come? And where is the place of understanding? It is hidden from the eyes of all living, and concealed from the birds of the air. Destruction and Death say, ‘We have heard a report about it with our ears.’ God understands its way, and He knows its place. For He looks to the ends of the earth, and sees under the whole heavens, to establish a weight for the wind, and apportion the waters by measure. When He made a law for the rain, and a path for the thunderbolt, then He saw wisdom and declared it; He prepared it, indeed, He searched it out. And to man He said, ‘Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom, and to depart from evil is understanding.’”

If the twenty-eight chapter of Job were a song, from where does wisdom come, and where is the place of understanding would be the chorus that repeats between each verse. It is the defining question of this chapter, and Job asks it rhetorically because he already knew the answer to this most pressing question.

Given that Job insists that wisdom is hidden from the eyes of all living, what we deem as wisdom is but a muddled approximation rather than the real thing if God is not the source, the wellspring, and the cornerstone of it.

Believing oneself wise isn’t the same as being wise, and as Paul points out, there are many who, having professed to be wise, became fools. How so? Because their wisdom was a byproduct of their inner thoughts, their own minds, and their wicked hearts, having nothing to do with anything outside themselves and their desires. True wisdom comes from outside ourselves. Its source must be external, its nature divine, and its purpose to reveal the glory of God.

The further one gets from the source of something, the greater the chance it will be diluted or contain impurities. There’s a bottled water company whose claim to fame is that it is bottled at the source, directly from some aquifer in Fiji, and because of this one reason, they charge three times what other waters cost, and still manage to have a loyal clientele who shell out the extra money for the privilege. Whether or not it's worth it is debatable, but at least for some people it is, and they’re willing to pay the extra cost.

When it comes to true wisdom, one can only find it at the source, and unlike the aforementioned water, it is always worth acquiring, no matter the effort it takes.

Rather than chase after men who claim to have what is, at best, second-hand wisdom, why not go straight to the source? Why not tap into the spring itself rather than get a water jug that’s been sitting in a hot truck from a third party?

Are you saying we should all fly to Fiji to drink directly from the Viti Levu aquifer? No, that would be impractical. What I am saying is that we can go to God and gain wisdom directly from Him. Just like the water, if you want wisdom straight from the source, it will not come to you; you must go to it. You must make the effort to seek it out and assign enough value to it that you will not balk at the effort required to attain it.

But you don’t understand; the second-hand wisdom has added flavors and electrolytes, comes in a fancy bottle with a mountain etched into it, and the only effort it requires is that I log on to Facebook to acquire it. I can get all the second-hand wisdom I could ever consume from the comfort of my own home while in my pajamas. There are so many varieties to pick from, so many favors to sample, and the effort I’m required to put in is minimal. True enough, but the only question you should be asking, the only question that matters, is whether or not it’s pure. Is what men are claiming to be true wisdom really that, or is it just a fancy bottle filled to the brim with bath water and a pinch of lemon to mask its bitter taste?

There is no doubt as to the purity of the wisdom when God is the source. There is no wondering if anything is missing, or if there’s too much of one thing or another, because you know that what He gives is perfect, lacking nothing, and abundant in its benefits.

You may not know this, but some people will go to great lengths to complicate what should be simple. They will do their utmost to put their spin on wisdom, add to it, massage it, sometimes twist it to the point that it’s no longer what it claims to be, far from it in fact.

Thankfully, it hasn’t made its way stateside, at least that I’m aware of, but while visiting the homeland a couple of years ago, I ran into something that threatened to make me wretch right there in the grocery store aisle. It was called aloe vera water, and yes, it looked as disgusting as it sounds. It was water with globules of aloe vera floating in it, looking like some failed science experiment, but as I stood there with a grossed-out look on my face, no less than three people picked up a bottle.

Whatever it was, however it had started out, what was in those bottles could no longer be defined as water. Call it what you will, but don’t call it what it isn’t. When you combine sugar, lemons, and water, it’s no longer water but lemonade. When you attempt to mix feelings, emotions, cultural ethos, and personal opinion with divine wisdom, it’s no longer wisdom.

We were given a glimpse of what the world will look like in these last days, and among the many signs heralding the return of Christ, we were told there would be a disproportionate number of souls turning their ears from the truth and turning aside to fables. We must be ever wary that we are not counted among them, and the only way we can ensure it is to go to the source of truth, the source of wisdom, the source of direction for the path we trod and submit to His authority in all things. 

Yes, going to the source may be more time-consuming than lapping up whatever is on offer as the day’s special, but it is well worth the effort, and the only means by which true wisdom is attained.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.