Proof The Bible Is True

Job 14:18-22, “Bu as a mountain falls and crumbles away, and as a rock is moved from its place; as water wears away stones, and as torrents wash away the soil of the earth; so You destroy the hope of man. You prevail forever against him, and he passes on; You change his countenance and send him away. His sons come to honor, and he does not know it; they are brought low, and he does not perceive it. But his flesh will be in pain over it, and his soul will mourn over it.”

Nothing in this world has permanence. Everything is fleeting. Continents shift and reform, mountains fall and crumble away, torrents wash away the soil of the earth, generations come and go, and kingdoms rise and fall, but through it all, God abides. That men would cling so hardily to temporal things and dismiss eternity as though it was not worth their time only goes to put the ignorance of man on full display.

There is no structure, no nation, no system of government, or man-made thing that is guaranteed to remain here, in the same iteration, ten thousand years from now. Even the feats men deemed the greatest of any generation are but vague echoes of what once was, whispered about by pockets of studious men, imagined in the glory they once possessed. Long gone is the tower of Babel, not one stone remaining upon another, the edifice everyone of that generation was convinced would reach God Himself.

There is evidence of past civilizations that were so thoroughly expunged as to leave behind a handful of stones and nothing more. As is the case with this generation, they likely thought themselves the pinnacle of wisdom, the crowning jewel of human accomplishment, and the one empire that would be the exception to the rule and continue in perpetuity.

In his hubris, man develops a form of tunnel vision wherein he refuses to consider the overwhelming evidence that try as he might, it’s likely that he will not leave an indelible mark on the history of mankind, and a handful of generations after he returns to the dust of the earth, he will be forgotten as countless others have.

Our goal isn’t to be remembered or forgotten by our contemporaries or future generations but to serve God. As long as we are remembered by Him, whether the next generation remembers our name or not matters little. Conversely, if the world knows your name a hundred years from now, but God does not know you, then it’s all for naught.

It’s easy to get caught up in the rat race, trying to chase the spotlight and attempt to elevate our status in the eyes of our contemporaries, especially when everyone else is doing it. More often than not, men will even try to justify their desire for glory by insisting the underlying reason has more to do with being selfless and trying to help others than feeding their ravenous ego.

What usually curbs the desire for the spotlight is the realization that every notable servant of God, every man or woman whose names are remembered, not for a decade or a century, but millennia after they’ve gone on to their reward, had the singular desire to serve and obey the call of God on their lives, not bothering to consider whether or not they would be remembered, thought well of, or known, or weighing their options as to which course would garner them a greater footprint or bigger following.

Do your duty. Be faithful in the things God has called you to do, put your hand to the plow, don’t look back, and let the chips fall where they may. It’s the obedience and faithfulness that God sees and rewards, not our egotistical desire to become a household name or rise above the sea of souls clamoring for the spotlight.

When something other than obedience becomes the driving force of your labor, the tendency to compromise for the sake of what’s driving you becomes nearly overwhelming. Everything gets filtered through the prism of whether the word we were commanded to speak will offend the sensibilities of the majority or whether we will lose support, and the message becomes diluted, ineffectual, and a shadow of the truth it once was in its original form.

The notion that the gospel or the message of the cross was meant to be inoffensive is a modern invention spurned by the desire for acceptance. Jesus Himself said that He did not come to bring peace but a sword. He warned that a man’s enemies will be those of his own household, for when the light of truth ignites in a soul, those still in darkness will naturally be averse to it.

We can seek to please men, or we can strive to please God. We can’t do both. We either commit our ways to the Lord and follow after Him or give in to the pressure of the world and those around us who insist that we are too rigid, unmalleable, and unwilling to compromise for the sake of unity.

If unity is achieved at the expense of truth and the gospel, it’s not unity but rebellion. We are seeing the effects of this in numerous denominations, which have strayed so far from scripture as to make them unrecognizable from the world, and the only thing they have to show for it is the validation and celebration of sin.

Job knew where he stood. Although all three of his friends tried their best to convince him otherwise, he knew he had not sinned before God and approached Him with the boldness only such knowledge can foster in one’s heart.       

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

 Job 14:13-17, “Oh, that You would hide me in the grave, that You would conceal me until Your wrath is past, that You would appoint me a set time, and remember me! If a man dies, shall he live again? All the days of my hard service I will wait, till my change comes. You shall call and I will answer You; You shall desire the work of Your hands. For now You number my steps, but do not watch over my sin. My transgression is sealed up in a bag, and You cover my iniquity.”

It’s awe-inspiring to witness a man grapple with his inner turmoil, battling his instincts and senses, rising above despair and hopelessness, and reaching out to the only One he knows can provide comfort. Job’s response to Zophar and his plea to God is a testament to the courage found in vulnerability, in admitting the struggle we often try to mask with a brave face.

I deflect with humor. I always have, ever since I came to realize what I was doing, especially in uncomfortable situations or circumstances where merely the idea of confronting the pain is so unfathomable that I would rather ignore it for as long as I can.

Job had no such outlet. He didn’t try to deflect the pain he was feeling but poured himself out with all the pent-up frustration, fear, pain, and grief that he was feeling.

Being vulnerable with God is not a weakness. On the contrary, pouring one’s heart out to Him, crying out to Him, being honest, sincere, and even painfully so about the hurt one is feeling and the hardship they are going through demonstrates one’s awareness of their own limitations.

If I am broken, I can’t fix myself. If I have reached the end of my tether, by definition, there is nothing I can do of my own agency to get me out of a situation or predicament. Yes, we endure, yes, we press on, yes, we persevere and keep moving forward, but the hope of being made whole again must be tethered in God and His ability to do so rather than our own strength and resolve.

We can only white knuckle it through pain for so long. Eventually, without the aid, comfort, and healing presence of God, we will be crushed and ground into the dust of the earth, no matter how valiantly we attempt to carry on.

Job was aware of his limitations. He understood that there was nothing he could do but cry out to God, plead with Him, and cling to the hope that the goodness of God would prevail in his situation. Job was not picky about how his resolution would come about as long as it did. In his current state, the only remedy he saw was to go to the grave because our intellect often limits our willingness to hope for a miracle. We are told that something or other is impossible for so long that we come to believe it, ignoring the reality that nothing is impossible with God.

Throughout my years in ministry, I’ve found it telling that certain trials last only so long as it takes for the individual in question to abandon all hope in themselves, their abilities, and their resilience and rest their hope fully in the Lord.

Some of us must be stripped of the illusion that projecting strength is itself a form of strength. We’ve all encountered fake tough guys who talk big, but wilt at the first sign of pushback, and the reaction to such individuals is universal. True strength is not boastful, arrogant, or given to displays of grandiosity. As is often the case, those who talk big do little, and eventually, their shortcomings, inadequacies, and weaknesses come to the fore and are on full display for everyone to see.

Men can choose to stand in their own strength or stand in the strength that originates from God, something beyond their agency or ability. Those who stand in their strength discover the frailty of it eventually, some only doing so when they’ve exhausted themselves trying to do on their own what only God can do. It is a form of pride, I think, beating our chests and declaring how powerful we are in and of ourselves. As Scripture points out, God resists the proud while giving grace to the humble.

Looking back on my own life, with the benefit of hindsight, I can attest that there are innumerable instances where only the strength of God carried me, and nothing I could have done on my own would have sufficed. You can have the hosts of hell arrayed against you, but if God remains on your side, victory is certain because God is able to do what man cannot.

What could Job have done of his own volition to improve his lot and his situation? What could he have done to heal his broken body, restore his possessions, and return to the life he’d once lived? Absolutely nothing. The best he could manage was a potsherd with which to scrape himself, and eventually, even that became burdensome because the sores were painful, and he could no longer do it.

Standing in our own strength is a toxic mix of hubris, pride, and utter futility. Especially when going through a trial, a sifting, or a season of hardship, the best course of action is to lean ever more on God and acknowledge our frailty, knowing that He has strength in abundance and is ever willing to imbue us with it if we humble ourselves and ask it of Him. We have not because we ask not, and when we do ask, some of us ask amiss, hoping to deal with the symptom of something rather than the underlying cause.

Job 14:7-12, “For there is hope for a tree, if it is cut down, that it will sprout again, and that its tender shoots will not cease. Though its roots may grow old in the earth, and its stump may die in the ground, yet at the scent of water it will bud and bring forth branches like a plant. But man dies and is laid away; indeed he breathes his last and where is he? As water disappears from the sea, and a river becomes parched and dries up, so man lies down and does not rise. Till the heavens are no more, they will not awake nor be roused from their sleep.”

Every great faith started out small. It’s a testament to the transformative power of faith that every mind brimming with wisdom, knowledge, and understanding once belonged to a babe who spent their days staring at their fingers, stacking blocks, learning to crawl, and finding the greatest amusement in playing with an empty box for hours on end.

We don’t like to hear it, but God doesn’t grade on a curve. He doesn’t see us as a monolith but as individuals, and we will stand before Him one day as individuals. We don’t get a passing grade simply because we deem ourselves of average faith, more faithful than Bob but less faithful than Jill, so right in the middle should be the sweet spot. Controversial? Most assuredly. Biblical? Quite so. Jesus said as much, but our self-righteousness will not allow God to be God and determine the standard by which He judges men. Trying to play de facto judge offers a higher perch, and for some, looking down on another who’s just starting out on their journey of faith, with shaky legs and a faith in its infancy, makes them feel better about themselves and their duplicitous hearts.

It’s easy to sit in judgment of Job in hindsight, given what we know regarding eternity, life after death, the home that Jesus went to prepare for us, and all that salvation entails. We read his words and tend to shake our heads at how little he understood regarding these things, especially if we fail to acknowledge the context of the time he lived in.

I understand that armchair quarterbacking is all the rage, and some are chomping at the bit to pick at the flaws of a man whom God deemed blameless and upright, but before we judge Job too harshly, we would do well to hold a mirror up to ourselves and acknowledge our imperfections.

With the knowledge he possessed and the faithfulness he demonstrated, Job was regarded as a man to whom God could point as having been unique among his contemporaries, both in his service and love of God. That’s not me saying it; that’s God saying it, so anyone quick to roll their eyes at Job’s ignorance of the broader picture of eternity and what comes after this life is spent would do well to acknowledge this truth.

That’s not to say Job’s outlook wasn’t bleak. He saw more hope for the tree that is cut down to sprout anew than for a man who dies and is laid away. No, I do not believe Job was contemplating reincarnation but rather a continuity of life beyond the point of death. In his limited understanding, he concluded that man lies down and does not rise again.

If your desire is to know Him, God will meet you where you are. You don’t need to be fluent in Hebrew or Greek or hold a doctorate in divinity from a seminary, but you do need to possess a broken and contrite heart that yearns for more of God. Job’s understanding of eternity was limited, yet God still saw him as a blameless and upright man.

Luke 12:48, “But he who did not know, yet committed things deserving of stripes, shall be beaten with few. For everyone to whom much is given, from him much will be required; and to whom much has been committed, of him they will ask the more.”

Job was accountable for the things he understood during the time he lived in. If God keeps count of the hairs on your head, rest assured, He is fully aware of the level of faith, understanding, knowledge, and spiritual maturity you possess. If you’ve been given much, much will be required of you. We are individually accountable for the understanding we possess regarding spiritual matters.

Not knowing something was displeasing to God and doing it, and knowing that it was and doing it anyway, are two very different things. When something deserving of stripes is done in ignorance, the individual shall be beaten with few. Jesus didn’t say there would be no consequence, but God does take into account whether it was done in ignorance or with full knowledge that it would displease Him and was done anyway.

True enough, ignorance of the law is no excuse, at least in earthly courts. However, unlike man, God knows whether or not an individual is genuinely ignorant of something or merely pretends to be in order to escape punishment.

Whenever discussing topics related to repentance, holiness, sanctification, or obedience, there is bound to be at least one individual who uses the thief on the cross as an excuse for their rebellion. He didn’t repent or live a holy life; he just said, “Lord, remember me when You come into Your kingdom.” Why should I have to sanctify myself when he didn’t? In short, he was ignorant of Jesus, who He was, and the salvation He offered up until that moment.

Most people who reject the love of God, who reject Jesus and His redemptive power, knowingly do so because they harden their hearts toward Him and refuse to surrender and humble themselves. It’s not that they never heard the gospel or were ignorant of it; having heard it, they rejected it.

For the thief on the cross, it was his last few hours on earth. He couldn’t schedule a baptism when the weather permitted or commit to living out his new convictions after this pesky crucifixion was over. Come the next sunrise at the latest, the life would have left his body, and he would be no more. Jesus knew he would have no opportunity to do what He’d instructed the rest of us to do, and in His grace and love, made allowances for that reality. That we would take an exception and make it the rule while ignoring the rule isn’t just obtuse; it’s dangerous.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

 Job 14:1-6, “Man who is born of woman is of few days and full of trouble. He comes forth like a flower and fades away; he flees like a shadow and does not continue. And do You open Your eyes on such a one, and bring me to judgment with Yourself? Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? No one! Since his days are determined, the number of his months is with You; You have appointed his limits, so that he cannot pass. Look away from him that he may rest, till like a hired man he finishes his day.”

Men like to think of themselves as more than they are and God as less than He is. If we were to make a base case for why there is so much rebellion, disobedience, and faithlessness, this idea would be among the root causes.

It would serve both the prince and the pauper alike to revisit the words of Job regularly and rediscover the timeless truth contained therein, for no matter how well-known, well-liked, well-heeled, or well-tended, the truth is that man comes forth like a flower and fades away. He flees like a shadow and does not continue.

It doesn’t matter how much kale you force down your gullet, how many handfuls of vitamins and essential nutrients you take every morning, how robust your exercise regimen is, or whether you subscribe to red light therapy or blue light therapy, everyone’s days are determined, and the number of their months are with Him.

Yes, the notion of quality of life is one that must be acknowledged, whether you’re stuck in a mobility scooter at twenty-five, wheezing through an oxygen mask, or being able to climb a flight of stairs without having heart palpitations is of consequence and something you have agency over, but as far as lengthening one’s days or extending the number of years we’ve been given, those limits have been appointed by God, and man cannot pass the limit that was set for him.

Given the technological advancements of recent decades, some have even taken it upon themselves to endeavor for immortality, something not given to man, no matter how rich, consequential, or willing to live as an echo of what they once were, a displaced brain in a machine, without the true spark of life, or the presence of a soul. It’s the fear of death that drives such individuals, and they fear death because they do not know life. They do not know life because they do not know God, and one cannot be known independently of the other.

They scramble about failing to live for fear of dying, believing they can circumvent divine order and extend the appointed limits that have been deemed unpassable. Men have always feared death to a certain degree, but given the anecdotal evidence available, none more so than this present generation.

It doesn’t take a deep dive to understand how void of hope in anything beyond this present life many have become. All it takes is looking back on the last few years and seeing how few of those who just months prior sang, “I’ve got a home, waitin’ in the heavenly kingdom, up where the streets are made of gold” until the rafters shook, did not give in to fear and continued about their lives rather than shrink wrap themselves and wait patiently in their basements for the all-clear. This shift in attitude towards death and the life to come is a clear sign of the fear that has gripped this generation.

Your days are determined, and the number of your months are with God. If that is the baseline of your reality, fear will never enter the equation or be allowed to hobble you in your duty toward Him.

If fear of death were a contributing factor to those who came before us, their testimonies would likely never have existed because, in their drive to spare themselves or extend their days, they would not have dared to stand before the masses who were set on their destruction, baying for blood, and proclaim the name of Jesus with their dying breaths.

Fear of death is bondage, and it’s usually those who are already dead that fear it, ever enslaved by it, more concerned about its inevitability and finality than receiving the life that would dispel it once and for all.

1 John 3:13-15, “Do not marvel, my brethren, if the world hates you. We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love the brethren. He who does not love his brother abides in death. Whoever hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.”

Although the broader conversation John was having focused on the love of the brethren, it cannot be overlooked that he was firmly convinced that he, along with those to whom he was writing, had passed from death to life. It is an often-seen theme throughout the New Testament, and something Job was not privy to because the Christ had not yet come.

Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean Job queried? No one! That was his conclusion, and at the time, he was not wrong. However, with the advent of Christ, we were given the grace to know salvation, transformation, and rebirth from death to life so that the bondage of fear would no longer hold sway over us.

Romans 6:8-10, “Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more. Death no longer has dominion over Him. For the death that He died, he died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God.”

Job had come to terms with his mortality, understanding that the only one who has agency over when we breathe our first and when we breathe our last is God and God alone. It’s undeniable that had Job had his way, he would have preferred it all to end till, like a hired man, he finished his day, but it was not up to him.

Your today will not determine your tomorrow, just as your yesterday did not determine your today. Yes, there are times and seasons in life when we cling to hope by the barest of threads, but the overarching assurance that if we died with Christ, we shall also live with Him gives us the strength to persevere and endure.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

 There is no end to human hypocrisy and the vanity of opinion. They are bottomless pits, and just when you think they can’t go any lower, they surprise you in the most unpleasant fashion. Natural wisdom, no matter how well-crafted, has cracks and fissures that become evident the moment pressure is applied to it. Philosophy for its own sake is oftentimes disjointed and at odds with itself, seeming to contradict one initial premise with another, deceiving people into thinking themselves wise, when any wisdom that does not originate from God and which doesn’t have Him at its core is a hollow husk of presupposition made up to seem like more than it is.

People can have an intellectual response to God just as they can have an emotional response to Him. They can acknowledge His existence, yet their hearts will continue to remain cold and unyielding until He becomes both a need and a desire, something one cannot live without.

God cannot be one among many for which our hearts pine, but the singular treasure we seek, everything else falling by the wayside and becoming ever more irrelevant the more we get to know Him. He is an existential need, like oxygen, food, and water, for the human soul. God is not a hobby; He is not something we relegate to the sidelines, the attic, or the shed until we have need of Him or a mere acquaintance, someone we know in passing rather than a heavenly Father.

Most people treat God like a life mechanic, the same way they treat a car mechanic, paying Him no heed and thinking nothing of Him until their life starts falling apart, and there’s nothing they can do to stop the freefall. That is not the sort of relationship God is after. That is not the sort of relationship that will grow you and mature you spiritually because, by definition, it’s not a genuine relationship.

In His grace and love, God has given man the opportunity to know Him, fellowship with Him, worship Him, and grow in Him. This relationship has the power to transform us, to bring us peace, comfort, and hope. That we would squander this greatest of gifts for the fleeting things of this earth only goes to show that we do not understand the value and worth of a relationship with Him.

When our priorities are rightly aligned, and God is first in all things, we will have peace even in the midst of chaos, we will have comfort even in the midst of pain, and we will have hope even in the midst of the storm. It’s when we shift our focus from Him and from following Him in humble obedience to trying to do on our own only what He can do that our progress is impeded and our walk needlessly burdened. But when we align our priorities with God, we can rest assured that He is with us, guiding us through every trial. It is not God’s duty to align Himself with man. It is not God’s duty to be in harmony with me. It is my duty, as well as the duty of every person, to align oneself with God and be in harmony with Him.

This begins with acknowledging that we are not the captains of our ship, the masters of our destiny, or whatever clichéd trope people tend to use nowadays. We are servants of God and, therefore, must remain under His authority in obedience and faithfulness, whether the road is easy or hard.  

Even in his torment, Job’s priorities were properly aligned: God first! In all things, God first. His presence, His voice, His guidance, His comfort, His strength, His will. There was nothing Job was willing to trade the presence of God for, whether restoration of his health or his wealth because he understood the fleeting nature of man and the waning appeal of the material.

Job 13:23-28, “How many are my iniquities and sins? Make me know my transgression and my sin. Why do You hide Your face, and regard me as Your enemy? Will you frighten a leaf driven to and fro? And will you pursue dry stubble? For You write bitter things against me, and make me inherit the iniquities of my youth. You put my feet in stocks, and watch closely all my paths. You set a limit for the soles of my feet. Man decays like a rotting thing, like a garment that is moth-eaten.”

Job’s anguish is palpable, not so much the physical pain but the idea that God chose to hide His face from Him and regard him as His enemy. The notion that Job not feeling the presence of God weighed more heavily on him than all the loss he suffered, and all the torment he’d endured is revelatory and humbling.

Countless souls are walking about today, beating their chests and declaring that they belong to God, but whether the presence of God is felt in their lives or it’s no longer there makes no difference and has no impact as far as their disposition is concerned.

If we groan and weep at the loss of material things with greater fervor and intensity than we do when we do not feel the presence of God, it says more about our spiritual condition than anything we could declare with our lips. That alone reveals our perspective regarding the importance of His presence, the value we place on intimacy with Him, and how existential we view our fellowship with Him to be.

How one reacts to something reveals their inner heart. It’s in those moments when something is snatched away or goes awry that the well-crafted masks so many wear slip off, and the true intent of their heart is made clear.

Job’s singular desire was to know the presence of God afresh. It’s the one thing he’d concluded he couldn’t live without, eclipsing everything else in his life. There’s a reason God considered Job to be a man apart, unique in his generation, upright and blameless. It’s because he put God first above all else, desiring only fellowship with Him.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.     

Job wasn’t looking to his friends to save him. He knew that even if they wanted to, they couldn’t because his situation wasn’t one that could be remedied by the intervention of men. Job entreated God because he knew where his salvation would ultimately come from if there was salvation to be had. He will be my salvation! Not you, not your accusations, not your judgments, but God will be my salvation, and it is before Him I must search my heart, and not before you.

In our modern age, we’ve taken the idea that God knows our heart and mutilated it to a point wherein it is used as an excuse and justification for anything and everything we pursue that is contrary to Scripture. I know I do all these horrible things, but God knows my heart. Yes, He does, and in light of this, the fear of the Lord should make you tremble like a reed in a hurricane.

Job was fully assured that God knew His heart, but he also acknowledged that a hypocrite could not come before Him. We tend to appropriate the first part but dismiss the second part because the second part holds us accountable for our actions and the choices we make throughout our lives. I cannot live in rebellion and disobedience and use the notion that God knows my heart as a justification for it.

There was no hypocrisy in Job’s self-assessment. He didn’t insist upon his innocence to try and impress his friends or make himself seem spiritually superior to them. He wasn’t playing at being an upright and blameless man; he was an upright and blameless man. This is not a distinction without a difference. Pretending to be something and being something are two very different things.

Job 13:20-22, “Only two things do not do to me, then I will not hide myself from You: withdraw Your hand far from me, and let not the dread of You make me afraid. Then call, and I will answer; or let me speak, then You respond to me.”

By the twentieth verse, Job was no longer addressing his friends or trying to convince them of anything. He realized it was a lost cause, so he began petitioning and beseeching God directly.

If there was ever any doubt over Job’s deep devotion and love for God, the two things he asked for should dispel it altogether. Job didn’t ask God to restore his health, his wealth, or his family, nor did he didn’t ask God to make him forget the past few months or take the pain away. His two requests were that God not withdraw His hand far from him and that the dread of Him would not make him afraid.

Even in his condition, Job’s uttermost priority and the singular desire of his existence was the continued presence of God in his life. Do not withdraw Your hand far from me! I can bear all these other things. I can bear the loss of my children, the loss of my wealth, the loss of my health, and the loss of the respect my friends had for me once upon a time, but what I cannot bear is the absence of You!

When it came to Job’s hierarchy of needs, God wasn’t competing with something else or positioned alongside health, wealth, and a comfortable life. He wasn’t one need among many; He was the need, the one thing Job could not live without, the one thing Job desired above all else.

Anyone with a superficial understanding of God will never reach the point where all that they desire is more of Him. They will, perhaps, acknowledge the benefits of knowing God, even go so far as wanting to know more of Him, but as far as reaching the point of desperation where everything else in this present life is as ash and dust compared to His presence, one must possess an understanding of His character, nature, and majesty.

If Job had ever been underwhelmed by the presence of God, if spending time with Him had ever grown banal or fallen short of his expectations, if the God he served failed him more often than He came through, his singular desire would not have been for God not to withdraw His hand far from him.

Whenever the weather permits, my girls are outside playing, whether making forts out of sticks, trying to outdo each other on who can do more cartwheels, climbing trees, playing hide and seek, or anything else their imaginative minds can conjure. Since we live in Wisconsin, there are days when they are forced to remain indoors, and that’s usually when they get into a spirited game of “Would You Rather.”

If you don’t know the rules of the game, it’s quite simple: one person asks a question starting with “Would you rather,” followed by a binary choice, and the other has to pick one. I’ve heard it all. Would you rather have the ability to fly or breathe underwater? Would you rather be able to speak to animals or walk through walls? Would you rather lose your sense of smell or taste, and the list goes on and on? 

For Job, every answer was God. Given the choice between more wealth or God, he chose God. Given the option between health and God, he chose God. Given the option between anything in this world, anything material, whether all the earthly treasures of men or a position of prominence and authority, and God, he chose God.

We’re often envious of the relationships those who came before us had with God, not realizing that we can have the same if our desire is for God above all else, every day, no matter the situation or circumstance. The reason God reveals Himself to some and not others is because those to whom He reveals Himself desire Him alone, exclusively, without expecting anything more than the knowledge of Him in return. Men today do not know God because they lack a genuine desire to know Him. The only thing they’re interested in is how they can profit from claiming to know Him rather than desiring a true and abiding relationship, and it shows.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

 Job 13:13-19, “Hold your peace with me, and let me speak, then let come on me what may! Why do I take my flesh in my teeth, and put my life in my hands? Though He slay me, yet I will trust Him. Even so, I will defend my own ways before Him. He also shall be my salvation, for a hypocrite could not come before Him. Listen carefully to my speech, and to my declaration with your ears. See now, I have prepared my case, I know that I shall be vindicated. Who is he who will contend with me? If now I hold my tongue, I perish.”

I can’t say I’ve ever reached the end of my tether, but I’ve come close enough to understand what Job was going through. He had reached the point in this back-and-forth between himself and his friends where the aftereffects of what he said and what followed were of no concern to him. Let me speak, then come what may. You can hate me, judge me, loathe me, unfriend me, but I’m going to speak my mind.

He’d tried to explain, tried to de-escalate, tried to make his friends see that they were judging him wrongly, but to no avail. It is said everyone has a breaking point, and Job had reached his. The dam had finally broken, and what were once fissures, cracks, and minor leaks in his resolve was now a torrent.

Although there are countless profound, thought-provoking, and inspirational things Job said that later laid the foundation of wisdom from the likes of David, Solomon, Paul, and others, there is one that, in my eyes, stands head and shoulders above the rest, especially given Job’s current situation and the sifting he was going through. Though He slay me, yet I will trust Him.

I’ve spent hours pondering this handful of words, and every time, they engendered a deep sense of humility. When Job spoke these words, they weren’t theoretical. He wasn’t being blessed coming and going, his cup wasn’t running over, everything wasn’t in its proper place, and the future didn’t seem bright. He was a man in pain, bereft of sleep, being accused of sin by his friends, covered in worms and open sores. He had reached the bottom, and there was no next tier of descent for him, yet at his lowest, in the depth of his sorrow and pain, he declared that though God saw fit to slay him utterly, he would trust Him because he knew the nature and character of the God he served.

When all your senses, circumstances, friends, and family insist that you have been forsaken, that God has turned His back on you, that you are alone amid the maelstrom with nothing to cling to and no hope of rescue, only an anchored and well-established faith can give you the strength to say you will continue to trust God and mean it.

It’s one thing to declare we trust God when all is well, when things are going right, and when anything we set our hand to grows, multiplies, and is met with enviable success. It’s another thing entirely to see everything you’ve worked for turn to dust and ash, having your body wracked with pain and your sleep invaded by nightmares, and still make the same declaration.

Were He to slay you, would you still trust Him? Were He to remove every safety net, everything you counted as constant, everything you held dear, would you still have the strength, faith, and presence of mind to declare as Job did that you will trust Him?

The underlying question is, do you know God well enough to trust Him in the valley just as readily as you do on the mountaintop? Do you know His character and nature well enough to trust Him in your trials as unequivocally as you do in your victories? Have you taken the time to build a true and lasting relationship with Him to the point that though He slays you, you will yet trust Him?

From an individual standpoint, the answers to these questions are far more imperative than who the Antichrist will end up being or whether praying while lying flat on your face will increase the chances of God hearing you more than standing up.

As an aside, either works, just pray. We get so caught up in the minutia that we fail to see the overall picture. There is no right or wrong way to beseech God. Hands clasped in front of you, hands raised in the air, hands hanging by your sides - it makes no difference as long as the desire of your heart is sincere and your supplications are heartfelt.

Yes, I will trust God, even if He chooses to slay me, but this does not mean I will admit to something I didn’t do, Job insists. Even so, I will defend my own ways before Him. I know what I know, and no amount of you telling me I’ve sinned when I know I haven’t will change the reality of it.

I’m all for discourse and debate, for reasoning together as we ought, but when my disagreeing with your opinion on a non-salvific matter on which the Bible has no declared position automatically means that you consider me cast out, doomed to suffer the eternal anguish of hell, it’s no longer a debate, but you playing judge, juror, and executioner.

For some, their pet doctrine eclipses brotherly love to the point that they will cut ties, disfellowship, and shun anyone who is not in lockstep with them. Again, these are not salvific issues but rather appropriated nuances that are elevated to the status of canonical scripture, magnified in the eyes of those who insist upon them to the point of overshadowing Scripture itself. Pet doctrine doesn’t save; Jesus does. It’s the one thing anyone waking up itching for a doctrinal fight must be aware of, lest they reject Christ for the sake of their stated position.

Every day seems to bring about a new bone of contention, a new reason for division, and a reformulated theory that the Bible debunked long ago, but no matter, we keep going at each other as though this faith of ours was a blood sport, not fought between the household of faith and the hosts of darkness, but between each other.   

Job’s friends weren’t interested in discourse. They had no interest in hearing what Job had to say as long as it wasn’t an admission of the sin they imagined he’d committed for being brought so low. Their minds were made up, their positions firmly established, their conclusions unwavering. At this point, nothing Job could have said in his defense would have swayed them.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

 There are few absolutes in life without the caveat that there is always an exception to the rule. Even the one about not getting out of life and alive had its exceptions, since both Enoch and Elijah never died a natural death but were taken by God. One such absolute without a carve-out or exception is that God will not be mocked. Men have tried; they even thought they’d gotten away with it for a time, but eventually, the bill comes due, and there’s no squirming your way out of paying it.

Another such absolute is that your sin will find you out. This particular one is specifically tailored to those who pretend to be something they’re not, who insist upon their righteousness, and who present themselves as beacons of holiness when, in fact, they are heavily ladened down with sin and depravity.

Even if the sin in question occurred so long ago that the individual has forgotten about it altogether, if it remains unconfessed and unrepented of, it will be exposed, and the shame of it will be put on display for all to see. The most recent debacle with the pastor of the biggest church in America at its center is a testament to this absolute, wherein heinous sin, and by the metric of law, a crime that was committed four decades ago, has come to light.

Even in his rebuke of his friends, Job had enough love for them in his heart to warn them of the severity of the punishment that is visited upon those who speak for God when He has not spoken and who mock Him as though he were a man. It wasn’t so much a ‘God is going to get you’ lecture as it was a reminder of who God is and that He will not be mocked. Do you know what you’re doing? Are you aware of the consequences of your actions, or is your overriding need to find me guilty of something I didn’t do blinding you to the reality of the judgment you are bringing upon yourselves?

Unlike them, Job wasn’t being condescending or giving off an air of spiritual superiority, although, to be fair, it would have been hard to do so in his current state. Yes, he was direct in his response to Zophar the Namaathite, but unlike him, he wasn’t being belligerent and sanctimonious.

You can speak the truth in love, but you can also speak truthful words in a spirit of division or to try and defend a point that is more a personal conviction than it is a biblical direction. Especially when attempting to comfort someone who is going through a trial, it’s advisable to search our hearts and determine whether the counsel we are providing is coming from a place of love and compassion or one of antagonism and spiritual elitism. A wise man will curb his instinct to condescend or pour burning coals on another’s head just to make themselves feel spiritually superior, while a foolish one will do as fools often do, and whether to mollify their inferiority complex or feed their need to seem great in their own eyes, they will do so at the expense of another’s pain.

Another warning shot across the bow and a reminder by Job to his friends is that God would surely rebuke them if they secretly showed partiality. We’ve all seen situations where self-professing objective arbiters of truth turned out to be anything but. The same individuals who would tell anyone who would hear that they are unbiased and objective as though they’d been tasked with being the town crier reveal themselves for who they are in the partiality they show.

You cannot play favorites when it comes to rightly dividing the Word, nor can you show partiality to an individual at the expense of the truth. We’ve all seen the mind games some individuals like to play when it comes to their favorite preacher or teacher, who has demonstrably, verifiably, and undeniably strayed from the path yet continue to be vociferously defended, whether because of the good they did in the past or the size of their ministry. It always ends in a similar manner, wherein those defending the indefensible must backtrack and apologize for having shown partiality, whether secret or otherwise.

As far as platitudes are concerned, it is undeniable that they’ve become common fare for today’s modern church, and as was the case with Job’s friends, most of them are platitudes of ashes, absent of life or instruction. Some men build kingdoms on platitudes alone. They spend their entire lives repeating the same tired tropes, and because there is no insistence on the deeper things of God, those content with a superficial faith lap it up as though it were a fine feast.

It’s not that proverbs or even platitudes don’t have their place once in a while, but a steady diet of them, especially when they are vapid and superficial, only serves to weaken the desire for the deeper things of God and drive people to cling to mantras they repeat in the mirror every morning rather than to Christ.

Everything you’ve said to me is as ash and clay. It is as dross swept away by the wind, with no permanence of foundation. Try as you might to seem wise in your own eyes and lean on sanctimony, you’ve fallen short of the mark. If ever your desire was to comfort me, that too has failed, yet I am not forsaken or alone because I still have God to whom I can run, I still have God upon whom I can call, and I still have God in whom I trust.

This was the crux of Job’s rebuke of his friends and one that was heartfelt and filled with sorrow. In seeing their reaction to his suffering and their insistence that he had sinned and thus deserved what was happening to him and perhaps worse, Job realized what many throughout the ages have since come to realize: only in God is there permanence. Only He is a strong tower that abides.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

 Typically, a physician studies the symptoms in the hopes of identifying the malady so that he can prescribe a remedy. When Job called his friends worthless physicians, it was no small slight. He was either insinuating that they were not as bright as they thought they were or that all of their wisdom amounted to a goose egg, as far as he was concerned. All three were certain of their diagnosis, unshakeable in their resolve about Job’s sinfulness, and all three couldn’t be further from the truth.

Proverbs 26:4-5, “Do not answer a fool according to his folly, lest you also be like him. Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own eyes.”

By Solomon’s reckoning, there are two ways to answer a fool, and both are equally effective. You can answer a fool according to his folly, but you run the risk of being like him, or you set a fool straight lest he be right in his own eyes.

When men speak foolish things, and no one calls them on it, they continue to believe they are right in their own eyes, emboldened by the absence of pushback or confrontation. It’s the reason so many aberrant and foolish teachings not only survive but also thrive within the church nowadays. Whether due to a lack of conviction, a lack of backbone, or a desire to ingratiate themselves with those in authority, even when they hear foolishness pouring forth unbidden, they bite their tongue and nod along, clapping like seals whenever the pregnant pause gets a bit too long.

If you’re going to answer a fool according to their folly, however, make sure you have a cogent argument handy, lest you also be like them. I’ve seen biblical debates descend into shouting matches because neither party had the Biblical knowledge to defend their position, or worse, they had no Biblical leg to stand on.

Job was loaded for bear. He wasn’t speaking about God in the abstract or via secondhand accounts of who God was, but from a deeply personal and intimate place, having lived the experience of seeing the hand of God active and present in his life. He wasn’t heralding the fathers of old as an example of who God is but speaking in the present from the understanding he had gleaned over the course of decades.

You can always tell when someone is espousing theories about God and when someone is relaying lived experiences with Him. Knowing about God and knowing God are two very different things. Hearing testimonies about the power of God and being a living testimony daily experiencing it likewise have very different implications.

Those who daily deny themselves, pick up their crosses, and follow after Christ, faithfully carrying out the things He commands, don’t need to be able to spin a good yarn or make up stories about porta-potties acting like a poor man’s teleportation device to heaven. Rather than seeking out the spotlight, they shun it because they know it’s not about them but about the One they serve, and they are content to give Him the glory and honor that are rightly His.

Oh, that you would be silent, and it would be your wisdom! In other words, if you three hadn’t gone on a diatribe of epic proportions, the illusion of your wisdom would have remained intact. Given that you chose to speak, the depth of your ignorance is laid bare, and you have no one to blame but yourself.

Job 13:6-12, “Now hear my reasoning, and heed the pleadings of my lips. Will you speak wickedly for God, and talk deceitfully for Him? Will you show partiality for Him? Will you contend for God? Will it be well when He searches you out? Or can you mock Him as one mocks a man? He will surely rebuke you if you secretly show partiality. Will not His excellence make you afraid, and the dread of Him fall upon you? Your platitudes are proverbs of ashes, your defenses are defenses of clay.”

It’s evident that many prominent preachers, evangelists, and pastors today never bothered to read the book of Job and heed the warnings discovered therein. There is a cost to speaking wickedly in God's name and talking deceitfully on His behalf. God will search out the heart of every man and discover the truth of it, no matter how much they might protest or point to the multiple campuses they’ve built as temples to themselves.

Job’s friends were similar to many believers today, wherein the excellence of God does not make them afraid when they speak things He has not spoken, nor does the dread of Him fall upon them when they teach abject heresy from the pulpit insisting it is the new and shiny path that will lead to the same destination as the old path, just with a lot less self-denial, spiritual maturity, and growth.

If you could have the best of both worlds, why wouldn’t you? If you could live as you will and be guaranteed a seat at the marriage supper of the Lamb, why not avail yourself of this offer?

If you can live off the fat of the land and enjoy the bounty God provides, then turn tail and run at the first sign of the enemy while maintaining good standing in His army, there is no downside. I suppose all the people being martyred throughout the world didn’t get the memo; otherwise, they, too, would have found a way to extricate themselves from the situations that led to their martyrdom.

If our service to God is predicated on whether He showers us with material excess, then whoever comes along to offer more —whether more money, fame, or fortune —will become their new master.

Before you think that would never happen, let me remind you that it’s happening every day. With each new bombshell, exposure, evidence-laden prosecution, or heretical teaching that sounds more like paganism than Christianity, there is a fresh bruise that the household of faith must contend with and a new defense it must mount, reminding the world that we’re not all alike. It becomes even more challenging to convince anyone of this when it’s revealed that entire elder boards have been covering up the egregious sins of their leaders for years, as they didn’t want to rock the boat or jeopardize their cash-generating enterprise.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

The truth doesn’t need to be molded. It doesn’t need to be shaped and hammered, stretched, and worked until it resembles what men want it to resemble. The truth is the truth, and it requires no help from us. It does not require us to reshape it into a more pleasing form but rather to present it as it is, without reservation or reluctance.

We are commanded to preach the gospel, not make it palatable, and then preach it or fashion it into something so different from the original that it becomes unrecognizable. We do the kingdom of God a disservice whenever we attempt to soften the blow of the truth or try to apologize for its directness on God’s behalf as though He needed our vindication.

We cannot approach the gospel with the mindset of an immovable object meeting an unstoppable force. One has to bend and relent, submit, and comply, and it’s not the gospel. When we read Scripture with the predetermined resolve that we are unwilling to change or allow ourselves to be transformed by the power of the Word, we will find reasons and excuses to remain as we are. What’s worse, we will discover voices among the masses who will validate and endorse our stubbornness.

2 Timothy 3:16-17, “All scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.”

By all scripture, Paul means all, not just the parts that suit our presuppositions or prejudices or the ones that, if taken out of context and put through a meat grinder, seem to suggest we can continue doing the things we know we ought not to do, but we love too much to walk away from.

All scripture is given by the inspiration of God, and all of it is profitable. Whether doctrine, reproof, correction, or instruction in righteousness, nowhere does the Word imply that it is given to personal interpretation, nor are there allowances made for disregarding whole books of the Bible just because they challenge us or make our flesh feel uncomfortable.

The downside to not allowing Scripture to mold us, guide us, correct us, and instruct us is that we will never be complete or thoroughly equipped for every good work. If we continually skirt and ignore the Word, then it cannot have the intended effect on our hearts and minds, keeping us at arm’s length from its transformative power. We will always remain incomplete. We will always be ill-equipped, whether for good work or resisting the enemy as he attempts to derail our faith and purpose.

The devil knows that the gospel of Christ is the power of God to salvation, and so does his best to keep us from it. Whether through distractions, rabbit trails, or that constant whisper that it’s too rigid, too implacable, and given to modern-day twists and interpretations, because surely God could not have foreseen how difficult it would be to walk uprightly in our current era.

When we think too little of God and too much of ourselves, we will always find justification for rebellion, faithlessness, duplicity, and lukewarmness.

Job knew who God was. He understood the majesty and omnipotence of the God he served and did not see himself as His equal or deserving of any special treatment because of his faithfulness. There was no explicit nor implicit declaration of a laundry list of expectations that he felt he was entitled to.

We serve and worship God because it is the duty of man to do so, not because we might get to the head of the line when he’s handing out million-dollar checks or keys to a brand-new car. Until one comes to the point of being humble enough to humble oneself in the sight of the Lord and submit to His authority, the dynamics of the relationship between the individual and God are off-kilter and improperly defined.

Because their expectations of what God should do for them fall short, many who initially feel enthused about the prospect of having a fix-all for all their bad choices become resentful and disillusioned with God Himself when these expectations are not met. If you start a journey on the wrong road, heading in the opposite direction, you will never reach your intended destination.

You may fool yourself into believing that God’s only function is to give you stuff for a season, but eventually, especially when an unexpected trial comes along, the bills start piling up, and you’re still packing on the pounds even though you prayed the calories away every time you sat down to have a sheet cake all by your lonesome, you’ll start to wonder if you were sold a bill of goods.

It’s a vicious cycle and one that must be broken if there is any hope for the contemporary church to be what God intended it to be. Men preach a false gospel, present a false god, focus on the material, and make promises of plenty; then, when all the things for which the people signed up fail to materialize, they turn around and blame the God of the Bible, as though He lied to them.

Sorry, Skippy, it’s not God who lied to you; it’s the man who you perceived to be on equal footing with Him because he told you everything your greedy little heart wanted to hear. Men grow bitter and harden their hearts toward God because they believe the lies men told them about God.

It’s not that God hasn’t kept His promises to His elect; it’s that He didn’t keep the promises men made in His name. Know the difference, and do not allow bitterness to take root in your heart because something someone told you has not come to pass. If God didn’t say it, He is not beholden to it, just as I am not beholden to take all the neighborhood kids out for ice cream just because my little girl said I would when I didn’t.

But how can one know what God has promised, you might ask? Read His Word! It’s there in black and white, without the filter of personal opinion or denominational prejudices. Between falling for the lies of men and wasting decades waiting on something God never said would happen and taking the time to devour Scripture so that I may be complete and ready for every good work, I know which one I’d choose.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

 When an attempt at comforting becomes an accusation of wrongdoing, when those you count on to be a healing balm turn out to be the ones pouring salt into your open wounds, you can’t help but feel some kind of way about it. If Job’s friends had been strangers, it would be one thing. Because he considered them friends, however, his expectation was that they would be a source of comfort in his grief and a means by which his pain could be lessened, if only minimally.

The negative impact of having one’s expectations not only dashed to pieces but experiencing the opposite of what you hoped you would cannot be overstated. Imagine being told you’ve won the top prize in a raffle you entered, and it's for a new car. You’re over the moon excited, jump into your rusted Kia, and head to pick up your prize, only to discover that there's no new car. Not only that, but three men jump out of the bushes, demand the keys to your old car, and give you a good beating to add injury to insult.

Had you never been told of the prize you’d won, your expectations would never have blossomed, and your imagination would not have soared with thoughts of what make, model, color, or style of new car you’d be driving in a few short minutes. You would have never imagined what that new car smell was really like or wondered if it lived up to the hype. You would have been content with your Kia, replete with the pile of trash in the passenger seat and that funny smell that’s a cross between wet dog and spoiled shellfish.

Even the letdown of there being no new car would have been manageable. The most that would have happened is that you would have scolded yourself for being too gullible, and that would have been that. The black eye and having to walk home, however, those you could have done without, and the crash from the heights of expectation to having less than what you started out with will be the roiling resentment in your gut that you will have to contend with.

Job had expected his friends to be a source of comfort, and rightly so. Instead, they added to his pain and discomfort, proving themselves to be a detriment to his well-being rather than an added benefit. In light of this, it’s understandable that once it was Job’s turn to respond, he held nothing back and seemed utterly disinterested in trying to be conciliatory toward his friends.

Job 13:1-5, “Behold, my eye has seen all this, my ear has heard and understood it. What you know, I also know; I am not inferior to you. But I would speak to the Almighty, and I desire to reason with God. But you forgers of lies, you are all worthless physicians. Oh, that you should be silent, and it would be your wisdom!”

There had been no earth-shattering revelation in anything Job’s friends had said. What they knew, he also knew, and although, given God’s declaration that there was none like him on the face of the earth, Job could have rightly proffered that he was superior in his understanding of God, he settled for reminding them that he was not inferior to them.

Just because someone is loud, obnoxious, or belligerent doesn’t make them wise or right. We’ve fallen into a vicious cycle of trying to shout over everyone else until someone with a healthier set of lungs comes along and does likewise, never reaching a consensus or a deeper understanding but wasting our lives away yelling at strangers until we’re hoarse.

It’s often the case that, as the 90s pop song says, it doesn’t matter what you say as long as you speak with inflection and commit to your declared position. You hear some men speak so passionately about a topic that, in hindsight, you realize they know nothing about because everything they had to say was window dressing, filler, and fortune cookie one-liners that do nothing to open people’s eyes to the beauty, majesty, glory, and wonder of the God of the Bible.

Job was done trying to convince his friends of his innocence. It’s not that he hadn’t tried or done his best to explain to them that they were misjudging him, and if there had been anything untoward in his life, he would have confessed and repented of it already. He had, but all of his pleas had fallen on deaf ears. They’d made up their minds and would not be swayed no matter what he said, so the only recourse left to him was to speak to the Almighty and desire to reason with God.

When men will not hear you, when those close to you fail to understand you, there is always God. Run to Him, speak to Him, pour your heart out to Him, knowing that He hears, He sees, and He understands. Whether purposefully or in ignorance, you are bound to be misunderstood. Whether by friends, family, acquaintances, or colleagues, there’s bound to be someone who sees what isn’t there, who insists upon something that is a figment of their imagination, and will not be swayed, no matter how cogent your defense.

By this point, there was intentionality behind Job’s friends and their insistence that he had sinned. They refused to take their friend at his word and give him the benefit of the doubt because the prism through which they saw his suffering precluded the possibility of innocence.

Acknowledging his innocence would have turned their entire philosophical world on its ear, along with their belief structure and how they viewed the world on a very practical and binary level.

It says a lot about their heart that, given the choice to believe their friend to the detriment of their long-held beliefs, they chose their beliefs at the expense of sowing uncertainty and doubt in Job’s heart. You cannot be innocent because if you are, that means the world isn’t as we imagined it to be.

To that, Job calls them worthless physicians and forgers of lies. It takes effort to forge something. Typically, it involves a piece of metal that requires heating in a furnace, followed by shaping it into the desired form through the process of beating and hammering. Essentially, what Job was accusing his friends of was trying to fit a square peg into a round hole, even though they saw it wouldn’t fit. Given their words, declarations, and insistence that he had sinned, Job was not wrong.

With love in Chris,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

 Job 12:13-25, “With Him are wisdom and strength, He has counsel and understanding. If He breaks a thing down, it cannot be rebuilt; if He imprisons a man, there can be no release. If He withholds the waters, they dry up; if He sends them out, they overwhelm the earth. With Him are strength and prudence. The deceived and the deceiver are His. He leads counselors away plundered, and makes fools of the judges. He loosens the bonds of kings, and binds their waist with a belt. He leads princes away plundered, and overthrows the mighty. He deprives the trusted ones of speech, and takes away the discernment of the elders. He pours contempt on princes, and disarms the mighty. He uncovers deep things out of darkness, and brings the shadow of death to light. He makes nations great, and destroys them; He enlarges nations, and guides them. He takes away the understanding of the chiefs of the people of the earth, and makes them wander in a pathless wilderness. They grope in the dark without light, and He makes them stagger like a drunken man.”

Try as one might, they would be hard-pressed to find a more profound, complete, and moving soliloquy on the sovereignty of God anywhere. David came close in the Psalms, but his musings had more to do with the greatness of God than the sovereignty thereof. To think that a man wracked with pain, addled by sleeplessness, and contending with worms and sores covering his body had the presence of mind to utter words of such profundity is humbling to the uttermost.

If we’re honest, we must acknowledge that on our best day, in good health, well-fed, and brimming with caffeine, we wouldn’t come close to encapsulating the omnipotence of the God we serve the way Job, a man sitting in the dust and scratching at himself with a potsherd was able to.

Although his three friends showed glimmers of wisdom in their orations, this handful of verses regarding God, His nature, and His immutable will over all that exists is so beyond anything they were able to express that it should have rightly shamed them into silence.

Not only was Job a blameless and upright man, but he was also a man of profound wisdom, light years ahead of his contemporaries, which, given the context of the time he lived in, makes it doubly impressive. Spend enough time in God’s presence, and it is inevitable that His wisdom will be poured into you.

When we desire to know God, He reveals Himself to us. He doesn’t play hide and seek with His children, nor does He keep Himself shrouded in mystery. His desire is for us to know Him just as He knows us. The caveat is that God has never forced Himself upon anyone, nor has He manhandled anyone into spending more time with Him. The desire for more of Him must be a present reality in our lives, springing forth from a sincere heart with no ulterior motives or vested interests beyond a genuine desire for Him. Only then will He reveal Himself to us in a deeper and more profound way.

It is a grace and a gift to be able to come before God, pour out our hearts, and know that He is listening. It is an honor and a blessing to have the opportunity to know more of Him every day. That some would try to blackmail God into giving them material things in exchange for spending time with Him is offputting on its best day. That’s not a relationship but merely feigned intimacy in the hope of receiving the thing you want more than you do God. It’s base usury, and God will not be mocked.  

Job had spent his entire life building a relationship with God, getting to know Him, going beyond the superficial and surface-level understanding of His nature and who He is, and it showed.

There was no uncertainty in Job’s words. He understood that God has absolute authority, absolute power, and absolute sovereignty over all things, whether the kingdoms of men, the rain that falls, kings, princes, counselors, wise men, fools, and everything in between. There is nothing in heaven or on earth that is outside of His purview, nothing that He cannot build up or tear down, illuminate, or confound.

If you are not in constant awe of the God you serve, chances are you do not possess a clear understanding of who He is. That’s as nicely as I can put it without coming across as snarky or condescending.

From Genesis to Revelation, every man or woman who grew in the knowledge of God possessed the requisite reverence for Him. There is nothing trivial about who the God we serve is. That men today can be so dismissive about His authority and omnipotence only shows that they do not truly know Him. They may have a vague knowledge of His existence, but they do their best to strip Him of His authority and sovereignty, attempting to place themselves on an equal footing with Him, some even having the temerity to consider their authority superior to His.

When anyone utters the words, “I know that’s what the Bible says, but I feel differently,” they are essentially subverting the authority of the Gospel and of God Himself, placing their own feelings and opinions above both of these. It’s no small thing, nor is it a negligible offense, because when we are no longer under the authority of God’s word, we are no longer under God’s authority, worshiping the creature rather than the Creator. This mindset is the petri dish for all manner of deception, foul doctrine, and unbiblical machinations.  

One cannot read Job’s reply to Zophar and fail to see the deep and abiding reverence he has for God. It is in every phrase, in every sentence, and though he had been brought low and sifted beyond what we can fathom, he had not lost his awe and reverence for the God he served.

My trial does not diminish God’s authority. My testing does not diminish God’s omnipotence. My sifting does not diminish God’s power. He remains God, sovereign over all, and the knowledge of this gives me strength even when I am at my weakest.

God’s nature is not situational. He is a constant. He remains the same yesterday, today, and forevermore. He is no less the Alpha and Omega, no less the Creator of all that is seen and unseen just because I’m going through a valley. He is no less present, no less able, no less loving, and whether here or in the life to come, His purpose in allowing me to go through testing will be made evident.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

Whenever I’m going through a trial, a test, or a time of sifting, my purpose isn’t to ferret out why but to ensure that I love God, knowing that all things work together for good to those who love Him. My daily focus is to love Him more today than I did yesterday, to grow in my adoration and affection for Him, knowing that everything else will be put in its rightful place. This trust in His plan brings a sense of security, and eventually, the entire masterpiece of His plan will unfold before me, leaving me speechless and in awe and wonder of His amazing grace.

It’s not something that occurs naturally in our hearts and minds but rather something that must be actively pursued. The first instinct we have when we’re blindsided by something, whether a new, heretofore unfelt pain or an unforeseen setback, is to sit and stew, wondering why this has happened to us. If allowed, this ever-present question becomes an obsession, something we ponder and think about every waking hour while dismissing the underlying promise that if we love Him, it will work together for good.

When God said all things, He wasn’t being hyperbolic. It was not an exaggeration but rather a true and present reality that all who love Him experience. All things work together for good! This doesn’t necessarily mean they will work together for good in the physical, although we are predisposed to believe it was the physical He was referring to. Trials are inevitable in our spiritual journey, but they are not meant to break us. They are meant to shape us and make us stronger.

It’s the reason the entire doctrine of prosperity falls apart because the foundation of its presupposition is flawed from the start. When God says that all things work together for good to those who love Him, there is no addendum insisting that it would be in the physical or material sense. It could be that as well, but more often than not, when God strips away the material things when God allows testing to come upon us, it has more to do with our spiritual man and the maturing and perfecting thereof than it has to do with the supernatural healing of a bunion or the accidental deposit of a million dollars in your bank account.

When we love God, we naturally trust Him to define what is good rather than taking it upon ourselves to do so. What you may deem good may be detrimental to the utmost for your spiritual walk, leading you to a place exponentially more debilitating than what you are currently navigating.

When we take it upon ourselves to demand what we deem to be good of God, rather than trusting in His sovereignty, we are no longer walking in obedience or submission but attempting to usurp His authority and dictate terms to Him as though He were no more than a wish granter who must bend to our will. Obedience, therefore, is not just a requirement but a key to our spiritual growth, inspiring us to follow His path and not our own.

Not understanding something doesn’t necessarily mean we should reject it, dismiss it, or discard it simply because we do not understand it. When my daughters were babies, and they were old enough to require more than just their mother’s milk, whenever we’d attempt to feed them something new, usually some puree, whether fruit or boiled vegetable, their instinctual reaction was to turn their head and make the pucker face known by parents the world over, but we nevertheless persisted because we knew the nutritive value in the things we were feeding them.

Even if we’d taken the time to explain why the purees were necessary to their development and that they needed to eat them to grow strong and healthy, they could not understand or perceive the words we were speaking to them. The same can be applied to us when God allows something unpleasant to occur in our lives. That one experience can ripple throughout the rest of our days, making us better, stronger, more in tune with His will, and less reticent to obey Him even when the road ahead is not as straightforward as we would like it to be.

He can take the time to explain, but chances are we wouldn’t perceive and understand it even if He did. An infinite God explaining His grand design and plan for an individual, finite life, limited in its understanding, is likely to fall on deaf ears and not to be comprehended. Do this, and it will make you stronger. Do this, and it will give you endurance. Do this, and it will build up your most holy faith. Rather than doing it, rather than committing and putting one foot in front of the other, not looking back but only forward, we procrastinate by asking how these things will transform us in the way He promises they will. Even if He took the time to explain it, we wouldn’t fully grasp it. So, rather than pitching a tent in the land of indecision, our best course of action is to do as He commands and see His promises come to pass.

Are you calling me a dullard? Don’t take it personally. In light of God’s eternal wisdom, we’re all dullards. We get glimpses of the plan and mind of God, but as far as possessing full understanding thereof, there is none among us who has. Men have thought it, perhaps, or have declared it to the awe and aplomb of some, but in reality, we see in part and understand in part.

God will never steer you wrong. He will never set you on a path that will be detrimental to your spiritual well-being because that would mean actively working against His own purpose regarding your sanctification. The only time we find ourselves confused, and off balance, uncertain about the path we are treading is when we heed the whispers of men over the voice of God and convince ourselves that we’ve found an alternate route to the same destination. We haven’t; no man has. There is only one way, only one truth, and only one life. Every other path leads to destruction, no matter how well-paved or amply lit it may be.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

 Job 12:7-12, “But now ask the beasts, and they will teach you; and the birds of the air, and they will tell you; or speak to the earth, and it will teach you; and the fish of the sea will explain to you. Who among all these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this, in whose hand is the life of every living thing, and the breath of all mankind? Does not the ear test words and the mouth taste its food? Wisdom is with aged men, and with length of days, understanding.”

Wherever you turn, you’re bound to see the Master’s handiwork. You don’t have to search high and low for it, you don’t have to go on a quest to a far-off land to lay your eyes upon God’s creation, but whether the beasts, the birds of the air, the earth itself, or the fish of the sea, the hand of the Lord and artistry thereof are evident for all to see, save for those who refuse to see.

There isn’t much you can do for someone who squeezes their eyes shut and insists there is no sunrise even though they can feel the warmth of it on their face. Willful ignorance is hard to combat in any meaningful way, and you can tell someone about the greatness of God, the majesty of the works of His hands, and their reply will be something about a big bang and the accidental coming together of DNA strands, atoms, mankind, the animal world, and everything in between. That fish have gills and can breathe underwater, that birds have wings and can soar to the sky, that you have the ability to reason, that the sun is just far enough away not to scorch everything but close enough to give off its warmth, all accidental. A happy accident, to be sure, but an accident nonetheless.

So you’re telling me it’s easier to believe that something akin to taking ten thousand Swiss watches, breaking them down to their smallest parts, putting them in a barrel, rolling them down a hill, and once they get to the bottom expecting them to have put themselves together perfectly took place than it is to believe in intelligent design and that God created the universe and everything therein?

Some people don’t believe because they don’t want to believe. It’s not that there isn’t evidence of God; it’s that they’re terrified of the implications. If God exists, then I must give account. If God exists, then I must bow before Him. If God exists, I can no longer live as I will, do as I will, pursue what I will, but must submit to His authority.

Romans 1:20-21, “For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened.”

All one needs to do to see His invisible attributes, and clearly so, is open their eyes to all that is around them. From the budding flowers in the spring to the birdsongs in the morning to the caterpillar in its cocoon, God’s hand is seen and understood by the things that are made. So much so that man is without excuse when he stands before God, insisting that ignorance of His existence is what kept them from humbling themselves and embracing Him.

It shouldn’t go unnoticed that much of Job’s wisdom in addressing his friends is reiterated throughout the gospels and much of the New Testament as well. Perhaps not in the same words, but more distilled and concise, because wisdom is perpetual from one generation to the next, and what was deemed wisdom in Job’s day was deemed wisdom in Paul’s day, and by extension, our day as well.

When he penned his introduction to the Romans, Paul was expounding upon Job’s words, insisting that God’s fingerprints, His invisible attributes, are ever present and readily seen wherever one might look. He even goes one step further and points out those who would insist that it is not so, that God’s hand is not readily visible in all things, concluding that thinking themselves wise, they became as fools.

Only a fool can continue to deny overwhelming evidence contrary to his position. That’s no longer a man living in ignorance but one who willfully chooses ignorance in the face of the truth being laid bare before him.

Everything Zophar had thought deep wisdom on his part, so much so that it would compel Job to confess to something he hadn’t done, turned out to be a self-evident truth that could readily be seen by the simplest of minds if they so chose it.

The beasts, the birds, the fish, and the earth itself are aware that they were fashioned by the hand of the Lord. It is no mystery; it is not something veiled and kept in shadow only to be known by the wise among us. The earth sings of His glory from waking to sleeping, as does His wondrous creation, yet man, the crown jewel of His work, dismisses His involvement as no more than mere happenstance.

Zophar wasn’t telling Job anything he didn’t already know, and the one thing Job earned to know, which is why all these things had befallen him, was still kept out of reach. Even if God had answered Job’s question, it would only have led to more questions because the one thing we think will make the journey easier or the burden lighter rarely turns out to be so. One question would have turned into two; two would have turned into five because even if God had told Job the intricacies of it, Job’s mind was incapable of fully understanding it.

Whenever we find ourselves in a situation to which there is no easy answer or readily available explanation, we can spend our days asking why or submitting to the sovereignty of God and trusting that He will see us through, using the time to draw close to Him and grow our dependency upon Him. Depending on the choice we make, we will either come through it stronger, more committed, and with a deeper faith, or scarred, beaten, and bruised with nothing to show for the pain we went through but the experience itself.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

 I’ve always been wary of people who insist they’re experts on everything under the sun. It doesn’t matter what the topic is, whether it is geopolitics, economics, space travel, or how to best get rid of a wasp nest, they’re quick to give their opinion and do it with such certainty as to make you believe they know what they’re talking about. If you take a moment and ask them if they’d ever implemented the advice they’re proffering, you’ll likely find out that they haven’t, but that shouldn’t stop you from trying it.

Two summers ago, we had a wasp nest that showed up on the side of the house, and it was impressive in its size. Given that I’m allergic to bee stings and I swell up like a hot air balloon, I thought it likely the same would happen from a wasp sting, so I was reticent to try and handle it on my own before I got some input as to what the best course of action might be.

I asked a couple of friends, and I got a plethora of advice, from going and just hitting it with a stick until it came off the side of the house to calling in a specialist and having them deal with it, to using WD40 on the nest, as it would make the wasps incapable of flight. Spoiler alert: The last one works, and the reason I chose that course of action was because the individual who suggested it had actually done it, and it had worked.

Yes, I could have called a company to come take care of it, and I did get a quote, but when they told me how much it would cost, I thought I’d risk it and save myself a couple hundred bucks. I’m not cheap, but I am frugal, and their quote seemed a bit excessive. The worst thing I could have done was to heed the advice of the first person who offered it, which was to go and beat it with a stick.

Had I done that, it likely would have been a painful lesson in what not to do, and I would have had no one to blame for myself for not thinking it through. Who’s the bigger fool? The one giving bad advice, or the one taking it? It’s the whole chicken and egg conversation again, and deciding which came first, but when it comes to taking bad advice, the one offering it doesn’t have to go through the pain of implementing it as the one who takes it does.

Not all opinions are worth taking at face value, and some of them are counterproductive, to say the least. It’s usually those who have never gone through what you’re going through who are quickest to offer their take on what you should be doing because, for them, it’s an intellectual exercise, void of the pain, hardship, struggle, and privation. It’s akin to the modern-day trust-fund babies who’ve never had to work a day in their life looking down on the guys with callouses and rickety backs, who are up before sunrise and put in twelve hours of hard labor a day and insisting that they’re not applying themselves or working hard enough.

Sorry, Stefan, but if you’ve never put in an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay, you have not earned the right to condescend to someone working two jobs in order to feed their kids.

The approach of Job’s friends was similar in attitude. They’d never endured anything near to what Job was enduring, yet they believed they were within their rights to sit in judgment and pass sentence, insisting that they knew more of the intricacies of Job’s situation than Job himself did. Unchecked hubris will make a fool of any man, be he wise or learned.

Words are easy to come by, as are opinions. Throw a stone in any direction, and you’re bound to hit someone who will tell you exactly what you need to do regardless of circumstance and insist that if you follow their counsel, all your problems will go away.

The same can be said of individuals within the household of faith whose words are like a fire hose without an off switch, yet when it comes to anything substantive or possessing any of the power they so eloquently describe; they fall short.

It’s not a new thing. It’s been going on since the early church, wherein you have those who talk a lot but do very little, if anything, and then those who, for the most part, say few words but do the heavy lifting within the body.

1 Corinthians 4:18-20, “Now some are puffed up, as though I were not coming to you. But I will come to you shortly, if the Lord wills, and I will know, not the word of those who are puffed up, but the power. For the kingdom of God is not in word but in power.”

Job’s friends were offering words. They weren’t even comforting or encouraging words, but words that were as daggers to his already wounded heart. We get that you’re in a hole, buddy. If only you had a shovel and a ladder, it would make things so much easier. But I don’t have a shovel or a ladder! True enough, but imagine if you did.

As far as being helpful, Zophar’s words had no actionable resolution, just as Eliphaz and Bildad fell short. There was no power in them, and nothing they had to say would provide a remedy for Job because his battle went beyond the physical into the spiritual and beyond what their minds could conceive of. He tried to placate the first two, but not so with Zophar. He’d reached the end of his tether and did not hold back in his reply.

There is a time to be congenial and conciliatory; then, there is a time to draw a line in the sand and be direct and forthright. For Job, the time to be direct had come, and once those floodgates opened, everything he’d been holding back and bottling up came rushing forward. 

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

Job 12:1-6, “Then Job answered and said: ‘No doubt you are the people, and wisdom will die with you! But I have understanding as well as you; I am not inferior to you. Indeed, who does not know such things as these? I am one mocked by his friends, who called on God, and He answered him, the just and blameless who is ridiculed. A lamp is despised in the thought of one who is at ease; it is made ready for those whose feet slip. The tents of robbers prosper, and those who provoke God are secure – in what God provides by His hand.” 

As was expected from the previous two interactions with his friends, it was Job’s turn to respond and mount a defense, or in the least show Zophar that not everything is so black and white, cut and dry, and without nuance or distinction. 

By his opening salvo, Job, too, was running out of patience if he hadn’t done so already, and there was no olive branch extended to Zophar, but rather the first words to come from his mouth were tinged with sarcasm so thick as to make due as an entire snack. Although he was responding to Zophar’s accusations, Job included all three of his friends in his acidic response, insisting that when they three went the way of all flesh, wisdom itself would die alongside them. Tongue in cheek as his response was, it likely stung all three of the men who were waiting for him to break and confess the sin they were certain he was guilty of.

I’ve heard what you had to say, but you forget that I, too, am privy to the things you’ve enumerated. I have understanding as well as you, and I am not inferior to you. This wasn’t an overreaction because Job had an inferiority complex, but given his friends’ words, it’s undeniable that they believed themselves intellectually superior and more knowledgeable about the things of God than him.

Perhaps they’d always harbored these feelings and kept them well hidden, but now the time had come, and each one was attempting to teach Job something they thought to be illuminating and earth shattering, while Job’s response to them was, who does not know such things as these?

What you deemed superior intellect is basic on its best day, and there’s nothing you’ve said that I don’t already know. If Job’s plan had been to hit them where it hurts, then he was over the target and connecting with each turn of phrase.

He’d been condescended to, talked down to, demeaned, and falsely accused while carrying the burden of watching his flesh being covered in worms and painful boils, and whether he tried to hold his tongue or not, we will never know, but what is clear is that he’d had enough. Yes, you can push a decent, soft-spoken, calm and collected person too far, and when you do, you’d better strap in because you’re about to get it in spades.

It is said it’s the quiet ones you have to look out for, and generally speaking, barring a handful of exceptions, it’s true. When someone who is mild-mannered, quiet, and not given to bouts of contention can no longer hold his tongue, you know you’ve gone too far.

Few things in life are more offputting than hearing someone you call a friend talk down to you, condescend, and belittle you for something you didn’t do. If a stranger were to say the same thing it would be a small matter, because they’re strangers, and they don’t know you as your friends should, but this was someone whom Job knew, and who in turn knew Job, and as he pointed out they were aware of his relationship with God, and that when he’d called out, God had answered.

There is no person, situation, or circumstance the enemy won’t use to try and get the upper hand. Nothing is beneath him, and there’s no shame in his plots and schemes, because as has become customary in our day and age, especially among those of political leanings, the ends justify the means, and if we achieved our end nothing we did in order to achieve it can be considered too slimy, or out of pocket.

It’s all about applying pressure and finding the precise point where pressure can be applied. Job had nothing left but his integrity, his steadfastness, and faithfulness to the God he served, and that was the target the enemy focused on with glee and abandon.

We’re all quite good at evaluating our strengths, and even overestimating and foolishly magnifying them at times, but not so when it comes to our weaknesses. Sometimes, we even like to talk ourselves into believing that a weakness is a strength, even though we know deep down that it’s not. When it comes to resisting vegetables, my self-control is impeccable. No crown of broccoli has tempted me to the point of surrender! The same can’t be said for warm peach cobbler with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, though. We like to pretend that we’re all strength, no weakness, and there’s nothing that can happen or anything anyone can say that will get to us or raise our hackles and make us react in the moment.

I am a rock; I am an island; I am what Stonewall Jackson wished he had been, and there’s nothing that will scar me. We can talk ourselves into believing it until the fateful moment when it’s proven a lie. We all have something that’s more likely to get a rise out of us than anything else, whether it’s a stutter, our hairline, crow’s feet, or a few extra pounds. For Job, that one thing was being accused of sin he knew himself not to have committed.

Throughout his ordeal, through all the pain and grief and loss, Job had clung to his integrity; he’d remained steadfast in His worship of God, and here were his friends insisting it was not so. You may think it, you may even believe it, but we know better, and you just need to admit that we do.

It seems as though it’s not just Job’s friends who’d decided to give him a piece of their mind, but Job also decided it was time to point out their inconsistencies and perceived wisdom that wasn’t so much wisdom as common knowledge.

It’s easy to pontificate and wax poetic when you’re not the one sitting in the dirt covered in worms having just buried your ten children. When it’s light out, what need have you for a lamp? Therefore, you despise it, but not so when the darkness comes, and you pray for a flicker, hoping it will light your way.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

 People hear what they want to hear. God hears the cry of your heart. He does not filter your words through some bias or interpret them to mean something they were not intended to. He will not nitpick at you or belittle you for using the past tense when a present tense participle would have been the proper way of phrasing it, nor will He reject you for your lack of eloquence when crying out to Him.

If one of my children is crying out for help, I would not fail to answer because they did not address me in Old World English or because their tone was a bit too shrieky. They cry, and I run to their aid because they are in need of my help, protection, or comfort. The words they use, the volume thereof, or the cadence they appropriate is irrelevant in such situations. Yes, dear, I see you fell and scraped your knee, but you did not address me as sire; therefore, I did not respond to your cries. Knowest though better for next time? Verily, I hope you’ve learned your lesson. 

The only rule that applies when we’re crying out to God is that we do so with a sincere heart. Every other pet peeve men have thought up is just that, a man-made preference, and not a Biblical dictate or mandate. Leave others to their dead gods, to pray in a specific direction at specific times with specific wording and genuflection. Let them ring bells, light incense, or roll their eyes into the back of their skulls until only the whites show. You approach God in spirit and in truth, cry out to Him with a sincere heart, and know that He hears you.   

Men read into things, situations, circumstances, the specific wording we use, and the inflection with which we use them, but God sees the situation for what it is and knows our hearts better than we ourselves know them. A loving father would not turn away his children because they cry too much or too little, because their posture is not rigid enough, or because their tone isn’t appropriately sorrowful. God is a loving father. Therefore, He will not turn you away due to irrelevant things men deem worthy of rejection.

Stand before Him as you are, without pretense or the attempt to put on a façade, and pour your heart out to Him. Acknowledge your frailty, your weakness, your battles, your wounds, your scars, your setbacks, and your inconsistency. Be honest with Him. He already knows it all anyway.

When we attempt to stand before God clothed in our righteousness, we make fools of ourselves. When we stand before God clothed in Christ, understanding that His sacrifice and not our abilities have reconciled us with Him, humility will be an ever-present companion.

Luke 18:9-14, “Also He spoke this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others: ‘Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, ‘God, I thank You that I am not like other men – extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I possess.’ And the tax collector, standing afar off, would not so much as raise his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast saying, ‘God, be merciful to me a sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”’

When we humble ourselves in the sight of the Lord, it is He who lifts us up. It’s not something we do on our own or something we talk ourselves into manifesting. There are situations where no amount of pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps will suffice, and the only remedy is to reach out, take His hand, and allow Him to do what He does, as He wills, when He wills. When you’re drowning and someone throws you a life preserver, you don’t complain that it’s the wrong color or that it doesn’t match your swimsuit. You grab it, cling to it, and show gratitude for having had your life saved from an untimely death.

Zophar heard what he wanted to hear in Job’s words. “You say my doctrine is pure, and I am clean in your eyes”, Zophar reminded Job, even though Job had never said those words. Zophar needed to make his point; he needed to defend his position, and if he had to twist the truth in order to fit his presuppositions, to him, it was a small price to pay if it meant being right.

Men see what they want to see. They hear what they want to hear, but God knows the truth of it since nothing is hidden from His eyes. There are even those who go out of their way looking for something they can object to, some twitch of the eye, or wave of a hand, or an out-of-place word that they can then magnify and point to as something legitimate rather than the ruminations of their contentious minds. If the same judgmental eye were to be turned on them, they would wilt and wither under its glare and demand that it stop, lest they crumble under its weight altogether.

No, I didn’t rub my eye because I’m Illuminati. I rubbed my eye because it was itching. I have allergies, and there’s pollen in the air. When we demand perfection of everyone around us but fail to apply the same standard to ourselves, all we are is pharisaical hypocrites who see ourselves in an undeserved light.

Some people have taken to calling themselves full-time heresy hunters, using it as an excuse for why they haven’t been looking in the mirror of the Word and dealing with the issues in their own lives. It’s far more rewarding to one’s ego to endlessly point out the shortcomings in others, whether real or perceived, than it is to deal with our own, but our primary duty is to ensure that we are working out our own salvation with fear and trembling before we dare to sit in judgment of everyone else, whether living or dead.

Matthew 7:2, “For with what judgment you judge, you will be judged; and with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you.” 

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

 Zophar was fully convinced that he would succeed where his two other friends had failed. He was, after all, the rationalist of the group, and while the other two may have fallen short of making their case, surely, his ironclad logic would prevail. You must have done something; now you just have to figure out what it was, and if you can’t, it’s because you don’t want to. God would not bring you so low for an oversight or something you’d readily forget doing. There’s no way you could have overlooked it, so you’re choosing not to confess it.

Job had no one but himself to stand in his defense. Throughout this protracted trial, God had been silent, and while two of the three could rest and gather their thoughts while one spoke, Job had no such help. It was akin to a one-sided tag team wrestling bout, three against one, with Satan putting his finger on the scale whenever he could.

Understanding both the context and the length of this drama is likely to make us more sympathetic toward Job and impressed with his resilience than we otherwise would be. We see moments of teeth-gnashing desperation pouring forth from his lips, and had we not been privy to the backstory of all he’d had to endure and how long he’d been enduring it, we would likely conclude, as Zophar did, that he was being a tad overly dramatic.

Unless you’ve been present in an individual’s life from the genesis of their trial, you cannot know everything they’ve gone through to bring them to their current state. It’s easier to judge a situation in situ than it is to take the time and hear the story, gather some context, and be balanced in your approach toward someone who is hurting. Understanding is the key to true compassion.

Nobody wakes up homeless, living on the street, with all their worldly possessions hanging in a plastic bag off a shopping cart. It’s a gradual descent, one thing leading to another, one bad decision having an exponential impact on the next, and if you take the time to hear their story, you’ll likely gain a greater understanding of their hardship and how much they had to endure to get to the place they’re in.

The unwritten rule of reciprocity of empathy, sympathy, and compassion is a real thing. No, I’m not talking about something as juvenile as karma; rather, if you fail to show compassion or sympathy for anyone, why would you live with the expectation of everyone showing you compassion when you’re in a position that requires it?

Matthew 7:12, “Therefore, whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law of the Prophets.”

Be the kind of friend you’d like to have if you were the one going through a fiery trial. Be the kind of brother and sister in Christ you would desire to have holding up your weary hands when it seems like the hosts of hell are arrayed against you.

Some of the most heartbreaking stories I hear are from individuals who, after faithfully giving to their church for decades, fell on hard times, and now, with nowhere else to turn, ask for help for funeral expenses or some other tragedy and get denied outright. It’s usually by elder boards who oversee multi-million dollar budgets, with overflowing coffers, and pay packages for the leadership that would make a multi-national blush, but cutting a check for a couple of grand so someone could bury their loved one is one bridge too far in their book.

Whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them. It is a simple enough principle, and one that would have us living in a wholly different kind of world if those who claim to be believers would apply it consistently.

If Job’s friends had applied this principle, their words toward him would likely not have been as caustic or accusatory. They didn’t take the time to consider how they would react if what had happened to Job would happen to them, and from high atop their self-righteous perches, they heaped sorrow upon a man who was already heavy-laden with it.

It’s one thing to point to the gospel, and remind those who are hurting of what it promises, it’s quite another to superimpose personal opinion on their situation, and insist that they react to their trial in a manner we imagine we would have reacted to it ourselves, if in a similar circumstance. Oddly enough, we never see ourselves as giving in to despair or grief. We always seem to think that our reaction will be optimal, that we will weather the storm without fear of shipwreck, and that if, perchance, we were to walk in their shoes, and suffer the same hardships, we would show the world what it meant to remain steadfast in the face of adversity.

I hope it is so; I pray it is so, but you never really know until you’re going through it. More often than not, the theory of a thing seems simple on paper until you attempt to apply it practically. Cartwheels seem simple enough. I see my girls doing them all the time. You get a running start, raise your hands in the air, then flip your body forward, use your hands as a fulcrum, and land gracefully on your feet. Easy enough in theory, but if I tried to do a cartwheel, I’d likely end up in urgent care with a broken wrist or a fractured arm. There are plenty of YouTube videos attesting to the fact that cartwheels aren’t as straightforward as they seem, from people landing on their heads or face-planting into the dirt, but the theory itself is uncomplicated, to say the least.

You never know until you know. How I think I would react to a situation, and how I will react to it once it becomes a reality may be worlds apart, and this is the reason we must lean on His strength rather than our own, so that even when all seems lost, we trust that He will make a way.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

 You approach someone differently when presuming innocence on their part than when you’re presuming guilt. If the presumption has already established itself that the individual you are addressing is guilty, but you just haven’t figured out what they’re guilty of, you’re likely to be more aggressive, confrontational, and lacking in empathy.

Once they’ve made up their mind about an individual or a situation, most people cling to their presupposition with a death grip because admitting they were wrong is a nonsequitur and something they are unwilling to allow the possibility of. They would rather continue to wrongly accuse someone of the most heinous of failures than admit they misjudged the situation or that their conclusions had no basis in truth.

I know what I know even though what I know is wholly based on mental gymnastics of the most basic intellectual tier, but I’m so sure about it that I will not hear the words you speak in your defense or allow my knowledge of your character to deter me from my course.

Save for God clarifying the situation and bringing light to it, there was nothing Job could say at this point that would compel his friends to change their minds. The presumption of guilt was well and fully established in their hearts and minds, and each one took a different route to the same destination. Job is guilty! No doubt about it, he did something to displease God, because the proof is in the pudding, and if he hadn’t, then he wouldn’t be suffering the torments he was currently undergoing.

Whenever we attempt to take a complicated situation that we only have a partial understanding of and wrap it up in a nice little bow, chances are, whatever conclusion we’ve come to is nowhere near the truth. We all want to believe the world is black and white; there are good guys and bad guys, sinners and saints, and while the sinner gets judged, the saint gets blessed. No mess, no complications, just straightforward arithmetic.

This worldview of causation brought Job’s friends to the conclusion that he must have done something to displease God. He had sinned. Therefore, he was enduring the consequences of his actions.

It is wisdom itself to resist the urge to pontificate when someone is going through a trial, when they are suffering, when they’ve lost a loved one, or when they are going through something you couldn’t possibly understand. In those moments, your presence is what is required rather than your sermonizing because they’re already at their lowest, and pushing their face into the dust even more will benefit no one.

Matthew 25:34-36, “Then the King will say to those on His right hand, ‘Come you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: for I was hungry and you gave Me food; I was thirsty and you gave Me drink; I was a stranger and you took Me in; I was naked and you clothed me; I was sick and you visited Me; I was in prison and you came to Me.’”

When we reach out to someone who is hurting, our purpose isn’t to add to their burden but to help carry it for the little while we are with them. Everything Jesus lists as having been done by those who are blessed of His father were actions. Whether feeding the hungry, giving a drink to the thirsty, taking in a stranger, clothing someone without, visiting the sick, or going to someone in prison, none of them were accusations or judgments but actions confirming a tender heart who understands that when someone is in pain or in need the one thing we should focus on is being a comfort, and meeting the need.

We’ve grown callous through the years. We’ve each identified the hill we’re willing to die on, and rather than being the kind of people Jesus can look upon and say, “Inasmuch as you did these things to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it unto Me”, we huddle in our cliques and tribes weary of everyone else, quick to declare Ichabod on anyone who disagrees with us even on the most tertiary of issues.

It seems as though we can no longer see the forest for the trees, and rather than focus on being more like Jesus, we are defined by our theological positions, allowing them to become de facto objects of worship. Yes, there are baseline salvific issues to which we must adhere to be counted among the family of God, but beyond that, much of the arguing and debate regarding tertiary matters will be settled on their own by time.

We can’t be more concerned about being right about something than we are about being present and ready to be deployed to wherever God has need of us. Some people will look back on their lives and realize they spent more time arguing over issues that had no bearing on salvation, rather than being about the Father’s business, and doing the work of the Kingdom as they were mandated to do.

As an aside, admitting that you don’t know something is neither a sin nor an acknowledgement of general ignorance but an acceptance of reality that for now, we see in a mirror, dimly, and the best of us know only in part. If Paul was humble enough to acknowledge this truth, it should be no great feat for us to do likewise.   

When we stop seeing the body of Christ as a whole and deem it to be a discombobulated basket of parts, we are no longer eager to bear one another’s burdens as the Word instructs but are constantly vying for supremacy or authority.

Zophar did his best to browbeat Job into confessing to sin he had not committed, even going so far as to insist that the punishment was light and not at all equal with the perceived crime. Be grateful this is all you’re having to suffer because it’s less than your iniquity deserves. Those are words everyone being crushed by their situation wants to hear, I’m sure. 

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

 Job 11:13-20, “If you would prepare your heart, and stretch out your hands toward Him; If iniquity were in your hand, and you put it far away, and would not let wickedness dwell in your tents; then surely you could lift up your face without spot; yes, you could be steadfast, and not fear; because you would forget your misery, and remember it as waters that have passed away, and your life would be brighter than noonday. Though you were dark, you would be like the morning. And you would be secure because there is hope; yes, you would dig around you, and take rest in your safety; You would also lie down, and no one would make you afraid; yes, many would court your favor. But the eyes of the wicked will fail, and they shall not escape, and their hope – loss of life!”

When someone insists on telling you what you should have done in a given situation without having full knowledge of what you already did, their counsel, even if well intentioned, will always fall short.

If your car won’t start, and someone insist you should press on the brake pedal to get your engine to turn, it’s sound advice for anyone who’s never started a car, but you’ve been doing just that for the past five years, did the same thing that morning, and not even a whimper from your powerful four cylinder Kia.

When you inform the person offering advice that you are not a dullard, and this isn’t your first time behind the wheel, those with a modicum of self-awareness will shrug their shoulders and give up, admitting they don’t have a clue, but others will insist that you’re not pressing the brake pedal hard enough, and that’s why your engine won’t turn. They don’t even bother to ask if any of the lights come on or if you hear the melodic ding when you put your key into the ignition because, to them, the reason is already a foregone conclusion.

It’s not that the battery is dead; it’s that you did it wrong, and if you did it the way they told you to, as if by some medieval alchemy, your car would start.

This was Zophar’s approach on the matter, layering assumption upon assumption regarding what Job had done and what he had failed to do, even though Job had repeatedly insisted that he had searched his heart and that he had cried out to God to show him if there was error in him. Whether Zophar didn’t believe Job outright or assumed that he hadn’t dug deep enough into his own past to see where he had erred remains unclear, but either way, his conclusion is still the same.

If you’d done it differently, perhaps you would have the wherewithal to lift up your face without spot and be steadfast and not fear. If you’d do as I instruct, you’d forget your misery, Zophar insisted, even though it’s nigh impossible to forget something as ever present as being caked with worms and open sores throughout your body.

I think it’s the lack of compassion and empathy from Job’s friends that rubs most people the wrong way. Even strangers would likely show more empathy toward someone lying in the dust of the earth, watching their strength wane and their condition worsen, but not so with his friends.

Their primary concern wasn’t for their friend or his welfare but trying to find an explanation for why he was suffering so, and the only thing that all three of them could agree on was that he had sinned. Some of their remarks were more forceful than others, with Zophar taking top prize for callousness, but all three had come to the same conclusion, likely feeding off each other’s assumptions and working themselves up into a lather.

One of the greatest dangers of having a friend, a spouse, a family member, or an acquaintance whispering doubt and discouragement in your ear while you're going through a trial is that your faith runs the risk of decreasing in strength just as your physical body is. Faith is both a shield and an impenetrable wall to the spiritual man, and if it becomes weakened or grows dull due to repeated attacks, it becomes easier for the enemy to sow doubt and bitterness in one’s heart.

It matters not what my outer man is experiencing, as long as my inner man is cocooned in faith, because while the outer man suffers for a season, it is during that season that the spiritual man grows and expands in his faith and trust in God.

The entire purpose of the enemy’s attacks isn’t to make you feel bloated, feel pain, or in extreme cases, such as Job’s, become a worm-covered human husk that knows only pain and torment in perpetuity. The purpose of physical attacks is to weaken the spiritual man, to chip away at one’s faith, and untether him from the source of life, which is God. That’s the end game. That’s the goal, and the prize isn’t your physical discomfort, as far as the enemy sees it, but the abdication of your once strong and immovable faith in God.

Satan understands the futility of the flesh. He knows that sooner or later, it will return to the dust from whence it came. His goal and purpose are to use the flesh in order to blindside the spiritual man, and if the spiritual man is not watchful or fully reliant upon God, cause him to rebel or sin against God somehow.

It may sound counterintuitive, but when you are going through physical suffering of any kind, your focus should be on keeping up the strength of your spiritual man. Rather than bemoan your frailty or hardship, it’s in the midst of physical suffering that you should endeavor to spend more time in God’s presence, in His word, and draw ever closer to Him.

Having the benefit of the aggregate experiences of those who came before us, we can more readily defend against the enemy’s devices, thereby keeping strong in the faith and enduring joyfully. It’s one thing to be able to look back on Job's life and understand the purpose of his suffering, and it’s another to be Job himself, wherein he was in complete darkness regarding the reason he was suffering the things he was. It’s one thing to cut your way through a forest; it’s another to walk a path others have tread before you. Out of sheer stubbornness, some refuse to walk the well-trodden path and set out to cut their own through the brush and the thistle, only to discover that it’s not as easy as they thought it would be, and at best, it’s wasted effort.

Be humble enough to acknowledge that simple as they may seem, the tried and true ways of remaining steadfast in God during trials work. Pray, fast, seek His face, and read His word, receiving His strength in your weakness and growing in the knowledge of Him. Simple, straightforward, and effective. Uncomplicated to the utmost, but for some, it’s deemed too easy to produce the same kinds of results it produced in others. 

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

 There is an undeniable escalation in both insinuation and outright accusation with each of Job’s friends, culminating with Zophar, who could not bear to hear of anything as impossible as Job’s doctrine being pure without calling it out. Given Job’s current state, that notion could not be true, at least as far as Zophar was concerned. He could not reconcile a pure doctrine and uprightness with what Job had been reduced to, and the only viable conclusion in his eyes was that Job had so rebelled against the God he’d served all his life to the point that he was getting less than he deserved.

There’s what men think about you, and there’s what God knows about you. This pendulum tends to swing both ways, wherein individuals who are seen by their contemporaries as pillars of morality and uprightness turn out to be the vilest of hedonists, while men who are walking humbly with their Lord, working out their salvation with fear and trembling, are deemed forsaken and lost. God knows the truth of it all, and it is before His throne that we will stand to face judgment, and not before men.

Our duty is to be pleasing in the sight of the Lord, not fit into some mold men fashion out of whole cloth, then insist we adhere to on pain of eternal damnation. If you don’t adhere to this doctrine, if you don’t practice this thing or that, if you pray with your eyes open, if you don’t belong to this denomination, then you’re not going to heaven, buddy, no matter what the Bible says. I, sister Karen of the church of self-importance and overreaction, have deemed it as such, so you’d better get with the program.

Whenever some newfangled, heretofore unheard of doctrine makes its way to the fore, the first and most important question we must ask is whether God said to do the thing these men demand of us and whether it is confirmed by Scripture. That’s the acid test that every teaching must pass in order to be appropriated, absorbed, and adhered to. If it fails, then it’s a no-go, regardless of who came up with it or how many influential leaders give it their tacit approval.

Do what God says, live as He commands, even if it means putting you in a contrarian position with your contemporaries, because it’s not them that you will one day have to answer to, but to Him. God’s will, above all, should be our baseline mindset, and when this becomes a reality, the way forward becomes clear, and moments of indecision or second-guessing ourselves will well and truly disappear.

Job 11:7-12, “Can you search out the deep things of God? Can you find out the limits of the Almighty? They are higher than heaven – what can you do? Deeper than Sheol – what can you know? Their measure is longer than the earth and broader than the sea. If He passes by, imprisons, and gathers to judgment, then who can hinder Him? For He knows deceitful men; He sees wickedness also. Will He not then consider it? For an empty-headed man will be wise, when a wild donkey’s colt is born a man.”

Some sayings and idioms stand the test of time, others not so much. While we still say it’s raining cats and dogs, I have yet to hear anyone insisting that an empty-headed man will be wise when a wild donkey’s colt is born a man. It doesn’t roll off the tongue, and maybe that’s the problem, but what Zophar was insinuating is that Job was too ignorant to understand the gravity of his sin.

If you can’t see it the way I see it, that just makes you empty-headed, and an empty-headed man being wise is as likely as a wild donkey’s colt being born a man. Not only have you sinned, and gravely so, to the point that your suffering is less than you deserve, but you’re too obtuse to see the sin you committed.

This is usually the last stand of anyone losing an argument or realizing their conclusion is flawed. Well, you just don’t see it the way I see it because you’re too ignorant. This approach usually doesn’t work if it’s one-on-one, the debate coming to a stalemate after each participant gives their point and counterpoint, but it is effective when there is a chorus of voices against one individual.

The reason we often see one individual being isolated and then being piled on by everyone is because it works. It takes a steel spine, will, and determination to be the one person in the crowd going against the grain and standing on principle rather than acquiescing to the mob.

It’s easy enough to get carried away by the rushing waters of compromise and feigned loyalty that has become common practice among many today. In doing so, you’ll always be in the majority, feeling as though you belong, but the purpose of we who are as strangers in a strange land isn’t to fit in, assimilate, and conform, but to be more like Jesus every day. If that means becoming outcasts, so be it. If that means standing out like a sore thumb and suffering the ridicule and ire of the masses, so be it.

The temptation of conformity is an ever-present siren song for those whose desire for prominence, influence, or climbing some ladder, social or otherwise, is in direct competition with the mandate to obey God and walk in His ways. It’s the lure of fitting in, of not standing out, of avoiding conflict, even if it means compromising on our faith and values.

It’s not a one-and-done prospect, either. Every day, we are confronted with the choice of holding onto integrity and speaking the truth in love, even if those we are speaking it to will see it as hate, or making compromises, holding back and omitting necessary truths, because of some implied benefit to our current station if we were to do so. It is a conscious choice, and based upon the choice we make, we reveal our true heart, whether that is doing the will of God or desiring the honorifics of men.

By this point, Job must have realized that trying to placate his friends wouldn’t work. They’d made up their mind as to why he was suffering his torments, and no matter how much of a defense he attempted to mount, it would have fallen on deaf ears.  

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

 If Job had remained silent, his friends would have likely come to the same conclusion. The only thing that would have been different is Zophar saying should a man who remains silent be vindicated, rather than should a man full of talk be so.

There are situations and instances when no matter what you do, whether you speak up for yourself or let people judge you at will without mounting a defense, their conclusions are already reached, their mindset cemented, and no matter what you say or don’t say, they will not be swayed.

It’s a slimy sort of approach reminiscent of politicians. It’s like the old trope where one man asks another if he still beats his wife, and he demands a yes or no answer. Whenever he attempts to mount a defense and insist that he’d never lay a hand on the mother of his children, he is quickly cut off and reminded that all that is required of him is a yes or a no. Well, the presupposition that the man beat his wife is already established in the minds of his accusers. If he says yes, then it’s a continuation of it; if he says no, it means that he used to but has recently stopped.

Some people have already made up their minds about you, and there’s nothing you can do to change them. They will see you as you once were, not as you are, unable to reconcile transformation and rebirth with the individual that used to run from God as fast as their feet could take them. No matter how much you insist you are no longer the individual they once knew, no matter how much evidence there is to substantiate your assertion, they’re too set in their ways to allow for the reality that God can transform an individual to the point that their entire nature becomes unrecognizable from what it once was.

You may have a past, but you’re no longer living in it. If someone insists that they must see you through the prism of your past rather than the new creation you’ve become, that’s on them, and God will deal with the injustice of it in due time. Are such individuals being used by the enemy? More often than not, yes. By their insistence that you are the same as you’ve always been and nothing has changed, the enemy is attempting to get you to see yourself as you once were rather than as you currently are.

It’s not so much that people change; it’s that God changes people. If it were not so, we wouldn’t have the testimonies of men who once exemplified cowardice becoming bold and outspoken even in the face of persecution. We would not have testimonies of men who were once slaves to sin, now pursuing righteousness with abandon.

It’s the easiest thing in the world to point to someone’s past and ignore their present iteration because it allows for men to feel spiritually superior and look down on others. You say you have been born again, you say your life has been transformed, but I remember when you used to do this thing or the other, so what about that? When this inevitably occurs, our instant reaction is to shy away from our past, from who we once were, while still in darkness, trying to play it down or dismiss it offhand.

When it comes to owning who we once were, I personally believe the best course of action is to take a page out of Paul’s book and acknowledge even the gloomiest of details regarding our past, knowing that we are no longer who we were but something wholly different.

Galatians 1:13-17, “For you have heard of my former conduct in Judaism, how I persecuted the church of God beyond measure and tried to destroy it. And I advanced in Judaism beyond many of my contemporaries in my own nation, being more exceeding zealous for the traditions of my fathers. But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother’s womb and called me through His grace, to reveal His Son in me, that I might preach Him among the Gentiles, I did not immediately confer with flesh and blood, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me; but I went to Arabia and returned again to Damascus.”

You may have heard of my former conduct, and I cannot deny it, but what I can say is that I am no longer the man I once was. Yes, I persecuted the church, Paul confesses, beyond measure and tried to destroy it, but then something changed. God called me through His grace to reveal His Son to me, and I am a man forever transformed.

That’s what God does in the innermost parts of man, and Paul was self-aware enough to realize that you can’t change the past, no matter how hard you try, but by the same token, your past does not define who you are in the present.

True faith in Christ is not performative; it’s transformative. It’s not about putting on a shirt with a button-down collar or wearing freshly pressed khakis; it’s about being born again and becoming a new creation in Him. Much of what passes for Christianity today is performance art, and it’s not even good performance art. It’s more akin to community theater in Pookipsy than a Broadway show.

We’ve come to equate spirituality with how loud someone can yell or how boisterous their declarations are, rather than looking beyond the superficial and discerning whether someone has been born again or is feigning it for some ulterior motive or another. We get taken in by showmanship because a showman is there to entertain, not call men to repentance or preach the Gospel. That suits us just fine. We don’t want accountability, we don’t want to be convicted, we don’t like the feeling of the Gospel scouring the inner depths of our heart; it’s unpleasant and painful, so we’ll settle for superficial entertainment by some carnie sideshow with pink hair and no depth of understanding of who God is.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

 Job 11:1-6, “Then Zophar the Naamathite answered and said: ‘Should not the multitude of words be answered? And should a man full of talk be vindicated? Should your empty talk make men hold their peace? And when you mock, should no one rebuke you? For you have said, ‘my doctrine is pure, and I am clean in your eyes.’ But oh, that God would speak, and open His lips against you, that He would show you the secrets of wisdom! For they would double your prudence. Know therefore that God exacts from you less than your iniquity deserves.”’

If his other two friends only made insinuations and hinted at the possibility that Job may have sinned and was thus being punished, it seems Zophar had no qualms about coming out and saying it, and in a less genteel manner than Eliphaz and Bildad combined. Zophar’s directness and lack of tact in his approach to Job’s suffering reflect a common theological belief of the time, that suffering is a direct result of sin. This belief is deeply ingrained in Zophar’s worldview and influences his judgment of Job, even though Job was his friend, and he knew Job’s character more than most. He dismissed all the history he had with Job and all the time they spent together based on a flawed belief structure.

Just because you talk a lot, it doesn’t make you innocent. Just because you insist you can think of nothing that you’ve done that would upset God and set him against you, it doesn’t mean you’re vindicated. We’ve all heard what you said. You said your doctrine was pure, and you were clean in our eyes, but if this is the case, then why are you in the condition you’re in? It’s not difficult to imagine wagging fingers, bulging neck veins, and spittle. Lots of spittle.

You can tell by the tonality of his opening salvo that Zophar had been sitting and stewing for some time. He was emotionally bottled up, had been for days, if not weeks, quiet, brooding, thinking of all the things he would say to his friend, and finally, it was his turn. By this time, Zophar had worked himself up into such a lather that he concluded that God’s punishment of Job in the condition he was in was less than what his iniquity deserved. No, I’m not sorry God is punishing you; I’m just surprised He isn’t punishing you more. Kind of harsh for a friend; then again, we’ve all been there.

Have you ever thought someone had wronged you or that something they said was intended as a slight, and the more you ruminated upon it, the bigger the issue became? The initial interaction might have been something so benign and inconsequential that had you not meditated upon it, you would have forgotten within an hour at most, but you dwelt on it, and let it fester, and it grew, and ballooned to the point that it’s all you can do to go up to the person you once called a friend and demand to know why the hated you.

All I said was that a striped tie doesn’t go well with a polka dot shirt! How did you get I hate you from that? What Zophar did was worse still, because Job had leveled no sleight or accusation against him personally, yet Zophar felt compelled to stand in judgment of him, and somehow, in his mind not only defend God, but insist that Job wasn’t being punished enough! The injustice of it all was palpable.

What more could there be? How much worse could it get? Unless an ear, fingers, or toes started sloughing off Job and falling off randomly, there wasn’t a worse for him. Satan had done his absolute worst and visited upon him all the pain and torment he could think of, yet a man Job called a friend sat before him now and insisted that he was getting less than his iniquity deserved.

What iniquity? That is the question none of Job’s friends could answer, a question Job himself asked of God for which he likewise received no answer because there was no iniquity to be revealed or exposed.

All three of Job’s friends were so certain of their conclusions that they chose to believe him a liar, even though they never called him such to his face, while ignoring the absence of any evidence to buoy their assertions. There was no presumption of innocence on their part, nor did they require proof of guilt. They knew what they knew based on the things they’d learned throughout their lives, and the only thing that made sense to them was that Job was guilty of something horrendous.

Some people are so set in their ways and unwilling to course-correct that even when evidence challenging their preconceived notion is evident and plentiful, they continue to justify their position. This becomes dangerous when the issue is a spiritual matter and when the Word of God is clear on the topic. When we ignore Scripture because it contradicts our entrenched beliefs regarding some doctrine or another, what we are doing, in essence, is placing ourselves above God and insisting that we must be right, even if that means He must be wrong.

This danger is a key moral and philosophical insight from the Book of Job, highlighting the importance of humility and openness to God’s truth. Rather than stare in the mirror and repeat some dated mantra Joel Osteen stole from Tony Robbins, perhaps a better use of our time is to stare in the mirror and tell ourselves we don’t know it all until we actually believe it.

Zophar was a traditionalist through and through. Things are as they have always been, they will always be as they are, and nothing will change; therefore, if you are being ground into the dust of the earth, it must be the direct result of sin.

I hear what you’re saying; I just don’t believe it. Moreover, your punishment is less than you deserve, so you should be thankful for that, at least. The old adage that with friends like these, who needs enemies comes to mind because whatever empathy or compassion they may have shown Job when they first arrived to visit him was well and truly gone. 

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.             

 2 Corinthians 4:16-18, “Therefore we do not lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day. 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.”

Not only does Paul beautifully encapsulate the reality of life in general, he likewise differentiates between the life of the believer, those who have surrendered their lives, and been born again in Christ, and the life of the godless, who wither daily just as we do, but without the benefit of the inward man being renewed day by day.

We are not the same. Yes, once we were like those of the world, counting down the days hopelessly and without the blessed assurance of eternity, but no longer. It’s not a reason for gloating, pomposity, or pride, but rather a reason for heartfelt gratitude, thankfulness, and indebtedness. But for the grace of God, we would be likewise desperate, hopeless, and adrift. But by the grace of God, we would be living purposeless lives with no hope beyond the handful of days we are given on the earth.

Because our perspective has shifted from the temporary to the eternal, from the things that are seen to the things that are not seen, our reactions to the trials, hardships, setbacks, and valleys of life are different than those of the world.

Job’s outward man was perishing. There was no denying it, no matter how one might hope otherwise. He went from a man in possession of his faculties, of reasonable health, with no apparent issues, to one who was on the threshold of death, covered in painful boils, caked with worms and festering wounds. Although men could only see the outward appearance and pity him, God saw what was taking place in the inward man, and the two side-by-side snapshots of Job couldn’t be more different.

True enough, the outward man was perishing, but the inward man was being renewed day by day. It’s easy to focus on the physical, especially when we’re going through pain or suffering some malady, but the question we must ask ourselves is how is this present trial benefiting my spiritual man? How am I growing through this, learning to trust God despite it, expanding my faith in it, and what will my spiritual man look like once this momentary affliction passes?

Trust that God is doing something you can’t see, but doing it nonetheless, and the final iteration will be a stronger you, forged in the fires of trial and testing, purified and refined into the image of His Son Jesus. By its very nature, the refining process cannot be painless. Although it doesn’t necessarily have to be physical pain, whenever God begins to prune and cut away the things not conducive to spiritual growth, there will be pain. Your flesh will cry aloud, pitch a fit, protest, because it is being mortified, and it doesn’t like it one bit.

The flesh never has a problem with you paying God lip service. What the flesh has a problem with is a steadfast determination of pursuing righteousness and growing in Christ. It knows that the more of Jesus there is in you, the less sway it will have over you. When Jesus sits on the throne of your heart, the flesh is weakened, muted, and unable to assert its influence over your decisions. The more you grow your spiritual man, the easier it becomes to resist the devil, deny the urges and impulses, and overcome the temptations the enemy lays at your feet. It’s work, no, not works, but work. It’s also effort, it’s being watchful and sober-minded in all things, it’s striving to enter through the narrow gate so that the fullness of the indwelling of Christ in you may be so complete that you’ll always be one step ahead of the enemy, and intuit the snares that he sets before you.

The mouse might not know that the piece of cheese is baiting a trap that will take its life, but we’re not mice; we are human beings with the ability to reason and use logic, and you know that there’s no such thing as free cheese, and whenever you see it offered up, you grow weary and cautious understanding that it may look good, smell good, and taste good, yet is nevertheless the means of your destruction.

Although he may have been up until Satan asked to sift him, Job was not living his best life. If this present life is all there was, and here was no eternity, if the only thing that mattered was how much we can accumulate and how comfortable we could make the flesh, then we would rightly conclude that Job got the short end of the stick even with all his uprightness and blamelessness.

Had he grown despondent? Most assuredly, but even in such a deplorable state, he held to his integrity because while his intellect could not make sense of why these things were happening to him, his spiritual man perceived that there was more to the story than he was given to understand.

The notion of blind faith is a misnomer at best. Faith grows and stretches and matures because it perceives that although it may not fully understand a given situation, it understands the nature and character of the One who is above all, the One who spoke the universe into being, and the One who has intimate knowledge of one’s joy, pain, hardships, and trials. We have faith in God and His sovereignty because we know Him, we know that He loves us, and we understand that there is a purpose for all things even though we may not be able to currently define the purpose itself.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

 The reason Picasso or Rembrandt, even their lesser known works, or just some charcoal sketch are valued at such exorbitant prices is because the artists not only created the art but signed their names to it. Although there are plenty of others who attempted to imitate their artistry, whether brush strokes, color palate, or configuration, and some even came close, they could not claim to be the artist in question, just a copycat.

A work of art must be authenticated, as must the signature, for it to qualify as a true creation of the artist, and although counterfeits have been floating around for decades, a trained eye who has studied the originals to no end can spot a forgery in an instant. Likewise, we are authenticated as belonging to God by having the presence of Jesus in our hearts and being clothed in His righteousness. God knows the real from the fake. He knows those who have the indwelling of His Holy Spirit within them and radiate the image of His Son and those who pretend to.

Men may fool men, but they’ll never fool God. No matter how close they may come to mimicking the presence of Christ, God will spot the forgery.

Psalm 37:3-5, “Trust in the Lord, and do good; dwell in the land, and feed on His faithfulness. Delight yourself also in the Lord, and He shall give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord, trust also in Him, and He shall bring it to pass.”

What those who misappropriate this passage fail to acknowledge is that if we trust in the Lord, feed on His faithfulness, and delight ourselves in Him, the desires of our hearts, which He promises to give us, will not be some vain, base, or worthless bauble, but more of Him. A regenerate heart, a heart that has been spiritually reborn and transformed by God, does not desire the things of this earth but the things that are exclusively theirs by right of sonship.

The things of this earth, whatever that may entail, grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace. If the focus of an individual and the desire of their heart is focused on earthly pursuits, then by definition, their heart has not been regenerated or renewed.

Job 10:18-22, “Why then have You brought me out of the womb? Oh, that I had perished and no eye had seen me! I would have been as though I had not been. I would have been carried from the womb to the grave. Are not my days few? Cease! Leave me alone, that I may take a little comfort, before I go to the place from which I shall not return, to the land of darkness and the shadow of death, a land as dark as darkness itself, as the shadow of death, without any order, where even the light is like darkness.”

Life is not the destination, but rather the journey toward eternity. It’s fleeting and swift and full of molding, pruning, trimming, heartaches, heartbreaks, victories, defeats, betrayals, disappointments, simple joys, profound gratitude, and epiphanies, whether realizing we were stronger than we thought or weaker than we feared, faith building, faith walking, learning to trust God’s sovereignty, learning to deny ourselves, understanding that His yoke is not heavy, and the reward for those who endure to the end is great indeed, and that’s just an average weekday.

When we conclude that God is an existential need, that without Him we can do nothing, His presence in our lives becomes both the goal and the purpose of our existence. Once that occurs, we gladly forfeit all else for the excellency of the knowledge of Him, looking upon the things we’ve surrendered not as something we had to sacrifice but as something we were freed from.

Once in a while, I’ll happen upon a video where someone has been sober for a year, ten years, or fifteen years. None of these individuals look back on their addiction and conclude that they sacrificed alcohol, but rather that they were freed, and unburdened from it, because they realized it was slowly killing them, destroying their relationships, and making a living hell out of their lives.

 That’s what sin does. It’s killing you ever so slowly, so when God commands us to repent and turn our backs on the desires of the flesh and the shackles to which we were fastened, it’s because He wants you to live, not because He doesn’t want you to have fun. I’ve heard the argument often enough from professing Christians that just a little sin is negligible as long as you can keep a handle on it, control it, and manage it. That’s like saying a little bit of poison is good for you. It’s not, and the one demonstrable absolute is that sin is never static. What satisfied the flesh today will not satisfy it tomorrow, so the depravity of the ‘little sin’ you thought you could manage grows incrementally day by day.

No one ever started out drinking a fifth of Jim Beam upon waking. A beer turned into two, two turned into five, then the flesh wanted something stronger, more potent, and those unwilling to see themselves as they truly were found ways of rationalizing their descent into oblivion. Playing with sin, any sin, is like playing with fire while being covered in gasoline. You never know when what you thought was a release or a way of smoothing out the edges becomes an albatross around your neck, dragging you further into the deep.

We cannot fail to differentiate between someone who trips over a tree root, gets up, wipes off the dust, and keeps going and someone who cannonballs into the pig pen, rolls in the mud, slaps away the hand of anyone reaching to pull them out, and feels at home among the swine. We all fall short, whether that flash of anger when someone cuts us off in traffic or the acidic remark on the tip of our tongue when we deem someone has it coming, but that is very different from willful, protracted, and habitual sin.  

Rebellion and disobedience will bring us to a direr state than any testing will, because while during a time of sifting and testing the presence of God is felt, during seasons of rebellion we remove ourselves from fellowship with Him, and are alone in the dark, groping about, refusing to acknowledge the extent of our own blindness.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.