The busyness of modern life needs no description. Society, culture, class, parents, employers, government, marriage, children, church, and self all have a different set of expectations that add weight to the burden of life. Men feel immense pressure to attempt to mimic the Greek titan Atlas whose job it was to shoulder…
Most people have a simplistic understanding of self-control. They reduce it to two basic motions. There is the brake pedal and the accelerator. To exercise self-control a person either presses down on the brakes to resist temptation (e.g. eating a second cookie) or steps on the accelerator to overcome fatigue (e.g. finish the last mile)…
Men, if you haven’t already, listen to this podcast by Rod Olps, ‘To Whom Much Is Given: Recognizing Your Talents and Setting Your Pace’. Rod will help you think about discerning God’s call on your life. Download it to your phone and listen in the car, in the gym, or when you have dead time between tasks.
The application for men is this: to be good stewards of our lives we need to set wise limits on our use of time, money, amusement, exercise, and so on. What should a man do if his income continues to increase through the duration of his career? Should he correspondingly raise his lifestyle unceasingly to match his salary? No, to do so would be to allow circumstances to dictate lifestyle rather than the call to follow Jesus. A better approach is for a man to sit down in prayer before God and to determine a threshold of how much he personally feels he can spend on his lifestyle as a good steward of the gifts of God. Any excess above this threshold should be used to invest in the kingdom of God. After all, the goal of life is not self-improvement, or to have a good time, but the glory of Christ.
God has called you to do something, to be something. This thought ought to quake the very foundation of your soul. Geologist warn us that one day San Francisco will lie in rubble due to straddling the San Andreas Fault. Christians should fare no better when they are told that God has purposefully created them. We are not accidents like a puddle of milk spilt from the cup of a careless child. We are instruments crafted in the forge of heaven for specific and non-negotiable tasks.
A man who ignores the future is like a person who walks around staring at his feet. He will miss a lot of useful paths in life because he never looked up to survey the landscape. The undeniable benefit of life planning is that the activity protects a person from ‘drift’, the mindless persistence along an unspecified course. Of course, for Christians, a deep attitude of humility must correspond to any attempt at life planning, since our lives are ultimately in God’s hands and because the future belongs to Him, not us. Nonetheless, most men will find spiritual relevance in Eisenhower’s quip, ‘Plans are worthless, but planning is everything’.
Men like to pretend that they are warhorses. We tell ourselves that self-control is a natural muscle that can be flexed at will and that develops coordination and stamina over time. Our problem with self-control, so we think, is not that we don’t have it, but that we choose not to use it. Like a warhorse, we are capable of showing self-restraint in difficult circumstances. We are men, not boys. We are soldiers, not recruits. So we think…
One of the greatest risks a man can take is to attempt the Christian life on his own. The deceitfulness of the heart by itself is a sufficient reason to walk close to others who are wise and faithful. Long ago Solomon recorded the proverb, ‘Whoever isolates himself seeks his own desire; he breaks out against all sound judgment’ (Proverbs 18:1). This wisdom is much needed today. A man who isolates himself is a man in danger…
By the time David was contemplating a night with Bathsheba his blood was already boiling. Lust had already mounted a siege against the conscience and was catapulting missiles against the will. What would have been the very best safety valve for David while he was pacing the decking of his palace? He should have had Abiathar the priest, or Nathan the prophet, or some other man of God walking with him. A good friend would have smacked him across the face and told him to recollect the life of Saul before dabbling in sin.
There is no guardrail more useful that a circle of spiritual friends. Hearing such words as ‘Don’t give up!’, ‘Where were you?’, ‘You can do all things through Christ who strengthens you,’ or ‘Fear not! God is with you,’ can be a cup of Gatorade on a hot day, refreshing the heart and supplying strength for yet another leg of the race.
Many a Christian man will step each day into a workplace in which he is the only person around him whose life goal is to know, serve, and delight in the lord Jesus Christ. He will feel like an exile in a foreign land, trying to maintain an identity that is threatened by the culture around him. In such arid conditions, the vitality of faith begins to evaporate, drop by drop, day by day. Zeal will cool; focus will relax; resolve will weaken.
Spiritual friendship requires shared consent regarding the desired temperature of discipleship. Different Christians have different interpretations of what it means to be a devout follower of Jesus. Some are happy to exist in a tepid, lukewarm state. Others feel the need to kick-start the burner whenever the boil drops to a simmer. Spiritual friendship is distinct from other Christian relationships because spiritual appetites must be in sync. Such friends not only share a sense of where they are going, but there is a pace, an earnestness, that all hope to maintain.
Yet, intentionality, by itself, is insufficient to produce spiritual friendship. The intent must be right. Spiritual friends are comrades who join together in pursuit of Christ. The following words of Paul are an apt description of the basic intent that drives one Christian to partner with another: ‘That I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead’ (Phil. 3:11). Knowing Christ, obeying Christ, being conformed to Christ – these are the objectives pursued in spiritual friendship.
This naivety is why a lot of men do not invest in spiritual friendship. During comfortable phases of life, friendship feels like a luxury. ‘I can manage on my own’ is the unspoken conviction of men when skies are fair. But like the North Sea the conditions of life can change rapidly. A crisis strikes and suddenly men discover that no one knows them well enough to be of help.
Yet, more than resources, a man who can handle the Word has a simple method of study, a regular routine that he utilizes to ease the process of investigation. Having a method is useful for two reasons : (1) ensuring that adequate care is taken to discern the meaning of a text and (2) disciple-making. The end goal of every spiritual discipline is always something more than individual growth. The Great Commission is at stake. For Bible study, this means that we ought to develop a method not ony for our own benefit, but also for the benefit of others. =
We need to be compelled forward in Bible study by a gripping vision the man we might become. What will motivate us to consistently skip a show on Netflix or to set the alarm 30 minutes earlier on a Tuesday morning? The answer is a sense of mission, the belief that now is an irreplacable moment that will either advance me toward the horizon of glory or pull me back to the brim of mediocrity.
