Biblical Manhood

  The other night, I was in my men's bible study and I was struck by some things in the book of Colossians that I hadn't really connect deeply with until then.

Here's what Paul says in Colossians 3:12-14

  "Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience,  bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony" (Col. 3:12-14 ESV).

   The qualities above Paul is discussing as if they are clothing, something we are to put on.  When I looked at this list of "Clothing" we are to consciously put on, I realized that as men, these are hard things to clothe ourselves with.  We men love strength, force, mighty works and not that these qualities aren't strong, forceful or mighty, it's just that as men we don't normally think of the above qualities as "manly".

  I am a  selfish being, compassion, kindness, meekness, patience and love are sometimes rare in my male heart.  I don't want to speak for all men, but it seems as I survey manhood,  for many men, it seems that it is hard for us to be compassionate, kind, patient and loving and in many ways we look at these qualities as feminine.

  This is not the case!  Paul was a Dude's dude, he had the snot beat out of him, he had been beaten by stones, shipwrecks and many other horrendous happenings.  He had all these qualities and he was a Dude.  The problem I think is our idea of these qualities.  We look at them in ways that are feminine so we reject them.

  I must say that the Western church has done much damage in feminising these qualities and has not properly taught masculine faith.  Compassion is a deep move of one's spirit that should cause one to rise up and desire to fight for justice.  Compassion is not always the sad feeling one feels for poor people, it is deeper.  It moves a person into action.

  The same for kindness, it is a deep movement in one's spirit that drives one to action.  It comes off with nice actions but it is a deep movement of one's being.

  Patience and meekness as well, they are not these mushy gushy things we can sometimes portray them as.  It takes a ton of guts to be patient and meek.

  Humility for me is one that hurts to put on because I am naturally prideful.  God has been challenging me deeply on my pride and really pointing out my nakedness where humility is concerned.  One of the guys in the Bible Study the other night said: "Putting on humility is really a question of where is your confidence." He went on to say that "Humility is confidence in God and Pride is confidence in yourself".  I fully agree and from a cultural standpoint, we men struggle with this because we're taught that in order to be good men, we must put our confidence in ourselves and show people how confident we are in ourselves.

  As men who desire to follow Jesus, we must become humble.  We desperately need a generation of men putting their confidence in Christ rather than themselves.  For too long we men have done our families and our church a disservice because we've been putting our confidence in ourselves and not God.

  The clothes we've been putting on are not the clothes of the new self as laid down by Paul in Colossians 3.  Rather, we've been living in the old self, relying on ourselves, caring only for ourselves and not the world outside of us and our families.

  God is moving.  His Spirit is calling men out.  Will we be there to answer the call as Warriors for the Lord?  Or will we sit back and think "someone else will take care of it"?

  We can't continue to abdicate our calling onto other people.  We men must stand up and stand in the gap.  We can be the changers, the movers and the makers of this great city by the Power of the Holy Spirit.  We can be a part of the solution to the absentee Fathers in our city.  We can stand in the gap and show these younger, fatherless young men what a man is really like.  We can be men who deny the weak man on the corner and step up to model real Fatherhood, real Manhood!

  I'm going to be doing a Biblical Manhood series for awhile starting this week.  Please keep checking back and add your thoughts to the mix!

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Who's Laughing Now?

  On Monday nights, I lead a Men's Bible Study with a great group of awesome guys.  We've been running through the book of Colossians together and we all have learned alot so far.

  This past week, I was inspired by several things that popped in the Scripture but one stuck out more than the rest.

 "by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.  He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him" (Col. 2:14-15 ESV).

  These passages are packed with several implications for the believer, all of which we desperately need to sink deep into our lives.  The first implication is that when we come to Christ, receive Him as our Lord and Saviour, he takes the record of our sins, that long, miles long list of all the junk we either committed or omitted and he cancels the WHOLE thing.  It's done, completely erased and our record of sin is thrown as far as the east is from the west (Psalm 103:12)! 

  Satan is a good accuser and he loves to remind us of our haunted past.  He keeps a record of our sins so that when we receive the grace of God in the forgiveness of sins, he can remind us of the junk and try to keep us down and hating ourselves by this. Satan jeers at us, laughs at us and points his finger at our sins.  He speaks lies over us that we sadly succumb to and believe.  He says things like:

"God could never forgive that sin, might as well pack it in now"
"You are so disgusting"
"No one will love you once they find out about this past junk"
"Your life is a heap of failures, bad decisions and mess ups, you will never be different"

  Those statements however believable are lies.  God is more powerful than our past and more powerful than the lies that keep us down.  The next part of these verses is just as powerful.

  Paul, knowing this to be a tactic of Satan, doesn't then just mention the forgiveness of sins, he goes deeper and shows that God exposes Satan's lies and puts him to open shame through the nailing of our sins to the cross. 

  When Christ went to the cross and died for our sins, several things happened all at once and one of those things is that God stripped Satan down naked and exposed him to the world!  When God died, he set in motion the ability to see the lies of Satan and laugh at how ridiculous they are.

  Christ death on the cross gives us the power to laugh in Satan's face for the lies he spins, because we can now see them as they are: comical jokes that have no power.  This is why the cross ticked Satan off so much, not only did he lose his grip on humanity, he was no the laughing stock of heaven.  He was fully exposed and now we can jeer at his lies!

  Christ, when he rose from the dead looked Satan in the eye and said: "Look Who's Laughing Now!"

  Now we come to the point of what implications this has for us as believers. 

   First, it's a great passage to remind us that our sins are forgiven, they are cancelled.  When we accept Christ as our Lord and Savior, he takes our rap sheet and BURNS it in the middle of the courtroom.

  Second, this passage reminds us that our sins are nailed to the cross.  We see again, the power of Christ's death on our behalf.  The only reason our rap sheet can be burned is by the sacrificial death of the pure lamb: being Christ.  So much was done in that act that the full implications of it won't be seen until heaven, but this we know: by the power of the cross we now can have life.

  Third, we no longer have to allow the past to determine our future not matter how volatile the past may be.  Our past no longer holds us down the way it once did.  We will still possibly deal with the consequences of those sins and actions, but they can no longer put us to shame.  With those records being cancelled, we no longer need to fear their power.

  Fourth and last, Satan is exposed.  We now can turn and laugh at his silly jokes.  We don't need to listen nor believe his lies upon our lives.  We can now stand by the Power of  Christ through the Holy Spirit within us and jeer at Satan when he accuses us and jeers us.  We can now, like Jesus say: "Look Who's Laughing Now!"

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