The Desire to be a Man in the image of God

There has been a good response to these articles. There are some serious issues surrounding men in our churches. Over the past few weeks we have looked at the need to be faithful men in our homes and faithful men in our churches. We are called to be the priest of our homes, making sure to teach the Word of God to our kids. We are the watchmen over our homes, the ones that are to protect our wives and children. We are to love our wives and support them as they journey through life for the Lord. We are to prepare our children to take our place when we move on to the next life. In this article I am going to talk about a few things that I felt led to expand on.

1. Be Faithfulness – 1 Corinthians 4:2

Faithfulness is one of the most important traits in a man. The NIV puts it this way, “Those who have been given a trust must prove faithful.” The word steward can be translated manager. Man of God, you are a manager in your home. You are required to be faithful. When we hear the word faithful, one may automatically think of sex or being faithful to a wife. But we are required to be faithful in other areas as well. We need to be faithful at work; we should be working hard to provide for our families to set examples for our sons that men should be hard-working.

In 2 Thessalonians 3: 10, the apostle Paul tells the church at Thessalonica that one who does not work should not eat. We have an epidemic of men, even young men, on welfare in North America. We have men who have decided that the government should pay their bills, or even worse, that their parents should continue to support them well into their 20s and even the 30s. In our time, ‘young people’ are getting married older and older and putting off the responsibility of marriage and taking care of a family.

Men should be faithful in their churches. Church is not optional. In Hebrews 10:25 we are called to be faithful in assembling for worship. The word church is from a Greek word that means an assembly. The Lord tells us that, as we see the end of time approaching, church attendance will be more and more important. Men need to lead here and take their children to church with them. There should be no excuses. If you would go to work when you are sick, then go to church sick as well.

No sporting events should take the priority over the Lord’s house. Tell your children’s coaches that they will not be available on church days at all. In our home we do not allow our kids to get jobs that require them to work on Sundays, and my wife works only nights in the nursing home business. Anyone who lives in your home should be expected to attend church with you, no matter who they are. Get up, fix breakfast, dress the kids, walk the dog; do whatever it takes to lead and show your family that church is an essential like breathing and blood. It is a priority. Outside of being in a hospital or dead, there should not be an excuse to miss church. If you are on vacation, find a church or just have church before you go anywhere on a Sunday.

As a pastor it is important that my wife not feel that the church is my mistress. My marriage is first above all except to the Lord. There are wives who leave the ministry because they simply don’t like it. My first wife did; she was with me for 16+ years of marriage and 23 years all together; but one day she simply did not want to do this anymore, and she left. She still does not go to church much. But there are also marriages that fail because the wives feel cheated on with the churches we serve as pastors. Most urgencies are not as urgent as the caller makes them out to be, and can be monitored by text or phone. A death is a different situation, or a serious accident.

2. Be Merciful

Godly men, remember their frail humanity. In Luke 18:13, the publican, a hated man, asked God to be merciful to him, a sinner. Never forget that we are just dust; God recalls that we are just that (Psalm 103:14). Lead as one who is vulnerable and not one who is invincible. Serve as one who is often tempted, and lead as one who requires a lot of mercy. Matthew 5:7: “Blessed are the merciful….” Be merciful to your family, and especially your children.

A godly man should not hold grudges against one’s spouse. There is a certain degree of tolerance in any long-term marriage. One must learn to not complain or point out the failures of one’s wife often. She is going to fail as are you. Let things go. We are not talking about grievous sins but preferences. Even if she were to commit sins, we need to be men of God who will forgive and move on for the sake of the marriage. I have learned that my teeth can be great gates for my words. Not everything I think needs to come out of my mouth. A wise man needs to be careful with his words (Proverbs 17:27). Godly men are careful with their words; they can do irreparable damage. James 3:5 tells us that the tongue can set things on fire. The tongue can hurt people; the tongue can do more damage than sticks and stones. Godly men, learn to be merciful with your words.

3. Be Kind

Over the last few weeks, we have talked about being strong and being fighters. But we need to be kind to all that we can as well. Kind to our family first of all. It is amazing how much unkindness goes on in families. Siblings fighting, often egged on by family members; and there should be no nit-picking between spouses. Constant bickering will destroy your family, and your children will see it. Be kind to your wife and set the example for your daughters. They will marry men just like you. So, if you want your daughters to marry unkind men, be an unkind dad. Ask yourself this question: Would you let your daughter marry you? Would you give her your blessing?

Compliments are not the same as flattery; flattery has a motive, normally a bad one. But a Godly man pays genuine compliments to his wife and his children. In Genesis 12:12, Abraham is about to enter Egypt, and he warns Sarah that she is so beautiful that he is afraid that the men of Egypt will kill him for her. If you take the time to study the time line, you will see that Sarah is about 65 years old when Abraham say this about her. She is still his beauty.

Our wives should be our beauties to us long after the world’s definition of beauty is past. I have been saved for a long time; and over the years I have seen that there is a joy that keeps Godly women looking younger longer and maintains their beauty. A Godly man tells his wife that she is beautiful, with genuine compliments and with heartfelt admiration for what God has blessed him with. While there truly is physical beauty in youth, the truth is that my wife, after almost 10 years of marriage, is more beautiful to me than ever. Abraham’s wife was so beautiful to him at 65 that he feared for his life. Lastly, we men, me included, are good with the discipline but bad with the compliments when it comes to our children, especially our boys. We will compliment our daughters and not our boys.

Gents, my brothers, work at being Godly men. It is a lifelong journey, and you never arrive. There will always be more to learn and grow into.

Missionarybaptistchurch76@yahoo.ca

 

There has been some really good response to these lessons. Just last year at one of our associational meetings, one of our main speakers asked to see how many preachers there were under 30 years old. There were two in a room filled with preachers. The vast majority were between 40-55, and just a few over the 65 range. It was a startling look at the reality of the lack of men that many of our churches are facing.

As I mentioned last week, the vast majority of our churches are filled with ladies. Once again, there is nothing against the ladies; we need them and cherish them. BUT we need godly men to fill our churches as well. Men who will love the Lord, love His holy word and be apt to teach it.

I hope with this to equip families to teach young men. I hope to help a home where the lady is the head of the home or the only spiritual leader to be equipped to help the young men in their homes become godly men. I hope to equip young men to grow, and I hope to help young women to be able to identify the young men that God has for them and be able to help them be the men that God intended them to be. To be ‘helpmeets’ like Eve was designed to be, to help complete the men in their lives and together be the formidable strength of the local churches that they serve.

The apostle Paul, via the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, offers us some insights into how Godly men should be in 1 Corinthians 16:13,

“Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong.”

In Jude, verse 3, we find that he tells us that his intention was to write about our common salvation, but was led by the Holy Spirit to write this,

“It was needful for me to write unto you, and exhort you that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered to the saints.”

1. Godly men should stand in and for the faith

This means that you have to know what you believe and why you believe it. Men need to be able to handle the Bible. Too often in TV shows we see the women are the foundation of the faith in a home. Let me give you an example from one of my wife’s favorite TV shows. The Walton’s features a family that regularly attend the local church there on the mountain. In the show, the dad is not a church-goer really, but mom is, and she takes the kids. In reality, the man who plays John Walton was a devout Christian and his TV wife the skeptic. But for the sake of Hollywood, the opposite was portrayed.

In many shows, the Christian is the fanatic and the nut case, the one who takes the OT rules to the extreme. But no one wants to admit the difference that true Christianity made to the world. Many of our prominent universities began as seminaries: places like Harvard and Yale. Just about everywhere in the world that true Christians went, they brought education. Often, it was the church house that became the school house during the week. The Gutenberg press began to allow the mass production of books, especially the Bible, and allowed the common man to get the Bible. Today we have people still actively translating the Bible.

Just yesterday, I found out that one of my nieces is in England studying music therapy and how it is used to help mentally ill people, used to help people with depression and a host of other diseases of the mind. In 1 Samuel 16:14-23, we find that God knew about this kind of therapy, and David played a harp for King Saul to comfort him in dark times.

We need men to stand up for the truths of the Bible by, first of all, knowing the truth of the Bible; so we need men to teach the Bible to young men. It may seem as if they are not listening, but they are; and more importantly, they see a man teaching the Bible and realize that it is not just for women folk. We need men who experientially know Jesus; they have walked and talked with Him and have seen His hand for themselves. I have!

I can tell you account after account of how God has spoken to me, shown me and met me where I was. I can tell you of events big and small in which I know for certain that I had neither the power nor the ability to perform. It was the Lord. I can tell you that God has provided for me and my family beyond what I make and that He is faithful. We need more and more men with this kind of experiential knowledge of God. Trust me, I am still learning and still growing, but I know God is real.

Both Paul and Jude encourage us to behave like men. Be strong in the faith, contend for the faith, stand for the truth, behave like you actually believe in a real God who does real things in your life and that He is the God you trust with your life. Godly men should not have two standards of life, one for church and then another for ‘real’ life. No, one standard for all, God’s standard.

1. We need Godly men to be faithful to their wives.

In Ephesians 5:25 we see this famous verse,

“Husbands love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.”

Men need to be servants, and their boys need to see them serving their wives, their children, their churches and their neighbors. Jesus washed the disciples’ feet; surely, we can shovel some snow, wash a car, mow a lawn or weed a garden for the neighbor. We can actually show God’s love and not just talk about it. Young boys need to hear men say ‘I love you’ to their wives and to them as well. Young boys need to see a hug, and a hold. They need to see genuine affection between mom and dad. Let them see how a real man loves a woman, not just how the media promotes using women.

Men should speak lovingly to their wives and learn to hold our tongues. Man, this is hard to do, but if we are to be true servants, we must learn that it is not necessary to have the last word; it is not necessary to say that dig at your spouse or to point out every little flaw. One must not get his way all the time or ever if that is what it takes to show true love. A man should not tolerate evil in his home, but we should learn to tolerate preferences that are not ours. A Godly man does not impose his will all the time; he leads and shows, he teaches by example, and then God leads others to follow.

Lately, there has been a rash of so-called preachers getting into trouble with regard to sexual issues. As we can see from King David, even a man after God’s own heart can forget his call as a man of God when faced with a beautiful naked woman. The story of Bathsheba has lived on in history for millennia. Sex is not a bad thing. God invented it and gave us the intimacy of sex to bind a man and his wife together for fun and not just for babies. Children are the fruit of a good sexually intimate marriage. God talks of the intimacy of marriage in passages like Proverbs 5:18-19,

“May your fountain be blessed, and may you rejoice with the wife of your youth. A loving doe, a graceful fawn- may her breasts satisfy you always, may you be captivated by her love forever.”

This is the Godly kind of romance, not the garbage that you find in modern movies and in the romance novels of the modern day. A married couple (a man and a woman) can be as adventurous as they want in their bedroom as long as it is between them and agreed upon.

Hebrews 13:4b “The marriage bed is undefiled.”

We need Godly men who will love their wives passionately and be captivated with their love, their physical beauty and their wonder. Young boys and men need to see their fathers fawning over mom and treating her as the beauty that she is. They need to see that a lifetime of satisfying one woman takes real men. Any boy can satisfy a different woman for one night. But real men, Godly men, invest a lifetime into their wives. There is nothing more beautiful than seeing an elderly couple who are still chatty and flirting with each other, and still happy to be together. We need Godly men to bring honor back to the sexual union that God created and blessed.

The Song of Solomon is an entire book in the Bible on human sexuality and on the intimacy and the veracity of love between a man and his wife. Apparently, Jewish people were not allowed to read that book until they were about to be married or after they were married; it is that explicit. For some reason a lot of churches simply do not talk about human sexuality from God’s point of view. This leaves a void that the Devil is filling with sexual perversion and sexual abominations that are killing our young people and plaguing our societies. Is it not sad that we have come to the point where if a man protects the sanctity of his marriage, he is considered odd? The Lord’s churches have allowed this to happen by not teaching Biblical sexuality. We need Godly men to lead here as well.

1. We need Godly men who have flaws in their armor.

We need to be real. We are not perfect. I am far from it. 1 John 1:8 tells us that if we say we have no sin, we are liars. We do not have it figured out. We should always be learning. I came into the parenting thing late in life. I was in my early 40s when I became a stepdad – Dad, as my kids call me; and then my wife and I had another child, three in all. I thought I had it figured out as a pastor. Man, I was wrong! I still don’t have it figured out 10 years later. As a pastor I have had to go back and apologize for sermons and then teach the whole truth. As a salesman I need to constantly grow and learn.

I fail, a lot. I sin, a lot. I probably embarrass God a lot. But He still loves me. We need to be real and love our wives and children in their reality. There are still rules and consequences, but the Bible says love covers a multitude of sins; love never fails. It is not weakness to admit flaws; it is weakness to hide them. Make no mistake; you are not fooling anyone. Maybe yourself. If you live with someone like your wife or kids for a while, they know all your flaws like you know theirs. Stop faking it.

Godly men confess sin daily. Godly men confess sins to their wives and kids. Godly men seek to do better, try harder and fail over and over. Godly men fail, but are never failures because they confess and try again. Godly men do not give up on their wives or their kids. Once again, this is not an excuse to condone sin. There are consequences, but mercy and grace should be exhausted to the nth degree since God does the same for us.

This is why you need men, fathers, pastors and leaders who are familiar in a personal way with the Lord. Men who have felt the mercy and the grace of God. Men who have deserved the wrath of God but experience His love, His touch, His kind word, His blessing instead of His punishment, His grace instead of His wrath; and with this knowledge, they lead our homes, our churches and our nations.

Will you step up? Will you join the front lines? Will you stand fast and stand firm like a man?

Missionarybaptistchurch76@yahoo.ca