How to Raise Weak Men

1 Kings 21:7 ESV

And Jezebel his wife said to him, “Do you now govern Israel? Arise and eat bread and let your heart be cheerful; I will give you the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite.

“Devin, be quiet.” Are the words I bark to the back seat. We are forty-five minutes into our in-service day trip to Larned, KS with forty-five minutes to go, the disagreement erupted from the back rows of the van. “But Peter isn’t being nice.” Is the whiny plea I hear in response, but it grows quiet, so I am left once again to my pensive thoughts. “Be quiet” and “Be nice” seem to be the thing my children struggle with the most. Yet at this particular moment Voddie Bachuum is berating my mind with his typical condescending tone “the eleventh commandment, ‘thou shalt be nice’” and I am left wondering what I am raising my sons to be?

Devin has been told “be nice” enough to know that others should be nice, defined as do what he wants. Is “be nice” really the goal I have for the young men I work most often to train in their manhood? Is “be quiet” the twelfth commandment they need to survive God’s wrath? What I really desire is that these young men be self-controlled, because loud voices are needed when wrongs are done. Strong aggressive thoughtful responses are demanded when evil is afoot. If I succeed in raising my son’s to "be nice and quiet", I have raised geldings instead of stallions. They must be trained to be self-controlled and thoughtful, not “nice” or “quiet”. Theodore Roosevelt was a runt of a child, and given the times, he found himself beat up (back when bullying required more than just words). His father took matters in hand and trained his son to box, not avoid the fight. Our society has trained its sons to be nice and avoid conflict, instead of training them to fight and win conflicts.

As these thoughts reverberate through my brain, I am brought to the next two best practices to raising weak men. We see this in Ahab. Ahab is King of Israel. He wants a field that he can’t have and quickly withers into a cry baby fit to get what he wants. His wife comes along, she is a strong/willful woman, who desires her husband to be happy, so she takes command and gives him what he wants. Make sure there are plenty of strong women around him. Kathrine von Bora was a willful strong woman. So much so that no one would marry her. Except one old, confirmed bachelor, who liked the idea of making people mad. So Martin Luther married her, and their marriage was fruitful, and loud. Her care and resolve against his bachelor ways increased his ministry by ten years at the least. Such a person was best suited to accomplish what was needed. If she had been weak the marriage would have limped and both would have been unable to run the race as well as they did. Ahab, though was weak, and his wife was strong so her pagan sensibilities ran the country, and Ahab was okay with that he got what he wanted.

The last point necessary in the making of weak men, is giving them what they want. He has what he wants, nothing to strive or fight for. She has given it to me. Train him well to declare his wants to strong women in his life. Give those desires to him, so that he need not learn to strive for anything. He need not learn the lessons of discipline and work to achieve his goals. Whining and complaining work just as well.

How do we train weak men? 1) Train them to be quiet, that way when they need to yell, they don’t know how. 2) Train them to avoid conflict by being nice, that way they won’t know how to fight when something needs fighting for. 3) Surround them with Strong and willful women to care for them, so they don’t have a vacuum to fill. 4) Give them what they want, so they never learn to connect discipline and work with achievement.

How does a generation raised like this; train the Churchmen our churches need? No excuses. Men are what the church needs more than the culture around us. Men disciplined, self-controlled, willing and ABLE to fight. If you see a young man in church, how are you helping the cause?

Coram Deo

Abandoned Trust

Mark 13:1 ESV

And as he came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him “Look, Teacher, what wonderful stones and what wonderful buildings!”

The building was large, made of red brick, with gorgeous stained-glass windows on the north and eastern wall, capturing the morning sun on this Sunday morning. Walking into the sanctuary was a pleasure to the senses. The Ceiling arched from the four corners of the room to produce a gorgeous vaulted ceiling. The curved pews sloped down to the pulpit and stage. The love of a generation was evident in the architecture and the accouterments in the building. A generation of Baptists had saved and sacrificed to build a building that could be used by generations to come to spread the Gospel. Built with size and grandeur, stunning in scope, and joyful in measure. They worshiped God and raised generations to follow them.

All the sounds and smiles were familiar to me. I knew no one, and had never seen them before, but they were the same dumb jokes and friendly smiles I had grown up with. Sweet men and women wanting nice people to Jesus. After the singing the missionary took the stage and told of all that God was doing in the women’s ministry that the church was supporting. Looking at the clock and noting she had gone over she offered to stay after and talk with any who would like to. Singing a closing song and the service was concluded. With handshakes, smiles, and a funny joke we proceeded to our car. I was left wondering if the church that built the building would desire the church that was inhabiting it.

They worked hard, they sacrificed (literally and figuratively), they gave up everything that they could rebuild the temple. They laid the foundations that others might build upon it (Ezra 3). Much would transpire between Ezra and Jesus walking beside the temple. The building would endure and be expanded upon until its destruction in 70 AD at the hands of the Roman legions. Apostasy and revival, neglect and restoration, faithfulness and ritual, all would have their place in the 585 years that it would serve the generations of Jewish worshipers. The builders would be overwhelmed to know that the messiah would walk amongst those very foundations, and they would be appalled to see their children reject the salvation he would offer.

From our Sunday morning church service, we would make our way down to the Amana Colonies. Learning of a group of people committed to life together. So much so that they owned nothing and would leave Germany to make a place for themselves with all the other religious outcasts in the Americas. They would toil and live until one day their flour mill blew up and burned down. With-in ten years of that event the colony would bow to the prevailing secularization and fold. They would endure but as individuals. As Kelly and I discussed the change we had to conclude that the trials and struggles of life had not destroyed the colonies. They had come with nothing built and sacrificed for it; they could do so again if need be. No, the issue was passing the faith along.

The generation that built the mills (saw, wool, and flour), that carved seven communities out of the Iowa landscape, simply was not the generation that had a mill fire. The new generation simply did not have the faith of the prior. The willingness to sacrifice and suffer for what they said they believed. And so, the building changed hands from community to individuals. A sacred trust had been given to future generations to steward the faith with. Buildings, land, infrastructure all to shepherd men, women, and children into the communal faith. They failed to do so.

As Jews for centuries would come to the temple, they too would eventually fail to recognize the feet of their Lord walking among the foundation stones. They would reject the faith spoken to them by the prophets, and recorded for them in the scrolls. And the temple also would burn down as Christ foretold. Christians faithfully go to beautiful buildings, singing the great songs of the faith, passing the form of faith on to their children in buildings entrusted to them to pass the seed of the faith. As we look at the blessings of generations that surround us, let us not quickly ignore the trust placed upon us by those saints who have come before. We have been blessed and given a sacred trust. Let us not abandon it, but seek more diligently to instill in all who would hear the news “that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures…”

CRUCE, DUM SPIRO, FIDO

Socks

2 Samuel 17:25 ESV

Now Absalom had set Amasa over the army instead of Joab. Amasa was the son of a man named Ithra the Ishmaelite, who had married Abigal the daughter of Nahash, sister of Zeruiah, Joab’s mother.

It is not unusual to have powerful families. We see the Adams’, Bushes, Kennedys, and think that they are somehow special in but they are actually normative to the world of politics, in every country and age of men. It was no different in David’s day. As his son has rebelled against him he has gathered to himself those who he knows and who are able to succeed at the job they have been given. So he hires family. In this case he hired his second cousin (David, Zeruiah, and Nahash are all children of Jesse; Joab and Absalom are cousins with Abigal, Amasa is Abigal’s son). David’s sin with Bathsheba not only divided the country and caused the deaths of twenty THOUSAND men, but also the division of his own family, it was a true civil war. THAT is the destructive power of sin in our lives.

The seventeenth verse of the first chapter of Jeremiah, gives us Jeremiah’s ordination in the presence of God. His commissioning words to Jeremiah tell him to dress for work. When I was a young boy, I quickly learned the value of always taking my shoes off when I would come inside. It was born not out of care for cleanliness but rather out of sloth. When my parents wanted something done outside, my brother would be the one chosen, because he had his shoes on and was able to go do the work quickly and they must wait for me, sin is truly a devious thing. God tells Jeremiah to get ready to work. Take off the kid gloves, the house slippers, and put on the ripped up, stained on, clothes and get outside. A nation who has rejected its founder and creator, that has been allowed to wander away, is hard work to bring back into the corral. It is not the work for sloths but for the diligent. Not young or old but those that have “dressed for action like a man” that have girded up their loins (King James version).

Indeed, we must pray for a generation that fears the Lord, pursues wisdom, discretion, truth, and work, but they do not spring fully formed / cut from whole cloth. It is years of work, diligence, and sacrifice. It requires boys and girls to grow into men and women, more concerned with offending God with their silence than offending friends with their words. As a church are we dressed for action, for the actions needed to salt a society? Are you dear Christian sitting around with your shoes off when God has called for work to be done, waiting for your brother to do the work?

The bible is quite clear that the gospel, and serving the true and righteous king, will divide families, “setting a man against his father, mother against daughter, and a daughter-in-law against mother-in-law” (Matthew 10:35). Jeremiah 1:19 has God warning Jeremiah that “they will fight”. We are not to expect every battle to be Hezekiah and the band. Jeremiah was beat-up, starved, thrown in a mud pit… and yet God told him “they shall not prevail”. Our enemy will take his toll on us, our family, our church, our nation, yet it will be far worse when “good me do nothing” and say nothing. We must be salt “in word and deed”.

“Gird up your loins like a man” there is work to be done.

A Listening Ear

1 Samuel 14:37 ESV

And Saul inquired of God, “Shall I go down after the Philistines? Will you give them into the hand of Israel?” But he did not answer him that day.

It had been a long day of great victory. Israel had dealt a great blow to the Philistines; Jonathan had bravely and individually begun the battle and the nation rallied to him. Now Saul, like any great general, is wanting to press his advantage. The man who would raise Jonathan so well, that he would forsake his own throne in light of David, is the man who knows that without God’s help failure is all that awaits, and so he asks God which way to go. And nothing. God refuses to say yes or no, because sin has come upon the people. Jonathan had eaten some honey in contradiction to Saul’s vow about a fast. The story resolves with the people pardoning Jonathan and refusing to allow Saul to kill him, and God’s people unable to continue the campaign into another.

How seriously do you take the idea of your own personal sin being the reason for God not doing/answering…? The dominant question is rarely one of importance to such a busy people, we look for deals and seek to negotiate not wanting to acknowledge that our sin is a very real possibility for our troubles and turmoil. Even in this case the sin rested in another. It wasn’t Saul’s sin that hindered God from answering him. It was hidden sin in his family that caused God to reject the petition for counsel. Once the sin was known and sorrowfully dealt with, God would answer later, but not until.

God continues to work through his people and establishes them. They in turn reject his good laws and pursue worldly pleasure and standing. This leads to their downfall and rejection. Isaiah speaks of this rejection in chapter 57 verse 17 of his book:

“Because of the iniquity of his unjust gain I was angry, I struck him; I hid my face and was angry, but he went on backsliding in the way of his own heart,”

He explains how he tried to correct the nation. He punished them and refused to listen to them. They did not respond to punishment and they did not examine themselves when he refused to answer their prayers. Israel showed itself to be totally depraved. Unable to respond to correction in any meaningful way they were powerless and hopeless. Such is the nature of our depravity, without the intervention of God to move in us we reject salvation and run from redemption.

Praise be to God, he does not leave us there, Isaiah continues in verse 18 and says, “I have seen his ways, but I will heal him; I will lead him and restore comfort to him and his mourners,”. God steps in and heals his people, not because they did anything, but because he loves them. They persisted in disobedience and turned a blind eye to his silence, and seeing all this he chose to change their heart.

I often grow fearful for my children. Not seeing changes in their personality and knowing what awaits adults with such habits, I fear for them. Yet, reading this gives me hope. My children, like their father, do not have hope in the future because of their good behavior, winning personality, or discerning heart. Our hope is in God who will pity us and change our heart, not because of worth but because of his great love. Let us rejoice in the God who hears the prayer of his son.

“I am praying for them…I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word,” John 17:9,20

CRUCE, DUM SPIRO, FIDO

For Some Reason

1 Samuel 9:3 ESV

Now the donkeys of Kish, Saul’s father, were lost. So Kish said to Saul his son, “Take one of the young men with you, and arise, go and look for the donkeys.”

Most of us have shows that are amazing in our memories. We probably don’t sit down and watch them anymore but they simply live on in all their childhood glory in our sepia toned memories. One of those for me is “Quantum Leap” and as such it is reasonable click-bait for me. A quick twenty-minute documentary (it's quick because I watch it at 1.5X speed), and “oh, boy” it is all coming back to me, a scene here a scene there and my nostalgia is in full swing. The latest of these began with Scott Bakula telling of his casting. He was on a hit Broadway show at the time, and “for whatever reason” he felt the need to go back to L.A. And so, he quit and went back to California. A couple weeks later he auditioned for this part. Dean Stockwell tells a similar story about his casting in the series. Stockwell has a successful movie out and “for some reason” he is taken with this script and auditions. The rest is history or simply nostalgia for me.

“For some reason” the servant forgot that those donkeys can be pretty ornery. You have to take some extra precaution to make sure they can’t get out. The new guy got told to put them away and didn’t know, or maybe it was the donkey’s first “great escape” and no one had any idea it was coming. Yet, now they are wandering the countryside enjoying the fruits of freedom. Not being too rambunctious, so as to avoid detection, they wander the secret places of the hill country, avoiding detection. And so “For some reason” Kish sends his son to go find his donkeys instead of only his servants. “For some reason” Saul picks the servant that knows of a seer in the land of Zuph and one that is wise enough to have money in his pocket!

God’s providence is a thing that simply is not understandable by human minds. We try to connect all the dots and think we can read the tea leaves but “for some reason” it worked out differently. “For some reason” what was supposed to work didn’t and what should have been a bad idea worked. That is Providence. God working the tangled web of our lives and choices to bring about his glory and our good. The nonChristian may recognize the inability of man to control or manipulate all the variables to come to the desired conclusion and attribute such an event to being “just lucky” or to some unknown reason they can’t put a finger on. This however is far below the grateful attitude of a man seeking God’s heart. I have often wondered how a man learns so many trades that he can be an expert seamster, goldsmith, tentmaker, and bronzesmith to the point that God ordains him to build the temple (Exodus 31:3), I imagine there were many “for some reason”s that it didn’t work out for such a capable person before he got to the point that he was filled with the Holy Spirit for the Tabernacles construction.

God providentially worked in some obnoxious animals getting loose. God providentially worked in the selecting of a servant. God providentially worked in NOT finding. In all the failures you are forced to endure, as you think upon all that you are doing that doesn’t seem to be working out, do not underestimate or look past God’s providence. Keep working, keep looking, keep praising God, and let providence reign in victory and defeat. Knowing that both are for God’s glory and our good.

CRUCE, DUM SPIRO, FIDO