I don't care if the flow is interrupted I have something to say and that's the way it will be.
What was I going to say...? It doesn't matter; I'll just type until I lose consciousness and wake with the imprint of a keyboard across the right side of my face.
How about I talk about what I have been learning as sleep has slipped away for the past few nights.
You could say that something has developed in my life that is challenging and unexpected and has directed my attentions toward a review of what the Bible says about men as masculine defenders, humble leaders, cultivators of women and children, haters of evil, knowledge imparting sages, self-controlled one-woman servants, and upright loyal Christians.
Basically Driscoll has been yelling at me for days now. It's awesome. If a man looks at his call and future without the fear of God and without an understanding of what his identity is, then he will live to his own glory, avoiding responsibility, not serving others, not leading a family, being a passive coward, contributing to a world where 40% of kids got to bed without a dad, because their dad was one of the worst kinds of men who use and abandon women. Was that a run-one sentence? Probably.
As Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, 1st Timothy, 2nd Timothy, and Titus all agree men are prone to passiveness or arrogant chauvinism. My natural tendency is toward passivity. Apart from God I am a the guy who avoids confrontation, who will agree with you to avoid being seen as a jerk, who will not point out folly and stupidity, who will not condemn evil even when it is causing generational damage, who will sit idly by like my father Adam while the Enemy lies and tears apart families and friendships.
But what is a man if he isn't getting into trouble, if he isn't contending for truth, if he isn't speaking that truth into the lives of his friends, if he isn't prayerfully showing manly fortitude while opposing the Enemy of God?
1 Peter 1:18 tells me that I have been "ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers". My forefathers were passive men. By the grace of God I don't need to be like them, repeating their mistakes and teaching them to my kids. It stopped with me. My kids will be different because of Jesus. Man that truth is so easy to forget. I need to be reminded often.
Grace...yeah I received a book from a friend about that. Here's some cool stuff from it:
"I've found that words tend to spoil ove the years, like old meat. Their meaning rots away."Philip Yancey is comparing the word grace to other words whose meaning has dimmed and festered over the centuries. He sees the word Grace as an imperishable words that has survived and infiltrated every facet of our nomenclature: persona non grata (an enemy of the state) means literally a person without grace, we leave gratuities at restaurants, we congratulated for success, we show scorn by denying a person grace "You ungrateful ass!" "You're an ingrate", and when a woman is assaulted we say she has been disgraced (her grace has been taken away).
"...grace is indeed amazing--truely our last best word."Yancey pays the word grace a high compliment - I would disagree, I believe the word "steak" is the most beautiful, most excellent, most honorific collection of alphanumeric symbols which unite into an amplified tintinnabulation resounding off the faces of mountains causing birds to sing, men to rise to war, enemies to flee, women to rejoice, and God to be honored. Um... what the hell was that all about? I guess it's 2AM and I'm hungry... Seriously Grace is freakin' sweet. It is the most difficult doctrine for me to understand and I have to fight to not be deceived regarding it's impact on my life.
"[Most people] think of church as a place to go after you have cleaned up your act, not before."Sad but true. Folks try to use religion to manipulate God into loving them, instead of throwing their atrocious life on the grace of Jesus because He already showed efficacious love.
Um what else have I learned during my nocturnal roamings and MP3 induced sesquipedalian prayers?
Driscoll quoted another preacher who said no man can ever out-shovel a woman's capacity to love. The point is that ladies have a greater capacity for expressing love that a man does (Men can show love but it looks different--it tends to be shown in action not spoken). This is a complicating variable, because women need to hear love to feel it whereas men need to feel respected. I know I am at my happiest not when my life is smooth and easy, but when I feel respect as an image bearer of God. Driscoll's point is that a masculine husband needs to labor and be intentional about his words of affection otherwise he has "not provided for the needs of his" wife. We all know the other half of that saying...
All my reading and auditory grappling has had a particular two-pronged focus: (1) encouraging me to rest in the grace of God and (2) demanding that I live in the fear of an Almighty God. Fear of the lord is my only hope for wisdom, and man, I could really use some.
I might actually be getting tired; this is good. Lemme go stare at the ceiling some more and see if I can stop feeling dumb because I can't follow the instructions that are so obvious that even the mattress company's lawyers don't feel the need to put them on the tag: step 1 - Lay down on mattress, step 2 - go to sleep. Man, you can tell I went to public school, I can't figure out step 2!!
