Honorable Christian Manhood (pt 8)
Valuing What God Values
Taigen Joos
Part 1 ♦ Part 2 ♦ Part 3 ♦ Part 4 ♦ Part 5 ♦ Part 6 ♦ Part 7
Our honor, our Christianity and our manhood are things which should be greatly valued by all men claiming to be Christians. As men, we tend to place a value on a great many things. We value our cars, our homes, our jobs, our “toys,” our positions, our authority, our stock portfolios, and our hobbies a lot more (generally speaking) than we do our own personal integrity and our relationships with God and our spouses. We more quickly and readily cultivate other things than our own integrity. In doing so, we make excuses for ourselves. We chalk it up to being “only human” or we rationalize our problems away by saying, “I can’t change who I am.” By making these and other excuses, we continue our downward, unmanly spiral of destruction.
Men, it is time that we face the reality of our own depravity. It is time that we forsake our wicked, rebellious thoughts against God and His Word. It is time for us to humble ourselves before God and cry out for mercy, forgiveness, and grace. It is time that we stop walking in the flesh, in which we easily give in to our own depraved desires. It is time to start walking in the Spirit, so as to starve out the evil desires of our flesh, and therefore strengthen the character of Christ in us.
What this boils down to is this: we must value what God values, hate what God hates, and honor what God honors.
- Does God value honorable Christian men in His Word?
- Does God hate the indulgence of man’s fleshly appetites?
- Does God look favorably upon men who, because they refuse to listen to God, live wickedly on the earth?
It is our obligation as men to discard our current, ungodly value system, which is largely tainted by the ungodly world around us, and replace it with a value system that is thoroughly and biblically shaped by God Himself. We must embrace what God embraces, love what God loves, and hate what God hates.
This is an incredibly important topic for many reasons. First, our wives need to see us as men lead in integrity and godly living. They look to us to be the kind of humble leaders God has designed us to be. They desire us to live holy lives and lead them to do the same for the glory of God. They desire us to cultivate the kind of love that honors God.
Second, our children need to see their father get more serious about spiritual things than he is interested in his favorite sports team or hobby.
Third, and ultimately, this is important because God’s glory is at stake in our lives. When we refuse to value and honor what God does, we fail to magnify Him to the world around us. They may see us living in the filth of our flesh while vocally claiming to be a Christian, but they see the dishonesty and hypocrisy in such a lifestyle. God’s glory is at stake, men!
William Merrill wrote a hymn at the beginning of the 20th century which says,
Rise up, O men of God!
Have done with lesser things.
Give heart and mind and soul and strength
To serve the King of kings.
It is time for the men of Christ’s church to rise up, be done with the lesser things of this earth, and wholeheartedly pursue Christ and live honorably as Christian men.
Taigen Joos is the pastor of Heritage Baptist Church in Dover, NH. He blogs here, where this article first appeared. It is republished here by permission.