Author

Glory – The Mark of High Achievement

“And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.”
2 Corinthians 3:18

The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one”
John 17:22

Weak males in the religious world avoid talking about glory for two primary reasons. One is that they have never experienced any glory in their own lives. People always hate the things they cannot or have not experienced. Two: They mistakenly associate glory with pride.

If men in the religious world want to take a pseudo-moral stand against any idea or mentality, they label it as “pride”. Pride is the “all-purpose sin” that is just vague enough to cover anything that low-achievement religious men do not like. It is your responsibility to not be like these men in this way. They are thinking wrongly about glory and success. If glory is prideful, these men have justified being losers. If glory and success are amoral, however, then there is nothing that can be attacked with morality. Think of glory the same way you think of money: an amoral tool or the world.

A man can never do great work and be rewarded for it in the eyes of low-achievement men, any glory equates to pride in their minds.

The reality is that glory makes men who have accomplished nothing feel insignificant or inferior, so they have no choice but to label that glory as arrogance. Glory is not arrogance, it is a reward for doing something well.

If someone is more successful than you, they simply made different decisions than you.

Glory is also closely related to being praised. It is the result of high achievement. Glory is to be earned in life and it is not arrogant or selfish to seek it out. You should always be aiming to accomplish things with your life, and glory will come as a byproduct of that effort.

“Do you see a man who excels in his work? He will stand before kings and not unknown men” –
Proverbs 22:29

For those who never attain glory on the earth, the afterlife is filled with glory for the way you maintained the faith here on earth. It is our mission to make it to that glory without becoming sidetracked by the thoughts of how boring heaven might be when described by many people. This itself is a tool of the devil.

Mantra

To live is glory, to die is glory.

Application

Aim high in your life. Do not use your Christianity as an excuse to be pathetic in your career and in your personal life. If you are truly doing your work “as to the Lord and not as unto men” (Ephesians 6:6-7), then you will certainly attain glory, and there is nothing wrong with that.

Rid your mind of the wrongful propaganda that you have heard your whole life: people who receive honors are not arrogant.

People in the religious world can only accuse them of arrogance because none of them have ever achieved anything in their own lives.

Aim higher than you think you are capable of achieving, because you can do much more than you think you can.

Win the wars of your mind and accept the glory that comes with your accomplishments. Do not let the ego take over, avoid allowing your accomplishments to make you feel more important than you are. If you can command your ego in the midst of great accomplishment, you have mastered an important part of your character.

Accept glory, but never become complacent in your past achievements. You must always be improving, working towards something new, something that will bring additional glory or success.

It is not wrong to be successful and do not listen to anyone who says otherwise.

Work hard.

Focus on what matters.

Be great at everything you do by concentrating your work ethic into it and by doing it unto the Lord and not unto man.

Win the battle over ego.

Command yourself and your mind as a general commands his men.

Conduct yourselves like men.

Forge Your Own Path

For whatever you think, believe and do in life, you must forge your own path.

“Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling”.
Philippians 2:12

So many men in the church have grown up their whole lives simply accepting whatever dogma was given to them by their parents. They never question a single drip of the doctrine that is passed down from generation to generation. Even if what they are being told is right, this mental laziness is wrong.

It is of extreme importance for every young man to forge his own path and uncover what it is he truly believes.

Every man has the responsibility of examining everything he knows and seeing if it is really true. As mentioned in an earlier section, one of the finest examples of the refusal to forge one’s own path is the Baptist mantra, “Born a Baptist, Live as a Baptist, Die as a baptist”. The emphasis here, therefore, is not on discovering what the truth is, but rather is focused on maintaining a personal label that one has invested in for years. That mentally shows that many men are not interested in having a logical “answer for the reason for the hope within them” (1 Peter 3:15), but instead are interested in living a life based on emotions. This mantra says, “Even if I am shown viewpoints that oppose my own and that may actually have merit, I will not give up my man-made, denominational name for the sake of truth”.

The masculine man is one who does not blindly accept what he has been told his entire life.

Instead he scrutinizes everything that he is told just like the Noble Bereans (Acts 17:11). He first examines the validity of the Creationist arguments and compares them to the evolutionist arguments. He then compares Bible-based Christianity to all other religions to see which is true based on fact. Finally, he compares what is taught in the Bible to what is taught in the various “flavors” of Christianity and chooses the one he can prove best fits what the Bible has to say. This is what it means to forge your own path. A man must have his own personal, intrinsic reasons for believing and behaving in specified ways.

The masculine man rejects the typical mental laziness of so many in the religious world and instead he “works out his own salvation”. You must ensure that you are that man and that you are never falling into the trap of mental complacency.

Mantra

I have a reason for everything I believe.

Application

It is of great importance that you deconstruct everything you believe, breaking it down to the most fundamental levels in order to determine why you believe it. You need to be able to explain your own position with good reasoning rather than with emotionalism or traditionalism. This starts by answering the most fundamental questions of reality:

Why do you believe in a God?Explain why do you believe in the God of the Bible?
Why are you a Christian instead of a Muslim/Hindu/Buddhist etc.?
Why are you a specific “Type” of Christian (Church of Christ/Baptist/Methodist/Catholic etc.)? Can you defend your position as a Christian with logic?

Once you answer these big-picture questions, you can begin to answer all the smaller questions:

Why did God command this behavior?
For what cause did God instruct His people to take these specific military actions?
Why does God operate in the ways that He does throughout the Bible? (Etc.)

For every question you have in your own mind, you need a clear answer. If you don’t think you will know how to answer a question someone might ask you, then you need to do some deep thinking and find a good answer. It is not enough to simply do something because you have always been taught to do it. You need your own reasons.

A masculine man forges his own path, character and philosophies from the foundation of logical thinking.

He is able to answer questions rationally, not emotionally. The masculine man is stoic and is concerned with the answer to the question “What is truth?”. He is not concerned with the answer to the question “Who is right?”

You have a responsibility to be this rational, masculine man. It is imperative that you have your own reasons for everything you do and you must never take anything at face value. A man is never excused from the responsibility of using his own rational mind to discover what is truth and, more importantly, to “work out his own salvation with fear and trembling”.

Conduct Yourselves Like Men.

Hell – The Myth of The Physical

There is no subject the church is more popular for than hell. In the modern day, the talk of hell has slowed down because no one wants to “get their hands dirty” and speak about the punishment that awaits the evil. On the few occasions that we do hear about hell, it is almost never correct. Men speak about “burning in hell”, as if hell will be physical fire and physical pain. The fact that people think hell will be a literal burning sensation shows how little they are willing to think critically about the Word of God.

“But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.”
Revelation 21:8

“And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”
Matthew 25:46

No man knows what the afterlife will be like, but we can deduce from scripture some fundamental truths.

We know that, according to scripture, we will cast off the physical body for a more perfect spiritual body. If this is the case, what will be left that can experience physical pain? We have no more nerves, our pain receptors are done away with, therefore we could not possibly feel the same physical pain that we feel on the earth.

What is left is spiritual pain that affects the spiritual body. Spiritual pain must be much deeper and more painful, because the only way to describe it is to compare it to the pain of being burned with fire, one of the most painful experiences known to man.

This is done in the same way that heaven is told to have streets of gold and jewels and precious metals everywhere. Do you think this is the literal description of how heaven will be? Will heavenly roads be lined with physical gold right off the periodic table of elements? Probably not, but this biblical illustration is an analogy to help us visualize how glorious heaven is by using materials we are already familiar with and appreciate. So also, the pain of hell is made real in our minds by comparing it with the forms of pain we already understand: fire

For this reason, hell is a spiritual pain, and will likely be worse than being on fire, but who can truly know before they get there?

The key for us to never find out what it is like, this is done by acting like men and taking noble and righteous action each day. We can avoid the entire debate of whether or not hell is a physical burning or what the pain is like by simply choosing not to go there. We choose not to go to hell with our actions and the way we conduct ourselves, which is why it is not redundant to continue to remind you to Conduct Yourself Like a Man.

Mantra

Avoid the Spiritual death, act with righteousness.

Hell. Fire — **Not** What Hell Will Be Like

Application

Rather than being burned by the fires of hell, use the reality of eternal punishment as a motivator to continue to press you towards what is right. There will be many times in life where doing what is right is not convenient and not fun, but the reminder of consequences for our actions keeps us on the path.

In contrast, it is damaging to the mind to only be motivated by wanting to avoid punishment, but this is where many Christians find themselves.

Heaven does not sound that appealing to many Christians, but hell sounds horrible, so we do what is right as men and stay on the straight and narrow (Matthew 7:14). We must retrain our mind to desire heaven and also want to avoid hell. When we combine both of these motivations into one, we are much more efficient and mentally stable.

Correct the thoughts that enter your mind by becoming aware of them, and then by redirecting them.

You own your mind, you tell it what you want it to think.

You must command yourself into a better pattern of thinking.

Act with strength and determination.

Gather all power into your mind.

Master your thinking.

Crush the enemy.

Conduct yourself like Men.

The Lion Mentality – Daniel’s Lions

The Lion Mentality is one of aggression and focus.

“And the king gave the command, and they brought those men who had accused Daniel, and they cast them into the den of lions—them, their children, and their wives; and the lions overpowered them, and broke all their bones in pieces before they ever came to the bottom of the den.”
Daniel 6:24

When children are learning about the story of Daniel in the Old Testament, they always learn two basic lessons.

Daniel prayed three times per day (Daniel 6:10) and did so even though he knew there would be consequences for praying to or worshiping anyone but King Darius (6:7-8).
Daniel was tossed in the den of lions but God closed the mouths of the lions and Daniel lived (6:21-22).

What children don’t learn or perhaps gloss over is a very important lesson that can be taken from the end of the chapter. And it is not merely a lesson, but a principle or an attitude that can be learned even from the animal kingdom through the Biblical lens. The principle comes from the selected verse of the day: the enemies of Daniel who plotted against him were taken and thrown in the lion’s den along with all of their family members. And the lions shattered their bones before they ever reached the bottom of the den – that is the epic ending of Daniel’s foes.

The aggression of the lions is what Men should seek to embody in their own lives.

Masculine Men possess a spirit that assaults all obstacles and crushes all opposing forces “before they can even reach the bottom of the den”. This philosophy is the opposite of procrastination. The Lion mindset is incredibly aggressive and is founded on the fast paced offensive maneuvering that all men should strive to employ in their lives.

King Darius likely had his lions starved or at the least fed them only intermittently, therefore anything that resembled food would be attacked and destroyed in an instant if it entered the den. So then men must also be hungry for personal improvement and success in their own life. Men must aggressively attack their own weaknesses and “shatter their bones”.

Mantra

I have the Lion Mindset and attack all obstacles with ferocity.

Application

These lions represent the spirit of the aggressive mentality.

The Lion Mentality is one that attacks problems before they are even problems, while they are still in the incubation stage and forces solutions onto them.

The mindset also seeks out tasks and completes them in advance, far before any deadlines need to be met.

You must be this way in your own life. When you know something must be done, you instantly attack it with violent aggression and destroy the task.

If you are in school or college, you must view yourself as a lion just waiting for a task to be tossed at you. The second you know about an assignment, you must attack it and work on it until it is finished. If you have a week to finish an assignment, finish it today. If you have a month to finish an assignment, finish it in five days maximum. You will feel a sense of pride and satisfaction in yourself that is only possible through intense, focused work.

The same thing can be done in your work.

If you are accustomed to taking a full day to produce one widget, take on the aggressive mindset and produce two widgets. Then make three and four widgets until you are the most productive person in your department. Then start your own business with your newfound aggression and work ethic and stop renting your time to the highest bidder.

You must also apply the same principles to your relationships with friends and significant others or marriage. If a problem comes up in the relationship, hit it early and quickly. Do not allow problems to fester and grow because of procrastination.

The Lion mentality can destroy Parkinson’s Law – which states, “work expands to fill the time given to complete it”.

Which simply means that if a normal man is given a week to finish a task, it will take the entire week even though it likely could have been completed in a few hours had he concentrated on it. Parkinson’s law outlines procrastination. But by applying the Lion Mindset you can short-circuit that law and be more productive than you have in the past.

Conduct Yourselves Like Men.

Motivation – Useful But Not Required

“Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.”
1 Corinthians 15:58

“Set your focus on things above, not on things of the earth”
Colossians 3:2

The meaning of motivation is literally “ a motive to act”, but men have turned it into something completely different. To the world, motivation is when you feel like taking an action. All the stars align, you are pumped and excited to go to work or to go train and you go out to pound the stone of discipline while spurred on by your warm and fuzzy feelings.

We as men know these occasions of motivation are rare and that they cannot be relied upon if our goal is to be successful.

You are only occasionally going to feel like keeping to all your disciplines. Only rarely will you desire to make those small sacrifices of discipline. The weak are the ones who wait for the stars to align before they take action. Men take the initiative and do the work when it is still inconvenient to do so. Men of character and strength improve themselves every day, not just on the days that it “feels right” to work. No Man judges whether or not he should take an action based on how he is feeling emotionally at the time.

Motivation is fickle, it is here one second and gone the next. Motivation should never be relied upon as your reason to act just as the emotional feeling of love should never be relied upon for any rational decision making. Both motivation and “love” can be here one second, and gone the next – but discipline always remains.

However, all that being said, we should still seek out motivation in the form of role models or stories that inspire us.

We should ingest a positive visual diet filled with motivation. In doing this we build a stockpile of motivation in our minds for whenever we need a boost.

Stories of men overcoming the odds and staring down their own personal adversity no matter how great or small it seemed to the world.

Examples of men who have achieved greatness in their chosen field serve as motivation to do well and they are out reminders for what is possible if we are willing to work.

When our minds and bodies are failing, we turn our minds to our role models, to the men who inspired us to take action in the first place, and we become energized to do even more work, to go even farther in our disciplines, to behave with increased masculinity and be more focused and determined in all that we do. We should fill our minds with men we admire and whom we want to be like. We must embed their words and philosophies in our minds and work to embody the spirit of the masculine Christian man.

The internet has placed dozens of excellent mentors at our fingertips. We no longer have an excuse not to improve in any facet of life. There is no justification for not knowing how to do something. There is no reason that we should not have any men to look up to.

Mantra

I am my own motivation.

Application I

Replace motivation with discipline. This can be done by forcing yourself to take action when you are not motivated. There is no simpler or easier way to become disciplined. You do not need to be the man who requires motivation to take action, you want to be the man who completes all of his work regardless of his personal feelings. Cast aside emotional motivation and take up the Blade of Discipline. Take the actions you do not want to take, that are uncomfortable, even painful but that bring the most profit.

Application II

Acquire mentors who inspire you, whether you know them personally or not does not matter. Here are some suggestions for men you can find online or in books:

Jocko Willink (Leadership/Discipline/Masculinity)
Jordan Peterson (Thinker/Lecturer/Writer)
Robert Greene (Thinker/Writer)
Elon Musk (Work Ethic)

I am not vouching for the morality of these men, some of them use profanity quite often, but they each embody a version of a masculine spirit and are great at what they have chosen to do in life. You do not have to copy their morality, only their skill and masculine characteristics.

You might look at this list of suggestions and tell me “There are not that many (if any) Christian men on this list!”.

That is correct, and it is because Christian men have this bad habit of being mediocre and forgotten. Christian men tend to be average and fail to achieve great things in life. Show young men a Man like Job or Abraham who gathered wealth and character and was still righteous and you will find another role model for them. But most Christian men are content to justify their failure by suggesting they are more spiritual for not focusing on worldly possessions.

Most Christian men do not have a psychotic work ethic.

The majority of Christian men do not gather great wealth.

Most Christian men are “theoretical success” rather than “experimental successes” (They say things like, “If I were X person, I would do X, Y and Z”, when in reality they would do none of those things because they have no idea how to manage anything which is why they are failures).

Your job is to break this mold of mediocrity and be a Christian Man who is also a respected Man of valor. We have no right to not use our time wisely and be great at our selected skills. When you pick a mentor for yourself, you must listen to him every day. Listen to his podcasts or speeches and lectures and actually try to apply some of the principles you hear. Try to embody a great and more focused mentality by being inspired by these men. Look at how other men act, and then act like them.

Conduct yourselves like men.

Page 55 of 84

« Previous 1 … 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 … 84 Next »