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Worship

What kind of worship are you offering to God on a regular basis? Are you focused on worship or on yourself? Most people in the religious world focus on themselves during worship instead of on God. They are more interested in their own emotions than they are with offering praise to God.

“But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”
John 4:23, 24

“And Jesus answered him, “It is written, “‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve.’”
Luke 4:8

There are terms to describe this distinction between worship types, it’s referred to as “vertical worship” (Where worship goes “up” to God) or “horizontal worship” (where worship moves laterally from person to person or stays within the self). Vertical worship places the focus on God and on serving Him in the worship. This is noble and preferable to horizontal worship which places the focus on the individual, on all the members of the church and how everyone is feeling emotionally about worship. Vertical worship tends to be primarily preferred by conservatives, (including radicals) while horizontal worship seems to be primarily preferred by liberals (also including radicals).

Worship is a service, and as such it should be directed towards God and not ourselves.

The only time it seems fit to observe yourself during worship is during communion. We enter the house of God not to increase our own emotions, but to present worship and service to the Lord.

Key point: This service does not always have to include enjoyment on our part. For years Christians have shoved down the throats of their children this idea of enjoying worship. This is absurd – “enjoyment” is an emotion and God never commands us to have specific emotions. While there may be times where worship is enjoyable, it is not a requirement. God commands action not emotion, this cannot be stated enough.

Did we mention that worship is not about you? It has everything to do with God, and almost nothing to do with us.

We as human beings will have our humanity and our nature infuse worship. We as humans get bored, and therefore we will occasionally become bored in worship – boredom is a feeling, an emotion. There will be instances when we will not feel like worshiping just like there are days when we don’t feel like going to work. We will dislike certain hymns (the ones the song leader will choose to lead every single Sunday without fail).

Men must sing when they don’t feel like it.

We must pray when we are not emotional.

We must worship despite how we are feeling at the time.

To suggest that we need to be in a certain emotional state in order to worship properly is dogma and propaganda that exists both in liberal and in conservative circles. Emotion should be cast aside and ignored as a requisite for worship. What does the Lord require of you? To worship in Spirit and in truth (John 4:24). That is all the Word of God says. To say we must feel a certain way for worship to be acceptable is an addition to the Word of God, a despicable power move by theoretical Christians (Deuteronomy 4:2; Revelation 22:18-19; Proverbs 30:6).

Another popular tactic used by individuals attempting to rationalize their emotional hysteria is this: “But my emotions make worship better”.

Make it better for who? For you or for God? The answer is simple, emotions make us feel better and have nothing to do with God. Take a restaurant for example: imagine you are going out to eat and you sit down in a restaurant and look over a menu. A waiter comes and takes your order: you order steak and baked potato, nothing more and nothing less. 20 minutes later the waiter comes back with a steak that has been smothered in a strawberry sauce and your potato is stuffed with mushrooms. You say to the waiter, “Hey, what happened to my order? I asked for steak and potato and that is all”. To which the waiter replies, “Well I just really like strawberry sauce on steak and mushrooms in my potato, it makes it better and I just like it”.

Do you see the problem here. The opinion of the server should not influence what he delivers to the table. Yet so many religious people do the same when it comes to worship. God listed in His word or left examples of what he wants in worship, yet we (the servers) decide to add what we think will make it better. When it comes to giving service to God, to focus should be on Him and never on ourselves.

The same emotionalistic tactic is applied to musical instruments in worship, clapping and hand-raising.

People are doing what makes them feel good and they do not care about focusing on God. This is proven by the fact that no one ever fact checks their own behavior with scripture. Take the hand-raising example – you have one main instance in scripture where the idea of lifting holy hands comes from, and it is in 1 Timothy 2:8. The first question should be “What does it mean to lift holy hands? Do I lift one hand or two? Where do I place my hands? How were hands raised in the 1st century when 1 Timothy was written?”

But none of those questions are asked because people are solely interested in doing whatever increases their own emotions while disregarding the principles of God. If Those individuals truly cared about raising hands for God’s sake, they would be neck deep in the scripture trying to find out what it truly means to “lift holy hands”. But instead they just do whatever they see fit, usually after seeing some other religious person raise their hands in a way they liked. This is a learned behavior that has little to do with scripture and much to do with emotionalism and socialization. Avoid doing anything for emotional reasons – that is not the way of men.

This is all not to say that we must mechanically walk through the various rituals and traditions of worship while having our minds far away from God, that would be equally wrong.

We would be honoring God with our lips while our hearts would be far from Him (Matthew 15:8-9; Isaiah 29:13). But also understand that the word “heart” that is used in scripture is not speaking about emotion. If you open your selected Hebrew study tool (BibleHub.com is recommended) you will find that the word translates “heart” in Isaiah 29:13 originally meant “Mind”, “attention”, “inner man” or “will”. Also in Matthew 15:8-9, even the Greek word translated as “heart” actually meant “mind”, “character”, “inner self”, “will” or “intention”.

Do any of these definitions sound emotional to you? No. Each definition is all about the mindset of a man. The masculine man concentrates his mind, attention, will and inner self towards God in worship. If we are participating in horizontal worship and concerned about our own emotions, then our attention is not on God – that is the end of the story. To suggest horizontal worship is anything else but emotionalism masquerading as spirituality is simply an attempt to justify one’s own behavior.

Mantra

Worship is only for God, and it is only about God.

Application

Purge the idea that worship is about you from your mind. Worship is about God.You go to a restaurant to be served food; how would you feel if the servers only cared about himself, how he was feeling, and how he was doing relative to the other waiters? You would be upset, because you are there to be served, and this fact has nothing to do with the servers besides the fact that they are the media through which that service comes. When it comes to worship, we are the server. We are providing God with worship, we should not be concerned with how we are feeling. Rather we should be concerned about whether or not our worship is done in spirit and truth.

We worship in spirit and truth, not emotion and truth, and not truth and emotion.

Spirit. Truth. With these we Worship God. We worship truthfully and with presence of mind, not thinking about food, sex or work. This is difficult and do not let any Christian tell you otherwise. It is becoming more and more difficult to keep our minds centered., in worship because our minds are conditioned to modern life with it’s constant distractions. The world itself is even a distraction and this is a tool of an enemy to keep us occupied in parts of life that do not matter.

The ability to focus is rare, and should be practiced if we are to distill thoughts when we enter into the House of God. Once the thoughts of the world are purged, we must turn our complete focus to God. We are serving God, not being emotionally served by the worship service – this is the key point.

Tactic I – Prime the Mind

Detach by taking all thoughts and writing them down. Observe them objectively. Your mind can be calmed simply by writing down everything you are thinking.
Once the mind is calmed, orient it in the direction of God. Start saying that you are about to enter the presence of God for worship on the first day of the week.
Prime the mind by listening to small spiritual snippets online or by listening to hymns.
Be prepared and in the mindset to worship God before you even enter the assembly. You do not want to have to waste the first several minutes of Sunday morning worship by having to get into the right mindset.

Enter into worship with a reduced sense of self.

Increase your presence of mind but direct your thoughts away from your own life, and instead direct them onto the life of Christ and onto God Himself.

Always remember that you are here to serve, not to be served.

The worship is about God and not about man.

Crush your ego.

Cast aside your emotionalism.

Reject self centered worship.

Conduct yourself like Men.

Biology: The Human Animal

People in the church make the mistake of trying to do away with the fact that man is an animal. He is not a plant or a mineral which should be obvious. Man is flesh, bone and biology. Man is highly influenced by biochemicals: His hormones. Yet people in the church still want to try to argue that man is a spirit and by virtue of that he is automatically holy. This is not the case, holiness does not come naturally. We have a wicked fleshly body in addition to a soul, because most of the things we desire to do naturally are wrong. The fact that the words “The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak” came from the mouth of God should be evidence enough of the fact that man is constantly battling his earthly body.

“But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.” & “Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.”
Galatians 5:16 & 19-21

“For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.”
Romans 8:6

There are moments in the life of man where it seems as if he loses all mental control and becomes solely flesh.

He becomes purely an animal and his soul is sidelined. Fits of rage, crimes of passion, lust of the flesh are examples of this phenomenon.

We cannot sit in our comfortable pews and deny the fact that the body of man is still heavily influenced by his biology. While we can put forth our best effort to rule over our body with our mind and morality, this does not magically take away our inclination to do what appeals to the flesh.

Animals rip one another apart and have sex at will without thinking about it. They do what is most likely to perpetuate their survival. We as men cannot behave that way. We must control our biology. We must be completely unnatural in almost everything we do – God requires this of us.

Do not murder other men.

Avoid sex with women who are not your wife.

Reject gluttony.

Through these simple, difficult and anti-natural actions we sharpen our mind and harden our discipline.

We must convert our natural drives and biology into a constructive energy that allows us to build and improve our lives rather than destroy and break them down.

We must focus those fits of rage into focused exercise. We must turn that desire for sex into a desire to build our business, do better work and to be more successful, because these things are what bring more sex (at least for a worldly man, but we can still hijack the sex drive to do good work). Through focused effort, we can flip the switch and use the same emotions to take positive action rather than negative action.

Mantra

I am rejecting the animalistic inclinations of my flesh.

Application

There are generally consequences that follow them when men behave like animals. Men take horrific action motivated by chemical reactions in the brain and must then suffer the consequences. We must master our emotions and gain a greater control over our body.

This flesh wants to do everything that we should avoid as Christian men. We have to rule over the flesh with an iron fist. Beat the body into submission everyday. So many men make the mistake of letting the body rule over the mind, we must do the opposite. We must rule over the flesh. The flesh never makes a mistake until the mind is fatigued and allows the mistake to happen. Therefore, we must keep the mind fresh at all times.

We cannot rest the mind, for in that moment the flesh will take over us. We must always be vigilant and aware of what is going on in our bodies and see to it that our biology does not affect what is going on in our minds.

Tactic I – Mindfulness

Detach from yourself and view your biological drives and desires as if you were a scientist looking at a test subject. Examine your various oddities, habits and cravings and note them.
Trace your desires back to their very root. Ask yourself why you want to act on a particular craving. Once you have the answer to that question, you must ask yourself, “Why” again. Continue asking until you find the source of your desire?
Contemplate the various consequences if you act on any of your desires, and at the same time visualize where your life would be and how successful you could become if you would redirect those energies into productive pursuits.
Unleash pent up emotion and desire into productive outlets such as training, business, music or writing.

Command your flesh.

Force yourself into discipline.

Conduct yourselves like men.

Force-Feeding

What do you do on days that you don’t want to read your Bible? What about the days where you would rather vomit than stick to your daily disciplines? You force feed the Word anyways. You force the discipline by applying the heat of aggression. Force yourself to take the right actions and impose your will upon your own weak body. You eliminate the need for emotional motivation. You cannot wait for the stars to align, or for the perfect motivation cocktail to swell within you, you must be able to force yourself to be disciplined at all times.

“In pointing out these things to the brethren, you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus, constantly nourished on the words of the faith and of the sound doctrine which you have been following. But have nothing to do with worldly fables fit only for old women. On the other hand, discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness; for bodily discipline is only of little profit, but godliness is profitable for all things, since it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come. It is a trustworthy statement deserving full acceptance. For it is for this we labor and strive, because we have fixed our hope on the living God, who is the Savior of all men, especially of believers.”
1 Timothy 4:6-10

Take an example:

Two men read the Word of God. One man is excited and energetic, the other is unmotivated, exhausted, perhaps even bored with his daily discipline, yet they both put in their designated chapters of reading. If they each maintain the discipline, who profits more? The man who was bored profits the most. Because even though they both read, the one who read when he was bored and unmotivated created more sweat-equity of discipline within himself. He had to force feed the Word, but it profits him nonetheless.

The man who maintained discipline is mentally better and stronger than the man who has “all the right emotions” for his Bible reading.

There is profit in doing things when you are motivated, or even when you only feel average, but there is much more profit when you maintain the discipline even though you do not feel like it. The forcing of the body and mind to be disciplined where all the profit rests. You gain equity within yourself, establishing dominance of your mind over the body. You command the body and it has no choice but to respond to your authoritarian law.

This self-discipline is more important than anything else: the ability to override your personal weakness and execute discipline every day. It is more important than any emotionalistic, effeminate pseudo-motivation you hear from liberals. It is more important than the mechanically liturgic ideology propagated by conservatives. Self-discipline goes far beyond labels and chunks of ideals. This discipline is the ability to force yourself to study the Word of God every day without fail. Vomit out your emotions and command your mind with a focused discipline that is unparallelled.

There will be many, many days where the “feeling is not in you”.

You just don’t feel like reading the Bible and memorizing scripture, but you do it anyway, and you come out the other side of that discipline much better for it. It is more profitable to take difficult action when you are not motivated than to take action when you have all the motivation in the world. The only way to build the character of an individual is to endure difficulties or small trials that you would rather not go through (Almost everything we endure is “small”, we are too soft as men and think everything is difficult).

You must force feed the Word of God at times if you ever want to grow.

Mantra

I am forcing my body into submission to my mind.

Application

If a bodybuilder is trying to grow muscular size, he must eat multiple meals every day that add up to an absurd amount of calories. Many bodybuilders eat upwards of eight meals per day. Do you think they are hungry and excited to eat every one? Nope. Some of the meals are bland. The 7th and 8th meal are ridiculously difficult to eat because they are already stuffed. But they force those meals down every single day without fail.

Why? Because that is how they grow. They ingest more and more food in order to integrate it into the various structures of the body. This same principle applies to spiritual growth. You consume the Word of God everyday, and you do so even when you are “full” and do not want to read.

This is the mistake most people make: they assume that if they are not feeling like reading or if they are not super motivated to read then they would be irreverent in trying to force themselves to do so.

This is idiocy. There is nothing in life that we will feel like doing all the time, but we must do it anyways, and in doing so we establish mental dominance over ourselves. The same applies to reading and studying the scriptures. You must adjust your perspective about what it is to be a student of the Word of God – it will require you to work through boredom and frustration in order to grow.

You must read the word of God every single day without fail. Pick a set amount of chapters or verses and you stick to it, never missing a day. Only weak men miss days of reading. A good starting place is 10 verses. This does not seem like a large amount, but reading huge amounts of the Bible at first is not the first goal you should set for yourself. You must first become the type of man who reads his Bible daily without fail. 10 verses per day is sustainable even for someone who completely lacks any form of self-discipline, so you must start there.

You must win.

Force your will over yourself.

Read constantly.

Memorize the Word.

Strengthen your will.

Fortify your discipline.

Conduct Yourselves like Men.

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Greed

“A greedy man stirs up strife, but the one who trusts in the Lord will be enriched.”
Proverbs 28:25

“But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs.”
1 Timothy 6:9-10

“One gives freely, yet grows all the richer; another withholds what he should give, and only suffers want.”
Proverbs 11:24

What is it that men want in this life? Many Christian men will lie to you about the “virtue” they are pursuing when they are really only interested in money; but because they have no money, they pretend like they are spiritual. They will tell you this world is not about the material items we possess or the money we make, yet they will go out the very next day and burn themselves into the ground trying to make tremendous amounts of money. Now there is nothing wrong with making a lot of money or working hard to pile up resources, the problem arrives when money becomes the sole focus of our lives or when we trust in money to save us.

We need to have more than just the desire for material wealth because we will find it hard to focus on God at the same time. This is what Christ meant when He said, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 19:24).

Greed is addictive because making money feels good, buying items feels good, and the idea of not having to work a job we hate anymore because we saved enough money or developed enough income streams sounds incredible.

Anyone who tells you money cannot buy you happiness is stupid. For most people, quitting their job would bring happiness, which could be brought about by the acquisition of enough funds. Everything that you enjoy in life, more of it can be acquired with more money. It is delusional to think otherwise. While money itself does not bring you happiness, money can be used to acquire whatever makes you happy, including free time. The only people telling you that money will not make you happy are people in the church with no money or superbly wealthy people who have not worked through the great existential questions of life.

Even if you believe money can’t buy happiness, you cannot deny that poverty cannot buy anything.

Contrary to what you hear in the church, it is possible to be wealthy and not greedy. All you have to do is avoid fixation on money and resist the urge to place wealth above God.

Greed itself is not limited to money. Man can be greedy for power, pleasure and even food. Greed is an intense desire or craving for something. The problem is that we are typically desiring and pursuing something worldly while forgetting about God. This is a difficult principle because we often do not “emotionally want” God nor do we want to do what He says, and for this reason we have all participated in greed in one form or another. This greed must be eliminated from our life.

Mantra

Correct the mind to correct the actions. I am avoiding Greed in my Life.

Application

Get to the root of your greed. Ask yourself multiple times why you want the items you are intensely desiring, because often the first answer does not go all the way to the root of the problem. Many people are greedy for money not because they are evil, but because they have great insecurity after being raised poor, or they are terrified of being bankrupt and on the streets.

Men fear the results of what will happen if they do not have money, so they pursue wealth with a burning passion.

Many men also want money because they know it will give them access to more women. These are cases of a faith problem (deep), not a greed problem (superficial). We lack faith in God to provide us with what we need, so we become greedy and pursue wealth instead.

Some men have damaged egos due to being raised with few possessions, so they chase money to fill the void and protect their ego from that intense level of shame. Perhaps we hate mindless jobs with a passion and we hate the people we work with, so, ironically, we work extremely hard so we can get to the point where we can stop working. Our hatred of our fellow man and our distaste for the work of our hands drives us to acquire wealth so we can end our career and live with freedom. The underlying problems with greed are often not directly related to greed itself.

Once you isolate your specific problem, lay your ax to the root of the tree.

Start correcting the deep faith problems that have resulted in a greedy mindset or behavior. You have to increase your level of trust in God.

Never expect overnight results in any endeavor of personal change. All you can do is make one small improvement at a time, and eventually those will add up to make the difference in your life. Start by correcting your thoughts. Every change begins in your mind, in the seat of your being. Correct the fallacies of the mind and you will see an accompanying change in actions.

You must separate the idea of acquiring wealth from your ego or fear, because fear is the emotion that drives you on and perpetuates your irrational way of thinking. Cast aside those emotions and build wealth not because you are greedy, but because you have shown yourself worthy of being entrusted with riches.

Tactic I – Reclaim Rationality

Detach from yourself and all your emotions.
View wealth and possessions like the amoral tools they are.
Ask yourself what it is you truly want in life.
Lay out concrete steps to achieve your goal and do so without becoming emotional.
Remain unemotional and remind yourself constantly that God is in command of the world. But never use that as an excuse to avoid working hard.

Lay the axe to the root.

Purge your mind of evil.

Be at peace within your soul.

Kill your ego.

Conduct yourself like a man.

Humility

“The reward for humility and fear of the Lord is riches and honor and life.”
Proverbs 22:4

But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”
James 4:6

“For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”
Luke 14:11

Humility is a trait missing in many men. Lack of humility signifies lack of confidence. Most men boast in order to compensate for an inner feeling of insufficiency. Lack of humility pervades the religious world and is highly concentrated in the youth groups (which should be abolished). Fathers no longer raise their sons to esteem others as equals or to admire men of character. In fact, most fathers are completely disengaged with their sons and would be shocked if they found out what their sons were doing behind their backs.

Fathers do not correct their sons during “adolescence” when they exhibit far too much pride. Nor do fathers prepare their sons to anticipate the biological changes of puberty and help arm them for the constant warfare of sexual discipline. This is because most fathers do not take time to think. They merely impregnated a female and created an offspring, and this does not magically make them good fathers. If men are to learn humility from anyone, it should be from their own father.

You must understand in your own mind that humility is not self-deprecation, even though that can be a byproduct.

Humility is being able to view yourself exactly how you are, not better than you are. Humility is how you view your own importance with respect to the importance of others. Do you think you are the next great thing? Do you think everyone is interested in hearing about your life all the time? You are not humble if you think in this way. Any man who thinks they are great is nothing more than the result of social media-induced egocentrism.

The humble man treats others as if they were better than him, though he does not self-deprecate. Ahumble man does not overestimate his worth or importance, he is acutely aware of his skills and abilities but his ego does not exaggerate them. The humble man does not oversell himself in a job interview, but he still looks for opportunities to advance in career and personal work.

People enjoy being around humble men.

People especially enjoy being around men who are truly excellent at everything they do, yet are still humble. It is one thing to be an average man who is great at nothing and be humble, anyone can do that. It is another thing to be a renowned businessman, builder, thinker or writer and still be humble. Men are drawn to other men who exhibit excellence tempered with humility. No one wants to be around the man who boasts about his career, especially when he is likely not skilled at what he does.

The humble man gives credit to others in his group and team, even if he did the vast majority of the work.

He looks for opportunities to share the credit even if the project was not possible without his involvement. Deep humility distills the need for validation and discards it. The humble man does not feel the constant need to be praised because he has self-esteem.

This image of the humble man is an extreme ideal, and is achieved by almost none, but it should still be striven after. In all things, even if ideals are lofty and appear far off, they should still be aimed at nonetheless. By pursuing huge ideals, we propel ourselves to greatness at any endeavor we choose, even humility.

Mantra

I am behaving with humility.

Application

Pride is a sneaky and deceptive disease. It lies dormant, grows under the skin and bursts out overnight. It is very difficult to recognize pride in yourself because it is a silent disease. Pride is the high blood pressure of the soul – it’s symptomless until it bursts an artery.

Pride is constantly looking for holes in your character to ooze out of. Humility shuts the pride-disease down. Humility begins by programming the mind to be humble first thing in the morning, this is done by using Mantras. Your humility continues to grow day-to-day by becoming more conscious of the disease of pride and crushing it.

Two-thirds of the battle for humility is crushing pride and forcing it into submission to your will.

You must fill in the sinkholes of character before building structures of achievement. In your pursuit of greatness, possessing consciousness of your flaws by your self-awareness is your greatest tool. With this you obliterate vice from the face of the earth, you drive it out from your land.

The last one-third of humility is programming the mind to act with honor, and this is done simply by preparing the mind to be humble before you are in a situation where humility is required. You must stock up supplies to go to war with your pride and beat into subservience.

Tactic I – The Foundation

Detach from yourself. View yourself as a movie character you are watching from the outside.
Examine your personal abilities objectively and with a critical eye.
Realize you are not special.
Work Harder

Tactic II – The Social Setting

Be conscious of yourself when you are in social settings. Observe your interactions in a detached manner – again, as if you were watching yourself as a movie character.
Be prepared to be kind to others and treat them with respect.
Admire others instead of yourself.
Remember you are not special

Crush your pride.

Develop your humility.

Prepare your mind for war until the end. You win or you die.

Conduct yourselves like Men.

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