Author

Truth

“And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
John 8:32

“Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.”
John 17:17

No one likes the truth. The people who claim to enjoy truth usually have not had that much of it spoken to them.

What they mean is that they love when other people get smashed in the face by truth so they can mock them while standing along the safety of the sidelines.

Truth is generally something you do not want to hear. There is the truth of the gospel, the good news, the happy idea of the life of Christ. Then there is the truth of what Christ expects from you, and that is much less fun to hear. You do not want to hear that. The commands of Christ are heavy and difficult, few can bear them, and few enjoy hearing them.

You don’t want to hear that you need to be sober minded right as you are about to kick back a cold beer. You don’t want to hear the command to be sexually chaste right as you are about to undress your girlfriend. These are truths, though. They are painful truths and give us a fixed course of action. They are painful because we want to do the wrong things.

On another hand, no one likes or wants to hear the truth from his brother. We ask “How are you today?” but we do not really want to know. If someone responds with anything beyond a simple “good” we feel inconvenienced. We do not want to hear how they are doing even though we specifically asked.

No one wants to hear a truthful opinion from his brother.

Men don’t want to be told by a brother that their lifestyle is evil and wicked. No one wants to be told that they are not doing what is right, even though it is a fact. These are difficult things to tell a brother, but necessary things nonetheless.

Weak men in the Church dance around truth, never fully immersing into the topic. Popular megachurch or liberal preachers will stay away from truth, it opposes the emotionalism that pays their mortgage. Truth shuts down emotionalism because it demands facts and logic instead of mere feelings.

Strong Men in the Church embrace all forms of truthfulness and possess the skill to use it strategically. It is not enough to embrace truth, but men must use their minds

Mantra

There is no other option but truth.

Application

The truth is that you are living life as an insufficient man.

You are stuck in your ways.

You lie and cheat.

And you steal. Even if in infinitesimally small ways.

Stop doing that.

The truth is that you are sitting in a pew every Sunday, putting nothing into the service and are not progressing. You sit in the warmth and comfort of a persecution free area and as a result, you stagnate.

Starting now, you tell the truth in everything. Every single lie will be accounted for. You have a responsibility to be a man and tell the truth at all times. Weak men beat around the bush. Strong men shoot straight and shoot strategically.

“A Marine never lies, cheats or compromises”. “Be completely honest in everything that you do” – Excerpt from the Standard Marine Boot Camp Intro Speech Given by the Senior Drill Instructor.

Conduct Yourselves Like Men.

Hatred of Sin

In order to beat evil, many times you need to channel the power of the hatred of evil.

“O you who love the Lord, hate evil! He preserves the lives of his saints; he delivers them from the hand of the wicked”
Psalm 97:10

“Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good.”
Romans 12:9

“Save others by snatching them out of the fire; to others show mercy with fear, hating even the garment stained by the flesh.”
Jude 1:23

It is sometimes necessary to conjure extreme emotions in order to take action. People do this all the time. They watch motivational videos online to motivate themselves to train, study, work or to do just about anything. Motivation is what people look for constantly. Motivation is a motive to action. It is never wrong to have motives that press you towards an action, it only matters what that action is. Right and wrong are based on action, not motive. Motive is sometimes an emotion and sometimes it is logic.

In order to defeat some sins, or to have the motivation to beat some sins, you have to conjure an extremely powerful emotion(s) to fight it.

Men have done this from the dawn of time. Some men use anger to overpower their fear so that they can charge into battle and kill the enemy. They don’t conjure up some weak emotion like “love”. Everyone knows that “love” in the emotional state is a weak pile of garbage. It accomplishes nothing and provides no lasting motivation. It’s popularized by liberals who wallow in their imperfection and think it is fashionable to do so. You need the power of hatred. Specifically, the hatred of evil.

In order to beat your lust, you need to hate the pornography you are looking at every day. You must hate the social media outlets where you consume it. Yes, Instagram is just a porn source.

In order to stop drinking alcohol once and for all, you must hate that disgusting compound you put into your body. It both looks and smells like urine.

Now I know when it comes to extreme addictions like these, it will require more than just your hatred of the sin, but do not forget to include hatred of sin in the recipe for change.

Hate the Sin.

Be a Man.

Mantra

Hate the Sin, Destroy the Sin

Application

Man is angry by his nature. This is a result of testosterone. To deny this fact is to deny reality. Man cannot help his inclination to anger, but he can stop himself from expressing his anger in a less than ideal manner. So instead of lashing out with the hatred welling in your soul, learn to convert that hatred into a productive energy source.

Direct the hate towards your own imperfection. The challenge is to hate the sinful part of yourself without hating yourself as an individual. You must only hate the characteristics that are making you a weak man. Turn that energy of hate into the change of character that you need. Hate is a useful emotion, just direct it at your imperfections instead of at other people.

Conduct Yourselves Like Men.

Ease

No growth of the individual ever came through ease.

“How long will you lie there, O sluggard? When will you arise from your sleep?”
Proverbs 6:9

The path of least resistance is popular among weak individuals. In physics, the idea is that a moving object proceeds down some path, and when it has to decide which direction to go, it always “chooses” the one with the least resistance. If a ball is rolling along a path, it will go the direction that has the least friction. Or it will go towards the lower elevation. Or if it has the option of going down two trails, it will pick the one that is the easiest to start going down – This is natural law.

It is natural to want to take the path of least resistance, but we must reject much of what is natural. We must resist the natural urge to impregnate every single female we see. The sexual urge is natural but not moral. We must resist the natural desire to lash out in anger, for anger must be contained. We resist that natural desire to conserve energy and be sluggish.

Many of the actions our human nature pulls us toward must be avoided.

Christians love taking it easy. Everyone loves it. But it does not promote growth of the individual. Ease promotes more ease. More ease promotes decay of body, mind and character. It never gives you what it promises: rest, peace of mind, healing. It only gives you anxiety and stress, because you know you are not accomplishing the tasks you need to be when you are taking it easy. You are not keeping your disciplines. Your character is not being built. You are not growing the mind.

Taking it easy is only comforting if you have earned it.

You don’t earn it by sitting in your 9-5 job, that usually never brings any form of satisfaction. You don’t earn the comfort of ease by taking more of it. Ease is earned by doing something difficult.

It is difficult to work hard enough to earn the comfort that ease can provide. Most weak men do not know what it is like to generate that kind of work. You may not know what it is like either. Unless you really earn it, there is no benefit to ease, and it does not even satisfy.

Reject ease.

Be a Man.

“I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life, the life of toil and effort, of labor and strife; to preach that highest form of success which comes, not to the man who desires mere easy peace, but to the man who does not shrink from danger, from hardship, or from bitter toil, and who out of these wins the splendid ultimate triumph.” ~ Theodore Roosevelt, The Strenuous Life Speech

Mantra

Ease serves no purpose.

Application

Reject most forms of ease. It profits nothing unless you have truly been at the grind for an extended period of time. Remind yourself that it does not build character nor does it improve you. The only time it is necessary is when you are truly fatigued and need a break. Those times will be very infrequent, so do not assume you are fatigued.

Conduct Yourselves Like Men.

Guilt

Before Reading this article about guilt, it may be helpful to read this article about using your emotions. We are not trying to divorce emotions such as guilt, but learn how to use them properly.

“And he touched my mouth and said: ‘Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.’”
Isaiah 6:7

Guilt is grossly overused in Christian culture. Not the good type of guilt that causes men to change, but the purely emotionalistic guilt that boys love to wallow in. It it weaponized by demagogues, People complain of “feeling guilty”. Simple pew warmers believe that guilt itself is necessary for change or repentance but this is not totally accurate.

Guilt may help catalyze repentance at times, but it is not absolutely necessary.

Liberals overuse guilt, as they do any emotion. They think that emotional “feelings” are necessary for growth and change, though very few liberals ever grow spiritually. They certainly grow more emotional over time. Emotional growth is not what we are pursuing as men.

Conservatives overuse guilt, stating that it is the foundation of change. My first question is: “What would a conservative know about change?” The label they wear describes how they feel about change – they avoid change by conserving old traditions. Besides, guilt is not in the “steps of salvation”, that highly promoted conservative arguing piece, so it can’t possibly have any relevance for them (slight exaggeration).

While guilt may be helpful for moving men to change, it is not necessary.

The only thing that matters is our actions.

Guilt is irrelevant if we do not change ourselves and our actions. We can have all the emotional, guilty feelings in the world, but without change, that guilt did not matter one bit, nor did it do anything for our faith. You can have all the emotions in the world, but without action, you have nothing.

This faith is based on action, not on how you feel. You have a responsibility to be a man, one of the foundational principles of which is to control your emotions rather than having them control you. You must be firm and principled in character and efficient in action. Only in this way can you avoid the trappings of emotionalism.

Again, this section is not to say that guilt is 100% useless. Guilt does have some use, but not if that guilt is not accompanied with the action of repentance. Men can learn how to repent without emotion and how to repent with the help of the emotion of guilt. Never rely on emotion, but use it if you can.

Mantra

Guilt is unnecessary.

Application

Forget about feeling guilty. If you can change yourself without feeling guilty, then do it. Now there is something to be said about godly sorrow. But again, godly sorrow without the action of repentance is worthless.

Reject every doctrine that paints guilt as a necessary feeling. That is all guilt is, a feeling. Feelings get you nowhere. Actions are the only things that change where you are in life. Want to move forward and progress? Stop feeling, start acting.

However, one acceptable form of guilt is anger. If guilt is going to be an emotional feeling, then the best emotion would be anger. This is because anger is useful for destroying old behaviors. It is a hot emotion that should be channeled towards our own weakness and insufficiency and be used to eradicate it from the face of the earth.

Conduct Yourselves Like Men.

Integrity

“Whoever walks in integrity walks securely, but he who makes his ways crooked will be found out.”
Proverbs 10:9

“Better is a poor man who walks in his integrity than a rich man who is crooked in his ways.”
Proverbs 28:6

“The integrity of the upright guides them, but the crookedness of the treacherous destroys them.”
Proverbs 11:3

Character is the internal code of an individual. Integrity is sticking to that code of conduct regardless of who is watching. There could be no one watching, but you still practice everything you preach.

You pick up the straw wrapper you dropped.

You take the shopping cart back.

On all your jobs you use your best effort and complete tasks to the best of your ability, even the ones you impose on yourself.

Even the small tasks around your home.

Do you clean the whole kitchen, or just the visible parts of it?

Do you dust around the picture frame or do you pick it up and clean the entire dresser?

Are all of your jobs done right?

These are the basic questions that give you a direct view into who you are as an individual. Are you the kind of person who takes shortcuts to avoid doing that little bit of extra work? Are you the type of person to use the phrase “good enough”? If you are that weak man, then today is the day you begin to cast off that old man of sloth and sluggishness. The Church has enough weak men already, you do not need to add yourself to their numbers.

You are the kind of man who does everything to the best of your ability.

It doesn’t matter who is watching. It does not matter if you have an audience of 50,000 people or if you are completely isolated. Integrity ensures that you are the same man in both situations. Integrity guarantees that you have consistent character over time, that your word has value, that you always follow through and do what you say you will do.

These philosophies are embedded within you. Like anything else, once you begin to apply these actions and disciplines consistently over time, they eventually become habit, and require no more willpower.

You take back that shopping cart without even thinking about it, it’s programmed into your character. Once programmed into character, it is there forever. That is the beauty of discipline and habits. You work hard to build them over long periods of life, then they are fit to stand the test of time for years to come. Don’t be discouraged by how long it takes to build the habit, because eventually you will be profiting from the compound interest of life.

Character takes a shopping cart back to the store. Integrity takes the cart back at night when it’s dark, no one can see you, and you were the only shopper.

Character picks up the trash it drops. Integrity picks up the trash even when no one saw who dropped it in the first place.

Have Character. Get Integrity. Be a Man.

Mantra

Even if no one sees me, I do what is right.

Application

The application is simple. Keep to your character even if you are alone. This is the way of men. There are few principles more foundational for building yourself as a man than these of integrity and character.

Time may take your health, your mind, your sight, your hearing and your wealth, but your character will last forever. Your character will continue to impact other people long after you are dead if you build it correctly. Start building integrity today, reap the benefits tomorrow.

Conduct Yourselves Like Men.

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