Most men never execute their own sin because it lives beneath their mind in the unconscious. Their sin is so ingrained in their lifestyle that it is committed passively. This should not be a shock as it is more natural to sin than to be righteous. Almost all sins are simply perversions of natural drives. Pornography is a perversion of the natural sex drive of man and promiscuity is founded on man’s biological need to reproduce with as many women as possible. Lying is a way to avoid pain, a manipulation of the most basic survival instinct of man. Stealing is a form of fear of poverty, greed, or insecurity. Gossip comes primarily from insecurity, which is why it is mainly considered a “women’s sin”. Greed is an exaggeration of the desire to be safe and secure monetarily.
“If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.”
All these sins lie in the unconscious part of man’s mind. They are automated because they are so deeply rooted in the natural aspects of man. This is how habits function. Negative habits are detrimental because they are actions that either do not benefit us or harm us and they are performed automatically. The automated form of sin is the most insidious, because it can eat us alive without us even knowing it is there.
The only way to begin to bring our sin to the surface and finally execute it is to follow the sin to its root cause.
We must learn our own selves and psychology if we are to see why we behave and commit the sins we do. Sin is almost certainly related to your personality and weaknesses. Trace your sin to the core. Your sin is a reflection of who you are, what you fear and what you desire. If you are going to execute your sin, you must first know yourself.
Mantra
Kill the source of sin, then kill the sin.
Application
Outline your personal weaknesses. What do you fear? What do you desire?And what are the small and seemingly insignificant desires and fears that live within you? What problems does your personality type encounter regularly? Answer these questions and you will begin understanding your sin. The enemy knows how to manipulate your needs and convert them into evil. Recognize and short circuit this process and you can win the war against the self. Your sin is dead if you are willing to lay the ax to the root of its tree.
Even better would be to correct the weaknesses of your personality so that they are no longer a target for attack. You cannot be tempted by greed if you are no longer insecure about poverty. The sexually satisfied husband or man who knows how to transmute the sexual energy has no need to seek an outlet through other women. You have the opportunity to win, and eliminate one sin at a time forever.
Also be aware that if you eliminate a sin, but forget to put a sentry on guard against the return of that sin, it will inevitably come back.
Remember the story in scripture of the demons who were cast out of a person but eventually got back in? They got back in because the person had not worked on themselves and invested in their own spirituality (Matthew 12:43-45). The sin will attempt to return because of your personality and particular weaknesses, but you must stay in command of your mind and do not let the evil near it. Never give evil a chance to take root in your mind again.
You have the weapon of vigilance on your side.
Always be aware of the evil, and do not let it near you.
“But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.”
Weak men emphasize grace far more than they emphasize action.
The religious world is plagued with the weak man’s mindset. Every Christian understands the necessity and importance of grace, but the weak man uses grace as an excuse to do evil. The weak man uses grace as a way to justify his lack of spiritual progress. He wallows in his “brokenness” and begs God to do all the work for him. God does save us by His will and by His grace, He does all the heavy lifting of removing our sins, but we still have a duty to behave as men and not use grace as a reason to avoid behaving righteously or the work of improving.
The beta focuses on his emotions, how he feels and how “church” makes him feel instead of focusing on the work he needs to do for the God of heaven and earth. He sings songs to make himself feel good rather than to serve God. The weak man uses grace to justify his weakness. He mistakenly thinks if he actually improves that there will be no place for grace to fill his life and make him feel warm and fuzzy inside. This man is a disgrace. Christians already have a reputation for looking weak and pathetic, and these men who are constantly emotional and effeminate do not help this perception.
Over-emphasizing grace relieves us of the responsibility to work on our character flaws and be obedient to difficult commands.
Many men think they do not have to do anything besides accept grace and then they are good to go. This is the foundation for the sinner’s prayer or “accepting Christ as our savior”, or any other concepts of salvation that oppose the Bible, are found nowhere in the Bible, and do nothing for our salvation. These are the concepts of weak men. Pathetic men want to say a one-lined prayer or theatrically call out to Jesus and “invite him into their hearts”, because that definitely works and you see that in the Bible. Have you ever seen a highly masculine man invite Jesus into his heart? This is weak man’s grace.
Mantra
Grace is sufficient, but my work is also required.
Application
Christianity is not just about grace. It is founded on grace, and would be nothing without the grace of God, but there is still a great deal of work that we as men are still required to do. We cannot sit around and wallow in emotions and talk about how ‘bad’ we are – that is weak man’s grace. Contrary to popular belief, we do not need to go forward to repent at every youth rally. Boys who go forward at those events are more interested in having girl’s breasts pressed against their chest when they hug than they are about changing their actions.
Men are interested in action, taking action and avoiding unnecessary or detrimental emotions because they know that emotions delude reality and are not a reflection of it. If a man is not firmly grounded in his principles of logic, he has the responsibility to first set aside all emotion and uncover the truth of who he is and what he believes. Once he is firm in these facts, he can then add back emotion to supplement the logic if he wants.
We must tone down our emotions because of the fact that emotions do not equal reality.
Emotions are not to be trusted or built upon, they are unstable and weak when used as foundations. Emotions are good fuel for your vehicle, but you have to make sure you are driving in the right direction first.
Catch yourself when you are getting too emotional about some event or situation and ask yourself a few questions.
In worship: “Is it right to be this emotional right now? Is this emotional momentum about me or about God? Am I thinking about grace, or merely feeling about grace? Are these emotions improving the worship to God, or merely improving how I feel about the worship to God?”
When You Become Angry: “Is this emotion productive for this situation? Can I control myself with a hot emotion like this? Would I make better choices if I wanted and cooled down before moving forward?”
When You Become Fearful: “Am I behaving like a man when I panic? Is this situation that important in the long-term? If the worst-case scenario happens, what will I lose? Can I think of situations that are far worse than mine currently? Can I detach from this emotion?
These are important questions to just a few situations where emotions rush into the mind. These questions also differentiate between usefulness and selfishness of emotion. Do not focus on your feelings because they are not always indicative of righteousness. Emotions do not automatically equal sincerity. The only way to prove sincerity is through actions, and sincerity is especially proven when you take action without emotional backup.
Reject your feelings and force them into submission until you know what you believe.
Weak man’s grace is selfish, and you must be reject the desires of the self at times.
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.”
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”, “innerman” or “will”. Also in Matthew 15:8-9, even the Greek word translated as “heart” actually meant “mind”, “character”, “innerself”, “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.
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.”
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.
“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.”
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.
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.
