Category: Simple Tactics/Quick Reads

“Being strengthened with all power according to His glorious might so that you may have full endurance and patience, and joyfully“

What we learn here is that strength, in this sense, is the combination of patience and longsuffering. The ability to outlast the enemy.

These two traits combined give us endurance. That is our ability to continue to press forward despite discomfort. That is one of the traits we must develop as men if we are going to survive this world.

But even more important is the last word of this verse – joyfully. Some versions say “with joy”. Patience and longsuffering joyfully is our ability to not only bear the difficulty of life but to do so with a smile.

We all admire those men who can smile and laugh through the darkest of hours. Through the horrors of combat or the normal difficulty of life, they somehow find humor. They somehow find a way to smile through it all.

We can develop that ability to laugh through the pain if we remember the goal we have. That is the goal of eternal life. We can develop patience if we also submerge ourselves into the present moment. Pain only becomes unbearable when we start wishing it would end or wondering how much longer it is going to last. Then we start to scramble and look for relief and it only makes it worse. But if we can train our minds to sit calmly, even joyfully, in that discomfort, we will have massive power.

Pain is reduced when you just allow yourself to feel the pain in the present moment. You can even test this in the gym when you are doing a painful exercise. When you start to think about how many reps you have left or wonder if you should just drop the weight, the exercise becomes much more difficult and painful. But if you just submerge yourself in the pain and allow yourself to feel it, the power of it is lessened. you begin to be able to manage it and even work through it. Learning how to do that provides you with great power.

Once you learn this in the gmy, you can transfer it to life. Then you can outlast the enemy.

That is all you have to do, just last longer than they do in order to win.

This life is an extreme experiment in endurance. You can either learn to manage the difficulty or get crushed by it.

Action demands a reaction. This is one of the basic laws of the universe. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Many times we forget this. We are going about our business or doing our work and we are not seeing any results. Instead of pressing on, we get discouraged and quit.

While it would be acceptable when we see no results to step back, examine what we are doing, and try to make better, more efficient action. However, most people quit the second they do not have the results they want. And many times they do so right after they give a feeble effort for those results.

Every action we take should be in the direction of our goals. If it is not an efficient action, we can change our direction or push somewhere different. But we should not become discouraged when we see no results.

Sometimes a man hammers a stone 100 times before it splits. And as various authors have noted before, it was not the 100th strike that cracked the stone, but the cumulative effects of continuous effort across each of those individual swings. That is what we are doing in our lives.

We are swinging at a stone, pounding it, attempting to create some results in our lives. And we will not always see results, and we need to learn to have patience with that fact.

We should also be sure we are taking the most efficient action possible. Many people try to open the door of opportunity by pushing right next to the hinges. You will not have the best leverage if you try to open a door at the hinges. You need to maximize the force and leverage by pushing farther away from the door.

Everyone understands that. It is a principle of physics that we deal with every day. Yet so many people, in their working lives, push as hard as they can at the hinges instead of pushing with a sustainable force at the doorknob.

If you want the best results, you have to apply hard force along with efficient leverage. This is how we start to make progress in our lives. But we also have to take action.

Instead of making excuses for why we are not where we want to be, we have to be willing to look in the mirror and fix the problems that we are seeing. If we are not content with our lives, we have all the power in the world to change them. And if we work as unto the Lord (Colossians 3:23), we will no doubt be successful.

Every action creates a reaction. We have to make sure our actions are strong. When our actions are in line with our goals, compounded by efficient force, we make progress. When we make progress, we have happiness. To get the best reactions, we need the best actions. Take the best actions today.

In 1 Samuel 4, the Israelites take the Ark of the covenant into battle against the Philistines. This is something they were not commanded to do. However, this is something that we read about other pagan nations doing with their gods. They would cart the gods into battle to hope for better fortune in the outcome. Of course, if two nations both did this there would be a predicament – one god would be captured by the other nation. Whoever had the best strategy or most power would gain the upper hand in the battle and capture the god of their enemy. In some cases, they would also melt down the enemy’s gods, in order to add insult to injury. Many nations could not rebuild their cities until they were able to reclaim their god from the enemy who took it.

So why did Israel bring the ark of God into the battle?

Because even before they demand a king in 1 Samuel 8, they were already mimicking the other pagan nations around them. They are already copying the other groups that they see in Canaan. 

Everyone thinks that 1 Samuel 8 is the first time Israel caved to the pressure to be like the people around them, but they had already done it for generations. It is an illustration of the powerful urge that humans have to fit into the group. No one wants to be an outcast. Everyone wants to be “in” with the group and feel like they belong to something bigger than themselves. The nation of Israel gave in to the urge to be like the nations around them. 

This is just another example of the powerful pull of negative influence.

While most modern evangelist groups today talk about being a good influence, the rational man understands that it is not always possible to be a good influence. Especially when you are already resisting the incredibly powerful waves of negative influences. 

I do not even understand what most people mean by “be a good influence”. It is a vague generality that gives no direction to a man. Should I go into some ghetto and expect my supposed goodness to pass to the meth slingers by osmosis? Will people magically be drawn to my alleged righteousness by simply being in the presence of it?

Influence takes much more than just being in the presence of someone.

It requires that the person being influenced actually wants to be influenced. Without that urge to model the person doing the influencing, the person being influenced will never change. No one changes just by being in the presence of one good individual. The powers of positive influence are so weak that you need at least five good influences just to be making a good influence on a single evil person. 

The lesson of 1 Samuel 4 teaches us that when human beings are pressured, they will give into the most powerful influence around them. And that influence in this case was the evil influence of the Canaanite nations. 

Understand: evil is stronger than good for the time being. The power of a negative influence is several times stronger than the power of a positive influence. 

Do not overestimate the power of a positive influence, and do not underestimate the power of a negative one. This is what most people in the church do and it makes them look like fools.

Related: Split From the Pack

Our first reaction to being hit by some outside force, some adversity is to shrink away from it. I propose that men must retrain themselves to suppress this instinct and instead lean into the resistance. 

I learned an interesting fact from the Huberman Lab podcast. We commonly think of the hormone testosterone as being the manly hormone. It is associated with sex drive and muscle mass, among a myriad of other manly products. But it also acts to make effort feel good.

It makes it enjoyable to lean into the resistance.

Perhaps this is why men find great enjoyment in various sports, despite their difficulty. Otherwise, why would a man think it is reasonable to deadlift 800 pounds? He could have proved that he was a man of strength 300 pounds earlier. But partially due to this additional effect of testosterone men pursue things that are difficult. This is natural for us. In fact, we cannot thrive without real resistance. This cannot be resistance fabricated by society, it must be real. 

Think of the cultures and societies in the modern age that were robbed of resistance.

Related Recommended Reading: Leverage the Darkness

Consider Native American Indians who were given so much because of how leftists claim they were treated. They were given land, business, tax advantages, preferential selection in business and college, yet they are failures. They have incredibly high rates of alcoholism and diabetes and have failed to make use of the opportunities they have been given. 

Think of the black community. Culture continues to promote the idea that racism is growing and prominent in the world. They say that blacks have been kept down and treated badly and are still treated poorly in the world. What good has this done the black community? What good has this done to their rates of single motherhood and poverty? 

By making these two groups believe they are the victim of some crime, one of the many consequences is that this robs them of their freedom to lean into the resistance. Instead of being encouraged to work against a real adversary, they are made the victim of a crime. This is a passive attitude and robs men of the ability to be manly. 

What we need to do is learn to lean into the resistance of life. Instead of shirking away, playing the victim, or accepting limitations, we must learn to lean into the adversity and convert it into strength.

The next time you find yourself hitting some adversity, real or simulated, lean into it. Learn to attack adversity and convert it into strength. You can do this in a simulated manner in the gym. Learn to lean into the effort of your training instead of thinking of it as suffering. In doing so you will become more of a man.