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Part One: A Man of God and His Master
A Commitment to Maximum Discipleship
We get a glimpse into the kind of men God is looking for in 2 Chronicles 16:9: “For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show Himself strong on behalf of those whose heart is loyal to Him.” God is looking for men who will steadfastly give their whole hearts to Him. Paul was that kind of man. “For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain” (Philippians 1:21).
Discipleship is placing ourselves under the discipline and training of Christ, submitting ourselves to the authority of God’s Word, and then living in daily devotion to what we are learning. We live in a world in which we expect to get whatever we want now. Our culture feeds the impatience that seems to be built into men when it comes of many of the routines of life. The trouble is we can carry this microwave mentality over into our Christian lives, which is as futile as trying to run your spiritual life on cruise control.
The Christian life is defined as “a long obedience in the same direction.” God is more concerned with the direction than the perfection of your life.
What It Means to Follow the Master
The word disciple speaks to deep commitment. It literally means a “learner,” or pupil. The idea is that the pupil studies, learns, and grows until he knows what his master wants him to know and is able to do what his master wants him to do. Jesus gave us a classic statement of this when He said, “It is enough for a disciple that he be like his teacher” (Matthew 10:25).
Jesus said, “If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple” (Luke 14:25b-26). It’s the comparison Jesus was interested in here. He was simply saying that not even the most wonderful and intimate human relationships can come before our devotion to Him if we are going to be His disciples.
There are three basic kinds of followers of Christ:
1. The Curious: People who follow at a distance, but they are not quite ready to step out and be identified.
2. The Convinced: Peter and the other disciples had moved from being curious about Jesus to being convinced that He was indeed the Son of God with the message of eternal life (Matthew 16:13-16). There are a lot of men who are convinced that Jesus is the Son of God who is worthy of their devotion, and they can testify to having received Him as their Savior. But they just can’t “pull the trigger” and sell out completely to Him.
3. The Committed: All Christian men need to get to this stage: the company of the committed. These are the guys who are flat-out for Jesus Christ. Jesus told the Twelve, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will save it” (Luke 9:23-24). They didn’t understand what kind of commitment it would take to fulfill Jesus’ calling, but they eventually moved from being curious and convinced to being committed.
Self-denial is essential for a disciple of Jesus. Self-denial means instead of asking “What’s in this for me?” or “How is this going to affect my career and my comfort?” we say to God, “Not my will, but Yours be done.” The call to follow Jesus is really pretty uncomplicated: deny, take up, and follow.
The Importance of a Man’s Lifestyle
Jesus gave us two timeless illustrations of what it means to be ready for maximum impact when He said, “You are salt of the earth… You are light of the world” (Matthew 5:13-14). We need to be stimulating and penetrating as the salt of the earth. If we’re going to make a difference, then we must be different. Perhaps the most common way we lose our “saltiness” is simply by keeping the salt of our influence bottled up in the saltshaker.
We need to illuminating as the light of the world. Light illuminates, and it dispels darkness. We have a mission from Christ to light up a dark world. Jesus said, “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:16). Jesus wasn’t saying our light has to be perfect, just consistent so that the world would see it and be drawn to Him.
The church of Jesus Christ is not a club or a resort where people come to relax and bask in the sun to get a good tan so they can go home looking good. The church is a lighthouse warning people away from a dark and dangerous shore on which they will shipwreck their lives.
Oswald Chambers, the great devotional writer, said, “Never allow the thought that I’m of no use where I am; you certainly are of no use where you’re not.”
Here are seven reasons you should make the church a priority for you & your family:
- We should be committed to the church out of loving obedience. Hebrews 10:24-25 says, “Let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, not forsaking assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching.”
- We should be committed to the church to experience fellowship. The Greek word, koinonia, comes from a word meaning “common,” or shared. The fellowship we need, and which the church is uniquely designed to provide, is the sharing of a common love and a common life. It means being together in the fullest sense of the word.
- We should be committed to the church for spiritual leadership. Your submission to spiritual authority in the church is the most direct route to having true spiritual authority in your home and in the church itself.
- We should be committed to the church because of our identity.
- We should be committed to the church out of loyalty. Loyalty is a trait sorely lacking in much of the church today because of “me first” thinking. A lot of people take the attitude, “I’m just one person. They won’t miss me at church. They have lots of people.” But that’s selfish thinking, not loyal thinking.
- We should be committed to the church as our place of ministry. God designed spiritual gifts to function within the life of the church.
- We should be committed to the church because of our witness. What I’m talking about is what your dedicated, loyal membership and involvement—or lack thereof—says to the unbelievers who know you. When you and I are fully committed to worship and serve God, and love each other, in the local church, unbelievers will notice.
Part Two: A Man of God and His Integrity
Facing a Fork in the Road
There is actually a solid truth behind this puzzling piece of wisdom from Yogi Berra, the legendary former catcher for the New York Yankees. When we come to a fork in the road of life, we have to go one way or the other. We can’t just stand there.
We are constantly facing forks in the road of our lives—and the road we take at these decisive moments will help shape our lives.
Many men are living life at the animal level, just as animals have three purposes: self-preservation, self-propogation, and self-gratification. It’s tragic when men who have been made in the image of God with the capacity to know, love, and serve Him seek fulfillment in the stuff of the world that is passing away.
You probably remember the saying, “Finders keepers, losers weepers.” But Jesus said, “Keepers weepers, losers finders.” When we lose our life in surrender and sacrifice to Christ, we find the joy, power, purpose, and eternal life He has for us.
Values are caught by children more than they are taught. Kids can read us like books, and they can tell from the atmosphere of your home what is important to you.
Is prayer an integral, indispensable part of your daily routine? It’s safe to say that you will never rise higher spiritually than the level of your prayers. Will your wife and children remember you as a man of prayer?
Aim to be morally pure. When the Hebrew prophet Daniel was taken captive to Babylon at about seventeen years of age, his Babylonian masters tried to change his culture, his language, and even his diet. He was given food that had been sacrificed to idols. But Daniel 1:8 says, “Daniel purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself with the portion of the king’s delicacies.” Daniel made a resolution to be obedient to God. What we’re talking about isn’t just behavior modification, but a resolve in the heart that is backed by the power of God’s Word and His Spirit and that is reinforced by making right decisions. That will put some steel in a man’s spiritual backbone.
We are standing a critical fork in the road today. The road we take and the decisions we make will determine not only our destiny but the destiny of our children, grandchildren, and their children. Let’s take a stand for integrity and purity in every part of our lives.
A Call to Moral Purity
For victory, make an active, positive commitment to holy living, so you have first-strike capability when the enemy brings the filth. That’s why the focus is “A Call to Moral Purity” instead of “A Call to Avoid Sexual Immorality” or something similar.
The overwhelming emphasis on Scripture is on our need to take the initiative and arm ourselves with the Word and mind of God that the enemy has a hard time finding the weak spot to attack.
Here are four truths to help you apply the Word, given in the form of an acrostic based on the word P-U-R-E.
- Prepare for Spiritual Attack: Preparation is half the battle in the fight against sexual temptation and failure. It’s like the boxer who said, “If I see a punch coming, I can usually defend against it. It’s the punch you never see coming that gets you.”
- Undo Defiling Associations: 2 Corinthians 7:1 is the conclusion of a powerful address on moral purity that began in 2 Corinthians 6:14 by saying, “Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness?” Someone usually asks, “But doesn’t the Bible say we are supposed to go outside the church and our Christian circle to reach out to the world?” Of course, it does. Paul wasn’t telling us to cut off all contact with the world. Being “unequally yoked” refers to the primary associations of our lives—partnerships and relationships that bring us into intimate contact with unbelievers in a way that could silence and compromise our Christian walk and witness. Check out the Old Testament quotations Paul used in 2 Corinthians 6:16-18 and you’ll see that they refer to periods in Israel’s life when God’s people were being defiled by the idol-worshiping nations around them.
- Remember the Consequences of Sexual Sin: God’s holiness demands that He deal with sin.
- Engage in Positive Spiritual Activities: Psalm 119:11 says, “Your word I have hidden in my heart, that I might not sin against You.” That’s why reading, studying, and memorizing Scripture are so important.
A Man and His Money
Jesus’ parables and other teachings reveal the attention He gave to money and, by extension, material possessions. Sixteen of our Lord’s thirty-eight parables deal with money and the responsibilities associated with it. Overall, Jesus said far more in the Gospels about money and material possessions than He said about prayer, heaven, and hell put together. The operative terms the Bible uses for our management of God’s money are “steward” and “stewardship.”
Joshua 1:8 says, “This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it. For then, you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.”
Prosperity from a biblical standpoint is rarely measured in financial or material terms alone. It has more to do with the ability to enjoy what God gives than with how much He gives. Everything we have really belongs to God. Ownership on earth is really about “loanership.” What we have is on loan to us from God. It all belongs to Him—all of it!
Some men cut their days into seven slices, keeping six for themselves and giving one to God as if that’s all He requires of our time. But all of our minutes and hours belong to God. So does our money.
God wants us to be content with what He gives us. One great attitude check you and I can take anytime is to measure the level of contentment with what God has provided. Contentment is a big deal to God, because a lack of it reveals a heart of greed and tells God that we don’t think He is being as good to us as we deserve.
We need to be grateful for what God gives us. Did you know that one of the unfailing marks of a Christian is gratitude?
People often quote Romans 13:8, “Owe no one anything.” That doesn’t mean we are to never borrow, but it means when the bill comes due, pay it. A more accurate translation would be, “Let no debt remain outstanding.”
John F. Kennedy Jr. said his grandmother Rose would often pull him aside and remind him, “To whom much is given, from him much will be required,” referring to Luke 12:48.
The Bible not only condones inheritances, but encourages us to leave something for our families. “A good man leaves an inheritance to his children’s children” (Proverbs 13:22).
The Bible says that a man who spends everything he makes is foolish (Proverbs 21:20). One of our biggest problems as Americans is that we are not only spending everything we make, but more than we make.
The Depression and World War II generation—called by Tom Brokaw the “greatest generation”—had this motto, “Hard work never killed anybody.” The Bible supports that view. Our God is a working God. He crated the heavens and earth, and because we are made in His image, He has given us the capacity to work.
We need to guard our money to use it for God’s glory. The average 65 year-old man in America cashed out, subtracting his debts from his assets, he would be left with $100. The best way to guard our money is to entrust it to the Lord.
It’s interesting that just after Solomon wrote Proverbs 3:5-6, he penned this verse, “Honor the Lord with your possessions, and with the firstfruits of all your increase” (v. 9).
Just as some men slice their days into seven pieces like a pie and give God one day, others cut their “money pie” into ten pieces, with one-tenth for the Lord. If you want to refresh yourself on how serious God is about the tithe, read Malachi 3:8 where He called the Israelites robbers because they withheld their tithes from Him.
God cares about what we do with the other nine-tenths. The problem comes when we give God one-tenth and say, “Okay, Lord, there’s Yours. The rest is mine.” Scripture shows us that we should give proportionately and systematically.
Part Three: A Man of God and His Family
Loving the Lady in Your Life
If we commit to loving the lady in our life the way God tells us to love her, we will be miles down the road toward becoming true men of God. Here is God’s command to husbands through the apostle Peter: “Husbands, likewise, dwell with them [your wives] with understanding, giving honor to the wife, as to the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life, that your prayers may not be hindered” (1 Peter 3:7). And then from Paul: “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her” (Ephesians 5:25). Both of these verses are loaded with meaning.
Women want and need tenderness. Living with the lady in your life in an understanding or intelligent way involves giving her honor, or cherishing her with tenderness and affection.
Women want and need empathy. Empathy means “to feel with.” There are legions of wives who could say, “My husband doesn’t really know or understand me at all.” One reason is that it takes time and effort to know another person, and not many men are willing to spend that kind of time.
Women want and need spiritual encouragement. Jesus said the two greatest commandments are to love God with all your heart and to love your neighbor as yourself (Matthew 22:37-39). Women are able to obey these commands in a way that often takes men years to learn. If a husband is the head of the home, as I believe it should be, his wife is the heart of the home.
The best definition of marriage is two givers who are trying to out-give each other. If you start giving of yourself to your wife, you will be amazed at how much she will out-give you. God created a woman with a wonderful capacity to respond to the love, appreciation, and attention of her man.
Studies show that the average married couple spends about 37 minutes a day in conversation, and that may be stretching it for some couples. Yet the very nature of marriage calls for unhurried time to talk and listen to each other, to look in your lady’s eyes and give her your undivided attention.
Women want and need praise. Praise is powerful, as it releases the power and presence of God. Our wives deserve our praise and blessing for being the kind of godly women they are as a wife and mother.
Peter gave husbands a “bottom line” at the end of 1 Peter 3:7. One reason we are to live with our wives in an understanding way is that “[our] prayers may not be hindered.” God is so serious about this business of our love and consideration for our wives that if we’re messing up here, our prayers are bouncing off the ceiling.
God intended the marriage relationship to be an unconditional, lifelong promise of love and faithfulness between a man and a woman. A marriage is a divine covenant, a divine transaction. That’s why preachers remind the bride and groom that when they proclaim their love and loyalty until they are separated by death, they are making their vows before God as well as the witnesses looking on.
The biggest problem in most marriages is selfishness—adults acting like children, insisting on having their way. We need a new attitude in our marriages—the attitude of humility that Jesus exhibited when He laid aside the robes of glory to take on human flesh. Paul’s magnificent plea for humility based on Christ’s example (Philippians 2:1-8) should be required reading for husbands about once a week.
Somebody said, “Every marriage needs one wedding and two funerals.” The wedding brings together two lives, but the death of self in both the husband and the wife allows them to live as one flesh and one spirit. There are two kinds of husbands in a marriage, the givers and the takers. What kind of husband are you?
As eros is the physical side of love and phileo is the emotional side, agape is the spiritual side of love.
As men of God, we are to be both prophets and priests in our homes. We have a spiritual responsibility to pray for our wives and protect them spiritually, and to teach the Word of God to our families. The husband, not the wife, is to be the spiritual leader of the home.
Your first job is not at work or at church, but at home. We’re to love our wives with a purifying, sanctifying love, to help them grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ (2 Peter 3:18).
If you want a happy marriage, quit trying to be happy and start trying to make your wife happy. When you satisfy your wife and give her joy and pleasure by the way you love her, you will find satisfaction you never thought possible because, remember, your wife is designed to be a responder. The best investment you can make in your own happiness and sense of satisfaction in life is to invest your life in loving your lady satisfyingly.
Protecting and Blessing Your Family
A dad who commits himself to lead his wife and children according to the principles of God’s Word can be successful. In fact, the Bible gives us the best manual on fatherhood—and on life in general—ever written: the book of Proverbs.
Teach your children to love and fear God. In Proverbs 1:7, we read these familiar words, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.” Teaching our children to love and fear God will give them a healthy respect for God and His Word, a healthy desire to obey Him, and a healthy fear of the consequences of sin and rebellion in their lives. Any child left completely to himself will pursue a course of sin and rebellion against God. So, teach your children to fear and love God from their earliest days.
It’s amazing how relevant the Bible is. There is a verse you may have heard many times that takes on a whole new meaning in this age of the Internet: “I will set nothing wicked before my eyes” (Psalm 101:3). The best way to protect your child’s mind is to fill it with God’s Word. Experts in detecting counterfeit money spend the vast majority of their time examining real currency. The best way to spot a fake is to know what the real looks like.
The goal is to build character into your children. Character is one of those concepts that sounds hard to attain, but a person’s character is nothing more than the sum total of his thought life.
Read through Proverbs with a pencil and paper, and mark the passages that talk about the importance of choosing good companions and avoiding evil ones (Proverbs 1:8-19; 2:10-15). Then share these passages with your children, and talk about them over dinner.
By the way, teach your children that they will have to stand alone sometimes for the truth. Teach your children about the power of one person standing for God, as teenager Daniel did in Babylon.
Our children are a gift from God. They are on loan to us for a very few years. At the very beginning of your children’s lives, offer them to God, and then spend every day working to make sure they follow Jesus Christ.
Authors Gary Smalley and John Trent did the church a huge service several years ago when they wrote their book, The Blessing. It awakened many fathers to their need to make sure they pass on a Christian heritage to their children by giving them a blessing. Blessing your children is not a one-time event, but a process of building their confidence so that they can be successful in the will of God for their lives.
The need to pray for our children has never been greater than it is today. Children need fathers who will engage in “warfare praying” on their behalf.
- Pray for your children with adoration.
- Pray for your children with submission. We must come to the Lord in prayer in a spirit of submission, asking God to rule in the lives of our children.
- Pray for your children with supplication. All praying dads pray for their children’s needs.
- Pray for open doors for your children, even when they are adults, that God would provide for them along the way. Also, pray for your children’s future mates.
- Pray for your children with confession. While I can’t confess my children’s sin, I can pray that God will lead them to repentance. Our children fail and stumble, as we do, and need God’s forgiveness and cleansing. Job prayed on behalf of his children, lest one of them had sinned against God (Job 1:5).
- Pray for your children with protection. All of us need to pray just as desperately and dependently for our children’s spiritual safety, because the “evil one,” the devil, is seeking to seduce them and take them for his own.
- Pray for your children with celebration. The members of a home bathed in prayer will begin to live in a positive, celebratory spirit.
- Pray constantly for your children. Notice that Ephesians 6:18 says that we are to pray “always.” “Pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17).
- Pray boldly for your children. The Bible says, “This is the will of God, your sanctification: that you should abstain from sexual immorality” (1 Thessalonians 4:3).
- Pray passionately for your children. We are to be at our prayer post as though we are in a battle, because we are. We know that Satan is stalking our kids. But we can engage in effective and victorious spiritual combat for them through believing prayer, constantly persevering in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ!
Turn this clear statement of God’s will into a prayer. “Lord, I know it is Your will that my children be sexually pure, and I know You will not lead them into temptation. So, I pray with confidence that You will help them avoid temptation and obey You by abstaining from sexual immorality.”
Living a Legacy for Your Children
Psalm 78 describes both our responsibility to leave a legacy of faith and the goal we should be striving for: “He established a testimony in Jacob, and appointed a law in Israel, which He commanded our fathers, that they should make them known to their children; that the generation to come might know them, the children who would be born, that they may arise and declare them to their children, that they may set their hope in God, and not forget the works of God, but keep His commandments” (vv. 5-7).
If you want to pray a prayer for yourself and your children that will revolutionize your outlook, begin praying Psalm 78 back to the Lord. This is our job description as fathers and grandfathers.
Live for Jesus and do the right thing today, and then do the same tomorrow, praying with passion for your family and depending on the power of the Holy Spirit to multiply your investment in the lives of your children. This is the spiritual equivalent of the only proven method for eating an elephant: one bite at a time.
One survey reported that when both Dad and Mom take their children to church, 76% of those children become active in their faith. When Dad alone takes the children to church, that percentage drops to 55%. But when Dad drops out and leaves Mom to take the children to church alone, only 15% of those children remain active in their faith. And if neither parent goes to church with the kids, only 9% of those kids become active Christians in their church.
Someone has said that we Americans worship our work, work at our play, and play at our worship. What we need is a generation of Christian fathers who will say, starting today, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord” (Joshua 24:15).
Part Four: A Man of God and His Ministry
The Need to Have and to Be a Mentor
It’s great to have godly mentors (see my post on Mentors here). We benefit immensely from the investment they make in our lives. And when we invest something of ourselves in others, whether it be our own family, friends, or fellow church members, we are depositing something in their lives that will last through the years.
Campus Crusade for Christ used to tell their campus staff members, “Never go anywhere by yourself if you can take a student with you.” The idea was to have informal, quality time to build into those students’ lives. That’s mentoring.
Every man needs to have a mentor. John Maxwell writes that we all need different kinds of mentoring along the way:
- We need someone to encourage us—a Barnabas who believes in us and encourages us to go for God’s best and serve Him with gusto.
- We need someone to confront us. We need a Nathan, the prophet who confronted David after David committed adultery with Bathsheba, had her husband Uriah killed, and then covered up his sin for months (2 Samuel 11-12). One of the myths of manhood is the Clint Eastwood type of guy who is tough and rugged and goes his own way, answering to no one. But I pity the man who thinks he is accountable to no one.
- We need someone to teach us. Paul was the master teacher who imparted solid biblical truth to Timothy, but Paul also imparted his life to Timothy, like a father to his son.
Every man needs to be a mentor.
- We need to encourage someone. We need to know another person well enough, and care enough, to say, “Bob, I know you’re struggling with that teenager right now, but hang in there. You’re doing the right thing to hold to the standards, and God will bless you for honoring Him.”
- We may need to confront someone. Confronting an errant person is one of the hardest things any man has to do, especially if it’s another man who needs to be spoken to. But it has to be done at times, and I believe God will enable us to confront. It’s really a matter of caring about others and putting another person’s interests and needs ahead of our own (Philippians 2:4).
- We need to teach someone. Pick a verse and discuss it at dinner. Memorize Scripture as a family. That’s teaching, Dad, and it ought to start with you. There’s something about a father’s authority in the home that, when children see Dad is serious about this, they take it more seriously.
Being an effective mentor requires that the grace of God be continually at work in us. Maintain your moral and spiritual purity as you strive for the prize. A mentor must be Exhibit A of the principles he wants to instill in others.
God’s Word to us as mentors is, “Pass the faith along to faithful men who will be mature, strong sons, soldiers ready for spiritual warfare, athletes striving for the prize, and hardworking farmers for the cause of Christ.”
Sharing Our Lord, Our Light, and Our Labor
Jesus is the One who binds us together.
Alan Redpath is a well-known British devotional writer and pastor who said that his conscience was stabbed awake one day when he heard a preacher make this statement: “You can have a saved soul, but a lost life.” Redpath said, “When I heard that, I realized that while I was on my way to heaven, I wasn’t taking people to heaven with me. While I realized that I was saved, my life was not influencing others for Christ. I wasn’t serving God.”
Spiritual gifts, called charismata in the Greek language, are ministry gifts, designed not primarily for our enjoyment but for our employment! These are supernatural gifts given sovereignly by God, and each one is different. If you have not already done so, discover, develop, and deploy your spiritual gift(s) for the church and the cause of Christ.
Years ago, Graham wrote these words in his Bible: “The Man God Uses”: “He has but one great purpose in his life. He has by God’s grace removed every hindrance from his life. He has placed himself absolutely at God’s disposal. He has learned how to prevail in prayer. He is a student of the Word. He has a vital, living message for the lost world. He is a man of faith, who expects results, and he works in the anointing of the Holy Spirit.”
We think, “God will use me when I’m really strong.” Well, God uses us most effectively when we present our gifts, abilities, and all we are to Him in dependence and, yes, even in weakness. God can take even our weaknesses, failures, and defeats to accomplish something good for His glory.
We need to serve God sacrificially. As Romans 12:1 says, we are to offer ourselves to God as a “living sacrifice.” Service that doesn’t cost you anything isn’t worth much. Paul described himself as a “servant,” literally a “slave” of Jesus Christ (Romans 1:1). The late Dr. Bill Bright, who founded Campus Crusade for Christ, would always stop someone who was complimenting him for this or that achievement and say, “Remember this, I’m just a slave of Jesus Christ.” That’s the secret of greatness, that we kneel in order to rise.
We are to serve Christ faithfully. Let’s finish what we start, keep our promises, and fulfill our ministries. It’s a lifetime assignment for us to serve God gratefully, confidently, sacrificially, and faithfully—but we can do it in the power of the Holy Spirit.
A Commission to Marketplace Evangelism
We are to make disciples, then we are to mark them as disciples through believer’s baptism, and finally we are to mature those disciples by teaching them the things of Christ. This is called the Great Commission, and it is the whole job of the whole church.
All people have four basic, inescapable needs on the inside that can be met only by Jesus Christ:
There are four great gifts you can share with others:
- You can share with lost people the testimony of a changed life. Jesus said, “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:16). You can begin a witness by asking a question: “Would you mind if I tell you what God has done in my life?” That opens an opportunity to share your faith without getting into people’s faces. Instead, you get into their hearts.
- You can share with lost people a confident faith. If you know Jesus, you have something to be confident about. As the NIV puts it, “Such confidence as this is ours through Christ before God. Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything for ourselves, but our competence comes from God” (2 Corinthians 3:4-5). We can be both confident and competent in the power of the Holy Spirit.
- You can share with lost people a compassionate heart. If you really care about people, it will show in every word you say to them. It’s an old saying, but it’s true: people don’t care how much we know until they know how much we care. When the love of Christ is evident in our hearts, people will respond to that love. Alexander McLaren, a great pastor of an earlier day, said, “You can tell me the depth of a Christian’s compassion, and I will tell you the measure of his usefulness.” If you want to have a heart of compassion, be sensitive to people around you, build relationships, and start seeing people as God sees them.
- You can share with lost people a compelling message.
Here are four things we need to do now as men of God to live lives that will count both for time and for eternity:
- It’s time to look up. Dr. W.A. Criswell, the late, great pastor of First Baptist Church of Dallas, used to challenge, “Look up, brothers!” God’s act of blessing us has already happened and is still in effect. We have been blessed, we are blessed, and we will be blessed forevermore.
- It’s time to step up. As men of God, we must “walk worthy of the calling with which [we] were called” (Ephesians 4:1).
- It’s time to wise up. Ephesians 5:17-18 says, “Therefore, do not be unwise, but understand what the will of the Lord is. And do not be drunk with wine, in which is dissipation; but be filled with the Spirit.” Jesus taught us to be “wise as serpents and harmless as doves” (Matthew 10:16). This means to think biblically and live truthfully—to live distinctly different Christian lives in this culture.
- It’s time to gear up. We still need to put on the armor of God (Ephesians 6:13-18) and stand ready for the fight.
