Empowered Manhood (Part 2)
These Three Traits Characterize Empowered Manhood
Hiding in the dark, whether it was by myself or with someone else, gave me permission to do things I would never consider doing in the light. But this caused me to live my life out of the fear of being found out which handicapped my faith.
Gary Haugen, Attorney and Founder, CEO, and former President of International Justice Mission said this…
“Jesus beckons me to follow him to that place of weakness where I risk the vulnerability of a child so that I might know how strong my Father is and how much he loves me. But the truth be told, I would rather be an adult. I’d rather be in a place where I can still pull things together if God doesn’t show up, where I risk no ultimate humiliation, where I don’t have to take the shallow breaths of desperation. And as a result, my experience of my heavenly Father is simply impoverished.”
I look back at the day my fiancé walked in on me while I was looking at pornography as the day God humiliated me into a desperate dependence on Him. He graciously pushed me into the light that I had been avoiding for so long.
It was tragically unfortunate and painful that I had to be pushed, but it was the beginning of a whole new life of freedom and joy. Praise God my fiancé and I were still married that following May, and we’ve been married now for over 16 years. Over this time of striving to live empowered by the light, and encouraging other men to do the same, I discovered three characteristics of the man who is free from the lies of the dark and lives empowered by the light.
A man empowered by the light is…
Known by God
Grown by God
Owned by God
Known By God
You may be wondering, “Doesn’t God know everyone? After all, Mike, He knows everything right? And He knows everything about everyone.” Oh yes, God knows you alright (Jeremiah 17:10). But if you have not trusted Jesus for your salvation then it looks a little different for you in this sense.
I love our neighborhood kids and I love my 11-year-old son, Matteo’s, friends. But my relationship with those kids is very different from my relationship with my son.
My son, Matteo, is uniquely my responsibility. I gave him his name. He is dependent on me for his very basic life-sustaining needs. He is also uniquely dependent on me for my fatherly affection and love. No other father will ever be able to take my place because Matteo is MY son.
If you haven’t come under the submission of the loving and gracious authority of Jesus Christ, then God has a very different relationship with you. You might be a “child of God” in the generic sense - that He created you - but you are not His child. When you have entrusted yourself to God through faith in Jesus you decide to move into the house of God, become dependent on His provision, and abide by his rules (John 8:31-33).
In John 8:31-33, Jesus draws quite a contrast between being a slave to sin or being a beloved son of God. When we find refuge in God, in the light, we get to know and trust God. But more importantly, God knows us!
Grown By God
1 John 1:5 highlights the fact that if we are willing to be honest and vulnerable, to step out into the light and acknowledge our sin, throwing ourselves on the mercy of God, He is faithful and just to forgive us and restore us through the blood of Jesus.
We are then freed by God from our sin which no longer needs to follow us around like a dark cloud. We can live with confidence knowing that our standing before God is completely secure because it is not dependent on anything we have done or did not do. But that is only the beginning! Then God begins to work through His Holy Spirit to change us miraculously from the inside out. As a pastor, I can vouch for this life change!
While I was a Young Life Area Director, I got to know a high school student named Mike. He is one of those miracles of God that I got to watch happen right in front of me. Mike grew up with a severe stuttering problem. His parents told me how they struggled, hauling him from one doctor and specialist to another, with very few answers.
Eventually Mike began to talk but it was very few and far between. He was so self-conscious about his stuttering he just would not speak at all.
After taking Mike to a Young Life camp in Minnesota where he heard the gospel for the first time he began to change. On the bus ride home, Mike decided to open his bible and start reading because he wanted to devote himself to Jesus’ teaching. Mike immersed himself in scripture, reading every day without fail.
Then the miracle happened. Mike began to speak…in full sentences! But it wasn’t his own words, it was the word of God that he had hidden in his heart. We would have discussions in bible studies and scripture would pour from Mike’s mouth out of his heart. I had never seen anything like it.
God gave Mike His words through the work of the Holy Spirit in his heart. It was amazing.
Mike not only gained freedom, in a sense, from his stuttering problem, but through his belief in God and entrusting himself to Jesus, he was free to be himself because of the security he found as a true son of God.
Men, as we walk in the light, instead of hiding in the dark, we experience God’s grace in ever-increasing amounts. This results in the fruit of the Spirit, along with greater confidence in the goodness of God.
Owned By God
A man cannot abide in God’s light without God’s light eventually residing in that man. It is that light inside a man that empowers him to transcend himself and make an eternal impact for God’s kingdom.
One of my favorite stories in the Bible is the story of Jesus’ interaction with the woman at the well in John 4.
After traveling through Samaria Jesus and his disciples arrived at a well where his disciples left him alone to go into the town to buy food. At this point a woman came to draw water and Jesus asked her for a drink. This launched them into a conversation through which we discover that this woman had a very sketchy reputation.
In fact, Jesus and this woman are at the well, in the middle of the desert at the hottest time of the day, because she was trying to avoid running into other women who might scoff at her. She had the reputation of being sexually promiscuous. In fact, she had been married to five different men. But we only find this out after she offers to expose a tiny sliver of truth to the light, and Jesus uses that to transform her. She is known by God and grown by God.
Then, after she finds out that Jesus is the Messiah, she runs back into the town, to the people she was trying so hard to avoid. These were the ones who had shamed her and treated her like garbage, and yet she ran to tell them about Him. The bible says that many people from that town came to believe in Jesus because of her. This woman with a questionable past and a shady reputation is who Jesus used as his vehicle to bring the gospel to this town!
But you see, she was able to do that because she was no longer her own. She was owned by God.
I identify with that shameful woman. I have no business being a pastor or mentoring other men. You have no idea how disgustingly sinful I am. The damage I have done is extensive. I have left a wake of destruction in my path because of my selfish, sinful rebellion. The only thing that warrants my role as a pastor is that the light of God exists in me now and that empowers me to transcend myself and make an eternal impact for God’s kingdom.
Galatians 2:20 says, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”
I am not my own, I am owned by God.
