I am the Lord, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight.  Jeremiah 9:24

God delights in kindness, justice and righteousness. None of this is easy for us to believe.

Kindness is difficult for some of us to imagine because we do not have extensive personal experience with kindness. We can imagine God as a weak, codependent, ineffective being whose specialty is being relentlessly nice to people. 

But what of the God who exercises kindness? What would that look like?

Justice is difficult for some of us to imagine because we have not had extensive personal experience with justice. In dysfunctional families justice is either chaotic or completely absent. 

But what of the God who exercises justice? What would that look like?

Righteousness is difficult for some of us to imagine because we have not had extensive personal experience with righteousness. We do not have instincts for doing what is right, we do not delight in doing righteousness, we expect it to be boring, dreary and out-of-date. We may delight in caretaking and codependent niceness, but is that the same as delighting in righteousness? Probably not. 

So, what of the God who exercises righteousness. What would that look like?

God is capable of delight. God is not the Unmoved One. God is the Most Moved of us all. 

God's compassion and kindness are free and full. 
God's commitment to justice is beyond all our imaginations. 
God pursues righteousness.

Learning to share in God's struggle for kindness, justice and righteousness will require significant changes for us. It cannot be done in a one time event. It will be a life-time quest. We will forget and remember again. We will run away and come back again. But each day in the struggle we will grow in our capacity for delight. Until, in the end, when God's purposes are complete, we will be filled with delight at the triumph of God's kindness, justice and righteousness

God of kindness, I want to understand you better.
God of justice, I want to live in solidarity with you.
God of righteousness, help me to delight in what pleases you.
Increase my capacity for delight, Lord.
Let me discover you afresh today.

Amen.

Copyright Dale and Juanita Ryan
National Association for Christian Recovery

The little seaside town of Demre, in Turkey, isn’t exactly the North Pole. It rarely snows there. Palm trees and orange groves dot the landscape. You won’t hear sleigh bells here, just the sound of the Muslim call to prayer from the minarets of the town mosques. No reindeer live here, and elves are extremely rare. NORAD won’t paying much attention to Demre this Christmas Eve, and most folks wrapping presents to put under the tree won’t give it a thought, either. In fact, virtually no one living in Demre celebrates Christmas, and yet this little town is the second most important town in the world next to Bethlehem when it comes to Christmas

See, Demre is the hometown of the original Saint Nicholas, who was born near there sometime in the late third century AD. There’s an old 8th century Church of St. Nicholas there that once housed the saint’s bones, and even though it is only active as a church one day a year (St. Nicholas Day, December 6), tourists come from around the world to see the birthplace of the one most of them know as Santa Claus.

Of course, the town of Demre cashes in on these interested tourists. You can buy Santa Claus-themed merchandise here that’s as plentiful as any you’d find in, say, Santa Claus, Indiana—everything from key chains, to icons, to Santa earrings.

If you traveled to Demre between 1981 and 2000, you would have seen a statue of Saint Nicholas dressed as Father Christmas—a figure in a hooded robe carrying a sack of toys and surrounded by children. In 2000, Russian sculptor Gregory Pototsky presented Demre with a bronze statue of an Eastern Orthodox Saint Nicholas, dressed in the vestments of a Christian bishop and standing atop a globe. The statue stood prominently right in the middle of the town square, which was unusual for a country that is nearly 100% Muslim.

Five years later, the town replaced this statue with one of an American style Santa Claus with a bell in his right hand, making him look like an overly zealous Salvation Army ringer. The plaster of Paris statue was designed to appeal to international tourists by making Santa more recognizable—more like the image of Santa developed by Coca Cola in the early 20th century—a Santa that’s less a religious figure and more the patron saint of consumerism.

So, which one of these is the real Saint Nicholas? What picture emerges when we cut through all the legend and commercialism? If Demre is confused, then we are certainly no less so. On Christmas Eve, millions of people will recite famous Clement Moore poem “A Visit from Saint Nicholas” (aka The Night Before Christmas) as a bedtime story for anxious children all tucked in their beds, with visions of X-boxes and iPods dancing in their heads. Well, there’s a very different story that needs to be told—a story of a man whose whole life was focused on following the one born in a manger.

The story begins around the year 260AD in the little village of Patara, just a few miles from the town of Demre (which was called Myra at the time). The apostle Paul had passed through Myra 200 years before as a prisoner on his way to Rome  and he very likely preached there. A Christian church was planted in Myra sometime after Paul’s visit, and was still in place when Nicholas was born.

Nicholas’ parents were Christians, and as a child he heard the stories of the Bible—he sang the Psalms in worship and heard the good news about Jesus—the stories of his birth in Bethlehem, his teaching and healing, his death on a cross and his resurrection from the dead. The church would have met in a large home and not a separate building, and Nicholas would have heard the Scriptures read by the elders and shared in holy communion there each week. Sometimes the church would meet in the town graveyard to remind themselves of the promise of Easter and the resurrection.

This is not church as we experience it tonight, however. Being a Christian in Nicholas’ day would have been a dangerous proposition. Just a few years before he was born, several members of the church in Myra were put to death by Roman authorities for refusing to make sacrifices to the Roman gods. Nicholas’ family would have reminded him of this danger, but they would also remind him that suffering persecution was, as Peter put it, a chance to “participate in the sufferings of Christ” (1 Peter 4:13).

Nicholas’ name in Greek meant “victory for the people,” and from the very beginning he seemed to look and act like a saint. He had a strong moral compass and avoided all the usual temptations of young people in Roman society—temptations of money, sex, and grabbing for political power. According to his 8th century biographer, Michael the Archimandrite, “He never strayed far from the church and, like a nest to a dove the church was to him a refreshment and a comfort. His mind was illuminated by the teachings, and day by day he grew towards a pure and gentle compassion.”

When Nicholas was a teenager, tragedy struck when both his parents died in an epidemic of plague that swept through the region of Lycia in the mid-third century. Nicholas was left alone, but not without help. His parents had apparently been wealthy, probably merchants who plied their trade through the ships coming in and out of the port of Myra. So they left Nicholas with a large inheritance of money to do with as he pleased. Can you imagine being a teenager with that kind of cash?

Well, rather than take the usual route of squandering the money, Nicholas relied on the faith he had received and, according to Michael, “he asked God that he might dispose of his life and his assets in accordance with [God’s] will. He would have remembered the words of Jesus about wealth—about giving to those in need and holding money loosely. He would have certainly recalled Jesus words to a rich young man who was likely in Nicholas’ very situation: “Go sell your possessions and give to the poor,” Jesus had said to the rich man, “and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come follow me” (Matthew 19:21).

It was customary in Roman society for people to take care of their own families, but not to worry about anyone else. The early Christians shocked Roman sensibilities when they insisted on caring for anyone in need—including societal outcasts like prisoners, widows, and orphans. Nicholas took Jesus’ call seriously, which led him to the first and most famous act of his life.

In Patara there was a once-wealthy man who had lost everything. People didn’t have savings accounts or retirement plans, so a lost ship of merchandise or a bad crop could completely ruin a small family. The man had three daughters, and he became so desperate that he resolved to sell each of them one by one into slavery, which, at the time, often meant sex slavery. The problem was that no one would marry these girls because of their poverty and the father’s inability to provide a dowry, so selling the daughters was the only option left—a common practice in the Roman world.

Nicholas heard of the family’s plight. One night, he took some of the gold his parents had left him, tied it in a small sack, and threw it through the open window of the family’s home. Some accounts say he actually threw the sack down the chimney and the gold landed in the girls’ stockings, which were hung by the fire to dry, though those are likely later additions. Michael describes what happened next:

“When daylight came, the man got up from bed and found in the middle of the house a pile of money. He could not hold back his tears…He gave thanks to God but also tried to understand the meaning of this good
fortune. Deciding to accept the gift as if it had been given by God, the father of the girls took the serendipitously found gold and noticed that the sum corresponded to the amount of money needed for a dowry. Without delay, he adorned the bridal chamber of his oldest daughter. And so his life once again became good, full of joy and peace of mind, thanks to the intervention of the holy Nicholas who had created a way for his daughter to marry.”

Seeing what an effect the gift had had on the family, Nicholas returned two more nights and tossed two more anonymous bags of gold through the open window for the other two daughters. The third time, the father of the girls was waiting in the dark to see who was committing these acts of lavish generosity. When the third bag of gold hit the floor, the man ran outside and found Nicholas and said to him, “If it were not for your goodness, which was stirred up by our Lord Jesus Christ, I have long since consigned my life to ruin and shame.” Nicholas swore the man to secrecy about what he had done, and yet, who could not tell this story eventually?

It’s difficult to express the uniqueness of this act in Nicholas’ time. In those days, in a culture of patronage, anonymous giving simply was not done. Usually, if a wealthy benefactor helped someone, the receiver would be obligated for life (kind of like the Godfather – someday you will do a service for me…). What Nicholas did was completely novel and it had a tremendous impact on the Christian communities who first heard the story. It became the story that identified Nicholas and made him one of the most popular saints in Christian history.

Notice that there’s nothing really magical about this story—no reindeer, no toys, no taking into account who is naughty or nice. It’s simply an act of sacrificial kindness toward someone in need—quite a different story than the one we celebrate in our Christmas specials and shopping malls. Santa Claus, as we know him, is the product of retailers who use him to sell their wares to those who can afford to stack presents under the tree that most of us don’t really need. The real Saint Nicholas was the product of a relationship with Christ, who gave everything away for those who had nothing. No one can do what the magical Santa does. Everyone can do what Nicholas did.

The story doesn’t stop there, however. Nicholas went on to participate in some of the most important events in Christian history. While Nicholas was still a young man, a great persecution of Christians took place under the Roman emperor Diocletian, who needed a scapegoat for the Empire’s precarious economic situation. Nicholas may have been studying for the priesthood when a crisis occurred there in Myra—every bishop (or overseer) of the church there had been imprisoned or killed, one after the other. One night in the year 295, the senior bishops of the area gathered to pray through the night for God to lead them to the person they could ordain as the next bishop of Myra. One of the bishops received a vision, where God told him to go with the others to the house of God and wait there for the first person to walk through the door in the morning. His name will be Nicholas.

Sure enough, Nicholas was the first to cross the threshold of the church that morning. Nicholas became one of the youngest bishops ever in the church—about the same age as Jesus when he started his public ministry. The bishop was both a man of the people and a man of God, executing the ministries of the church in the example of Christ. Nicholas fit the bill perfectly, and while being ordained a bishop was a huge honor for someone so young, it would not be easy.

No sooner had Nicholas been ordained as bishop than he was arrested on religious charges, imprisoned without trial, and was beaten and tortured. A common torture dealt to Christian prisoners was to blind their right eyes and cut the sinews of their left ankles. Nicholas born the scars of holding to his faith, even though he escaped becoming a martyr. For the majority of his tenure as Bishop of Myra, Christians were a hated minority, a target for angry mobs and the whims of the emperor. Still, Nicholas was steadfast in his ministry with the people, despite the scars he carried in his
own body.

When the emperor Constantine took over in the early 4th century, Christianity went almost overnight from being a persecuted minority to the religion of the empire. He called together a great council to standardize the church’s doctrines and Nicholas was part of the 300 or so bishops who gathered for the discussion and debate. It must have been a sight—a gathering of old bishops, many of them missing eyes and limping, some missing limbs—looking more like a gathering of pirates than a collection of religious leaders. The debates were intense, the major question being whether Jesus was
actually God in the flesh, the same substance as God, or only a being “like” God. Nicholas believed what John’s Gospel said about Jesus, that Jesus, the Word was with God and was God—the Word that became flesh and dwelt among us.

He argued fiercely for this biblical position and, according to some sources, even slapped the heretic bishop Arius across the face in a fit of righteous rage. Gonna find out who’s naughty or nice! He apologized, of course, but his zeal for Christ was always evident.

The stories of Nicholas’ Christian deeds of justice and compassion are myriad. When back in Myra, he heard of some men who were falsely accused of a crime and were about to be beheaded. He advocated on their behalf and, acting as their advocate, got them acquitted because of his reputation as an honest bishop. For this reason, the saint who would be Santa Claus became the patron saint of prisoners.  In another instance, Nicholas went to the emperor to plead the case of his people who were under an undue burden of taxes, and got them lowered. There are lots of stories like this concerning Nicholas’ passion for his people. Every one of them reveals that he lived up to his name, “victory for the people.”

When Nicholas died some time in the 330s, he was buried in Myra, but relic seekers managed to take his bones to various places around the world, meaning only parts of Santa Claus actually made it all over the world! Today, most of his remains rest in Bari, Italy, where anthropologists recently constructed what his face might have looked like—not a bit like our Santa Claus, but the same kind of face as the people he served.

There are lots of stories about Saint Nicholas, some of which are true, most of which are the fanciful distortions of legend. Our version of Santa Claus is actually a Scandinavian legend loosely based on the real Saint Nicholas, but many generations removed from the real thing. I don’t know about you, but I find the real story to be the most compelling—the story of a Christmas life, one lived not just once a year, but all the time. A life that is willing to sacrifice, to suffer, to give oneself fully to the work of Christ. It’s a giving life more than a receiving life. It’s the kind of life that Jesus himself would live and invites us to follow him in living ourselves.

Paul’s letter to Titus describes that kind of Christmas life. “For the grace of God has appeared,” says Paul. The Word of God became flesh in the form of a baby in a manger, the one who came to save us all. This grace, this gift of God is about “training us to renounce impiety and worldly passions, and in the present age to live lives that are self-controlled, upright and godly.” We don’t merely celebrate the gift of God at Christmas. Like Nicholas, we go out and make that gift a reality. We renounce dependence on the collection of stuff, the indulgence of ourselves and, instead, live lives that are worthy of Christ. Paul goes on to say that Christ will return again—a second Advent—and when he returns, what will he find us doing? Will we be sitting on piles of presents, or will we be silently and secretly changing the lives of people who are in desperate need?

Indeed, says Paul, that’s what the gift of Jesus is all about. “He it is who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify for himself a people of his own who are zealous for good deeds.” We are not simply to “be good for goodness sake,” but for the sake of Christ, whose goodness changes the world.

Zealous for good deeds! You want the spirit of Christmas? That’s it. It’s not about us. Christmas is not your birthday. It’s about being zealous to do what Christ has done—not just during the holiday season, but every day. Can we retrain ourselves to move away from consumption and toward generosity? Can we sacrifice a few more toys so that someone who is desperate
can survive? Can we stand up for those who are broken, imprisoned, poor, and marginalized? Can we focus on “victory for the people” over poverty, sin, and death? Rather than teaching your kids to be good because Santa is coming or there’s some “elf on the shelf” watching their every move (a holiday version of extortion? But I digress…), teach them the way of Jesus and the example of the real St. Nicholas—to be good for the sake of Christ. That’s a real Christmas life, my friends. Anything else is just a caricature.

What if we made it a goal to represent this Saint Nicholas with our giving to Christ? What if, instead of entering the fray at the mall, we all decided to try and help lift one family out of poverty? What if instead of spending all our time visiting relatives we chose instead to visit someone in prison, or spent time talking to that homeless man on the street? I’m guessing that Christmas would start to feel a lot different—and maybe even honor the Christ child more than any sale or full stocking ever could.

In 2008, the town of Myra replaced the Coca Cola Santa with yet another statue—this one of a Saint Nicholas with Turkish features—a trimmed beard, a patterned jacket, a round Seljuk styled cap or boerk, and he carries on his shoulders not a sack of goodies, but a young child—children were the beneficiaries of many of his acts of kindness. Behind him appears a slightly older boy dressed in a simple tunic. He looks like a common man—someone just like us, someone who could be fully devoted to Christ. We can do extraordinary things if we devote our lives to the manger born King. On Christmas, we just don’t celebrate a holiday, we remember the invitation of Christ, who wants to be born in us—to change us so that we can join him in changing the world for the sake of his kingdom. 


Will you follow him?

As you get ready for bed on Christmas Eve, I hope you will remember the story of this Saint Nicholas—the story of one who gave his life completely to Christ. And then, may you begin living his style of Christmas life every day!

This post was written by Bob Kaylor.  For his original post, go to:  http://bobkaylor.com/a-christmas-life-the-real-saint-nicholas-a-sermon-for-christmas-eve/

I am a Nazarene because of what the church teaches. It teaches a doctrine of compassion, love, and kindness. 

In October 1895, Phineas F. Bresee and Joseph Widney organized a Church of the Nazarene in Los Angeles. The church was formed around the doctrine of entire sanctification and the belief that sanctified Christians should follow Christ’s example and preach the gospel to the poor. 

Bresee took issue with the church placing missions in poor areas, but not giving the poor their own church. He formed the church with the goal of ministering to the poor. It was said of him that he often took money with him when he went out on his pastoral rounds, but that he never returned with any, having given it away to anyone he met who was in need. 

On Sundays (and the members would come to the church for the entire day, having services in the morning, eating dinner together, fellowshipping in the afternoon and then having an evening service), he would stand in the foyer greeting people before the service. If he saw people arrive who looked embarrassed about the way they were dressed, he would rush to greet them enthusiastically, put his arm around them, and escort them to the best seat in the sanctuary. 

Even in 1895, the church allowed for the consecration of women and ordained both women and men as ministers. Before the Holiness Church of Christ in Tennessee merged with the Nazarene Church in 1908, they had ordained three women as ministers. Our founder was fond of saying, “Some of our best men are women.” Women played major roles in the holiness movement and when we start naming the names of our church parents, the lists are filled with women who were ministers, deaconesses, evangelists, and missionaries. 

The founding members of our church strongly believed that you shouldn’t adorn either churches or your body—not because it was sinful, but because it was a poor use of resources. That money, they felt, should be going into ministries for the poor. 

That church later merged with two other regional denominations, each having a Wesleyan context. The Association of Pentecostal Churches of America, the Church of the Nazarene, and the Holiness Church of Christ were brought together and merged officially on October 8, 1908 in Pilot Point, Texas.  The merged organization was called The Pentecostal Church of the Nazarene. 

In 1919, we changed our name to drop the “Pentecostal” because of the new associations that had become attached to the word Pentecostal. We are part of the Pentecostal movement; however, we do not encourage (nor forbid) speaking in tongues. It is a gift of the Spirit, but not one on which we place a lot of emphasis nor one we believe is essential. 

We trace our roots through various movements which we recognize as paving the way for our existence. Our antecedents include the Holiness Church of Christ of 1894, the Association of Pentecostal Churches of America (1887), the holiness movement of the 19th Century, and the Wesleyan movement of the 18th Century, including the Anglican Church. 

We claim heritage from the other Christian churches (including the Catholic Church) throughout the ages. The Church of the Nazarene calls itself a branch of the “one, holy, universal, and apostolic” church. We seek to be faithful to that universal history and—like nearly every other Christian religion—claim the history of the people of God as presented in the Old and New Testament as our history and heritage. 

We believe that all people of God through the ages who have been redeemed through Jesus Christ are our brothers and sisters—no matter what church they do or do not attend. We acknowledge and accept as expressions of our faith the ecumenical creeds of the first five Christian centuries. 

We believe that our branch of the church has a special calling and that is why we exist separately. Our calling is to proclaim the doctrine of sanctification and to live a Christ-like life of service to others.   We have 16 Biblical Articles of Faith.

As Nazarenes, we believe that God calls Christians to a life of holiness. God cleanses our heart from original sin (the act of justification, achieved only through God’s grace and accepted by us only through faith) and fills us with love for God and others. When we have been filled with the Holy Spirit, we then devote our lives to serving God by serving others. 

Compassionate ministries are extremely important to Nazarenes. It is commanded that we love others and we display that love through service. In that love and service, we believe, all else is fulfilled.  Our concept of service and God is based on the belief that we are to love God with all our hearts and to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. 

This post was adapted from an epinions website entry.  For the original post, go to:  http://www.epinions.com/content_2721620100?sb=1

BE HOLY.
BE A MAN.

1. Sex was created for marriage. We shouldn’t paint a picture of sex as naughty, dirty, nasty, and shameful to our kids. What we should be teaching our kids (in age appropriate ways, of course) is that God created sex, and that sex is amazing, beautiful, intimate, passionate, and of course fun…and best experienced in the context of marriage. (See Genesis 2:23–25.) 

2. We have a deep, passionate love for Jesus. “The Sex Talk” can quickly turn into a list of don’ts! But what we need to be teaching our kids is the whys. If we do our job properly, our kids should want to abstain, based out of their deep, abiding, passionate love for Jesus. The Bible is full of don’t verses (Acts 15:29, Romans 1:29, 1 Corinthians 6:13–18). While certainly it’s critical that we teach our kids the truth of God’s Word, we also need to convince them to obey His Word out of love, devotion, and passion for Him. 

3. Sex before marriage is robbery. When we choose to follow Christ, the reality is that we are God’s sons and daughters. And when we have sex outside of marriage, we’re stealing the virginity and purity of others who belong to God. Those things are His, a precious treasure that He has reserved only for the future spouse of that person. I know this is a bold statement, but we must honor God’s kids! We must value them, treating them with gentleness, love, kindness, and care. We need to treat them as precious and holy! Because that’s what they are in His eyes. 

This post was taken from the booklet Sex, Lust and XXX:  Fighting for your kids' purity in a sex saturated world. 

BE HOLY.
BE A MAN.

I am the Lord, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight.  

God delights in kindness, justice and righteousness. None of this is easy for us to believe.

Kindness is difficult for some of us to imagine because we do not have extensive personal experience with kindness. We can imagine God as a weak, codependent, ineffective being whose specialty is being relentlessly nice to people. But what of the God who exercises kindness? What would that look like?

Justice is difficult for some of us to imagine because we have not had extensive personal experience with justice. In dysfunctional families justice is either chaotic or completely absent. But what of the God who exercises justice? What would that look like?

Righteousness is difficult for some of us to imagine because we have not had extensive personal experience with righteousness. We do not have instincts for doing what is right, we do not delight in doing righteousness, we expect it to be boring, dreary and out-of-date. We may delight in caretaking and codependent niceness, but is that the same as delighting in righteousness? Probably not. So, what of the God who exercises righteousness. What would that look like?

God is capable of delight. God is not the Unmoved One. God is the Most Moved of us all. God's compassion and kindness are free and full. God's commitment to justice is beyond all our imaginations. God pursues righteousness.

Learning to share in God's struggle for kindness, justice and righteousness will require significant changes for us. It cannot be done in a one time event. It will be a life-time quest. We will forget and remember again. We will run away and come back again. But each day in the struggle we will grow in our capacity for delight. Until, in the end, when God's purposes are complete, we will be filled with delight at the triumph of God's kindness, justice and righteousness

God of kindness, I want to understand you better.
God of justice, I want to live in solidarity with you.
God of righteousness, help me to delight in what pleases you.
Increase my capacity for delight, Lord.
Let me discover you afresh today.
Amen.

Copyright Dale and Juanita Ryan
National Association for Christian Recovery

BE HOLY.
BE A MAN.

There is a difference between being masculine and being macho.  Masculinity is our healthy expression of the uniqueness of being created a man in God's design.  The behaviors of a macho man are instead unhealthy expression of the stereotypes of masculinity lived out in their most extreme forms.  The macho man perverts true masculinity.  He pretends to be strong by acting aggressively and creating about himself an image of power, both of which mask the deeper reality of the insecurity within.  The truly masculine man knows who he is in God and enjoys a healthy integration of this emotional, intellectual, physical and spiritual nature. This wholeness comes from knowing and responding to the truth that he is fully loved and accepted in Christ.  The masculine man in Christ is truly set free to become all that he is meant to be.

The macho man lives out an image of manhood that emphasizes only one small part of what it means to be male.  He pretends that it is possible to live life with a constant erection.  But, our physical genital reality reminds us that we are only sometimes hard.  Most of the time, we are are soft.  The majority of our lives is lived out as penis, not erected phallus, and this is normal and proper for men.  Think of what it would be like in actuality if we had to live the whole of our lives with an erection.  This is a grotesque image.  Yet it is the kind of masculine image many macho men attempt to convey thru their personalities as they relate to those around them.

It is far healthier and more productive to recognize and celebrate the broader dimensions of our masculinity modeled for us most completely by the man Jesus, our loving LORD.   As He demonstrated, a man's strength is not rooted in violent aggression or in an obsession with worldly power, but in the Godlike power of sacrificial love.

A man is not weak, but strong, when he wisely chooses to live the predominant portion of this life with his sword in his sheath.  This is not a man feminized.  This is a masculine man who has given up the false god of proud machismo and has delivered his complex and diverse masculine personality into the hands of God to be shaped by the demands of love.

This post is taken from Temptations Men Face.

BE HOLY.
BE A MAN.

Yesterday, we discussed four things that represent a real man, a Christian man.  Today, we conclude our discussion:

5.  The Christian man is free to be tender.  He no longer has to analyze everything objectively and express himself without feeling.  He is now strong enough to be gentle.  He will touch and hold and kiss his children & grandchildren as Jesus held the children of his day and loved them.  He will affirm others with words of truth and love and be generous with hugs and other physical expressions of encouragement.  He will let others affirm and love him.  He can laugh and cry with others like Jesus did.  

6.  The Christian man is free to forgive.  He will forgive others quickly and with a generous spirit as he has been forgiven by God.  A redeemed sinner, and in process himself, he can sympathize and empathize with the struggles of others.

7.  The Christian man is free to stand for righteousness.  He will influence the world by courageous speaking  the truth and acting on the truth he knows.  Once he was too insecure to stand up for what he believed, but now he is secure in Christ's love.  He has the courage to expose the fruitless behaviors of darkness and to model the fruitful lifestyle of light, love and truth.

8.  The Christian man is free to be concerned for the world around him.  No longer driven by a need to build external evidences of his worth, he can give himself and his money away.  He can work less to build his personal empire, and more to alleviate suffering, hunger and the conditions that lead to distress, disease and death.

The Christian man is free to live in love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

The information from this post is taken from Temptations Men Face.

BE HOLY.
BE A MAN.

What are the common behaviors of a man who claims Christ as his savior?  What does the power of God's Word do to a man?  What does a man look like who has been transformed by God's Holy Spirit?

1. The Christian man is free to be a servant-leader.  He no longer depends upon his own strength, but on the guidance, wisdom and strength of the Lord.  His identity is not dependent on successful achievement, so he is set free to fail without being devastated by failure.  This freedom to fail gives the Christian man courage and faith to step out and take  measured risks in the Lord's work.  He includes others in the decision-making process because he is no longer afraid to admit that he needs the help of others and of God in order to have success.  He can affirm and build up those with whom he works because he feels affirmed and accepted in love by God in Christ.

2.  The Christian man is free to be lighthearted.  He no longer has to take himself so seriously.  God is his refuge.  He is set free from having to protect himself, to fear and shield himself from others.  He is secure in himself and his faith.  He will not list out his accomplishments like a peacock strutting around, fanning his tail.  His personality will take on a peaceful playfulness that will draw others to him.  He can laugh at himself.  He has no need to put others down.  

3.  The Christian man is free to interact with others.  He is relational.  He is a thoughtful boss and a congenial host.  He is free to share himself openly. He will talk with his wife.  He will talk with his children.  He will not talk at them but will talk with them, listening to those he loves.  He will not have to have all the right answers.  He will enjoy entering into the deeper-meaning dimensions of the lives of those around him.  He is no longer interested in telling others how important he is.  He is now more interested in hearing about their joys, their needs, their hopes, their dreams.  

4.  The Christian man is able to be open with others about his needs and to ask for help.  He knows that it is his willingness to open his life to others that creates possibilities for himself and others to grow, receive healing and move on toward maturity in Christ.  The man will give and receive friendship.

(continued tomorrow)

The information from this post is taken from Temptations Men Face.

BE HOLY.
BE A MAN.