Men, Called By God To Be Warriors

This is for all the men and the boys becoming men. The enemy and this world, along with your flesh, are trying to mess with your mind. You are under tremendous attack and you don't even know it. The enemy wants you to sink to the lowest level, to live according to your flesh, and we fall for it all the time. But we are more than our flesh. We are more than our urges. We are more than our dark desires. We are leaders, champions, heroes, warriors called by God. Doesn't matter if you don't feel like it or think you don't deserve it or even if you know you don't qualify. You have been called and anointed, and God never revokes his calling.

I will speak candidly with you. The way you treat women, your mother, sister, friends, tells everyone how you will treat the most important person you will ever have in your life; your wife. If you lose yourself in pornography then this most precious partner will be nothing more than an object to you and you will always treat her as a possession, a thing to do with as you want. Those images you are looking at are not innocent activity; they are someone's mother, daughter, sister, friend, and most do not want to do what they are doing. You are contributing to an industry that feeds off the desperation of some women and the sick mind of men.

You call yourself a man? Then be a real man. Be what God called you to be. Start with your wife or girlfriend:

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. (Ephesians 5:25-27)

Every Christian husband should be sitting on the edge of their seats when they read these words. Can you imagine how you are suppose to be seeing your wife? How you are suppose to be treating her? Is she precious to you? Is she the great jewel in your life? You are to sacrifice for her, cover her, sing over her, wrap your arms around her, defend her and see her as perfection.

Do you think the Church is perfect? She isn't. We can all see her blemishes. We all point out her short comings. But Jesus doesn't see any of that. He has made her holy. He has washed everything away. She is radiant, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish in his eyes. She is holy and blameless because he has declared her holy and blameless. It doesn't mean she is perfect but Jesus sees her as perfect. Your wife makes mistakes. She says things and does things that could offend you, but you are a man in love. You cover those offences  Forgiveness is quick for you. You do not see blemishes. You have declared her blameless because she is your wife and you are her husband. To say you are her husband should be enough. You are the warrior and defender in her life.

Some men don't understand this whole warrior thing. Your wife is a warrior too. You fight for, not against, each other. But as a warrior you must sometimes defend her against herself. When she does stupid things (because we all do) you cover her. You don't hold things against her. You don't make a list. You thickly spread forgiveness over your relationship and you never, ever, ever bring up those things again. You treat them as if they never happened. You are defending her against herself. You remind her of your love but more importantly of God's glory. You speak the Word into her life. You pray with her and for her. You make her feel like she is worth a million bucks to you, your best friend, the most important person in your life, because she is. If doesn't matter what she says and does, you made a decision to love her as Jesus made a decision to love his Bride; cover her.

You never cheat on her, in action or in thought. This is where the enemy will want to destroy you. This is where he will cause us to sink to the lowest level of our flesh. He will try to move us from the spirit realm to the flesh place. He will use images that provoke flesh desires. Things will become easily available to you on the internet. A quick peek. What does it hurt? It hurts who you are to your wife. It hurts who you are to Jesus. It hurts a whole lot of people. Don't go there. Jesus has equipped you to be more, to rise as a hero, to be that champion, to be more than a conqueror, to fight as a warrior. Sometimes you will have to fight against your flesh to be that warrior. After Jesus your first thought must be to your wife and you would never do anything to offend the most important person to you, the one who lays herself wide open to you, the one who has placed her heart in your hands.

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her. Jesus has you covered. If you fail her Jesus covers it. He will intercede for you. Trust him. Do what is right. Confess what you need to confess. It is not about you. It is not about your needs, wants or desires. Be the man Jesus called you to be. Be a man and set yourself aside, sacrifice yourself for your wife. Don't worry about her response, the Spirit is at work in her too. She will respond to the Jesus in you, to the love you pour out into her life. Her reaction is not your responsibility, but your actions, words, attitudes are your responsibility. She is the most important person in your life, the only one who you have opened your heart to, the only one who looks to you as her champion. Rise up!

Blessings Flow In Submission

The Church is so different than the world that it cannot be understood by the darkness. Even the words we use are different in meaning. Love, in the Church has a far greater character than the love spoken of in the world. It is the same with the word submit.

If you tell someone in the world they have to submit, walls will come up pretty quickly. Yielding, trusting, giving up rights is not something that anyone in the world accepts easily. We see ourselves as freedom fighters and we will move heaven and earth to keep our rights, or so we think. But in the Church the word submit means to open ourselves to receive from others. It involves love and trust. Not trusting others necessarily but trusting God who works through them.

If you tell a woman in the world that she has to submit to her husband you will probably get an earful. The word means something different to them. But in the Church it comes loaded with a richness that overflows with trust and love:

Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. (Ephesians 5:22-24)

Let's set aside the husband's responsibility until tomorrow and just focus on the wife here. I am assuming in this situation that the husband is a Holy Spirit, Jesus following man whose personal goal in life is to increase in his revelation of love. It is the woman's responsibility to trust what Jesus is doing through her husband. She must trust his words of encouragement, believing that Jesus is blessing her through her husband.

To receive the blessings of God we must submit ourselves, casting off our fear and opinions, to be open to receive from his hand what he offers us. Wives must see their husbands as a blessing, the person God will use to bless them. Husbands are a source of encouragement as they remind their wives of the glory of God. They have a huge responsibility in this relationship to love their wives as Jesus loves the Church, but the wives have equal responsibility to love their husbands as the Church loves Jesus.

It really comes down to a trust issue. Do wives trust Jesus to use their husbands to bless them? Imagine the blessings we miss out on when we fight against God. How can he bless those who fight against receiving those blessings? The same is true in a marriage. How can God bless the wife through the husband if the wife is constantly putting her husband down, calling him names, picking fights, arguing over everything and insisting on her way of doing things. Marriage is most certainly a partnership but it is clear in the Word how God works in a marriage.

It is true that none of this applies if the woman has married someone who is lost in the darkness and does not know Jesus. There are big problems with trust in that situation and it is part of the reason that Jesus told us not to be unequally yoked. Marriage works when Jesus remains the center of the relationship and continues to be the reason for being.

I realize that this is not a popular notion, even in the Church, and it's because we have allowed the attitude and wisdom of the world to darken our understanding of God's wisdom. If we look at submission from the world's perspective it is a nasty and ugly thing. If we understand marriage from God's perspective we understand that submission is a beautiful thing, an act of love and trust. We see husbands as representatives of Jesus, overflowing with love, self-sacrifice, Godly direction, hope, great lovers of their wives and no one else. When we look at men's responsibility tomorrow you will see how submission can be the most natural response to love.