Men - Hold the Line!

Men are intrinsically stubborn. If you are a man, I don’t need to provide that statement with corroboratory evidence. If you are a woman – even less so! It’s a wonderful, God given gift (ladies are thinking – woah, stop the lorry! Guys are thinking – heck ya!) Unfortunately through a cunning twist, carefully employed to subvert God’s purposes, Satan has tricked us into misdirecting our stubbornness. So now the first thought that pops into a woman’s head is that he – stubbornly refuses to help around the house, to moderate the time he spends with the boys or at the golf course instead of her, or how he stubbornly refuses to cut back on his excessive spending on toys or even just to come to church with her on Sunday. In short, he stubbornly refuses to consider anyone other than himself.

What a waste of stubbornness!

Men do well to take a page from Shammah’s book - the mighty Israelite warrior. When the bad guys came pouring into the countryside his mates “fled from the Philistines”. Instead of joining the retreat he got a bit “otherwise” (you know how men get sometimes?) and decided he’d rather “take his stand” on a lentil patch he’d staked out. And that’s exactly where he stood until the bad guys all went home (check it out! - 2 Sam 23:11).

That’s what men are supposed to do, they’re supposed to make a stand when everyone else is melting away. Think of Daniel and his bros who took a stand (literally) when everyone else was bowing to an idol and faced the flames as a consequence. Think of Joseph who stubbornly refused to compromise with his master’s wife and was thrown into jail for it. Suddenly the examples just come flooding to mind – Jesus, John the Baptist, Elijah, what do they all have in common? They held the line, they made a decision, they stood their ground.

Many men have lost the metal to make a decision and hold the line, instead they just make lame excuses. Joshua said, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” Decisions that men make are supposed to influence the destiny of the whole family, the community, the church, that’s the way it’s supposed to be.

What kind of man are you? When your life is spent and God asks you to give an accounting are you going to whinge? What are you going to say?

"My marriage would have been awesome but work got kinda busy."

"I would have made a difference in THE kingdom but my kids gave me the run around and I just didn’t feel like I had the capacity for anything else."

"I would have risen up to be a lion-heart in the church but I spent all my talent making a killing in the business world instead."

"I would have brought many soul’s to life by preaching the Gospel of the kingdom in power but my late nights watching Netflix made it tough to wake up for my quiet times."

Are you a fleck of froth on the ocean splashed around by every wind and tide? Do you spend a lot of time explaining how you ended up in the position that you’re in? Don’t be that guy. If you don’t make a decision to stand for God and order everything else around your decision then no one else will and your family will pay for it. Or worse, God won't ever entrust you with a family and you’ll waste your whole life on yourself (lame!!) Go on, be the man God made you to be, pick a lush looking lentil patch and hold the line!