Another Men's Movement
03/17/12 11:28 Filed in: David Ellis
It seems like every time I turn around, there is another “men’s movement”.
Now granted, we men DO need help… and A LOT of it I might add (and that’s just for me).
But why is it that no matter what we seem to try, nothing seems to “stick”? At least not for very long.
Maybe we are asking the wrong questions and therefore hearing incomplete advice...
One more “movement”- this one will be the “one” that will finally…
… Get men moving
… Bring a “renewal”
… Fix the problem
… Finally get men serious about God
There have been many.
Promise Keepers
Every Mans Battle
What Would Jesus Do
Now it’s Courageous
and Not A Fan.
… There will be more.
I don’t mean to judge these. I really don’t. All are sincere. And all are helpful… to a point.
What they are great at is pointing to the symptoms. And we certainly need that. We need that doctor that says to us, “these test results are telling me something is really wrong.” Otherwise we just keep walking around blind to our own condition. And believe me, many, many men are the walking blind. Some by choice, many more by something deeper.
But all these “movements” share one common thread that ultimately dooms the men that sincerely try them to frustration and failure.
And that common denominator is… Us.
I know this is not their creators’ intention, but as humans, and maybe especially as Christian men, our natural inclination when we hear our “symptoms” is to either deny the facts altogether or else embrace them. Some of us push away what we are seeing or hearing about ourselves in denial of our actual condition, wanting to believe that we are just fine the way we are. Or we embrace the symptoms and see them as our “identity” and begin the efforts to “fix” ourselves. Sometimes an odd combo of both. “Symptom management” is what I call it. Unfortunately it also goes by another name. Religion. And any honest reading of the Bible will tell you what Jesus thinks of religion. (He’s not a fan)
“Symptom Management” is based on us cranking down and finally getting “serious”. Serious about God, serious about our family, our responsibilities, our commitments, etc.
Now hear me. None of these things are bad. They are good things to want and certainly acceptable outcomes.
And certainly the desire to want these things are part of any real change. You have to be unsatisfied about today to affect real change tomorrow.
But the solution ultimately fails in the implementation because of two things.
ONE: We forget that these things, the commitments, keeping our promises, and all that, are RESULTS. Results of something deeper occurring inside of us.
SECOND: It’s dependency, its focus, is on us. On our own ability to buckle down and do the right thing.
WE must act… FOR success. Or in the words of Watchman Nee (btw Google him), we are those men “fighting FOR victory”.
And the only problem with that is we are seriously flawed creatures. Broken in fact. And we are missing the most basic fact that the very core of our being, our heart, is a broken, wounded and shattered thing. And if that doesn’t get repaired, then all the trying harder in the world will NEVER last long or result in what the original goal was to start with… Real Change.
Much like our New Year’s resolutions. Great goals. We even get motivated and try. But 99.9% of us stop and forget at some point. It’s because we never do it from the heart and the heart needs only one motivator to engage it… it must KNOW, experientially KNOW, that to do something means Life and to not do it means Death.
In the absence of an alive and free and whole heart- your brain is all you got making the choices. And our brain believes a whole mess of lies, and one of the most destructive is that WE are the solution to our condition. And for us men, this is particularly handy because we love control. And nothing builds up our pride and religiosity more than feeling like we’ve been able to buckle down, get our own lives in order and be one of the good guys.
Please hear me. There is a time to make choices. There is a time to utilize your will to do the right thing. But if your source, your foundation, is based on your belief that your issues have all been a matter of just you not getting serious enough and not trying hard enough to be a good man, then I hate to tell you this, but you ARE going to fail. Because, my friend, we ALL fail, regardless of how much we white knuckle the steering wheel of our lives.
Because the problem ISN’T your willpower, it’s the broken and wounded heart inside the man, you And when I say broken, I’m not talking about a sad or depressed emotional state, I’m talking about a heart that doesn’t work the way it was supposed to. Like a broken watch. It’s out of this brokenness, that we think. It’s out of this brokenness, that we speak. It’s out of this brokenness, that we do the things that we do. And until our hearts, the inside of us, gets the repair & restoration it desperately needs, we will always continually go back to behaving and speaking and thinking the same way.
But this is where the news gets good! Fixing the inside of us, doing that restoration, is exactly the work that Jesus came to do. Remember when He announced his mission? “I came to heal the brokenhearted and set the captives free.” He knew that when you discover the man you really are, the man that God has created you to be; when you discover your True Identity, your actions your thoughts and your behaviors will follow.
So go watch Courageous, or Not a Fan, or whatever other movie or movement that gives rise to the passion to change. They serve as our modern day equivalent of the Old Testament prophets calling us to change. And that’s a good Step 1. But realize Step 2 is never found in ourselves, never found in “Symptom Management” or found exclusively in willpower. It’s only found in the One who can heal our core. And once that happens, you will start to see the results that you desire. Or as Watchmen Nee put it, “you will fight FROM victory”!
To learn more about what it means to Find Restoration, Discover your True Identity and Live Passionate and Free, please join us at Heart Revolution IGNITE!
Live the Revolution!
David
… Get men moving
… Bring a “renewal”
… Fix the problem
… Finally get men serious about God
There have been many.
Promise Keepers
Every Mans Battle
What Would Jesus Do
Now it’s Courageous
and Not A Fan.
… There will be more.
I don’t mean to judge these. I really don’t. All are sincere. And all are helpful… to a point.
What they are great at is pointing to the symptoms. And we certainly need that. We need that doctor that says to us, “these test results are telling me something is really wrong.” Otherwise we just keep walking around blind to our own condition. And believe me, many, many men are the walking blind. Some by choice, many more by something deeper.
But all these “movements” share one common thread that ultimately dooms the men that sincerely try them to frustration and failure.
And that common denominator is… Us.
I know this is not their creators’ intention, but as humans, and maybe especially as Christian men, our natural inclination when we hear our “symptoms” is to either deny the facts altogether or else embrace them. Some of us push away what we are seeing or hearing about ourselves in denial of our actual condition, wanting to believe that we are just fine the way we are. Or we embrace the symptoms and see them as our “identity” and begin the efforts to “fix” ourselves. Sometimes an odd combo of both. “Symptom management” is what I call it. Unfortunately it also goes by another name. Religion. And any honest reading of the Bible will tell you what Jesus thinks of religion. (He’s not a fan)
“Symptom Management” is based on us cranking down and finally getting “serious”. Serious about God, serious about our family, our responsibilities, our commitments, etc.
Now hear me. None of these things are bad. They are good things to want and certainly acceptable outcomes.
And certainly the desire to want these things are part of any real change. You have to be unsatisfied about today to affect real change tomorrow.
But the solution ultimately fails in the implementation because of two things.
ONE: We forget that these things, the commitments, keeping our promises, and all that, are RESULTS. Results of something deeper occurring inside of us.
SECOND: It’s dependency, its focus, is on us. On our own ability to buckle down and do the right thing.
WE must act… FOR success. Or in the words of Watchman Nee (btw Google him), we are those men “fighting FOR victory”.
And the only problem with that is we are seriously flawed creatures. Broken in fact. And we are missing the most basic fact that the very core of our being, our heart, is a broken, wounded and shattered thing. And if that doesn’t get repaired, then all the trying harder in the world will NEVER last long or result in what the original goal was to start with… Real Change.
Much like our New Year’s resolutions. Great goals. We even get motivated and try. But 99.9% of us stop and forget at some point. It’s because we never do it from the heart and the heart needs only one motivator to engage it… it must KNOW, experientially KNOW, that to do something means Life and to not do it means Death.
In the absence of an alive and free and whole heart- your brain is all you got making the choices. And our brain believes a whole mess of lies, and one of the most destructive is that WE are the solution to our condition. And for us men, this is particularly handy because we love control. And nothing builds up our pride and religiosity more than feeling like we’ve been able to buckle down, get our own lives in order and be one of the good guys.
Please hear me. There is a time to make choices. There is a time to utilize your will to do the right thing. But if your source, your foundation, is based on your belief that your issues have all been a matter of just you not getting serious enough and not trying hard enough to be a good man, then I hate to tell you this, but you ARE going to fail. Because, my friend, we ALL fail, regardless of how much we white knuckle the steering wheel of our lives.
Because the problem ISN’T your willpower, it’s the broken and wounded heart inside the man, you And when I say broken, I’m not talking about a sad or depressed emotional state, I’m talking about a heart that doesn’t work the way it was supposed to. Like a broken watch. It’s out of this brokenness, that we think. It’s out of this brokenness, that we speak. It’s out of this brokenness, that we do the things that we do. And until our hearts, the inside of us, gets the repair & restoration it desperately needs, we will always continually go back to behaving and speaking and thinking the same way.
But this is where the news gets good! Fixing the inside of us, doing that restoration, is exactly the work that Jesus came to do. Remember when He announced his mission? “I came to heal the brokenhearted and set the captives free.” He knew that when you discover the man you really are, the man that God has created you to be; when you discover your True Identity, your actions your thoughts and your behaviors will follow.
So go watch Courageous, or Not a Fan, or whatever other movie or movement that gives rise to the passion to change. They serve as our modern day equivalent of the Old Testament prophets calling us to change. And that’s a good Step 1. But realize Step 2 is never found in ourselves, never found in “Symptom Management” or found exclusively in willpower. It’s only found in the One who can heal our core. And once that happens, you will start to see the results that you desire. Or as Watchmen Nee put it, “you will fight FROM victory”!
To learn more about what it means to Find Restoration, Discover your True Identity and Live Passionate and Free, please join us at Heart Revolution IGNITE!
Live the Revolution!
David