There is power in faith.
One of our guys was struggling. He
wasn’t showing up to our group times. He would sleep through his
alarm and have to be woken several times before he finally got up.
He was lazy during work time and would often miss whole days
complaining of being sick.
One night, someone spoke up.
“Dude, you’re a grown ass man. It’s
time to tighten your belt and live like it.” He was sick. The
enemy had gotten to him, and the result was physical exhaustion,
emotional turmoil, and spiritual decay. The worst part was he didn’t
know how to get free of it.
“I am sick of being oppressed,” he
said. “I am sick of being attacked, constantly. I get attacked by
negative thoughts everyday And sleep is sometimes the only place I
can go to escape it. But even there I get attacked, either in my
dreams or just from restlessness. I never get any rest!”
His biggest demons were lust and anger.
The enemy was hitting him with an anger manifesting just below the
surface that led him to judge us, his teammates and withdraw from our
brotherhood. At night, he was being attacked by lustful dreams,
dreams he was determined to resist, so that when he slept he would
often wake himself up to get away from a lustful dream. It caused
him to sleep in late, which in turn caused him to feel ashamed of
himself and judged by us, which caused him to withdraw even further
from community.
It was a vicious cycle, and his peace
was being destroyed. The enemy comes to steal and destroy life, and
he was living a life he hated.
He couldn’t get out of it though.
“You’re a grown ass man man,” said his brother.
It was only the second time he had been called a man. Even though he
was being rebuked, he felt respected.
“I believe in you in you so much,”
another said to him. “I know you’re going to throw this thing off
that is attacking you. God is going to work in you and you’re going
to be free. You’re going to beat this thing because you’re a man, a
man of God. And not just that, you are a good man.”
The next morning, he was up before half the other guys. He did the dishes once or twice a day. He was at work, and he worked hard.
Most, if not all, men need a foundation
of respect of which to operate from. If a man is not respected while
alone, his pride and self preservation may be damaged. But if you cut
a man down in public, you emasculate the very thing that makes
capable of speaking into the lives of others.
Believing in someone is a little like
taking out a future on respect. It’s like saying, “I respect you
so much I know you can do this thing, and I’m going to treat you
now as if you’ve already done it.”
