This month is “manistry month,” and it’s got me thinking a lot about how I can grow as a man of God.
My only goal this month is to chase after His heart. I want to clear my heart of all the ugliness I’ve stuffed inside it and fill it with the heart of God. I want to end this month transformed. I want to leave Honduras a different man – a man who points to God in every way. So I’ve been exploring characteristics that men of God exhibit.
Well, I think we can all agree that honor is a pretty key characteristic of a man of God. It’s just one of those things; we all want to be honorable men. Fittingly, there are dozens of verses and stories in the bible that talk about honor. God calls us into honor all over the Bible.
Honor your parents.
Honor your children.
Honor the elderly.
Honor authority.
Honor the church.
Honor your employer.
Honor your spouse.
Honor your brothers and sisters.
Honor all people.
And of course, honor God.
1 Peter 2:17 says, “Honor all people, love the family of believers, fear God, honor the king.” I think that verse does a great job of summarizing the dozens of verses, passages, and stories of honor in the Bible. It’s all over scripture. It’s clear: Jesus calls His followers into lives of honor.
But what does it really mean to honor one another?
I’m certainly no expert, so I started where any reasonable man would start: the dictionary.
Google defines honor as “regarding with great respect” and “fulfilling an obligation or keeping an agreement.”
“Honor in the Bible means ‘esteem, value, or great respect.’ To honor someone is to value him highly or bestow value upon him.”
These are a few definitions we have of honor, and they definitely go against our natural instincts. For most humans, it’s pretty normal to honor and value ourselves instead of others. The worldly view of honor, so corrupted by sin, seems to be a lot different than these definitions I found. People that are rich, politically powerful, famous, or in possession of various other sorts of worldly power are often the ones showered with awards and honor. But we know that it’s just a product of our corrupted world. Ecclesiastes 1 and 2 makes it clear that all of this worldly honor, fame, and wealth is totally meaningless and shortlived. We are not of this world, after all (John 15:18-21).
This reminds me of the Pharisees. Proverbs 3:34 says, “God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble.” The Pharisees sought out honor and accolades from men, and Jesus straight up rejected them. Everything they did was for people to see and to build themselves up (Matthew 23:5). The fact is, they were not living honorable lives, because they were not giving God the honor He deserves.
Paul wrote, “For although they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened” (Romans 1:21). Seeking honor for ourselves instead of honoring God is a good way to distance ourselves from Him. Rather, we honor God when we acknowledge He is Lord, live for Him, and humble ourselves before Him (John 15:8).
So let’s look at a few examples of humble, honorable people in the Bible! (Hint: there’s tons of them.)
Gideon: In Judges 6-8, we see Gideon as a man who questioned the Lord but still obeyed. When the Lord first spoke to Gideon, he couldn’t believe that the Lord was with him, after all of the devastation that had happened to him and his people. Gideon questioned but still listened to the Lord’s commands. These acts of humility – putting the Lord’s Will before his own – allowed God to use Gideon to save Israel. His honorable obedience transformed him into a man so wrapped up in God that he was able to save a nation!
David: Anyone could easily talk for hours about King David’s honor. He wasn’t after any sort of glory or wealth or royalty or praise or power. He wasn’t trying to win the people over or woo God. He was simply living to honor God. He was after His heart. David’s only desire was to make his heart more and more like God’s heart; to love God and love his people.
When David and his men came upon a devastating scene at their town of Ziklag, completely destroyed and all their wives and children captured, David immediately turned to the Lord. 1 Samuel 30:6 tells us, “David was greatly distressed because the men were talking of stoning him; each one was bitter in spirit because of his sons and daughters. But David found strength in the Lord his God.” And he sought the Lord’s guidance. David always humbled himself before the Lord, honoring the Lord as his almighty, powerful God.
Jesus: The Son of Man; the Savior of the World. It almost seems silly to mention Him, because He’s so obviously the perfect example of a humble servant and honorable man. Jesus is literally God in human form, the definition of humility. Jesus, the God of the universe, communed with “the least of these,” walked in love, sought the Lord in all things, and, the only perfect man, died for every single one of us (Philippians 2:5-8). Shoot, it doesn’t even do Christ justice to say He lived a humble and honorable life…
Peter: A man who boldly followed the guidance of the Holy Spirit. True, he denied Jesus before His crucifixion, but then he went on to so passionately follow Christ that he was crucified upside-down himself! Peter lived his life in humble service to Christ. He walked in honor. Once again, it’s in his first letter that he says, “Honor all people, love the family of believers, fear God, honor the king.”
So God calls us to honor, and His word gives us countless examples of honorable people. But how do we live out lives of honor?
One thing all four of these honorable men (and the countless other honorable men and women of the Bible) have in common is that they all lived in love.
Romans 12:10 says, “Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves.”
Proverbs 21:21 says, “Whoever pursues righteousness and love find life, prosperity, and honor.”
More importantly, all of these honorable men lived in love for the Lord. Love is synonymous with honor, and honorable people honor God above all else. So these biblical people teach us that when we’re walking in love and humility, we’re living honorable lives. And more importantly, when we’re walking in love for God and in humble adoration of God, we’re living honorable lives.
Now obviously we can still apply this idea of living honorable lives and honoring God to dozens of different aspects of our lives, so I want to focus on something that God taught me over the summer and that He’s continuing to teach me on the Race.
I knew this past summer at camp was my last year on Summer Staff, so I was extra intentional about really investing in each activity with each group throughout the day. I didn’t want to check out and stop trying. I wanted to do a great job of sharing the gospel with the campers during each block of my schedule. And you know what, for the most part, I think I was pretty successful in that! But the problem was that, for a while, I was looking at my schedule as a bunch of individual blocks. Instead of seeing the big picture, I was focusing all of my energy on a few small sections of it and missing so much more.
By focusing solely on investing in my specific, scheduled time with specific campers, I lost site of so many other ministry opportunities. What about ministering to other campers I saw throughout the day? What about loving and encouraging the volunteer counselors? What about engaging in community with all my fellow summer staffers? What about investing in all my other friends and family? What about seeking God??? I was focusing too much on my set ministry and not enough on my very reason for investing in that ministry in the first place – the Lord! By narrowing my view to one thing, I took my eyes off of God and thus took so many other ministry opportunities out of my view. But let’s be real: God has the best view.
It can be pretty easy to focus on honoring one set ministry or one group of people. Maybe I’m really focused on honoring the school this month. Or maybe I really want to invest my energy in honoring all of the men. That’s awesome, but what about the rest of the squad, the other ministries I’m serving, the people I encounter throughout La Ceiba, my friends and family back home, and everyone else? It can look different for all of us, but unless our main focus is honoring God, we’re gonna fall short somewhere.
You see, all are made in the image of God, so if we wish to honor God, we must honor all! Like I said before, though, this is all opposing our natural instincts. But luckily we have this awesome person called the Holy Spirit to guide and strengthen us! It’s only by clothing ourselves with humility by the power of the Spirit that we can love and honor God, and thus our fellow man, more than ourselves (Romans 12:3, Philippians 2:3). With the Spirit, we can extend that honor to all people.
By walking in humility and love and honoring God, He will give us His eyes, allowing us to honor all of the people, ministries, and circumstances He places before us.
And that brings Kingdom.
