Welcome back to Part 2 of the series The Chronicles of Men! Day 1 talked about the deep fear men have of failure. Specifically how we internalize our failure. Today we will dig a bit deeper…
So anyway, there are a couple main issues with internalizing failure:
But God keeps telling me over and over,”Danny I love you regardless of what you do for me! Just enjoy relationship with me, stop trying to prove to yourself and to me that you love me and you are obedient. I know your heart. It’s good because I made it that way.” It funny, I’ve preached this lesson several times, yet God reveals to me once again how deep His love goes. Ask yourself that question, why are you really serving God? Why do you get frustrated when you don’t see the fruit that you desire?2) When our fear of failure exceeds our faith in God, that is when the man of God becomes hesitant-passive. Unfortunately all men have inherited Adam’s first sin, passivity. Instead of protecting Eve and silencing the serpent as he whispered lies to the woman, Adam stood idly by and did nothing. Now all men’s natural inclination is towards passivity. Some men might be thinking, oh no not me. “I’ll fight anyone”, “I am the hardest worker I know”, “I provide for my family”. Well how often do you serve others? How do you lead others into deeper relationships with God? Do you lead in vulnerability and honesty about sin in your life? Do you sit back while your girlfriend or wife leads you spiritually? Passivity manifests when we don’t trust God in situations in our lives. So ask Him. Ask God to reveal areas in your life where you are passive. Where you don’t believe that He will show up where you know you need Him…I promise He’ll show you.
3) The Man of God’s greatest pain is regret – What hurts us the most is when we look back and see areas where we were passive and did nothing. Oh what could have been, had we only had the faith to trust in God…Our regret is tied with shame and unfortunately often leads us to more passivity.
We see our failures and begin to believe that we are, in fact, failures. We don’t have a community around us to speak the truth of God’s Word to us, so we hide in whatever success we can find. Whether it’s work, friendships with the boys, a hobby…we isolate ourselves from the problem and ignore our failures. So what is the solution?? How, as men, can we rise up as the warriors of God that He has created us to be?
The answer lies in a question. What are you fighting for? Every man has a God given desire to fight for something. And if we aren’t fighting for the right thing, then we will end up fighting for the wrong. Typically, the right to be selfish, prideful, and apathetic to anything that is not self-serving.
Stay tuned for our final installment-What Are You Fighting For?
