25 ways men can be servant leaders.

The call to be a servant-leader is tough. No one gets it all right, and certainly no one gets most of it right overnight. It’s a life plan — a way of living you grow into with practice and time. Here are 25 suggestions, men, for being a servant-leader in your home.

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An exhortation for fathers!

Nathan Bingham writes a strong exhortation to fathers. I need this reminder regularly.  Probably all dads do:

There’s a crime wave going on in your neighborhood—possibly even in your own home. It’s a crime wave that won’t make it to the nightly news, but not because it isn’t serious, for it scars generations and teaches them to commit the same crime.

Who are the criminals? Absent fathers.

I’m not talking about full-time absent fathers, those never home at all. I hope that’s a rarity. I’m talking about your average dad, the one who commits this crime most mornings, during dinner, and especially during the hour before little ones go to bed.

It’s a crime wave, and I’ve been an offender. You might be one too.

You’re guilty when you skip breakfast with the family to prepare for that early morning meeting, when you’re distant at the dinner table because you’re resolving an issue at work in a long email conversation on your smartphone, and when you forfeit a healthy family night-time ritual because you’ve got something important to do—like write a blog post.

I’ve succumb. Have you?

Keep reading “Fathers, Stop Stealing from Your Children” for more help and hope. Then prioritize your life and spend some time with your children, fathers!

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From boyhood to manhood

Albert Mohler shares 13 characteristics of maturity that define manhood. Great resource for fathers! Get “From Boy to Man: The Marks of Manhood” (Free PDF).

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Appreciating unashamed masculinity

Gloria Furman shares about the unashamed masculinity she sees in her husband and the Bible celebrates in its description of true manhood.  An excerpt:

The masculinity I appreciate as a wife is of far greater value than wealth-earning power. It’s a masculinity that is unashamed of the gospel which is the power of God (Romans 1:16).

The unashamed masculinity I enjoy in my home leaves a legacy that is more enduring than prolific fertility. It’s masculinity that fervently loves others from a heart that has been born again, born not of seed which is perishable, but imperishable. True masculinity is reborn through the living and abiding word of God.

The unashamed masculinity I love to follow in my home is far more impressive than macho pride. It’s masculinity that is willing to take the painful shrapnel in the battle against his own sin, rather than run from sin and hide in the comfort of silence. It is a masculinity that willingly exposes its life to the iron-sharpening-iron of open and honest male accountability relationships.

Keep reading.

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A birthday letter to a 16-year old

The other day I found a letter I wrote to our son when he turned 19 years old.  I teared up a bit as I read and reflected on that letter as I thanked God for Ian.

Then, a few days ago, I saw this letter that a dad wrote to his 16-year-old and which he published with his son’s permission.  What a model of faithful fatherly wisdom and leadership. I’d encourage you to read what Rick (here) wrote to Luke and use it as a model for writing your son or daughter a letter on his/her birthday this year.

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Manly responsibility, wimpy theology, and true womanhood

The title is a compilation of two recent posts over at Desiring God that feature short quotes from John Piper.  Read and apply the call to strong men and theologically sound women!

This is a call to stoop down and to take the responsibility to be a leader—a servant leader in the various ways that are appropriate to every different relationship to women. It’s a call to us men,

 

• that we should take the risk of getting egg on our faces;
• that we should pray like we’ve never prayed for help in this tremendous responsibility;
• that we should be in the Word more than we ever have been to know what God expects of us;
• that we should plan things more than we do, and be intentional and thoughtful and less carried along by the mood of the moment;
• that we should be disciplined and ordered in our lives;
• that we should be tender-hearted and sensitive;
• that we should take the initiative to make sure that there is a time and a place to talk to her about what needs to be talked about—this “her” could be a friend, a date, a colleague, a wife, a sister;
• that we should be ready to lay down our lives in discharging this responsibility to be the leaders God is calling us to be.

Excerpted from Manhood and Womanhood Before Sin (1989).

Wimpy theology makes wimpy women. That’s my assumption that I bring to this evening. Wimpy theology simply does not give a woman a God that is big enough, strong enough, wise enough, and good enough to handle the realities of life in away that magnifies the infinite worth of Jesus Christ.

Wimpy theology is plagued by woman-centeredness and man-centeredness. Wimpy theology doesn’t have the granite foundation of God’s sovereignty or the solid steel structure of a great God-centered purpose for all things.

Stream or download the entire message delivered at the  2008 True Woman Conference.

 

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Make those words count, Dad!

Crawford Loritts reflects on five lessons he learned from his father on how to speak so that your children take your words seriously:

1. Don’t waste words. Don’t add a lot of apologies or unnecessary detail that make you look timid.
2. Don’t threaten.
3. Be clear about expectations. When you tell someone, especially a child, how to behave or what to do, make sure you both are very clear about what you expect.
4. Be clear about consequences, particularly if your expectations involve an area with which that child has struggled in the past.
5. Take clear, decisive action. . . .

Say what you mean and back up your words with action. It’s a testimony to your integrity and an example your children will carry with them throughout their lives.

Never Walk Away, (Chicago: Moody, 1997), 96, emphasis mine (HT: DG)

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A charge to parents!

From The Duties of Parents —

Fathers and mothers, I charge you solemnly before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, take every pains to train your children in the way they should go. I charge you not merely for the sake of your children’s souls; I charge you for the sake of your own future comfort and peace. Truly it is your interest so to do. Truly your own happiness in great measure depends on it. Children have ever been the bow from which the sharpest arrows have pierced man’s heart.–J. C. Ryle (HT: DG)

And on the subject of prolonged adolescence among young men especially, Darrin Patrick writes:

We live in a world full of males who have prolonged their adolescence. They are neither boys nor men. They live, suspended as it were, between childhood and adulthood, between growing up and being grown-ups. Let’s call this kind of maleBan, a hybrid of both boy and man.

Ban is juvenile because there has been an entire niche created for him to live in the lusts of youth. The accompanying culture not only tolerates this behavior but encourages it and endorses it. (Consider magazines like Maxim or movies likeWedding Crashers.) This kind of male is everywhere, including the church and even, frighteningly, vocational ministry. . . .

In a culture where the influence of godly men is desperately needed, this void results in a legitimate cultural crisis. We are not going to solve it by ignoring Ban and hoping that he eventually grows up. We are not going to solve the problem simply telling women that they should take up the slack.

We might solve the problem by modeling biblical manhood and calling adult boys to forsake their youthful lusts and become the men that God is calling them to be in the context of the local church. This call should come from godly men and women sitting in the pews and, specifically, from the pulpit of God’s church. The models should be men of God.

Church Planter: The Man, the Message, the Mission, (Wheaton: Crossway, 2010), 9-12, paragraphing by Jonathan Parnell

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Time for men to man up!

“Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong.” (1 Corinthians 16:13, ESV)

Bill Bennet:

So what’s wrong? Increasingly, the messages to boys about what it means to be a man are confusing. The machismo of the street gang calls out with a swagger. Video games, television and music offer dubious lessons to boys who have been abandoned by their fathers. Some coaches and drill sergeants bark, “What kind of man are you?” but don’t explain.

Movies are filled with stories of men who refuse to grow up and refuse to take responsibility in relationships. Men, some obsessed with sex, treat women as toys to be discarded when things get complicated. Through all these different and conflicting signals, our boys must decipher what it means to be a man, and for many of them it is harder to figure out.

Bill Bennett’s article is well worth the read, ladies and gentlemen!

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What does it mean to take dominion?

Mark Chanski, author of Manly Dominion and Womanly Dominion and the pastor ofHarbor Reformed Baptist Church of Holland, Mich., was kind to answer a few questions about what it means for men and women to be men and women of (biblical) dominion.

Read this interview at Between Two Worlds! Well worth your time.

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