“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming...” My dear warrior,
There are times in our lives when it feels like no one is rooting for us to win, and everyone is looking for us to fail. It seems like no one is for you and everyone is against you. Sometimes you wonder if anyone out there has thought about cheering you on, or if anyone is on your side. You feel alone, completely abandoned, like there is not one sympathetic soul out there rooting for you. I have learned that oftentimes, while those who are against us are the loudest, there are silent spectators watching us, waiting for us to step into our identity. These are the ones who are for us, who are quietly rooting for us, praying for us, and cheering for us. They are sitting by, waiting to see what we will do, staying out of our way because they want to see us succeed. They are watching from the sidelines because they know the decisions we have to make must be our own. They know the victory has to be ours.
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“What you need in life will be brought to you, but what you desire, you’ll have to go get. Much of what you cry for will not be brought to you.” My dear warrior,
Welcome to Part 2. Yesterday, I left you with a question to think about. I ask you again: Is God so cruel that He would dangle your hearts desire in front of your face and taunt you with it, only to deprive you of it? Ask that out loud. Just like I wrote in There is Always a Solution, I want you to laugh at how ridiculous that thought is. Go ahead: laugh! Why would God dangle the answer to your prayers—your heart’s desire—right in front of your face? When the Bible says that God is good, it means that He is good. He is not some cruel, sadistic God with a penchant for schadenfreude—that is, deriving pleasure from your pain and suffering, or gaining joy from taunting you with what you desire. It is not in His nature to taunt us. It is not like Him to take the very things from us that we’ve desired all along for the sake of seeing us suffer. “Stand true to your calling to be a man. Real women will always be relieved and grateful when men are willing to be men”  My dear warrior,
I have become increasingly more aware of men struggling with what it means to be a man; struggling to understand what true masculinity is in a culture that is increasingly antagonistic towards what God designed men to be. Culture defines manliness as being tough as nails, showing no emotion; or demands men to be emasculated, submissive and sensitive; or downgrades/ debases/ demotes them to purely sexual beings, driven by their libido and knowing little more than animal instinct. None of these is correct, and each of them is a distortion of the reality set forth by our Creator. |
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Mere Humanity: Becoming a Mature Christian in an Immature World 
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