It has been a week since I have had a post so I thought I would get in gear. I have been watching some basketball games of the local High School here. The girls team is ranked numbers in the state for 3a ball and they are undefeated they have a good club I hope they do well. Well anyways I am not going write about basketball but continue my series from the book Why Guys Need God by Mike Erre. Today I want to share a couple of quotes from chapter 10 and talk about them a little bit.
When we come out of hiding in front of each other, relationship will take hard work and lots of grace. The church gets lots of criticism because of its imperfections.
So many times we hide who we really are. Sometimes it is like we have to put on some sort of facade so people do not see the real us. I am not sure what drives this perhaps it is fear of people seeing the real us or fear that we are not good enough. Rarely do we tell people our real struggles or the things that are keeping us from being all we want to be in Christ or all we can be in Christ. The truth is if we really do be ourselves then in fact it will take alot of hard work and lots of grace. Grace to forgive others even when we really do not want to and grace to ask for forgiveness even when we do not want to. But if we continue to pretend to be someone we are not then the church is just a place where we go to be fake. The church definitley is not perfect and we are indeed a bunch of reformed sinners going thorug the process of sanctification yet many times we act like we have already been fully sanctified and that we have no problems whatsoever.
I often wonder what would church be like if people were real. What if a man walked into Sunday school and said I am struggling with pornography and I need help, or what if a woman walked in and said I struggle with gossiping I need help, or how about I have bitterness in my heart I need help. The church is supposed to be a community loving each other and holding each other accountable but I am afraid we have become a community where everything is based on only what we want people to perceive us to be and not who we really are. We don’t want people to know our secret sins what will is take for us to stop being superficial and just be honest. It is so hard. Here us the second quote.
Most churches teach men how to pretend behind religious fig leaves. We learn to act in the right religious ways, look the right religious ways, sing the right religious ways, and so on. We usually are not encouraged to actually share how things really are. So even though we need to connect with other guys at a really deep level, the church actually often hinders this process.
Prayer isn’t a place to be good; it is a place to be honest.
I already spoke about this above. I do not think this is a problem for just men either. I think often we go to church to pretend. Pretend to be someone we are not and we rarely go just to be honest and admit our struggles.
Tonight I am going to continue on with things I have learned from the book by Mike Erre Why Guys Need God. Chapter four was titled Toil and Thorns. The following quote really stood out to me
We are looking for who we are as men in what we do. Our lives are based on work, earning, and performance. No wonder we are confused when we show up at church and hear about God’s free gift of grace to us. pg. 59
I believe this is so true. In society today everything we do seems to be based on performance. As men we sit around and watch sports because we love the competition, we buy new cars because we are concerned about our image, we have to have the latest and greatest gadget so we can look, feel, or seem important. I once heard a pastor put it this way “we buy things we do not need or want to impress people we do not know.” So is it confusing for us when we walk into church and here that God’s grace is free absolutely. I remember doing a free car wash with my teens and people would not understand why in the world we do this for free. Why would we wash their car for free. As men we face the same challenge with God’s grace. It is difficult to understand that we do not have to earn it.
I will give one more quote form chapter four.
The moment we surrender control (or the perceived illusion of it), we find ourselves in the barren wild of God’s ruthless love. At precisely that point of risk, when we no longer have it in ourselves to impress God or others, we realize we just can’t make life work through our own effort and resources, and we discover the freedom and courage that defines true men. pg.63
The other night at our church we watched a video about letting go of those things that are keeping us from fully serving God. When the video concluded we all grabbed to handfuls of dirt and symbolically prayed for those things we needed to let go and then dropped the dirt. I ma so often reminded that I need to empty myself of myself in or to experience that freedom and courage of a true man.