For many people, the word discipline evokes a sense of resistance--but Kent Hughes points out that the heart of spiritual discipline is a relationship with God. This tract gives ten practical areas for a man to grow in spiritual discipline. This companion guide is great for men's small-group leaders or Sunday school teachers to use alongside the book.
Comes with discussion starters and questions drawn from Scripture. Barbara Hughes carefully guides her readers through the Scriptures, asks them questions for self-evaluation, and provides helpful suggestions for direct application of these fundamental spiritual disciplines. Do you have a healthy heart? Any physician will tell you that in order to live a healthy life you must take care of your heart. God has allowed me to experience certain principles that have worked for me and many other great men and women of God and I am going to share them with you so that you can also rise to who God created you to be.
These keys are going to inspire you to greatness and I pray that you will never settle for anything less than what God intended for you. Pursuing God really is an adventure—one that can get extreme, one you'll never tire of. Becoming a young man after God's own heart is a lot like climbing a mountain. You'll find all sorts of challenges on the way up, but the awesome view at the top is well worth the trip.
Real success in life—the kind that counts with God—starts by discovering God's priorities for you. These include Includes new and revised content.
The second volume of this Preaching the Word commentary explores the great truths of Christ's supremacy and the finality of his work on the cross. Students are often tested to evaluate their academic knowledge, but few Christian schools use objective measures to determine if a student has become a true disciple of Christ.
Unfortunately, there are few organizations that provide metrics for measuring biblical knowledge, let alone any sort of comparative evaluation of students engaging in the Christian disciplines, forming a biblical worldview, or actually being impacted spiritually by the programs of the school.
No matter whose statistics one chooses to believe, the inescapable truth is that the church is losing its young men and women at an alarming rate once they graduate from high school. He knew what his mission was and he was willing to do whatever it took to accomplish the task that God had set before him.
Paul was bi-vocational. He proclaimed the Gospel, planted churches and pastored people, yet he never demanded his right to a paycheck from the church 1 Cor Maybe you are a modern day tent maker, but unlike the Apostle Paul who always seemed to come out on top as a spiritual super star, you are sinking under the pressures of multiple jobs both inside and outside of the church , school, family, or countless other obligations that you face each and every day.
Take courage and know that you are not alone! The Youth Ministry Bi-Vocational Survival Guide was developed especially with you in mind, to enable you to succeed and still minster effectively to those you are leading. A devotional guide presents the stories of one hundred biblical characters, including Cain, Jacob, Samson, and Mary, and discusses the lessons that their lives offer about following God.
God said that we were to subdue the earth and have dominion over every living thing including the power of the enemy. We can t even begin to think in those terms because our experiences don t conform to that image of our authority.
Jesus could raise the dead, heal the sick, set captives free, rule the weather, change the economy, and drive out demonic influences. Jesus said we could do the same things if we have faith but not by using soulish power.
Trying harder, changing laws, and devising more efficient systems won t change hearts or overcome the forces arrayed against Christ s kingdom. Ken and Jeanne demonstrate through the scriptures and their own journey how to access the halls of power by the Spirit. Let God impose His super over your natural and change your world. The relationship between a father and a son is like none other. Dads have a God-given role to protect and provide for their families, always striving to teach their sons the life skills they'll need to grow into honorable men.
But many dads struggle with feelings of inadequacy regarding their fathering abilities. They want to be better dads. Rick Johnson can show them how. In this insightful and practical book, Johnson shows how fathers can be equipped and inspired to be positive role models for their sons. He stresses the significance of male bonding, discipline, and spiritual leadership; discusses important topics such as sexual purity, respect, and self-discipline; and reveals the top ten mistakes to avoid as a father.
From commitment and courage to honesty and humility, Better Dads, Stronger Sons helps men strive to be the dads God designed them to be--so their sons can grow to be everything they are meant to be. Cosmic Call We cannot overemphasize the importance of this call to spiritual discipline. For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come.
We are all members of one another, and we are each either elevated or depressed by the inner lives of one another. Some of us affect others like a joyous tide, lifting them upward, but some of us are like undertows to the Body of Christ. If you are married, the presence or lack of spiritual discipline can serve to sanctify or damn your children and grandchildren. Spiritual discipline, therefore, holds huge promise for this present life. Some may minimize the importance of spiritual discipline now, but no one will then!
The disciplined Christian gives and gets the best of both worlds — the world now and the world to come. The word discipline may raise the feeling of stultifying constraint in some minds — suggesting a claustrophobic, restricted life. Nothing could be farther from the truth! The obsessive, almost manic discipline of Mike Singletary liberates him to play like a wild man on the football field. The billion sketches of the Renaissance greats set Michelangelo free to create the skies of the Sistine Chapel.
The disciplined drudgery of the musical greats released their genius. And, brothers in Christ, spiritual discipline frees us from the gravity of this present age and allows us to soar with the saints and angels. Do we have the sweat in us? Will we enter the gymnasium of divine discipline?
Will we strip away the things that hold us back? Will we discipline ourselves through the power of the Holy Spirit? God is looking for a few good men! Food for Thought What is spiritual discipline, and why is it so important? What usually gets in our way see Romans ?
What can a lack of spiritual discipline do to your life? Practically, step by step, what does this mean you should do? What does Hebrews say about this? What things are holding you back in your walk with God? Why are you hanging on to them? Is there a cost to spiritual discipline? Check out 1 Corinthians What could greater discipline cost you? Are you prepared to pay the price? Why or why not? How do you feel, deep inside, about this challenge? How does spiritual discipline differ from legalism?
Which do you most often practice? Is a change needed? If so, how can you bring this about? Talk to Him about it right now! Think About It! Most of the oppression is crude.
A boring trip around the TV channels at midday invariably reveals at least one couple wrapped in bed sheets and much sensual monotony. But the heat has become increasingly artful, especially if its purpose is to sell. Newer spots feature subtle cinematic images with prose from D. But even with all this, many sensualists want more. Professor David A. It sounds like a new section of Disneyland. It is no wonder we live in a culture that sweats sensuality from its pores!
Recently Leadership Magazine commissioned a poll of a thousand pastors. The pastors indicated that 12 percent of them had committed adultery while in the ministry — one out of eight pastors!
Shocking statistics! Especially when we remember that Christianity Today readers tend to be college-educated church leaders, elders, deacons, Sunday school superintendents, and teachers. Only God knows!
Sensuality is easily the biggest obstacle to godliness among men today and is wreaking havoc in the Church. Godliness and sensuality are mutually exclusive, and those in the grasp of sensuality can never rise to godliness while in its sweaty grip. There has to be some holy heat, some holy sweat!
Lessons from a Fallen King Where are we to turn for help? Life at the Top As the account begins, David is at the summit of his brilliant career — as high as any man in Biblical history. God liked what He saw. David had an archetypal sanguine personality brimming with joy, enthusiasm, and confidence and overflowing with irresistible charisma. He was the poet — the sweet Psalmist of Israel — so in touch with God and himself that his Psalms pluck the heartstrings of man even today.
Under his leadership all Israel had been united. David hardly seemed a candidate for moral disaster. But the king was vulnerable, for there were definite flaws in his conduct which left him open to tragedy.
Deuteronomy 17, which set down the standards for Hebrew kings, commanded that they refrain from three things: 1 acquiring many horses, 2 taking many wives, and 3 accumulating much silver and gold cf. David did fine on one and three, but he completely failed on number two by willfully collecting a considerable harem.
The long hours of indiscriminate TV watching, which is not only culturally cachet but is expected of the American male, is a massive culprit of desensitization. The expected male talk — double entendre, coarse humor, laughter at things which ought to make us blush — is another deadly agent.
David was at midlife, about fifty years old, and his military campaigns had been so successful, it was not necessary for him to personally go off to war. The problem was, his relaxation extended to his moral life. It is hard to maintain inner discipline when you are relaxing in this way.
David was imminently vulnerable. David did not suspect anything unusual was going to happen on that fatal spring day. I think I will commit adultery today! Just when we think we are the safest, when we feel no need to keep our guard up, to work on our inner integrity, to discipline ourselves for godliness — temptation will come!
They destroyed the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah. But David remained in Jerusalem. One evening David got up from his bed and walked around on the roof of the palace.
From the roof he saw a woman bathing. The woman was very beautiful, and David sent someone to find out about her. The king strode out on the rooftop for some cool air and a look at his city at dusk. As he gazed, his eye caught the form of an unusually beautiful woman who was bathing without modesty. She was young, in the flower of life, and the evening shadows made her even more enticing. The king looked at her.
And he continued to look. After the first glance David should have turned the other way and retired to his chamber, but he did not. His look became a sinful stare and then a burning libidinous sweaty leer.
A lustful fixation came over him that would not be denied. Satan does not fill us with hatred of God, but with forgetfulness of God. When we are in the grip of lust, the reality of God fades. The longer King David leered, the less real God became to him. Not only was his awareness of God diminished, but David lost awareness of who he himself was — his holy call, his frailty, and the certain consequences of sin. This is what lust does! It has done it millions of times.
God disappears to lust-glazed eyes. Men, the truth demands some serious questions: Has God faded from view? Did you once see Him in bright hues, but now His memory is blurred like an old sepia photograph?
Do you have an illicit fixation which has become all you can see? Is the most real thing in your life your desire? If so, you are in deep trouble. Some decisive steps are necessary, as we shall see. Rationalization From deadly fixation, King David descended to the next level down, which is rationalization.
This girl needs a little comfort in her loneliness. This is one way I can help her. No one will get hurt. I do not mean anything wrong by it. This is not lust — I have known that many times. This is love. This is not the same as finding a prostitute on the street.
God knows that. You are judging me. She came to him, and he slept with her. She had purified herself from her uncleanness. Then she went back home. David was unaware he had stepped off the precipice and was falling, and that reality would soon arrive — the bottom was coming up fast.
A year later David would repent under the withering accusation of the prophet Nathan. But the miserable consequences could not be undone. And in doing so, he dishonored God as well, breaking, in effect, the first four Commandments. His throne never regained its former stability. The pathology is clear, and so are the horrible effects of sensuality. Both are meant not only to instruct us, but to frighten us — to scare the sensuality right out of us!
The Will of God: Purity Sometimes people under the Christian umbrella simply do not buy what I am saying in regard to purity. They consider such teaching to be Victorian and puritanical. Victorian it is not. Puritanical it gloriously is — for it is supremely Biblical. The Lord will punish men for all such sins, as we have already told you and warned you. For God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life. Therefore, he who rejects this instruction does not reject man but God, who gives you his Holy Spirit.
As the New Testament scholar Leon Morris has written: The man who carries on an act of impurity is not simply breaking a human code, nor even sinning against the God who at some time in the past gave him the gift of the Spirit. He is sinning against the God who is present at that moment, against One who continually gives the Spirit.
This sin is seen in its true light only when it is seen as a preference for impurity rather than a Spirit who is holy. The Discipline of Purity Men, if we are Christians, it is imperative that we live pure, godly lives in the midst of our Corinthian, pornotopian culture. We must live above the horrifying statistics or the Church will become increasingly irrelevant and powerless, and our children will leave it. The Church can have no power apart from purity. Accountability An important place to begin our training is with the discipline of accountability.
This to be done with someone who will regularly hold you accountable for your moral life, asking you hard questions. If you are married, ideally you should use your spouse, but I also recommend another man, one who will give you no quarter in sensual matters. You need someone of the same gender who will understand your sensuality from the inside out — someone you can be completely honest with, to whom you can confess temptations and attractions. You need someone who will help you toe the mark and keep your soul faithful to God.
Mutual accountability is the ideal. In this connection I think of a certain salesman who regularly maintains accountability via phone contact with other Christian salesmen, and even works at scheduling trips to cities at the same time they will be there. Pray daily and specifically for your own purity. I am amazed that so few men who are concerned about their lives pray about it.
Enlist the prayers of your spouse and friends, and pray for others in this respect. Do not wait to be asked. Pray for the purity of your friends too. They need it, and so do you! Matthew Other helpful passages include Job , Proverbs , Mark ff.
Mind The discipline of the mind is, of course, the greatest of challenges and will be discussed more fully in Chapter 6. And Scripture regularly presents its discipline as a discipline of the eyes.
Here is where the most radical action is necessary. No man who allows the rottenness of HBO, R-rated videos, and the various soft-core pornography magazines to flow through his house and mind will escape sensuality! How do you think Job would live in our culture today? If their dress or demeanor is distracting, look them in the eyes, and nowhere else, and get away as quickly as you can!
Refrain from verbal intimacy with women other than your spouse. Do not bare your heart to another woman, or pour forth your troubles to her. Many affairs begin in just this way. On the practical level, do not touch. Do not treat women with the casual affection you extend to the females in your family. How many tragedies have begun with brotherly or fatherly touches and then sympathetic shoulders. Whenever you dine or travel with a woman, make it a threesome.
This may be awkward, but it will afford an opportunity to explain your rationale, which, more often than not, will incur respect rather than reproach. Many women business associates will even feel more comfortable dealing with you. Never flirt — even in jest. Flirtation is intrinsically flattering. You may think you are being cute, but it often arouses unrequited desires in another. Reality Be real about your sexuality. He fell within months! Face the truth — King David fell, and so can you!
Divine Awareness Lastly, there is the discipline of divine awareness. Men, the heat of our culture oppresses us with its obsessions and pornotopias. Many in the Church have wilted. The statistics tell it all. In order not to become part of those statistics, there has to be some disciplined sweat. Are we men enough? Are we men of God? I pray we are! It is being stewed in the molten juices of its own sensuality.
Concerning your own church? Concerning your own personal life? Have you found this true in your own battles with temptation?
What is the most effective way to prevent moral lapses? Is 1 Thessalonians too narrow to consider as binding on Christian men today? If not, how can we put this passage to work so we will be victorious in our fight for purity? Considering the prevalent immorality of our culture, how can we possibly hope to keep our thoughts and behavior pure? Of ourselves? Their skin glows with amber luminosity from the flickering candles behind me.
I see everything: the moist eyes, the trembling hands, the surreptitious wink, their mutual earnestness of soul. Sometimes in my enjoyment I let it all blur for a moment and imagine the ultimate wedding where Christ will officially take us to Himself, and then I blink back to the living parable before me.
How will the couple fare over the years? Will she reverence her husband? Will he love his beautiful bride as Christ loved the Church and gave Himself for her? Will he love her with an elevating, sanctifying love? Will he love her as he loves himself? I pray it will be so. In March Dr. McQuilkin announced his resignation in a letter with these words: My dear wife, Muriel, has been in failing mental health for about eight years. So far I have been able to carry both her ever-growing needs and my leadership responsibilities at CBC.
But recently it has become apparent that Muriel is contented most of the time she is with me and almost none of the time I am away from her. Then she may be full of anger when she cannot get to me. So it is clear to me that she needs me now, full-time. Christian schools have some particular advantages in the area of discipleship; however, their full potential is, at the moment, untapped.
Discipleship in Education is about preparing everyone from administrators, teachers, pastors, and parents to be ready to unleash that potential. All Christians will find Counseling One Another useful as they make progress in the life of sanctification and as they discuss issues with their friends, children, spouses, and fellow believers, providing them with a biblical framework for life and one-another ministry in the body of Christ.
Would you like to have a real and lasting impact on the world around you? God knows what it will take for you to experience the satisfaction that comes from living a life of purpose—His purpose. In A Man After God's Own Heart, you'll discover God's perfect design for how you can make a difference in all the key areas of your life: your marriage—what it means to love, lead, and protect your wife your children—the keys to training them up and shaping their hearts your work—modeling integrity and diligence in the workplace your church—discovering how and where God can use you your life example—letting others see God in your words and actions Commit now to becoming a man after God's own heart—you'll find it the most rewarding pursuit ever!
This is a book of reflection and meditation to give you encouragement and greater spiritual depth. Respected counselor and bestselling author H. Norman Wright releases a spiritually and personally fulfilling daily devotional for men.
Known for his insight into the needs of people, Wright shapes devotions to strengthen men at their core—their heart for God. This relevant devotional will be a gift of ongoing influence and inspiration for men of all stages of their journey.
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