Love this post from Ray Ortlund in so many ways. Here you go:
Godly Leadership In the Home
I was encouraged earlier this week to listen to Heath Lambert’s podcast on Godly Leadership in the Home.
Maybe this would be something that would benefit you, as well. This brief audio in an interview with Heath Lambert and Stuart Scott. I love how the counsel to pursue Godly leadership flows out of realities that are in the Gospel. Further, guys are encouraged to not be passive and even paralyzed by the calling, but are encouraged to seek out what leadership may look like in the Bible.
What Does It Mean To Be A Man?
We discussed this at our Men’s Ministry Collision Course this past Sunday. Here’s the video we watched and the transcript:
What Does It Mean to Be a Man? from Desiring God on Vimeo.
Scott Anderson: Doug, in some of the things that I’ve read, that you’ve written online and in your books, you lay out some helpful roles — I don’t think you mean them to be binding but they are descriptive and I think helpful in helping us to understand what it means to be a man. And, I’d like you just to maybe comment on just a few of these. Talk about a man being a lord, a husbandmen, a savior, a sage and a glory-bearer. Unpack that a little bit for us.
Doug Wilson: I write on that in Future Men and I’m taking that breakdown from a gentleman named Bill Mowser who developed this in depth and has got some good materials on this, where he’s pursuing that. But, a lord, lords of the earth, think of men as built to explore. When God created Adam and gave him Eve and said, “Multiply,” He had the exploration of continents in mind. There were mountain ranges and places and seas to cross. There was a lot of exploration there that God expected men to go check out and in order for God to expect us to go explore those things, we have to be the kind of people who want to. So what impulse is it that stirs a man up to want to see what’s beyond the next mountain. So, lords of the earth is sort of the exploring motive. Discovery. And I’m talking geographically, but it also applies to scientific exploration, theological exploration, figuring things out.
Scott Anderson: So, a creation mandate, go-take-dominion kind of thing?
Doug Wilson: Yeah, in Proverbs it’s the glory of a king to search out a matter. God has built us for that. So figuring it out, digging all the way down, that’s the lords of the earth. But then, once you’ve discovered this continent, you need to cultivate it. You need to–you can’t just be a free-booting pirate moving from–that’s got no civilizational building power, you can’t build civilizations unless someone finds the territory to build it in. But, you can’t build it unless the husbandmen, the ranchers, the farmers come in and settle and tend and cultivate. So there’s a deep impulse that men have to cultivate.
There’s also the third thing: the savior impulse, the deliverer impulse. Which you can see in little boys. Boys want very much to save their sister. They want to save the damsel. There’s a reason why St. George and the dragon stories resonate. They resonate for a reason. And I would say there’s something important about this, because this, the necessity to be a savior predated the Fall, just like work predated the Fall, the husbandman thing that God wanted us to do — God told Adam to tend the garden. Well, God also by His providence told Adam to defend the Garden and defend his wife, because you had a world with no sin, you had an unfallen world, a perfect world, perfect marriage, perfect everything and yet in that Garden there was a serpent. There was a dragon. So, Adam needed to be a savior. And, he needed to step in, because God had told him not to eat of the fruit. Eve wasn’t created when that prohibition was given, so Adam needed to intervene somehow, he need to drive the serpent off. He needed to fight the serpent so the savior impulse predated the Fall. And, of course, after the Fall, it takes a different, there’s a different complexion to it, given the reality of sin, just as husbandry takes a different complexion after the Fall. But, Adam was to tend the ground before there were weeds and Adam was to tend the ground after there were weeds. Adam was to explore the world before there was sin and Adam was to explore the world after there was sin.
Then, the fourth thing you mentioned was a sage. And this echoes something else we talked about where in Colossians Paul wants every man presented perfect in Christ. Well, our goal is to grow up to maturity in Christ. And I think you can see that clearly in the Garden of Eden prior to the Fall. I don’t think it–had Adam not fallen, I don’t think we’d be able to go visit him in Mesopotamia today and have him still there hoeing a bean patch, standing around living in his little hut. No. He would have — it’s the glory of kings to search out a matter and he would have done so. Sin interferes with that, disrupts it, but doesn’t obliterate it.
And, then, lastly, the Bible is very explicit that men are the glory and image of God. A woman is the glory of man and man is the image and glory of God. And, so man is intended to be a glory bearer. He is, when he seeks glory, a recent book, very helpful book, by Dave Harvey, Rescuing Ambition, is a great book for this. We are glory chasers. And, that’s easily perverted, but it’s a godly and a good impulse, God has built us that way. We’re supposed to reflect God’s glory.
As you think about manhood, what stands out to you? I hope this video encourages you.
Weekend Recap – 9/16/12PM
On this past Sunday, our men gathered for a series called Collision Course, which seeks to allow men to sharpen one another to practice Biblical masculinity. Specifically, we engaged with this Doug Wilson video entitled Two Departures from Masculinity:
Weekend Recap – Collision Course on Inescapable Headship
On Sunday PM, 4/22/12, our Men met to discuss issues of manhood. We watched a video entitled Inescapable Headship. Here it is:
1 Corinthians 11:3 –But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God.
Ephesians 5:23 –
For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior.
Here’s some further questions to consider:
• What does it mean for the husband to be “head”?
• How do these texts understand our headship will be practiced?
• What is one area in which you can be more effective in headship?
• Pray about these things at your table.
Father Hunger?
Our Men’s Ministry Collision Course met this past Sunday, March 18, 2012. We discussed this video from Desiring God entitled, What is Father Hunger?
Here’s a transcript of the interview:
Weekend Recap — Collision Course, Session 1
This past Sunday PM, 2/19/12, we kicked off Collision Course at Crestview. A series of videos and talks about the meaning of manhood, allowing men to sharpen one another as iron sharpens iron.
Here’s the video from session 1:
We also added these notes:
Weekend Recap – 10/23/11 with Dan Dumas
We had a great weekend at Crestview with Dan Dumas visiting. I was really impacted by the book he co-wrote with Randy Stinson entitled Guide to Biblical Manhood. Having heard Dan unpack what the purpose of the book was a few times this weekend, I would say it is a tremendously helpful, practical book on fleshing out what manhood looks like according to the Bible. Upon reading that, I knew I needed to get Dan here around our men and yesterday was our day.
During the SS hour, Dan preached from James 1:19-25 a message entitled God’s Mudroom for Worship. God has given us His Word as basic functioning for life. Specifically, this passage calls us to hear and heed God’s Word by application.
In the AM Worship Service, Dan preached from Job 1 a message entitled Spiritual Ruggedness. This message really unpacked how Job could be a point where he worshipped after suffering hit and his anchor proved to be a Sovereign, Immovable God.
Finally, in the PM, Dan preached from 1 Kings 2:1-9 on the DNA of Biblical Manhood. Seizing upon David’s deathbed charge to Solomon, Dan gave rich application to the men to Fear God, Tremble His Word, Be Tough As Nails, Do Hard Things First, and simply Act Like Men.
All is all, my soul was very nourished and refreshed. Weaknesses were exposed in both my life and leadership. Many applications need to be pursued as a result of this weekend. I hope your Lord’s Day was profitable as well.
Weekend Preview for 10/23/11
We anticipate a great weekend at church this weekend. First off, on Saturday, October 22nd, our Ladies have a Prayer Retreat. Always a great time for them.
I’m really excited, though, for Sunday when we have Dan Dumas from Southern Seminary and author of Guide to Biblical Manhood in to speak. He will preach in the morning and speak, specifically, to our men at the Men & Boys Chili Feed, Sunday night at 6PM.
The Gospel changes everything, especially how you act as a male and female in the unique hardwiring God created for you. Come this weekend expecting this glorious Gospel to be on full display as we flesh out what being a man and woman is all about.
Family Decline…Are you helping?
I was challenged by a recent post on the Resurgence entitled The Decline of the Nuclear Family. Among other things, this post highlighted how the demographics of families have changed and how the church should respond. The point:
Perhaps the most loving, most prophetic thing the church can do is to call men in their 20s to love Jesus, read their Bibles, get a job, to leave their parent’s house, and to love one woman—according to the Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, and the New York Times, no one is doing that.
Creating a culture of manhood is, evidently, not that hard. Let’s call men to this high standard and watch the fruit it produces.