The Resolution for Men Read online

  It’s Time for Men to Be Courageous

  Our generation desperately needs courageous men to step up. We need men who will not be swayed by the culture or afraid of criticism. We need men who are resolved to lead their families no matter what. We need men to teach sexual purity to their sons and daughters so that more children won’t enter the world without married parents. We need men who stick to their marriage vows and cry out for God’s help to love their wives rather than giving up during difficult times.

  We need men who refuse to sacrifice their families for the sake of a promotion at work. Men who refuse to let entertainment eat up all their time and deaden their consciences. Men who will speak out against laws and philosophies that are destroying families. Men who will forgive their dads, break the chains of the past, and set new standards. Men who will pray for their pastors and for revival in their churches and make decisions that will strengthen the next generation. We need to be these men. And we need one another!

  When strong men work together, they can accomplish amazing things.

  A story from 2 Samuel 10 provides a powerful picture of how we men can effectively support one another in our generation. The armies of David had come together to face their enemies amid seemingly impossible odds. Joab, David’s commanding general, recognized that the battle was against him both in front and in the rear. But he and his brother, Abishai, decided to work together, support one another, and then trust God’s power, knowing the results were in His hands.

  Joab challenged his brother with these bold words:

  If the Arameans are too strong for me, then you shall help me, but if the sons of Ammon are too strong for you, then I will come to help you. Be strong, and let us show ourselves courageous for the sake of our people and for the cities of our God; and may the LORD do what is good in His sight. (2 Samuel 10:11–12)

  Their gutsy strategy worked! God blessed their courage and teamwork and brought a powerful victory in the midst of what seemed to be an impossible situation.

  Men today are feeling intense pressure all around them. The dark depravity of our culture and the desperate needs of the next generation stand in front of us. The mistakes of our fathers and the sins of our own past stand against us from behind. Each of these can feel like an ominous cloud, challenging us to give up and surrender ourselves and our families in defeat.

  But we need to remember one immovable, unconditional truth: we have a Father in heaven who is for us—our loving Provider, our strong Protector, our truthful Leader, our respectable Authority, and our intimate Friend. He loves us unconditionally. He alone is a majority, and the battle always belongs to Him!

  If He is for us, it doesn’t matter who or what is against us.

  We are here on this earth at this moment to be like His Son, Jesus Christ. We are here to boldly speak the words, do the work, and carry out the will of our Father. Regardless of what our culture says, regardless of what other men do, we must be courageous to lead our marriages and our families for the sake of the One we represent and for the sake of the generations that will come after us.

  We must stop complaining about where our culture is going and resolve instead to do something about it. We must lock shields with other men around us and refuse to allow one another to fail any longer in the battles for our marriages and families. We must give our sons and grandsons a new picture of leadership and a new example worth following. We must help our generation of men to step up to embrace their responsibilities before God and to love and lead their families. If we will take courage and lead the way, we can change the world and leave a strong legacy for our children’s children.

  That is the purpose of this book. That is our mission!

  We must learn to stand up together, become men of resolution, and boldly say, “If my battle gets too strong for me, then you shall help me, but if your battle is too strong for you, then I will come to help you! Be strong, and let us show ourselves courageous for the sake of our people and for the cities of our God; and may the Lord do what is good in His sight!”

  COURAGEOUS CHALLENGE

  Watch or read out loud the closing speech from the movie Courageous (found in appendix 9).

  MEMORY VERSE

  Be strong, and let us show ourselves courageous for the sake of our people and for the cities of our God; and may the LORD do what is good in His sight. (2 Samuel 10:12)

  I will open my mouth in a parable; I will utter dark sayings of old, which we have heard and known, and our fathers have told us. We will not hide them from their children, telling to the generations to come the praises of the LORD.

  Psalm 78:2–4 (NKJV)

  CHAPTER 2

  A LIFELONG VISION OF FATHERHOOD

  The eyes of the LORD are everywhere, keeping watch on the wicked and the good.

  Proverbs 15:3 NIV

  Imagine that you are sleeping one night, and God visits you in a dream. He says, “Come with Me. I want to show you something.” In an instant you find yourself in a dark and dirty room you’ve never seen before. Glancing around, you see piles of soiled clothes and garbage everywhere. The stench is almost unbearable. Suddenly you see movement in the shadows—a feeble, old man, crouched in a corner alone, gasping for air, and then vomiting on the floor. Disgusted, you turn to the Lord and ask, “Who is that?”

  He says, “I want you to consider this man—Timothy—for there are many like him on the earth. He is a wicked and foolish man like his father was, hating Me and always turning toward evil.”

  God then begins showing you vivid moments throughout the time line of Timothy’s life, from beginning to end. You become aware of his illegitimate conception, his unwanted birth, and the poverty and pain resulting from his father’s negligence, rejection, and abuse. You see the hurt in Timothy’s eyes as a child. His heart gradually fills with anger, then hardens with bitter hatred, then rages with wholehearted rebellion. You shake your head as you watch him grow up to reject all manner of wisdom and warning that God mercifully sends into his life to rescue him, rebelling against every authority, scorning every loving rebuke, resisting repeated invitations to turn his life around.

  You can’t help but look away as he violates the purity of several young girls during his youth. Daring to turn back, you see the expected results as he fathers, abuses, and then abandons his own children throughout the years.

  You witness Timothy repeatedly stealing, squandering, leading others astray, rejecting all forms of responsibility, and taking greedy advantage of others. Always running from the truth, his is a life of violence, perversion, addictions, and drunkenness. And though tormented cruelly by his demons, he responds by raising his fist against God, cursing His name, and recklessly living out his days destroying his own life as well as those around him.

  Each decade unfolds before you like one nightmare after another, each with increasingly greater consequences—a rising wake of destruction that ripples out over time, bringing nothing but pain and suffering to the people in his path. He squanders every day of his existence like diamonds slipping through his fingers until his biography finally runs out and catches up to his present heartbeat—the way you first saw him—old, dirty, and degraded beyond recognition.

  As you watch him now wallowing on the floor, you see the emptiness and evil in his eyes and become fully aware that the “wages” of Timothy’s sin is “death” in every area of his life. Here in his final chapter, you share in God’s righteous anger while mourning the loss of what could have been.

  Then the Lord speaks again.

  “Tomorrow, on his sixty-sixth birthday, the days of my mercy for Timothy will end, and I will require of him his sinful and unrepentant life. He will die here alone, and no one will mourn his passing.”

  “What then?” you ask.

  “He has rejected Me and the offering of My Son, and he will be judged according to the standards of My holy Word. He will be cast into outer darkness to join his fathers in torment.” You tremble as you hear these words, but feel a hei
ghtened awareness of God’s perfect justice knowing it is righteously executed.

  You ask, “What good could come from my seeing this man’s life, Lord?”

  The grief on God’s countenance begins to change into hope. He looks into your eyes, and a warm smile awakens on His face. “I want to show you what My grace can do.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You have seen where Timothy is. Now I want you to experience his life as he should have lived it, as if he and his father had both obeyed me completely. You understand that the wages of sin leads to death. But I want you to know the results of righteousness as well.”

  Instantly you travel with the Lord many decades back in time and find yourself standing in the back of an old country church as the service is concluding. As you gaze around the one-room building, the clothes of those in the congregation remind you of those your great-grandparents wore in photos you had seen as a child. Your attention is drawn to a young man with a crew cut in a military uniform sitting on the back row. He is whispering into the ear of a somewhat scantily dressed young woman seated next to him.

  “Who is that, Lord?” you ask.

  “That is Timothy’s father, James, when he was a young man. Today was the day he hardened his heart and walked away from Me. But you will see him respond differently to My grace in this vision.”

  Suddenly the rising voice of the guest preacher echoes from behind the pulpit: “Repent, and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved!” As he passionately calls on everyone “with ears to hear” to turn from their sin, the congregation stands, and the small choir begins to sing the first stanza of “Amazing Grace.” Your eyes fix on James as he crosses his arms and clenches his jaw, stone-faced. But then something happens. His countenance changes. He lowers his eyes, thinking soberly. He looks up again, watching people slip one-by-one from their seats and approach the front of the church, kneeling to pray, hungry to get right with God.

  “Now is the day of salvation,” the preacher pleadingly declares. “Jesus said, ‘Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.’ Repent therefore and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord. Come to Christ while you still have the chance! It is time for you to choose.”

  James begins to tremble and wipe tears from his eyes. Then contrary to anything he had done in the past, he too steps out, slowly walks to the prayer altar near the front of the church, and kneels down. All other sounds in the room fade in the distance, and you can hear every word of his humble prayer. There is so much sincerity in his voice as he cries out to God for help. For forgiveness. He prays to be saved and expresses his faith in the death of God’s Son. Then after a brief moment of silence, James stands up and sighs deeply. As he turns and walks back to his seat, you see a difference in his countenance. Something that wasn’t there before. Peace and hope.

  And you become consciously aware that everything once established about this young man’s future is about to unfold in a very different way.

  Time races. Your mind begins to flood with images of James’s life as his story is rewritten before your eyes. Rather than violating Lilly, the young girl seated next to him on the back row of the church, then abandoning her with Timothy in her womb, you see James share his newfound faith with her instead. She soon embraces his faith as her own, and they talk with the pastor and are both baptized. With childlike belief they begin rebuilding their relationship with a renewed commitment to purity, honor, and sincere love. You watch James talk with Lilly’s father, and then marry her with the complete support of their parents and their new church home.

  You see them launch into married life with God’s blessing and a strong foundation of faith. Every week, James and Lilly grow spiritually as they worship God, listen to the teaching of His Word, fellowship with other believers, and spend time alone in prayer. While reading the Bible one morning, James learns that he is to love his wife like Jesus loves the church. He realizes that God has called him to be the spiritual leader of his home and prays for God to show him what that means. And the more he obeys the Scriptures, the more James matures spiritually and his mind is renewed.

  He begins to discern what is right and wrong in his life and also in the example his own parents left him while he was growing up. Having been wounded deeply by his father, you see James battle with his resentment and then completely forgive his dad from his heart. This brings an incredible new freedom from bitterness that had haunted him since his youth. He then asks God to break any destructive chains remaining in his life that had been passed down from his family’s history. You feel his joy and liberation as God begins giving him personal breakthroughs on a consistent basis.

  James and Lilly establish better habits and begin new family traditions in their home. Sundays become days of rest and worship. They begin making all of their major decisions together in prayer. When disagreements and hurts arise, they quickly work through them and forgive each other. James listens more lovingly to Lilly’s ideas and requests, and she increasingly respects and trusts his leadership decisions.

  Then it happens. After months of asking God to bless them with children, you hear Lilly announce to James that she is pregnant. Thrilled beyond measure, James thanks God for this priceless gift. He and Lilly begin to pray daily for the Lord to bless, protect, and use this child for His honor. You watch with intrigue as you see the significant difference in Timothy’s beginnings from what you had seen in the earlier vision from his life. He is now being born into a strong, God-honoring family where his mother and father deeply love him and one another.

  Your mind jumps ahead to see James and Lilly bringing Timothy before their church family and dedicating him to God. You feel their shared sense of inadequacy as they pray with their pastor for the daily wisdom and guidance to raise Timothy well and to train him in the way he should go. You smile as James looks in wonder at his son’s tiny face and holds him proudly in his arms.

  As you see Timothy grow, you can tell he feels emotionally secure and knows he is loved. You see the amazing balance of a child’s mom and dad teaming up together each day to give their son the kind of solid upbringing he needs. His mother’s comfort and warnings, matched with his father’s encouragement and discipline, develop a loyal and loving respect in his heart for them. He hears his father reading the Scriptures aloud at home and discovers at an early age that God created him in His image and wants to have a relationship with him.

  You enjoy watching James wrestle with his son on the floor, teach him how to tie his shoe, and ride a bicycle. You see him carry Timothy on his shoulders around town. “This is my son! He’s a great little champ, isn’t he?” Many of the things James says or does for Timothy are now inspired by what he wished he had experienced from his own dad while growing up.

  As Timothy grows, you observe James using the Ten Commandments to show him right from wrong and how to treat others. Later, you see Timothy later convicted of his selfishness and disobedience as his father explains to him that the “wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Timothy sits wide-eyed in wonder when he hears his dad describe the amazing sacrifice Jesus made willingly on a cross in order to pay for our sins.

  Then you later see Timothy—with childlike faith—give his heart and submit his life to Jesus Christ in prayer. You share in the joy of watching him being baptized in their church.

  His parents see a clear change in him over the next few months. His conscience becomes tender. His willingness to obey grows. His longing to love God and others increases.

  James is always there to keep Timothy growing in a godly direction, using the events of every day to teach his son character and the lessons of a responsible life. While driving past a homeless man sleeping on the street, he challenges him with the importance of working hard whi
le also showing compassion for the poor. Both at home and at church, he shows him how to open the door for a lady and to stand in the presence of the elderly. After a thief breaks into their house while they are away, he shares with Timothy lessons about forgiveness, honesty, and why we lay up our treasures in heaven.

  One day, Timothy walks in the kitchen to see his father holding and kissing his mother. You smile as you watch James turn and wink at Timothy. “Son, when you get married, don’t forget to kiss your wife and tell her you love her every day. It will help her stay beautiful like Mommy!” Timothy decides, even as an eight-year-old, that he wants to grow up and get married to someone with a radiant countenance like his mother. Though he realizes more and more that his parents are imperfect and often fail one another, he sees them quickly work through their differences together, forgive, and learn from each mistake.

  Several years later, James takes his son along on a business trip. And during their long drive, he explains to him the facts of life. You hear James emphasize with wisdom and care the importance of living with sexual purity. He explains how to treat a young lady as someone’s future wife rather than the object of lust for him to undress with his eyes.

  “Did you and Mom sin in that way before you got married?” Timothy asks.

  You can see the grief on James’s face. “Yes, son, I’m sad to say we did. You can’t imagine, though, how badly we wish we hadn’t. But after we became Christians, we stopped doing that and made our sexual relationship something beautiful again by saving it until our marriage, like God’s Word commands.”

  James pauses to let this sink in, then adds a personal charge forged from his own experience: “You have to keep special things special, son. Don’t treat the holy and priceless things of life like they’re common and cheap. I want you to learn from our mistakes so you can avoid them. I want you to be able to tell your children that you kept yourself pure until your wedding day out of your obedience to God and your love for your wife.”