No Bake Cheese Cake

Soure: Workplace Colleague, Ms J

The Mark of a Man (2/2)

Page 98

The real test of manhood, it seems to me, is not the Boston Marathon, but “the race that is set before you,” mentioned in Hebrews 12. Paul wrote to the young man Timothy, “Take time and trouble to keep yourself spiritually fit. Bodily fitness has a certain value, but spiritual fitness is essential, both for this present life and for the life to come.”

Page 100

It was their willingness to give up themselves for the sake of God and other people that proved them real men. Sports make a poor substitute for such rites. They are not for the sake of God and others, but for the sake of oneself, for glory and for gain.

Page 102

That’s what it takes to be fully a man, Pete. You must share the life of Christ. Without Him you can do nothing – simple as that: absolutely nothing. But, with Him – everything. A man’s willingness to offer up his life, for his wife or for anybody else who happens to need him, is not the end of everything. It’s only the end of himself.

I know it’s true. There are times when everything in us resists taking the step forward that must be taken. Think of Abraham’s actual packing up and saying good-by and starting out on that wilderness journey. Think of the decision that Daniel made after he heard the king’s decree. Was he going to do right ahead and open his windows toward Jerusalem and kneel down where he could so easily be spotted and take the risk that was a matter of life or death? Everything in these men must have said, No! Every thing except one: their desire to please God. Don’t forget Daniel was a young man – very likely your age – with the same sort of ambitions and hungers and temptations.

Page 103

He who is fully a man has relinquished his right to himself. “Have my blood,” Jim Elliot wrote in his college journal. “Have it all. Let it be poured out for the life of the world”. When the chance came to take a big risk in obedience to God, he took it at once – he went “gaily”( 快乐地)! I doubt that he remembered the words of that prayer, but the matter had been settled long before. The route to Life had to be the Way of Death.

Page 105

If a man is “head” of his wife in the same way that Christ is the Head of the Church, he must hear authority over her. To deny this is to empty the analogy of its central meaning.

Christ’s willingness to be Head over the Church was a part of His submission to the Father. A man’s willingness to be the head of this wife is a matter of submission – to Christ. For her to oppose his authority is to oppose God. For him to refuse it is to disobey God.

Page 112

The initiator always takes risks. Christ took them for us. “He came into his own world, and his own people would not accept him.”

Page 118-119

A man who is to be a leader must prepare for leadership in the say way Jesus prepared: by being willing to suffer.

He makes certain choices in life: a career, a wife, a place to live. If he is mature and responsible, he accepts the conditions of those choices, even though some of them entail suffering of one kind or another.

To suffer simply means “to bear under”. A leader is a man who does not groan under burdens, but takes them as a matter of course, allows them, tolerates them – and with a dash of humor. He knows how to keep his mouth shut about his difficulties and how to live a day at a time, doing quietly what needs doing at the moment. People will follow that sort of man.

Page 123

A husband asks his wife to share his destiny. What is his becomes hers; where he goes she’ll go; what he suffers she’ll suffer; his privileges will be her privileges. She doesn’t often see in advance the price she will have to pay. She sees the delights. But both are her portion. That is why marriage vows are so necessary. They remind both partners that the story will not be all “for better”, “for richer”, “in health”. They promise to stand by each other in case of the opposites: for worse, for poorer, in sickness.

Page 124-125

To husband means, as I have noted, “to take care of”, “to cherish”. As Christ cherishes His own Body, His Bride – that is, us – so as man cherishes a woman: holds her dear, values her highly, treats her tenderly. Too much to expect of man? Think of how you treat your own body. You have no difficulty holding it dear, valuing it highly, treating it tenderly. Give your wife the same kind of breaks.

Pay attention. Notice when she’s tired or cold or upset or needing your arms around her.

Page 128

Human beings haven’t got a thing to offer up to God, except what we’ve been given; and your manhood is a gift that you offer back to Him. It’s also a gift you offer to your wife. Without that offering, she is not free to be fully a woman; for to be fully a woman means to respond, to receive, to be acted upon, to follow. You’ve got to give her the gift of your manhood – initiating, cherishing, leading. This is what women want, in her heart to hearts.

I say that courtesy is sacrificial symbolism because each act is a very small sign that you are willing to give your life for hers. When you pass the salt to her, you’re saying, “You first”. When you help her on with her coat, you’re not saying, “You’re too weak to do it yourself”; you are saying that you’re willing to take trouble for her.

Page 143

When King David was dying, he said to his son Solomon, “…Be strong, and show yourself a man, and keep the charge of the Lord your God, waling in his ways and keeping his statutes, his commandments…”

Showing himself a man meant doing what God said. That’s what it means today. There will be plenty of opposition. Righteousness has never been popular. You’ve got to be willing to look like some kind of nut, some of the time, because you won’t be doing what everybody else is doing.

Page 146

Wait a minute. A woman wants a man who is capable of standing up for her. She wants his to be a godly sort – I didn’t say a pious sort. That is, she wants him, like Daniel, to have his “windows open”, and like Jesus, to have his “face set” toward Jerusalem. If that’s the direction he’s headed, his obedience will be her liberation.

Page 153

“Christianity is hard as nails,” C.S. Lewis wrote. “Hard and tender at the same time. It’s the blend that does it; neither quality would be any good without the other.”

A man must at times be hard as nails: willing to face up to the truth about himself and about the woman he loves, refusing compromise when compromise is wrong. But he must be tender. No weapon will breach the armor of a woman’s resentment like tenderness.

Page 163
I said a moment ago that you ought to abandon yourself. There is no better expression of the difference between making love and loving. To make love refers to a performance. It is an act which technically does not require anything remotely resembling real love. To love, by contrast, requires leaving the self behind, abandoning it for the other.

Any yet, how shall I write adequately of the rewards of this kind of loving? How, unless you put yourself on the line, can you know that this paradoxical principle really does work?

Page 168-169

There are plenty of book on fathering. Let me say just one more thing about it here. I am convinced that one of God’s reasons for giving us children and animals to care for is to humble us. They begin by breaking our hearts. The total sweetness of a newborn child (or even of a puppy), the innocence, the abject of helplessness (here is this person, this small creature who will not survive unless you take care of him), the mystery of knowing that this being is the product of your genes and your love (and you see yourself looking back at you out of the milky, wide eyes, the minute he is born): These things will break your heart.

Then, every day, if you take being a father seriously, you’ll know that you’re not big enough for the job, not by yourself. And that’s humbling. The job at the office maybe you can handle. The job of being a husband you might have thought you were doing pretty admirably. Being a son or a friend or a grandson you probably never gave a whole lot of thought to. But being a father will put you on your knees if nothing else ever did. It will save you from yourself, because you are forced to attend to this very small person for whom you and his mother are responsible. (It is mothers, however, who are even more humbled by their job, simple because usually it is to the mother that the messiest tasks go. “Don’t ask me to change the dirty diapers,” fathers say because they can get out of it. The mother has no choice).

Page 170-171

At the top of the list would be femininity and faith.

In other words, a real woman has accepted the given: her femininity. This is an act of faith. She accepts the place of her femininity gives her in God’s world. She knows she was made for man, from man, brought to man by God, and named by him. She does not covet the not given.

A real woman understands that man was created to be the initiator, and she operates on that premise. This is primarily a matter of attitude. I am convinced that the woman who understands and accepts with gladness the difference between masculine and feminine will be, without pretense or self-consciousness, womanly.

Page 177-179

First off, be a man. I’ve said that in a hundred ways, but I’ll say it again. You expect her to be a real woman, but you can’t expect that if you’re not a real man. It is in response to the fullest expression of your manliness that she will be most womanly. When she’s not living up to your expectations, check yourself out first. Are you taking the lead as you ought to, with an attitude of humility and submission to Christ? Are you remembering that you’re the one responsible for her?

Second, make her glad she’s a woman. One way to do this is to notice things. An honest compliment can make her light up. So she hasn’t got the figure of Farrah Fawcett, but does she carry herself beautifully? Say so. Has she pretty hands? Tell her. Another way is to be courteous. Courtesy is a way of reminding each other that you’re a gentleman and a lady. No matter how “old shoe” you both like to be – casual, unstructured, simple, sincere, “just me”, or whatever – you’ll be surprised what pleasures will unfold if you treat each other with a little special consideration. I’ve already mentioned some of the specifics: Pull out her chair for her at the table, open a door. Keep on remembering the little things after you’re married. They often have a way of vanishing, one by one, as familiarity breeds slobbism. Get up some morning, make the coffee, and bring a cup to her in bed, with a daisy or a book on the tray. She’ll be amazed.

Third, understand that leadership is for her help and redemption and be willing to take charge. That includes not making excuses when you fail. It includes spiritual headship in your home. Many men feel that their wives are more spiritually minded, more sensitive to God, more religious, than they are. Therefore they defer to them in the matter of family prayer. They shouldn’t. Even if you believe your wife to be your spiritual superior, you are the appointed priest in your home. You need not compete with her. You certainly don’t have to preach a sermon at breakfast every morning. Just take the lead in reading of portion of the Bible or the Daily Light, that wonderful collection of Scripture verses for morning and evening. Lead in prayer. Let it be as simple as you want but pray. Ruth Graham said she believes if a husband will pray for his wife and the things she is going to do that day, and if the wife prays for her husband and the things he is going to do, that marriage will be strengthened as the years go by. There is not calculating the influence on the children when their father, by daily example, leads them to God.

Fourth, love her with the love described in Corinthians. Try putting your own name in place of the word love: “Pete is low to lose patience, has good manners, knows no limit to his endurance…” How does it work?

Last remember that you are heirs together of the grace of life. This is one of the great equalities of the Bible, that men and women are all the recipients of the grace that is greater than all our sin. It will rover her sins against you. It will cover your sins against her. It will cover your past and hers. It will cover everything in the future.

Source: The Mark of a Man: Following Christ's Example of Masculinity by Elisabeth Elliot

The Mark of a Man (1/2)

Page 12

Faith has to be exercised in the midst of ordinary, down-to-earth living. Ordinary living includes trouble. When things are going as we would like, faith doesn’t often seem necessary. It’s when things get messed up that we look around for answers or for help. Where, exactly would you expect the tests for a young man’s faith to come, if not in the three areas where you were having trouble?

Page 15

The world cries for men who are strong: strong in conviction, strong to lead, to stand, to suffer. I pray that you will be that kind of man, Pete, glad that God made you a man, glad to shoulder the burden of manliness in a time when to do so will often bring contempt. I say to you what Paul said in his letter to the Ephesians Christians:

Live life, then, with a due sense of responsibility, not as men who do not know the meaning and purpose of life but as those who do. Make the best use of you time, despite all the difficulties of these days. Don’t be vague but firmly grasp what you know to be the will of the Lord.

Page 47, 48

Four extremely important events illuminate where woman stands in relation to man. I see, in them, who I am as a woman, who you are as a man.

1. She is made for the man. According to the specifications, she was divinely designed to fit his needs exactly – and adapter, a responder.

2. She was made from the man, quite literally, constructed our out of one of his own bones. He was her reason for being, her source, which is one of the root meanings of the New Testament word for “head”. If you miss the point in Genesis 2, you can pick it up in 1 Corinthians 11: “For man was not made from woman but woman from man. Neither was man created woman, but woman for man.”

“Oh, well,” people have said to me, “you’re just interpreting things your way. There are lots of other interpretations.” Are there? Give three examples.

3. She was brought to the man. God made a present of Eve to Adam, not of Adam to Eve. She was his.

4. She was named by the man. The Old Testament authority to name was immense importance. It signified the acceptance of responsibility. He was taking charge (responsible).

Page 54

“God is so masculine,” wrote C.S. Lewis, “that all creation is feminine by comparison.” The earth has always been seen in the human imagination as female: Mother Earth, Mother Nature. The sun is usually thought of as male, often as a god. For the earth receives, is acted upon, and gives back in fertility what is planted, while the sun receives nothing from earth, but shines in his strength upon her, giver her life. Here we have the ancient and deep human consciousness of maleness and femaleness.

Page 55

 The sea is His, He made it. It receives its very being, as well as its daily instructions, from the Creator and Sustainer of the world. God is the initiator. This is the distilled essence of masculinity: initiation. All creation responds to His initiating. It is the only thing creation can do.

Page 58-59

Eve was made to order. God saw the shape of Adam’s need and designed the woman to fit it exactly in every way. She was to be an adapter. When you’re looking for the right woman to marry, Pete, look for one who is prepared to adapt to you. Now don’t suppose for a minute that you yourself won’t have to budge (让步). When two people live together day and night, for life, both of them need to give and take; and I’ll mention more of this later. But if you find a woman who is ready to go where you go and do what you do without brooding about being “her own person,” you’ll have found a treasure. She will have to be a woman who has submitted herself to God, first of all, because otherwise she’ll be listening to the insistent voices around her, telling her that she’s got to be independent and autonomous, that she ought to not to be “only” somebody’s wife or somebody’s mother, that she needs to seek fulfillment for herself, and that can only be found beyond the bounds of home. If, having submitted herself to God, she understands that what He had in mind when He made her was response – in order that both man and woman be fulfilled – she will be at peace with the arrangement.

Page 59

The important thing for you, as a man, to remember, Pete, is that a woman cannot properly be the responder, unless the man is properly the initiator. He must take the lead in order that she may follow, as in a dance. The willingness of each to perform the “steps” that have been choreographed gives the other freedom.

Page 60

If the husband can look upon his gift of initiation as a privilege, instead of as a right; and if the wife can look upon her gift to response in the same way, instead of as an obligation, both might be surprised to find that Jesus’ promise actually comes true for them: The yoke proves to be easy, the burden light.

Page 64

To husband means simply “to take care of”.

Page 71 (Prejudice vs Harmony)

It was not from pure prejudice that God equipped spiders to skitter, lions to spring, and donkeys to plod. It was his concern for a universe that could function together in harmony. The part each was to play in the harmony was determined as carefully as (infinitely more carefully than) the orchestration of a symphony. God did it with generosity; He did it with love; He did it with grace. His gifts to men and women are not, any more that His gifts to lions or spiders, “equal”. They are complementary. They contribute to the harmony of the design. It was grace, the Bible says, which gave those differing gifts. Furthermore, the anatomical difference is very far from irrelevant to the overall plan. It is wholly and wonderfully relevant.

Page 78

What is true in the theater of the home is true also in the other theater, the local church. Christ is the true Head. Men represent His authority in the local body of believers. Women, in subjection to Christ, are subject to the representative authority – not because they’re not competent or worthy, but quite simply because they are enacting a drama. This order stands for something.

Page 81

Don’t be cowed (吓到) by them, Pete. With all my heart I say, don’t be cowed. Stand up to them. Stand true to your calling to be a man. Real woman will always be relieved and grateful when men are willing to be men.

Page 82

Jesus “…did not think to snatch at equality with God.” He was subject. Can any woman think that she has as much right to equality with men as Jesus had with His Father?

Don’t be afraid; don’t be ashamed. Moses was neither. He was simple humble. He knew – and you men must remember – that it was not a matter of “setting himself up”. “In the morning the Lord will show who is his, and who is holy…” There’s a lesson there for all 21^st century men. It’s God’s authority that is being questioned. It’s God’s business to deal with those who rebel. “Rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft,” God says. He looks for men who will see it for what it is and, in the face of social ostracism or scorn, will stand strong with Him.

Page 84

The offering up of oneself for the sake of others – this is the price of real authority. It was because Christ “humbled himself” – to the point of dying – that He is now lifted up above all others in heaven or earth. His exaltation required his humiliation. The way up is down.

The power of servanthood. It commands respect. It does not demand it.

Jesus also “took a towel”.

The kind of love described by the Greek word agape is defined by Edward Nason West as “a profound concern for the welfare of another without any desire to control that other, to be thanked by that other, or to enjoy the process.” It gives itself. It lays down its life.

Page 88

Responsibility has been the mark of a man from the moment when God shaped a woman to fit Adam’s need and presented her to him and Adam recognized her and accepted her and named her. Responsibility is the refusal to drift or delay or pass the buck.

Page 91

The husband must give his wife the same sort of love that Christ gave to the Church, when he sacrificed himself for her.

Men ought to give their wives the love they naturally have for their own bodies.

A man shall leave his father and mother and shall cleave to his wife.

Let every one of you who is husband love his wife as he loves himself…

You husbands should try to understand that the wives you live with, honoring them as physically weaker yet equally heirs with you of the grace of life.

Compare the list of commands to husband with the list for wives:

The wife has no longer full rights over her own person, but shares them with her husband. The woman reflects the person and glory of the man. You wives must learn to adapt yourselves to your husbands, as you submit yourselves to the Lord. The willing subjection of the Church to Christ should be reproduced in the submission of wives to their husband...Let the wife reverence her husband. Their role is to be receptive. Holy women of ancient times trusted in God and were submissive to their husbands.

There you have it: the contrast between what is expected of men and what is expected for women. The roles are complementary, planned to enable husbands and wives to function together without bumping into each other or stepping on each other’s toes, and in such a way as to contribute, rather and deprive, to free, rather than to shackle.

Source: The Mark of a Man: Following Christ's Example of Masculinity by Elisabeth Elliot