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