A Wanted Man Page 8

  IF IT WAS GOOD ENOUGH FOR JESUS: THE POWER OF SMALL GROUPS

  You cannot be naive once failure has entered your life. And that includes being naive about whom you choose to let get closest to you.

  I promise you I’m not being a shock jock when I say this. No drama intended, but I’m serious when I say that I don’t believe that Christians as a whole, since the day Jesus ascended into heaven, have ever been able to understand or accept the critical need to have a small group of brothers protecting our blind spots.

  Sure, most of us have had other men around us in life’s normal flow on some level, but camaraderie is at the core of what Jesus did by placing Himself near a small group men.

  Think about this: Jesus knew from the beginning of his ministry that His days were numbered. And I’m not talking about numbered in terms of moving out into a new career field.

  No, Jesus knew that his retirement party was just a short time off and that it involved the most horrific murder in human history in the form of a torture device called a Roman cross.

  Now think about this: If you knew that you were going to die in just a few years, or sooner, would you spend the remaining time you had left with just twelve people? Honestly, I’m not sure any American evangelical Christian really “gets” the gravity in Jesus’ decision to take that route—myself certainly included.

  Every man needs his own tribe. Men who know his habits, his tendencies, and his weaknesses, and yet know how to rely on his skill set to offset their own deficiencies.

  There’s power in a small group. We toss around this “band of brothers” idea in Christendom quite freely these days, but in truth that’s what brotherhood really should be: men who fight for and alongside one another. Every man needs his own tribe. Men who know his habits, his tendencies, and his weaknesses, and yet know how to rely on his skill set to offset their own deficiencies.

  Yes. That is the way biblical manhood should be. We owe that to one another. The older I get, however, I’m finding that a band of brothers is rare. You can’t find that kind of community easily, and if you do, you probably had to help invent it as part of the culture you run with on a daily basis.

  Most men don’t have the grit for the hard work that brotherhood done right takes. To be sustainable, true brotherhood requires, relational, life-on-life, intentional work, and due to that level of emotional maintenance, the vast majority of men mentally say, Count me out. It’s just too much work for most men. We aren’t wired for maintenance, and so because brotherhood involves emotional maintenance, we check out fast.

  The problem is that Jesus told us in Matthew 28:19 to “make disciples.” He never instructed us to make converts, but converts are mostly what we see today.

  That’s because making disciples is hard work. I am convinced that most men don’t have the wherewithal to do it because it asks for too much transparency. Yet what’s the alternative? If you cut yourself off from your brothers, you’re going to hit the ditch—hard. It’s only a matter of time. Then what do you get? You get all the mess that comes with it. So in terms of investment, you pay a high price for such temporary privacy. The return on investment is no return at all.

  REALIZE THAT THIS RECENT FAILURE IS BUT ONE CHAPTER OF YOUR LIFE

  Yes, your failure is a bad chapter of your life—a really, really bad chapter. But it’s not the full story summing up your life.

  Be very careful that you do not minimize the trauma you’ve caused. I’ve seen far too many men do that. We do it out of embarrassment, mainly. When you’ve let everyone down, and you know it, then it can be almost too much to accept.

  Time after time I’ve seen men fall on their spiritual, and sometimes physical, faces, and while they know it isn’t good, I’ll hear them say things like, “Oh, I’ll be all right. Just a bump in the road. Gotta keep moving.”

  Yes, your failure is a bad chapter of your life—a really, really bad chapter. But it’s not the full story summing up your life.

  When you hear that coming from a man who has wrecked his career, his family, or both, you can bet the nightmare is not over. Accepting failure is something we are unable to avoid because failure has been a part of our story since the experience of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.

  Paul said in Romans 5:12, “Through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned.” Adam took us down the road of sin. Yes, it’s true. However, had you or I been there, we’d have done the same. Sin is a part of our nature, and there’s no denying that simple reality.

  I remember being in a class working on my master’s degree during my seminary years. We were in Systematic Theology, which is a brutal class for both the student and the professor. Think about it: you’re discussing the things of God, and that can get about as wild and dramatic as a classroom setting can get, no matter who is in the room.

  One student asked our professor, “Are we born sinners, or do we become sinners?”

  The professor was a great guy with a good heart. He had some soft views of God that made me question him at times, but he was a true believer. I felt sorry for him, because for many students, he just wasn’t dogmatic enough, so they would forever try to corner him on a piece of theology that didn’t fit the denominational creed. Time after time a few students would try to draw him out on a thin limb, hoping he’d snap it.

  Even still, it was a good question. I’ll admit that. It’s a super question, really, because it reveals a lot—about a lot. If we are born sinners, God set us up for failure, some would argue. If we become sinners, then it’s all on us.

  I loved the way my professor answered it. He gently laughed and said, “It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter at all. Either way, you’re going to sin. There’s no escaping it. You’re destined to sin for one simple reason: there’s only one God, and you’re not Him.”

  There was no rebuttal. None whatsoever.

  It’s a strange thing, sin.

  Liberals and conservatives alike know they have it in their bones.

  Sin is something you must accept as a reality. Remember that conversation you and I had earlier about owning failure? You must own it, and part of owning it is eventually coming to accept sin as something you cannot change.

  The longer and the deeper I walk the path of Christ, the more I find that my own personal goodness, whatever it may be, is still wretched comedy.

  And there is where you must start. It’s at the crossroads of shame and sustainability that every man must make a conscious decision: Will I live in shame, or will I find a sustainable way to move forward?

  I can think of few things worse than a man who gets kicked in the teeth by his failures and just sits there and bleeds over it for the next forty years.

  I’ve seen men do it. It’s an ugly, ugly thing.

  WINNING MATTERS

  Back to coaching my two sons in football.

  Let me tell you one huge problem I have with our culture of parenting today. We live in a society where everybody gets a trophy for showing up and playing, and that’s just stupid. In fact, it’s more than stupid; it is immobilizing. All we are doing is setting kids up for the brutal truth that life doesn’t throw you a trophy party just for getting out of bed every day.

  While this soft, nurturing mentality so many parents buy into today is prevalent and tends to go over well with crowds of parents in the stands, I do not and will not subscribe to it.

  Look, I’ve never been the kind of coach who has a win-at-all-costs mentality. I want my sons, and all my players, to learn how to lose with honor.

  I have a mandatory coach-parent meeting every year at the first practice of the season. In that meeting I let parents know I will never, ever teach their sons to be good losers. Show me a good loser, and I’ll show you someone who has never learned how to win nor tasted the sweet experience winning brings.

  I always tell parents in that setting, “I’ll never teach your son to be a good loser. I will, however, teach him how
to lose with honor and class, because he will know that he left every ounce of his worth that day on the field and drained himself trying to help his team win.”

  God. Did. Not. Create. Us. To. Enjoy. Failure.

  I did have a parent question me on it one time. This parent said, “I just think winning means too much to you. These boys need to explore more of football and learn to play multiple positions, and if that means losing, then so be it.”

  I told her, “I’ll never do that. I never accept losing or intentionally orchestrate a situation where we may lose, just so our boys can have more fun losing. Winning matters, and the reason it matters is because God did not create us to enjoy failure.”

  God. Did. Not. Create. Us. To. Enjoy. Failure.

  Say that to yourself over and over again.

  Jeremiah 8:4–5 is grounding for me. Jeremiah was urging the people to return to God, and God instructed him to say to them:

  “Do men fall and not get up again?

  Does one turn away and not repent?

  Why then has this people, Jerusalem,

  Turned away in continual apostasy?

  They hold fast to deceit,

  They refuse to return.”

  It’s the overtone of what God is saying here that is so natural to learning to win again. In essence God is telling His people that living in failure is unnatural. He is telling them that they were not created to live in the emotional and relational squalor that sin ushers into a person’s life.

  RETURN TO THOSE THINGS YOU LEFT

  Many years ago, early in my Christian faith, I read Henry Blackaby’s classic work, Experiencing God.

  It was a fresh wind to many evangelicals, and especially to my denomination, because anything reeking of “experience” was automatically cause for skepticism.

  You know those pious religious leaders who saturate many churches, the ones who drink starch instead of water? Well, these are the people who seemingly have never encountered and been awestruck by the presence of God. Ironically they are the same ones who tell you that you aren’t allowed to experience Him either.

  Since they have no idea what it means to experience God, they believe you shouldn’t be allowed to either.

  Blackaby challenged that idea in a most unique way, but it worked.

  And in doing so, he said in terms of experiencing the freshness of God, “Go back to where you left Him.”

  What were you doing back there when you felt His strength in your life? What habits were you engaged in at the time? What people surrounded you in that season? What were you watching on TV, and more importantly, what were you refusing to watch and let enter your mind?

  It’s interesting what David did once Nathan confronted him about his adultery. In Psalm 51 David opened up his life and let us look into the windows that exposed his spiritual journey out of the grasp of utter failure.

  To start with, he appealed to God’s mercy. That’s quite wise if you ask me. It’s not that God forgets anything, of course. No, it’s just that we see a pattern in the Old Testament in which many times God’s people call out to Him in ways that He has responded to in times past. They recall, or call up, His unfailing love, or they go before Him praising Him for His great power over creation.

  Here, in Psalm 51:1, David said, “Be gracious to me, O God…”

  Here’s the thing: you only ask for those things you do not have.

  If you ask God for something, you are in complete realization that you are deficient in some area of your life.

  If you ask God for something, you are in complete realization that you are deficient in some area of your life.

  David asks for God to be gracious, and later he asks for God to have compassion. He knew he needed grace, for he knew his sins of murder and adultery were heavy before the Lord.

  Right after that, David owned the sin: “Against You, You only, I have sinned” (Psalm 51:4). He knew that no one was to blame but himself.

  Then David said something to God that lets us in on just how detached his heart had become from the very God who said of David himself, “I have found David the son of Jesse, a man after My heart” (Acts 13:22).

  David requested of God: “Restore to me the joy of Your salvation and sustain me with a willing spirit” (Psalm 51:12).

  A man only asks for what he does not have.

  David had nothing left in his spirit. His heart was done. His song was gone. And he knew it.

  David was learning that all the wild sex in the world wouldn’t restore a song to the heart of a righteous man living outside the wire.

  He wanted his joy back.

  See, that’s what the porn video never tells you. You don’t get that disclaimer on the front end.

  Sin is a taker with a heavy price to pay.

  You’ll never read, Warning: In the next ten minutes you’re going to watch two gorgeous women have sex, and you’re really, really going to like it, but it will eventually own you and then rob you of every good thing you have in your life right now. It’s going to leave you thirsty and barren and broken eventually.

  No, you don’t get that truth on the front end. You only see it for what it is in the aftermath of the carnage it causes.

  Sin is a taker with a heavy price to pay. David let his heart chase the wind, and a hurricane was what he got in return.

  And in that vacuum where air was absent, David lost his song of salvation.

  LINKS TO WISDOM

  My dad is a retired PGA professional, which means that I grew up in the game of golf. Maybe that’s a core reason why I’ve never been afraid to get counseling at the first sign of trouble. Golfers, at least good golfers, are students of the game.

  There’s a known axiom in the game of golf that stands as a historical principle to guide a golfer in getting his game back on track. It comes in the form of an acronym: GAP.

  Grip. Alignment. Posture.

  When a man’s game goes south, a solid golfer knows to return to the basics. And this is not a sign of weakness. No, in fact, great golfers are quick—very quick—to go back to square one.

  Legendary gamesmen like Ben Hogan and Harvey Penick were dogmatic about assessing their grip when the ball started flying erratically. Hogan believed that grip is the key to the golf swing, because the grip is literally where a man first comes into contact with the club. If that part of the swing is tainted, it affects everything.

  As for alignment, learning to check this area of my game is where I first learned the critical value of assessments and audits.

  When I was a young boy, right about the time my dad was entering the PGA world, my dad was an apprentice under a Director of Golf named Gil Bettez.

  Gil was truly one of a kind, the sort of man you never, ever forget.

  He was raised in the North and played football for the Army in his early ears. Gil was both confident and blunt.

  Gil would tell you exactly what he thought, whether you wanted to know it or not.

  He was a true professional, though. He dressed nicely, took life seriously, and played to win—on every level. The saying “He’s in it to win it” suited him.

  Gil did nothing halfway. Nothing.

  And Gil had a huge heart. He loved young boys and girls interested in learning the game of golf.

  I didn’t have to ask Gil for help. He approached me immediately when he saw that I was a young golfer who wanted to win.

  I remember the very first time Gil took me to the range to assess my game. I saw him go into the club repair room and grab a can of white spray paint. I was thinking, What in the world?

  We got to the range, and Gil took me off to the side, well off the tee box. We got away from everyone. It was then that he told me the basics of learning how to practice.

  “True players, Jason, learn to work on their game, not just beat a bucket of balls. To do that, you need to get away from everyone else.”

  He then took the can of white spray paint and painted what would resemble a grid akin to railroad tracks:<
br />
  He put my feet on one track and told me that the perpendicular line was for ball position. The first track was to align my feet to the target. The second track was to mentally see the path of the club head to the target.

  It was all about alignment.

  You must realize that Gil was a master teacher. Literally.

  He had given lessons to some of the greatest athletes in sports, including Hall of Fame quarterbacks and PGA Tour players.

  Gil would do anything, employ any tool, if it meant pulling someone out of a slump. I once saw him use a bunker rake and swing it like a sand wedge to show me how easy getting out of the sand could be if I learned the right technique. He actually did get the ball out of the bunker with a rake!

  RETURNING

  Finding your swing when it has left you is nearer to walking the path of a disciple than you may realize. You must return, for that’s what a disciple does: he isn’t content to live in failure. Rebuild you must, and to do it, you must go back to the fundamentals.

  After his great fall with Bathsheba, in the returning, David asked God for joy. Consider this simple reality especially in terms of praying: you never ask for something you already have. David asked God for joy, because he had lost it. You can do the same thing. You can ask your great God, this Father of compassion and mercy, to give you what you do not have.

  David needed a new spirit. It’s interesting to me that he asked to be sustained with a willing spirit (Psalm 51:12). He knew that he did not have the power to drum up the energy to thrive anymore. He was a dehydrated man living smack in the middle of the most barren land he’d ever traversed.

  He had to find a new way to live.

  And for you to get a fresh start, you may have to do some new things to get some old results. I cannot tell you specifically how that will work in your life. What I can do is give you some examples of how this has worked well in my life during times when I found my walk with God to be less than stellar. When I find that my joy is fading, my song is gone, and I need to reorient my spiritual GPS, here are proven tactics that speak well to me.