Assuming that we are going through the process Paul describes in 2 Timothy 3:12-17, the process that God uses to turn us into men of God who are equipped for every good work — the process that includes being saved, learning God’s word, accepting reproof from God’s word, experiencing restored relationships by God’s word, and living righteously in accordance with God’s word — we can now start helping people and healing people by doing the good works that God saved us to do.
But alas, we men of God also have feet of clay: chronic and glaring deficiencies that, when people get up close and personal with us, they cannot help but notice. And the problem is, if we ignore our feet of clay, then they can at some point crumble and bring an entire lifetime of doing God’s good works into disrepute.
What to do?
The answer, the Bible tells us, is to develop a humble and healthy sense of self-awareness.
Why men of God need self-awareness
“God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.” John 4:24
When Jesus spoke to the woman at the well, he didn’t just say, “God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit.” Rather, he added something important at the end, something that the woman at the well was missing. “God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.” That is, we are only truly worshiping God when we do so with honest self-awareness in our spirit.
The woman at the well wasn’t being truthful with Jesus or herself about who she was in her spirit and about what kind of life she was living in her practice. Until she gained self-awareness in this area, no spiritual progress could be made. It wasn’t until Jesus called her out on her fornication and she acknowledged the truth about herself that she could then be saved and her spiritual life could begin.
In the same way, we men of God need self-awareness because God demands it of us.
A man of God’s self-awareness begins when he admits the truth about himself
We see this same process of Jesus revealing spiritual truth to accomplish self-awareness in Jesus’ encounter with Peter by the lake after his Resurrection, an encounter that I call “The First Men’s Breakfast.” Here Jesus brings to light Peter’s pride and feelings of superiority when he asks Peter if he loves him more than the other disciples love him. It was embarrassing. It was awkward. But it was a necessary moment of self-awareness that Peter had to acquire before he could make any more spiritual progress.
The Apostle Paul describes this process of attaining genuine self-awareness as thinking of ourselves “with sober judgment.”
“Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you.” Romans 12:3
The Greek word here, ὑπερφρονεῖν (hyperphronein), means to have an exalted view of one’s self. Paul warns everyone in the Roman Christian community, a community prone to have an exalted view of themselves since they lived in the capitol of the greatest power in the world, to avoid this fatheaded attitude.
Instead of viewing themselves as VIPs, Paul exhorts his readers to think of themselves with σωφρονεῖν (sōphronein), with a detached and objective judgment.
Sometimes when our ministry to others — meaning working to meet the needs of others — results in great fruitfulness, that very fruitfulness can lead to pride, self-confidence and, eventually, to spiritual disaster. The antidote to this scenario is genuine self-awareness and the humility it brings.
“So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.'” Luke 17:10
A man of God has self-awareness when he understands that…he still has a sinful nature…he lives in perilous times…and he has a powerful enemy.
We men of God have an unwanted guest living inside us
Like a cantankerous guest who has overstayed his welcome, we men of God still have our “old man” hanging around. And no, I am not talking about our fathers. I am talking about our sinful nature, aka “flesh,” “body of death,” “sin that dwells in us,” and “the carnal mind.” Scripture teaches that every man of God still has this unwanted guest. Our salvation has not touched him in any way. He is as bad now as he has ever been. And as much as we would like to change him and improve him or, failing that, get rid of him, we cannot. We will always have this unwanted guest until the day we die. Only then will we be presented faultless in God’s presence (Jude 1:24). Worse still, every now and then we let our old man rear his ugly head. Scripture has much to say about this rebel that lives within every believer.
- “Whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life.” Galatians 6:8
- “For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin.” Romans 6:6
- “O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” Romans 7:24
- “Put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness.” Ephesians 4:22-24
- “But now, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me.” Romans 7:17
- “Now if I do what I will not to do, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me.” Romans 7:20
- “Because the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be.” Romans 8:7
- “And if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is life because of righteousness.” Romans 8:10
- “And those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.” Galatians 5:24
- “Do not lie to one another, since you have put off the old man with his deeds, and have put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of Him who created him,” Colossians 3:9-10
- “Let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.” Hebrews 12:1
Whew! There is a lot to unpack here. But simply put, our newborn spirit and our flesh are in a civil war (Galatians 5:17). We can’t change our flesh and we can’t get rid of it. But we can ignore it and instead focus on a new and overwhelming reality: that is, on our newborn spirit, on the Holy Spirit who indwells us, on Christ who intercedes for us, on God who is our Father, on fellow believers in the church, on honest and open fellowship with other believers (1 John 1), on worship with other believers, on the Word of God, and on doing the good works God saved us men of God to do (Romans 6). (I cover this topic of how to overcome the flesh in more detail in my post, “The Bikini and the Berka.”)
We men of God live in perilous times
“Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil.” Ephesians 5:15
It is not an accident that our passage, 2 Timothy 3:12-17, in which Paul describes the process by which God takes a sinner and makes him into a man of God who is equipped for every good work, starts with this dramatic warning: “Everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted”. Indeed, if we have never suffered for our faith, that is something to worry about. “Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you, for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets,” Jesus warned his disciples in Luke 6:26.
In warning Timothy that all men of God will suffer persecution, Paul is simply extrapolating from what he has already written just a few verses before 3:12: “This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.”
Whether or not we are in “the last days” right now only our Lord knows. But one thing for sure, we are two thousand years closer to it than Paul and Timothy were when Paul wrote 2 Timothy.
I think we can all agree, though, that whether or not we are in the last days, it sure feels like it. Our post-Christian culture is fast becoming an anti-Christian culture. Want to see how anti-Christian our culture is? Post a Christian add on Facebook, as I have done, and target everyone, Christians and non-Christians alike. Then watch the virulent, anti-Christian comments from non-Christians pour in.
Everywhere we turn, whether it be on radio, on TV, on the Internet, in entertainment, in the news, at the mall, on billboards, and in school, our senses are assaulted with conversations, print media, images, and film that challenge, contradict, and mock our faith and morals. Yes, “the days are evil,” and that is all the more reason to make the most of every opportunity by doing the good works God saved us men of God to do.
We men of God have a powerful enemy
“Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.” 1 Peter 5:8
Men, as if it isn’t enough that we have an unwanted guest living inside of us, that is, our sinful nature, and that we are surrounded by a culture that is completely antithetical to all that we believers stand for, we also have a powerful enemy who hates us and all that we do and seeks to destroy us and discredit our work.
Part of self-awareness is understanding that every man of God has a target on his back with a red laser dot shining on the middle of the target. Man of God, turn around and you will see that the Devil is staring down the barrel of his rifle right at you. And his finger is on the trigger. He is just waiting for the right moment to pull it.
Paul writes in Ephesians 6:12, “Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”
Do you remember that list in my last post? It was a list of men of God who crashed and burned. Here it is again:
“One man of God I knew, a pastor, got embroiled in a huge argument with his church board, became embittered, and left his church in a huge mess. Another man of God was arrested, tried, convicted, and imprisoned for decades for secretly sexually assaulting women in alleyways. Another man of God confessed to pornography addiction. Another man of God had an affair, divorced his wife, and married his lover. Another man of God got caught and convicted for embezzling funds. All of these men were, and are, true men of God, were respected leaders in their churches, and later repented of their sin.”
So, once again, fair warning: “”Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.”
Always remember that, as a man of God, we are here to do good. But the Devil is here to do no good by neutralizing our good deeds.
A man of God has self-awareness when he stops hiding and starts revealing
“This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin. If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us.”
Often we read in Scripture that blinding light accompanies divine appearances. The Transfiguration and Saul’s conversion are two examples.
But John is not talking about physical light in 1 John 1. John is talking about moral light. John is saying that God is also light in the sense that he is morally pure. He is holy. This moral purity that God possesses searches out and reveals for all to see the moral state of all sentient beings around him, such as angels and humans.
And since men of God still have a sinful nature, we cannot be in God’s presence without blinking and shading our eyes and wanting to hide. This natural reaction must be consciously resisted by all men of God.
Instead, we must make the courageous decision to be openly truthful about ourselves. After all, everyone else around us can see our faults anyway. One of the things that I have appreciated as I have ministered in over one hundred and fifty men’s conferences in the past twenty years is seeing men openly confess their sin and then begin to help other men with their struggles. Like AA, we can all say, “Hi, I’m (our first name here). And I am a recovering sinner.”
That is self-awareness.
Our local church men’s ministry is our “safe house” where we can develop our self-awareness
“We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. We write this to make our joy complete.” 1 John 1:3-4
The reason why John wrote his first epistle is so that he could have genuine, honest “fellowship” with his Christian audience. But for John, fellowship wasn’t just sitting around a table at a men’s breakfast eating sausage, eggs, pancakes and shooting the bull. Fellowship, as we saw in the section above, is self-revelation in the light of God’s holiness. Only when this brutal honesty happens is a men’s ministry fulfilling its purpose for men of God.
Just as spies in a foreign country have “safe houses” where they can take refuge from the enemy that surrounds them, so too, men of God need their men’s ministry to be a “safe house” for them from their flesh, from the world, and from the Devil. They need a place where they feel safe to open up and share their deepest struggles. That is the genuine fellowship John is talking about in 1 John. And as difficult as transparency sometimes is, it always leads to “complete joy” in the end.
In our local church men’s ministry’s “safe house,” men of God can develop self-awareness by feeling fee to talk about the trials, tests, and temptations we are going through
I learned an important lesson about men when I was a pastor doing marriage counseling: men rarely open up, especially in front of their wives, unless they are doing something with me. If I didn’t do something alone with the husband to give them a chance to talk about what they were really feeling, they would invariably sit stoically silent in the counseling session with their arms crossed, listening to their wives complain about them.
Women, on the other hand, open up to each other, and to their pastor, as a matter of course.
What I did for the men I was counseling was invite them to go hiking with me in the Rockies, which were just twenty minutes away from us.
At first, we would hike along and not say much. But, sure enough, after about half an hour of strenuous hiking, the men would start spilling their guts. It never failed.
The lesson? Women relate face to face. Men relate side by side. Men feel threatened when you sit them down across from your desk and ask them to tell you their deepest and darkest secrets. They also feel threatened when asked to share their inner selves with a group of men they do not know or trust.
But put men in smaller groups where they can do something together so they can bond and learn to trust each other, and you have fertile soil for the genuine fellowship John is talking about in 1 John 1.
One of the reasons why New Commandment Men’s Ministries has successfully used teams of men to serve widows and single moms is that, by doing so, men have an opportunity to create relationships with other men on their team that last for years.
Whatever mechanism you use, all men’s ministries must strive to create for men safe and sustained relationships in small, long-lasting groups, that provide opportunities for men to develop their self-awareness and be able to share it honestly with others.
So, men of God, how is our self-awareness and what are we doing about it?
Men of God, do we know what our weaknesses are? What our besetting sins are? What our triggers are? Do you have someone we can open up with?
In this section I will be writing about common issues all men of God face, how we can recognize them, how we can respond to them, and how local church men’s ministries can help us overcome them.
This post first appeared in NewCommandment.org.
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Learn how to form teams of men for every widow, single mom
and fatherless child in your church at NewCommandment.org.
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