I’ve recently started working through The Measure of a Man with a good friend of mine. We’re both men who recognize the fact that we need and desire to grow in our spiritual walks with Christ so that we may better serve God, serve our wives, and minister to our friends, families, and respective communities. _Measure_, written by Gene Getz, is a book on 20 spiritual disciplines that define what a Godly man looks like, and its focus is to drive men to mirror those disciplines in an effective manner.
The first chapter sets up the rest of the study for the next 19 weeks by talking about faithful men. I think that perhaps the most salient fact I took away from that chapter was that I myself am a man of faith, but I am not necessarily a faithful man. What I mean by that is this – my faith in God in strong, so strong that it informs and is present in my every thought, action, and decision. Yet, I am not always faithful to live my life according to all those principles of my faith. In short I am, at the core, a weak and foolish man who makes many mistakes. I know what I should do, but I do not always do it. ((Romans 7:15-21)) My sin nature gets the better of me, and I allow myself to fall into weakness, rather than relying on the Lord’s strength to lift me out of it. My failure is condemned by my own faith. This is what I mean when I say that I am a man of faith but not necessarily a faithful man.
It is a struggle I think with which all men are faced. We desire to do the right thing, to be the kind of men that are admired and respected, yet we are also so very weak. We mess things up, we lose our tempers, we fall into various sins, and sometimes it is hard to break out of those cycles due to the feelings of guilt and the burdens of despair we carry with us. Christ does offer us forgiveness and a way out of the mire, if only we seek it.
My goal, my desire, is to become a faithful man, in addition to being a man of faith.
