(Audio transcription below) Last time I mentioned that the very first thing in the Bible that is said to be “not good” is loneliness. Genesis 2:18 says “it’s not good that man should be alone.” The lie is that loneliness is part of being a man. The truth is that friendship is a superpower. When you’re in a war, you go through a lot of intense things in a short period of time and create friendships that you wouldn’t create…
(Audio transcription below) Because we are separated from God, what was right now seems wrong. The deceptive thing about sin is that you can’t see it clearly. We see a problem and so often misdiagnose the solution. We lie to ourselves more than we lie to anybody else. We deceive ourselves. Our topic this week and next week is loneliness. The lie we believe is that loneliness is part of being a man. It’s almost like a badge. I can…
(Audio Transcript Below) I don’t know why this is, but dogs can feel shame. We’ll talk about five signals of shame and this dog has picked up on one, blame shifting! One signal that shame is operational in your life is if you’re blame shifting. The book talks about shame this way: the lie that we buy into is, “I need to do everything possible to prevent people from seeing my failures and weakness.” So we walk in here this…
Shame tells you that you need to do everything possible to prevent God and people from seeing your failures and weaknesses. This keeps you living in shame’s shadow. It provides no way to escape; instead, it keeps digging your hole deeper so that no one can see who you really are. This week at Iron Leadership we will discuss The 5 Signals of Shame: Blame-shifting Questions constantly rolling through your mind like: Am I really good enough? Did my dad/mom…
The lie of shame is that I need to do everything possible to hide. I need to do everything possible to prevent people from really knowing me. The truth is God really delights in you and he’s the one who does see everything. He sees everything and he wants you to change, but he loves you fully just the way you are. He doesn’t want you to stay where you are, but he loves you as you are because you…
We are meant to point our lives in one direction towards the Lord, but something comes in between us (sin) and we can’t see it. We’re turned around, but we don’t know that we’re turned around. You’re walking away thinking wealth, women, wine, work is the right way to go. We’re trying to have Christ come in and lift that off of us so we repent and turn around. There’s a different way to live our lives and we don’t…
“Many men are in a state of massive despair because they have forgotten their future – their inheritance, their calling, their horizon. They only see the present and the bleakness of the present seeps into their hearts, the shadow of despair robs life of its possibilities.” Jon Tyson in Fighting Shadows. This week we will discuss what it takes to fight successfully against the shadow of despair. We will learn from King David about how he fought against his despair while…
(Audio Transcription Below) This is my very favorite video. It’s about how a small introduction, few in number, changes everything in the ecosystem. The reason I like it is that men, coming in and living in the right way, change the ecosystem of the world. Romans 8:19 says, “For the creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed.” Much like the wolves have this downstream effect on the rivers themselves, men coming into the world’s…
The wise writer of Proverbs states, “All wisdom comes from the LORD and so do common sense and understanding”( Proverbs 2:6) This reminds us that there is a way to live our life “along the grain” of the way God has structured the universe. Common sense and understanding might be found through various means, but all true wisdom comes from the LORD. This summer I read Discipline is Destiny by Ryan Holiday and found the author’s thinking and storytelling helpful…
The wiseman who wrote the book of Ecclesiastes makes a series of observations about the futility of life. Listen to what he says in Chapter 6:7-12: “All a man’s work is for his mouth…yet this appetite is never satisfied.” You work all your life to feed the beast – your family, your ego, opinions of other people. Yet those appetites are never quite satisfied, so without the correct perspective it can feel like futility. “There are many words which only…