Mission Focused Men for Christ

Summary : As we seek to run well the race marked out for us, i.e. advance the righteous reign of King Jesus in our own lives, God has ordained one, primary offensive weapon that overthrows the kingdom of darkness:  PRAYER. Jesus said to Peter, “Satan has demanded to sift you as wheat, but I have prayed for you “(Luke 22:31-32). One veteran missionary writes, There is nothing on earth that Satan so...

Summary : In the last episode we observed that no one can nurture a child as well as his own or her own mother can. Similarly, no one can be the father to your children that you can be. Our job as fathers is to help our daughters flourish—to become all that God created them to be. This episode examines two ingredients required by every daughter’s heart for her to be able to thrive. For Further Pra...

Summary : In today’s world, many of our female loved ones are engaged in a very personal spiritual battle about their identity and calling as women, and how motherhood fits into that calling. This episode shows how the mistake of overvaluing motherhood will hurt them and how undervaluing motherhood can be devastating. Only the biblical worldview gets this balance right; so that is our topic today....

Episode Summary : Our calling as men, to help others flourish, means helping our daughters and granddaughters build confidence in the way God created them to be female. Gender differences are profoundly related to our sense of identity. Before helping men know how to winsomely explain the biblical worldview of gender, the podcast identifies two big obstacles that routinely prevent others from bein...

Episode Summary : As we close out this Fatherhood Month series, we return to the Andrew Tate phenomenon that is impacting teen guys in our churches, with which we began this series. Tate says, “There is zero advantage to marriage for a man. If you use your mind, if you use your head instead of your heart, and you look at the advantages to getting married, there are absolutely none.” But, in fact r...

Episode Summary : This past week, the Supreme Court upheld Tennessee’s law, which blocks all transgender medical treatments on those under 18, including puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries. This ruling is an encouraging sign; but it is also a reminder of the torrential flood of polluted messages coming from social media, shouting for the past twenty years that gender identity is fl...

Episode Summary : To aim low, when it comes to our efforts to guide our sons into godly manhood is to fail them and to fail the Lord . Toxic, self-centered, masculinity is real in this world; it has harmed countless women. Its only cure is the gospel of Jesus Christ which transforms. If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come (2 Cor 5:17). Answe...

Episode Summary : Jesus closed his most famous message, the Sermon on the Mount, with the warning that those who ignore his words build their lives on the worst possible foundation— sand . Our sons, daughters, and grandchildren who build their marriages and families by ignoring God’s design of created gender differences and assigned gender roles build on a foundation that is bound to collapse, san...

Episode Summary : Andrew Tate is a former is a kickboxing-champion-turned-social-media-influencer who has become popular among young men for his views on modern masculinity. He has over ten million followers on X. Regarding his influence on American Christian teen boys, Nancy Pearcey, author of The Toxic War on Masculinity, wrote recently on X: A former graduate student of mine now teaches at a hi...

Episode Summary : The great theologian Augustine prayed famously, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.” King David would have been the first to affirm Augustine’s observation about human nature in general and his own longings. He begins Psalm 63 with the words. You, God, are my God, earnestly I seek you; I thirst for you, my whole being longs...

Episode Summary : YESTERDAY’S spiritual passion doesn’t supply TODAY’S spiritual energy. Fired up hearts through Scripture inspiring us or by seeing God’s hand answering our prayers ignite our passion for the moment or day. But all too quickly that passion cools, as the rain from a new day’s storms hits—circumstances that go all wrong, obstacles that make simple tasks harder than they should be, o...

Episode Summary : In the beatitudes, Jesus paints a portrait of spiritual vitality and health into which Christ’s kingdom members are being transformed. But at the root of that transformation process is cutting out the cancer of sin . Such excision of sin requires both confessing it, the first beatitude, and grieving over it, the second beatitude. The combination of these two attitudes is called r...

Summary : Early in Jesus’ ministry, on a small mountainside outside of Capernaum, Jesus picked up his verbal pen and painted a portrait of human life when it is restored to the way it is intended to be, by his power to overthrow sin. This portrait of kingdom life begins with eight heart attitudes that comprise righteousness. Today we examine the second of these beatitudes, not only because it is s...

Summary : This episode continues our series on the life of David by examining his battle to fight the temptation that survey’s reveal is at the top of men’s temptations—overcoming lust and, if married, directing their sexual desires totally towards the wife of their youth. We study David’s fall and the lessons we can take away from this biblical example. For Further Prayerful Thought :  How is the...

Episode Summary : The resurrection reminds us that the gospel is not just about our personal, private salvation and growth in holiness (which is called the two-chapter gospel.) Such a gospel leads to separating from the lost, forgetting their inherent value as those created in God’s image, and devaluing the (common grace) contributions they make to our culture. In contrast, the resurrection of Chr...

Episode Summary: Though we associate Jesus’ arrival on a donkey with children and palm branches, those actually with Jesus who shouted, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord” saw his arrival as the coming of the promised Messianic King who would fully and finally overthrow their enemies. This episode is devoted to better understanding the nature of Christ’s...

Episode Summary: Since it is the nature of men to want to win in everything they do, Christian Christ-followers want to win as disciples. Paul defines this success as reaching spiritual maturity, but such a target on the wall can be nebulous. In I Samuel 24, however, David displays three striking marks of spiritual maturity that give us a clear example to emulate. This episode explains these three...

Episode Summary . Many of us haven’t thought much about protecting our families, not just physically but emotionally. Feelings of depression, worry, bitterness, worthlessness, and fear can devastate our loved ones. One of the most eye-opening questions a husband can ask his wife is, “Are their fears that sometimes grip your heart?” This episode is designed to help us know how to cope with our own...

Episode Summary . Christians find universal comfort in knowing that the Bible never flatters its heroes but exposes their numerous flaws. Such honesty inspires us with hope because we know that we ourselves are deeply flawed. Such a hero was David who had big successes but even bigger failures. This episode provides encouragement for all of us as we see David succeeding bigtime, failing bigtime, b...

Episode Summary . Christian tradition records envy as one of the seven deadly sins, along with lust, greed, pride, gluttony, wrath, and laziness. God warns us, Envy makes the bones rot (Prov 14:30b). This episode examines how King Saul’s envy of David steadily eroded the health of his soul. It then examines how to attack four roots of envy that can grow in our hearts.  For Further Prayerful Though...

Episode Summary . This episode examines the most famous friendship in the Bible the bond between Jonathan and David. We study their example to see how we can enjoy stronger brotherhood connections ourselves, because experiencing such brotherhood bonds has always been God’s intent, as Ecclesiastes 4:9-12 explains.  Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they...

John Eldredge is right when he says, “A man must have a cause to which he is devoted even unto death, for this is written into the fabric of his being ( Wild at Heart ). The adage is true, “If a man doesn’t have a cause to die for, he doesn’t have a cause to live for.” This episode is about the greatest cause in the history of the world—the kingdom of Jesus defeating the kingdom of evil and spread...

Episode Summary . One of the great truths of life is that one’s mental perspective determines one’s attitude. Eve believed the lie that God’s command not to eat the fruit was selfish and that God was keeping something to be desired—the knowledge of good and evil—from her. That perspective led to the attitude of rebellion which led to the action of sin. This episode seeks to better understand how w...

This episode answers the question, “What do dads need to do to develop their child’s potential, i.e. to be faithful stewards of this treasure entrusted to us, not just because we love them, but because God has important contributions for them to make to his world.”   Link to Leadership Diagram Past Podcast Episodes on spiritual gifts : S2 E #38-41, 7/18/21-8/8/21  Link to  The Five Love Languages...

Summary : Marriage failure almost always begins with the loss of intimacy, i.e. closeness in the marriage. This episode examines what Scripture says married couples need to understand and do to experience both the emotional and sexual intimacy, which God designed marriage for.  Couples Study to Overcoming the Intimacy Misconnect in Marriage She spells intimacy TALK. He spells intimacy SEX. This bo...