Where does Jesus lead? 

 

Christ guides us into the opened hearts of those in need.

I say ‘opened’ and not open, because the tyranny of living may have 

closed off the heart, 

shut down the trust, 

and sealed the innermost thoughts of a wounded soul.

But the “gates of hell” will not prevail when the Holy Spirit breathes and connects us with downtrodden.

 Jesus warms the cold, ruptured heart; 

glimmers of hope begin to rise and Christ grants a trust where the 

‘Confessional work of the Spirit’ 

opens wide the tomb of terrors, 

and tears begin to fall, 

silence is broken, 

and words, which may have been hidden for a lifetime, begin to flow.

 

The healing balm of Christ’s presence, brings to the downcast a foretaste of healing, the anticipation of liberty from sorrows past and present.

There is a holy quiet as knitted hearts realize 

“It is God who is at work in you, both to desire and to work for His good pleasure” 

which is the liberation of another child of His.

 Are you like a Gorilla?

"These guys see masculinity as muscle and mastery. 

They are the fighters and killers and a trail of blood is the scent they leave behind. 

These men only admire brawn, battle and bravery. 

Courage is capital in their bank and only men who are dangerous matter to them. 

If you can’t die doing it, it ain’t worth doing. 

The are the types that throw the first punch. 

These men only respect what they can’t take down. 

The size of someone’s balls is measure of a man to the Gorilla.

Men are often called animals and not without reason! There’s a brute beastliness about all men that needs civilized. There’s a real toxic masculinity that needs to be dealt with in men, but it’s not the anti-male blather that’s being pumped through the public media sewers these days. 

All men need to be sanctified, which is a biblical idea that doesn’t mean feminized or shamed for being or acting like men, it’s means maturing men into the men God created them to be.

Here are seven other types of men, and what acting like a man means to them ---

The Ram...he talks tough and rough, punctuates every comment with a jarring cuss or curse word. 

He’s the dude that has to make others feel small, in order for him to feel big 

and thinks he has to establish dominance by diminishing others. He’s often alone because he pushed everyone away by his behavior. He's hard-headed, confrontational and usually a jerk. He’s the type of guy that just doesn’t know when enough is enough and when to shut up

and his mouth, more than anything, 

is what always gets him in trouble.

 

The Peacock...this guy parades his plume of abs and biceps like some women use their breasts, butts and legs...

it’s all bait and tackle. 

He’s shirtless most of the time, size matters and towels are optional. 

He’s plucked, perfumed and performs with perfect Instagram angles. He’s beautiful like a picture but as deep as the Starbucks macchiato he’s sipping. 

The Mustang...this guy is all about horsepower! 

Money is masculine to him and he uses his bling to dazzle dudes with all his motors, toys and trinkets. 

Cash is king and he has to be at the front of the herd no matter what it costs. 

He’s the one who has everything, anybody wants...first. 

Grease, gears and gadgets are his language and if you don’t speak it, you are bucked off or trampled.

The Octopus...these guys are all sticky, gangly appendages. Their whole existence is about grasping body parts. Acting like men involves objectifying women and titillating tales of sexual conquest find their way into every conversation. Tits and dicks is how this guy quips, creeps and crawls through every crowd. He spews his black ink of penis pontifications to hide his stunted growth and out of control appetites. Eight tentacles still can’t capture enough prey for this guy. 

The Cheetah...these guys have only learned community through competition. The only way to interact with them is to beat them or be beat by them. Everything and everyone is processed through the grid of conquering and achievement. Success is determined by if they ‘can beat them’ in one way or another. First place is everything to these guys and they wear every ribbon, medal or trophy to show how great they are. 

The Owl...some guys have been formed in the crucibles of conversations and their whole interaction with others is intellectual. They are men of talk and ideas, they judge each other from their high, isolated, academic perches of mind. They are often the quiet ones, just sitting there...judging you. Heads spinning all around, gazing, watching, measuring, silently tearing apart your meager minds like small rodents in their sharp talons. They like to swoop in on conversations and sink their beaks into the mushy thinking of dudes and show off their intellectual prowess and then retreat as quickly as they came, licking the blood of their prey with pride. 

The Hyena...these are the party animals and acting like a man means getting wild! These loud-mouthed hecklers, must use intoxicants, because it ain't a party until a bottle or a blunt is in their hands and it isn’t fun unless they are blitzed, buzzed or blazed. They incessantly bark laugh at everything but there's always, always a bite behind their gaggle. They often run in ‘bro packs’ but they can be loners too. They dominate the moment but are often driven off by other dudes because of their odd antics and boisterous buffoonery. 

The Lion...these are kingly men. 

They are powerful men, who don’t need to prove themselves. They bear scars and are often missing parts of their manes, an eye, claw or fang but they are strong. 

These men can be present, 

but do not have to present themselves. 

They can roar, but don’t often need to do so. 

These men could pounce on you a hundred different ways, 

but feel no need to dominate. 

Who they are and what they have done, speaks for itself. 

These men lead by example, by history and by inspiration. They are the warlords, story tellers, sages, bards and saints. 

They are the shadows that most young men try to get out from under 

but older men seek their shade. 

They are the echoes of masculinity worth listening too and the quarries from which to build. 

All these types or sides of men will be encountered in men’s work but all of them can learn to change, harness or transform. 

All of these men matter, even though encountering them can be a difficult. 

Love accepts men as they are, but doesn’t leave them there. Authentic ministry to men helps them see themselves as they are and walks alongside them to become better men. 

“Acting like men” is a call to be strong and courageous, to do and be who you were created to be. To become a mature man, one who has risen above nature and nurture and strives to be the man God has created you to be and calling you to become."

Pastor Eric.

 

"No one has the same relationship with each individual. 

The older I get the more comfortable I am with accepting that our own reality is our own. Every chapter is filled with characters unique to our unfolding story. What we know and love is made up of unique moments that can’t be fully remade or retold as they actually were experienced or even as they might have truly been.   

Sit in a funeral and listen to someone talk about their recollections or encounters with someone you too knew and you’ll notice that there’s similarities and dissonance. 

We knew them as we know them. 

Lewis said it this way:

C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory “In speaking of this desire for our own far off country, which we find in ourselves even now, I feel a certain shyness. I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you—the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence; the secret also which pierces with such sweetness that when, in very intimate conversation, the mention of it becomes imminent, we grow awkward and affect to laugh at ourselves; the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both. We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience. We cannot hide it because our experience is constantly suggesting it, and we betray ourselves like lovers at the mention of a name. Our commonest expedient is to call it beauty and behave as if that had settled the matter. Wordsworth’s expedient was to identify it with certain moments in his own past. But all this is a cheat. If Wordsworth had gone back to those moments in the past, he would not have found the thing itself, but only the reminder of it; what he remembered would turn out to be itself a remembering. The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshipers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.”

My grandmother is a Genie that I cannot get back in the bottle. She’s far bigger than the actual container that her lived life contained. 

She is known to me in the irritating, sweeping of a broom. 

In the clinking of a spoon in a stirring coffee cup. 

In the scent and swirl of cigarette smoke. 

In birds chirping in cages. 

In the smell of mint crushed in the palm. 

In the feel of crumbling rock. 

In the popcorn bowl. 

The feel of dog fur. 

And in the primordial sounds of a Peacock that roamed her home.

Many of my memories as a young child revolved around her and the mountain home she ruled. Her stormy moods and her unapproachable grandmothering are like a spell cast over my coming of age.

All of the fairytales that have mysterious women who haunt the woods or castles contain her. I loved her in her unlovableness and her wonder. I needed her and still do in some unknowable way. 

My mother was possessed by her and tried to exercise her unsuccessfully. I learned to love women with demons through my senses, memories, joys and troubles. 

She created a world I still try to build from these unreadable blueprints, because I was mesmerized by her shadows and dancing light in my heart and mind. 

She’s been dead most of my life and yet today she lives right outside my window roaming my yard on this mountain hillside. 

I bought this house in part, because her memory demanded it. 

I am a man shaped by earthquaking women.