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Times of flourishing are awesome. Stuff goes great and you thank God for it. But, does your heart tend to stray when all is going well? When my life is good, I tend to get ahead of myself and my plan can quickly be confused with God’s gifts. What a loving Dad we have to keep us from giving ourselves his gifts. Then the silence comes and life falls apart. God bounced and hope chunks the deuce. You ever been there? Everything was going so well! What happened? Then you wait… and wait. Have you kept trying to follow the path you were on and realized God wasn’t there, but kept going simply because you liked where you thought that path would lead? It’s that season of silence that is so frustrating. Seems like God’s just not interested. There’s nothing wrong with the path you were on, why won’t God just give you what He was leading you towards? He made promises, I’m following His law, then… silence. Long, painful silence. For us dudes striving to live biblically, stalling out in life is pretty common. How can we wade through that time of transition? How can we hear the voice of God when all our “good” efforts failed? In today’s episode of the BMP, we look at transition in life. When God is silent, He is setting the stage “to make ready for the Lord a people prepared.” I’m at 9 months of silence and I’m only beginning to catch onto which direction God is speaking. It took God “400 years of silence” to do this between the Old and New Testaments. Is God taking His sweet time to fix your life? Show Notes The Intertestamental Period in 15 Objects – by Chris Clevenger Pastors on Sovereignty in Suffering: John Piper – Called to Suffer and Rejoice: That We Might Gain Christ Matt Carter – The God of All Comfort Matt Chandler – Preparing the Church for Suffering Luke 1 Malachi 4 Episode 15 – Tests and Trials

Every once in a while, you come across a man that just amazes you with how he acts. He’s so finely tuned to operate in exactly that role that he must have been born into it. What’s even more amazing is when you learn that he hasn’t been doing it for all that long, really. In fact, that role is a part of a substance addiction recovery program. Huh?! That was my experience meeting Roger. So calm and soft spoken. Authoritative and respectable. Smiles and handshakes. So deaconly in his ways. I remember thinking I wanted to be that type of Biblical man. Then I learned that he was actually in the recovery program. What an amazing work God must be doing in His life! So many times, I think of deacons and overseers as having everything together. Wife, kids, home, steady job and a hobby to make the world a better place. I saw Roger just the same as any deacon man I had met before. I had placed such an expectation on men who look like Roger, that the fact that he was in a recovery program completely caught me off guard. The reality is that God is using him, in the midst of his recovery, to: Serve an average of 1,500 meals daily (500,000) yearly Manage 30-50 men in food ministry work discipleship programs Handle approximately 1 million pounds of goods donated to the Dream Center Food Bank Prepare 300 hot meals daily for Church Under the Bridge Ministry Coordinate Food Chapel, feeding 55,000 each year with a meal and the Gospel message Listen, Biblical man: This is God’s world. He will use whomever He wants, whenever, where ever and however He sees fit. If you think you need to clean yourself up before God would want to use you, think again! God is so amazingly wonderful at making all things new that He wants to use YOU to build His Kingdom. WHAT!? Yup. But my addictions, my sin, my unbelief… The enemy will use any lie to keep you feeling closed off from God. Turn your “God couldn’t possibly…” arguments into “But God did/is/will…” statements and see what happens. LA Dream Center

In Episode 16 – Interview with Marc, we begin by discussing some professional dilemmas and joys associated with being a Biblical man in the American financial workplace. The conversation develops into the transition from singleness to marriage. Christians are funny about money. How much do I give? How much do I save? How much can I spend? These are legitimate questions for every Biblical man, whether single, married or married with children. We’ve all heard that “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” (Matthew 6:21) And again, “the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.” (1 Tim. 6:10) Obviously, dealing with money on our own is a very important task with which we must guard our hearts. But what if you’re a financial adviser? Now your job is to encourage others (believers and non-believers) to guard their hearts against the love of money! This profession comes with its own challenges and joys. Jesus told the disciples that they were the light of the world. That the church would be the guide for people to be reconciled to God. We always want to have an answer for the faith that is in us according to the reverence of Christ as Lord. (1 Peter 3:15) Seeing as how Christians are to always point people to Jesus, and have answers for that faith, how we talk to others about money is also very important. How would you advise a non-believer to invest? Would you support their interests to invest in non-Christian opportunities? What would you say to Christian families that do not want to honor the Lord with their money? We end with a discussion of spiritual vs. physical poverty and God’s story in Marc’s life. Thanks for joining on this installment of the Biblical Manhood Podcast.

With so many warm promises from our loving Father, one of the most comforting is the promise of trials. Scripture assures that we will face tests and trials, but not outside of God’s direction. As men striving to live Biblically, we don’t shy away from tests and trials because we know that God is truly in control. Tests and trials are simply tools to refine our character to Jesus’ likeness. Often times, tests and trials lead in to the deeper discipline promises of tribulations and suffering. As the Lord has led me so far, I have not experienced much in the way of tribulations and suffering, but I expect them to come. In today’s episode, we will look at tests and trials. We will break down the elements, likenesses and differences between earthly trials and tribulations, and spiritual trials and tribulations. As always, I find my best motivation for content from real life experiences and the story God weaves in my life. I’ll share my recent tests and trials as a kind of personal update and illustration point. The fruit of which, was not what I had ever expected. Is it ever, though, really? But that’s the fun part. I pray that as you face tests and trials, you pray and remain aware of the context of your life surrounding the tests and trials. There is such rich and  life-giving encouragement in paying prayerful attention to God’s story in trials. Show Notes: Episode 10 – Interview with Jimmy Verses: James 1:12    1 Peter 4:12    Psalm 26:2    2 Cor. 13:5    Lamentations 3:40

Goals are tangible measures of progress as Biblical men. Being intentional is huge for us. But what if, even with the best of intentions, we set the wrong goal? What if we set the right goal and fail? What if we focus on that goal for a whole year, meet it, then discover that the goal we set was the wrong one! After a year of inactivity, the BMP re-surfaces with this comeback episode. This year in review has been a wild one. What happened last year? Where did it go? This episode will encourage you to look at the facts of last year. Collect, organize and analyze. The analysis is what we’ll look at today. We will explore what drove last year’s successes and failures. Take a minute while you listen to today’s episode to think about your goals from last year. Did you have any goals? Why were those your goals? Did you meet your goals? What tools did you use? What blessings did you miss out on so that you could meet your primary goal(s)? These are the questions into which we delve for today’s edition of the Biblical Manhood Podcast. Show Notes: The Way of Men Episode 12 – Growth Philippians 3:13 2 Corinthians 7:10 Mark 11:24 Isaiah 43:18-19

In Episode 13 of the BMP, we will finish our study into the worldly assumptions of manliness – manly behaviors and attitudes assumed by the world – that often Biblical men adopt as the norm. It is pretty surprising, really, how much of my own shortcomings showed up when studying the traits, behaviors and habits of worldly manliness. But, as always, it is overwhelmingly sweet to see how Jesus uses experiences and people to narrow my path toward Him. It was probably because I had just finished reading Generous Justice: How God’s Grace Makes Us Just by Tim Keller that so much of the social justice and the marginalized made their way into this episode. Another part would be the fact that the marginalized were frequently visiting me, even before I started reading Generous Justice. God just had a plan to refine my cold heart through them. I hope you find this odd mix of life lessons, observations and research compelling in your own life. What other worldly assumptions of manliness do you see even Christian men adopting as habits?

Welcome back to the BMP! Thanks so much to those of you who have come wondering back. I’m sure my absence has been quite a mystery and I want to waste no time explaining. Today’s episode is to tell the story of what has stolen my attention over these past few months. We will discuss the lies that we tell ourselves and how these lies can distract the work of God in our lives. I’ll tell the story of how God changed my attitude towards work in general, from careless waiting to focused expectancy. The change in me ended up moving me to Phoenix, AZ, leaving loved ones to answer a call to be open to mission. We will also talk about a proper attitude of work that includes and leans into God for interrupting the lies we tell ourselves with His truth. Some methods to take thoughts captive and really go after the ministry before us as God provides. Again, thanks for coming back to the BMP and I hope you enjoy today’s show.

Thank you for joining in on the Biblical Manhood Podcast! This episode is about some worldly assumptions of manliness that influence decision making in men, believing and not. Have you ever caught yourself defending a thought or action with worldly reasoning? Maybe the action itself isn’t overtly wrong malevolent, but is not uplifting and above reproach, and the reasoning used to defend those actions is at its core, not Biblical. I’ve noticed a lot of this thinking in my life lately and want to share some experiences where I defended seemingly harmless actions in a worldly way. As a result, God used my Missional Community to expose and restore me to pursuing Biblical manhood. Sometimes I get a little excited about certain topics. I did in this one and it would have made the episode much longer. So this will have to be a two-part episode. Look forward to Worldly Assumptions Part 2 in the near future. I hope these points related to dating, missions and humility encourage you to examine your outlook on life and motivations for actions. Thanks again for stopping by and check us out on Facebook and Twitter for updates.

Welcome back to the BMP! Today’s episode is such a joy for me to share with you because you’ll get to hear from a Biblical man who has every reason to brag about himself but truly counts it all as loss for the sake of knowing Jesus. I’m so glad to call Jimmy my friend and really value his input when I need encouragement and wisdom. In this episode, Jimmy will tell us a little about his background and the foundations that started his walk with God. We’ll hear about a once broken relationship with Jimmy’s father that God is now restoring for His glory. Jimmy shares his passions in life, thoughts on Spiritual gifts and a story of previous “idols” that could never have glorified God. We also discuss frustrations with men in and outside the church and the legacy of cultural change he wants to leave when “Before the throne of God above.” What an answer to prayer it was to do this interview. I hope you enjoy it and are blessed by Jimmy’s testimony.