Training Yourself (To Be A Godly Man)

I was asked to do a short talk sharing with some men in our church on a scripture pertaining to training yourself to be godly.  In 1^st Timothy 4:7-8 the bible states, “For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come.”

I had to ponder for several minutes about what to say to them. Obviously going to church, listening carefully to the message, taking notes and reading the bible are all training but I wanted to share what really helped to train me. To prepare for sharing, I started off with reading the scripture quoted above then I started to read other scriptures that mention the word godliness. As I was reading I began to feel stuck so I did something I should have done in the first place which was to pray. After looking up from my prayer my eyes fell upon my journals sitting on my bookshelf.   I picked one up to see if I had previously written anything down about training myself to be godly when suddenly it hit me.  For me the very act of writing in my journals was how I trained myself to be godly.  I have filed up three journals and I am currently working on my fourth. In my journals I write down my personal thoughts about things that are troubling me or inspiring me and I write down inspiring scriptures.   In my journals, I also admit to myself and to God what my part was in starting a conflict, and then I go ahead and forgive the other person’s role in the conflict. I also write down what emotions I am feeling and then write down some conclusions about why I feel those emotions.  It gets better; next I will write down exactly what I need to do to repent and how I’m going to make amends for my own wrong behavior. In conclusion when I speak to the men tonight; I plan to share with them that journaling was how I trained myself to be a godly man and that I still write in my journal today.

The Elephant in the Closet

Take a  Google eyed view of your neighborhood and you will see the roofs of many households. Have you ever wondered how many of those families have a skeleton in the closet?  I’ll wager you that the answer is most of them.  A skeleton in the closet is something shameful and potentially damaging if exposed. Therefore an individual or even the whole family tries to conceal it. The problem with something shameful being hidden away is that sometimes it may get out on its own. How stressful and fearful that must be. So why not just let the skeleton out yourself by admitting the wrong? 

Sadly, if your letting out your secret is not handled in just the right way, it may become the elephant in the room.  

An elephant in the room is an important and obvious topic which everyone present is aware of, but is never discussed because it is too uncomfortable. So once you tire of this elephant in the room, you banish it back to the closet. But then you will have an elephant in your closet. So what is the best way of admitting a serious wrong? I'm talking about personal wrongs here involving a family member not  about prosecutable crimes. Talk to someone else about it first, a neutral spiritual person who can give wise counsel. Also pray hard for God to give you just the right opportunity and forum to let it out in. Admitting the truth will not be easy but it will bring both freedom and healing to your household. In the long run you will not regret getting rid of  all the skeletons and elephants in your life. Once you allow light into your life you will begin to see the goodness that you've' been missing. 

Summer of tough love in San Francisco

I didn't go to Haight and Ashbury streets when I first visited San Francisco back in 1977 towards the end of the hippie era. I am sure it was different then because Jimi, Janice and Jim Morrison had only been gone for just six or seven years then.  Now in June of 2013 I was finally able to visit the birthplace of hippodrome's flower children. I rode a crowded city bus up from downtown San Francisco which let me off right there Haight and Ashbury. Today it's now a tourist destination with many gift shops lining both sides of the street for a seven block area. There were lots of young people around as they once were in that bygone era; some of them local, others just tourists like me, and still others backpacking their way from far off states. These young people weren't hippies in the classic sense but maybe some of them were the sons and daughters of hippies.

My observation was that many young people were living off the land and in the streets of San Francisco. I noticed several local young people hanging out on Haight Street, trying to look hip but who looked scruffy and also their clothes were tattered. I heard some of them talking and I could definitely hear a hard street edge to their speech.   It would be unfair for me to judge the whole area by just a few and I am not doing that. I'm just saying that I did observe an unusually large number of young homeless people hanging around the area on two particular summer days in June of 2013.

Haight street dead ends at Golden Gate Park. I looked towards the park from across the street. I could see that there were many young people congregating in that park but I was too far away to see what they were about. Overall Haight- Ashbury is a historic, well maintained  and clean area, with beautiful old houses. But there were numerous young homeless people all over the place but they did not seem to be unfriendly.

My research into the area concluded that it is very expensive to live in San Francisco. The average house there will cost about a million dollars and that is allot of bread. I explored several other parts of the city of San Francisco and it my opinion that as a whole the city is very beautiful and I am in love with it and have been since I first came there in 77 and twice more since then. But beware of going there if you are planning on staying; homelessness waits for you there if you don’t have a well paying job or at least very good prospects to get one. 

Men Express More Love (than you think)

My theory is this. Not only are men just as romantic as women are but men may actually be even more romantic than women. 

I was watching the Bachelorette show on TV with my wife who likes and watches almost every season of those shows. I asked her, who has the most drama, the men on the Bachelorette show or the women on the Bachelor show? She replied that, "the men on the Bachelorette show seem to have more drama than women because, we are not expecting men to express strong feelings as much as women do." She added that, "In general women more often than men  express their emotions." 

I have heard this before that women are more emotional, more romantic, more loving, and more tender hearted and that they express their feelings much more often than men do. On the other hand we men are viewed as being, unimaginative and unable to express our feelings although sometimes, we might have a good heart. Suddenly, I was hit by an inspiration coming out of my great love for music; so I asked her this question. "If men so rarely express their feelings, then why is it that men write most of the love songs?"  “You know, you may have something there,” she said. What do you think? Below are two links; the first being the lyrics to a love song called, ‘I’ll have to say I love you in a song’, by Jim Croce and the second link is for a list of the top100 love songs list which also shows the songwriters names. This is not scientific but the lists that I have seen sure seem to back up my hypothesis about men being even more romantic that women.  Feel free to check out my earlier post entitled: The Saint Valentine’s Day Reversal, for more on this topic.