Manhunt: Strength

13Be on your guard; stand firm in the faith; be men of courage; be strong. 14Do everything in love.
-1 Corinthians 16:13, 14

I had remembered reading around this area with one of Pastor Jack's sermons and decided to look into it more and I found this verse. This is the first of two letters that Paul writes to the church of Corinth, and this verse is found towards the end.

Now, about half of what Paul says here goes with the world's view of a "man," and the last two words of the first verse are fairly universal when talking about men. It's simply put, "be strong."

The typical worldview of a man is physically strong. Ask virtually anyone what their definition of a man is, and most would answer with strong, but there's mental, emotional, and of course physical forms of strength. Physical seems to be the most apparent in men, and the world presses this one the most. Along with that, emotions are seen as a weakness, and even being mentally strong is viewed as a weakness. With God, this is not the case, thankfully.

Physically, I'm not as strong as a good amount of people. However, Solomon says in the book of Proverbs that "A wise man has great power, and a man of knowledge increases strength." This is a good reassurance that men don't necessarily HAVE to be able to bench tons of weight, but it also shows that God looks at more than the physical side.

And I don't know about you, but I've seen plenty of very physically strong guys, but haven't seen many that are also mentally and especially emotionally strong. I'm tired of seeing guys break up with a girlfriend and their whole world falls apart. I can understand why they're upset, but when something like that happens it's obvious to see who they were really living for, and it wasn't who it should have been.

The last part of the verse from 1 Corinthians is convicting for me: "Do everything in love." I'm sure I'm not the only one who struggles with this. Think about it, doing EVERYTHING in love. Not just when you remember to do so. Absolutely 100% of what you do should be done in love. I'm not the best at making sure what I do is out of love. I like to think I'm good at it, but I'm really not.

1) A man of God is strong and does everything in love.

Manhunt: Intro

My next few series of posts are going to be a way of keeping myself accountable in reading and studying my Bible, but also to educate myself in something that I believe has been distorted. I'm going to be studying what God's definition of a "man" is.

The world's view seems so messed up to me and at times, I'm not sure what a righteous man of God actually is. This will help me stay level headed and be the man that God wants me to be.