ACT LIKE MEN (www.actlikemen.com)

Psalm 1:1-6 ESV Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers. The wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away. Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous; ...

1 Corinthians 16:13-14 ESV Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong. Let all that you do be done in love.

This weekend marks the third and final weekend of ActLikeMen.  With three weekends that spanned from California to Canada and this weekend in the Midwest, all I can say is how encouraged I am as a man of God.  That is, to say, that I am truly confident that some men (likely not all) will turn toward being a disciple of Christ through these weekends.  Why?  Because God has called us to be his disciples.  Why?  Because men will hear that ever so quiet voice calling us to be less for ourselves and more for God.

The ultimate goal of a true disciple of Christ is not to shrink into manhood, but rather to let others see the love of Jesus Christ in us (to see Jesus) and to see less of ourselves.

Psalm 112:1-10 ESV Praise the Lord! Blessed is the man who fears the Lord, who greatly delights in his commandments! His offspring will be mighty in the land; the generation of the upright will be blessed. Wealth and riches are in his house, and his righteousness endures forever. Light dawns in the darkness for the upright; he is gracious, merciful, and righteous. It is well with the man who deals generously and lends; who conducts his affairs with justice. ...

Here is the challenge to all of us:  Whether you attended this conference, opened your bible or prayed the prayer of a humble man, can you ask God to reveal his plans to you.  Can you ask him to take control over ALL of your life?  Will you pray Proverbs 3:3-5 in your life, which says, "Trust in the Lord with all of your heart.  Lean not on your understand, but acknowledge him in all your ways and he will make your paths straight."

Where you go (Lord) I will go, where you stay (Lord) I will stay.  Where you lead (Lord) I will follow.  Oh praise him he has done a mighty thing for us- by his sacrifice we are saved.  By his love - we are made new.

Hoping to hear from you all! #actlikemen

Blessings,

Dante

How to avoid unwanted temptations in our lives (that which we bring on ourselves)

Saturday morning in men's group I had the privilege to lead and facilitate the discussion. I am very humbled by the growth and sincere faith that I am seeing with so many other men in this special group of Men of Faith.  This morning's topic was on avoiding unwanted sin in our lives.  That is, the temptations that we bring on to ourselves and how we can pave steps to in our lives to navigate around these erroneous ways.  I started the morning out by asking the men around the room to think about words in our lives:  Temptation, lust, pornography, anger, pride, forgiveness, un-forgiveness, Father, Parent, Shame and continued with a few more thoughts along the way.Realizing that the term "parent" or "Father" could be very painful for some, I asked them to think about our Father God and how much he loves us and how much he desire for us to run to him just like the father that we read about in the Prodigal son.  God desires for us to turn and repent and run to him.  He waits for us with open arms and is quick to forget and slow to anger.  For some of us, our earthly parents may have not shown the love of Christ.  For others, they may not remember their parents and for the few fortunate ones who remember loving parents who modeled Christ's love for us - count your blessings!  Come Holy Spirit come into our lives and grow us into the disciples that you want us to be.

There are some really good steps to work on daily in our lives to allow this growth to flourish:Pray continuously throughout the day,  "Matthew 6:13 (ESV) ¹³ And lead us not into temptation,  but deliver us from evil."

Use God's Word daily, "2 Corinthians 10:4-5 (ESV) ⁴ For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. ⁵ We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ,"  There is a very good acronym, which is MEALS, which means:  MEMORIZE, EXAMINE, APPLY, LISTEN and STUDY these words daily.  Before you say that you don't have time or it is impossible for you to do so think about all the passwords that you have to remember in our daily jaunts (come on - you can do it).  Make this a habit daily and as your put more of God's word in and less of the world's view in - see what happens in you life.  As one song puts it, "Break my heart for what breaks yours, open up my eyes...."

Know yourself (and your triggers to sin), "James 1:14 (ESV) ¹⁴ But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire."  For some of us this could be lust, it could be anger, it could be pride and it could be fatigue or for some others it could be a cocktail of all of the above.  Avoid these triggers at all costs.  Jesus said that if your eye offends you - pluck it out.  If you hands offends, cut it off.  I think we get the point - AVOID SIN and the Pitfalls of life.  The old saying of "the devil made me do it" is sometime lost when he doesn't even have to push us in the direction of our known weaknesses.  We can pray the armor of God on ourselves daily (Read Galatians 6).

Flee from sin (not walk, not poke around - R U N ! ! !), Verses from www.biblegateway.com on FLEEING.  When Joseph worked for Potiphar in his house and was tempted beyond what most single men could bear, he not only fled from sin, he left garments behind in order to avoid any further temptation.  God's word doesn't tell us to pretend that we have a good hold on temptation - it tells us to RUN (FLEE) don't even entertain temptation in any form (harmless flirting in improper friendships) DON'T DO IT!

Create honest accountability in your life, "James 5:16 (ESV) ¹⁶ Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working".  Let's be honest for one second here.  When you allow true accountability in your life, amazing things happen.  Seriously!  Accountability is only as good as how honest you will be.  That being said, if you hold back anything from your accountability partner(s) then you are cheating yourself and the bond of brothers that can help carry our burdens.  The thing about un-confessed sin is that it has so many repercussions, it separates us from God's holiness, from God's light in our lives and from the blessing(s) that he has planned for us.  Don't mistake my words here.  When we confess Jesus Christ as our Savior, then our sins of the past, present and future have been forgiven, are forgiven and will be forgiven.  Un-confessed sin in our lives puts us in a prison.  When we confess our sins to God and to our brothers - then we bring them into the light and then we feel God's love and mercy and we are free.  We are in the light!

Be Encouraged not discouraged, "1 Corinthians 10:13 (ESV) ¹³ No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it." Proverbs 3:5-6, "(ESV) ⁵ Trust in the Lord with all your heart,     and do not lean on your own understanding. ⁶ In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths."  No matter how far we have come in our spiritual growth and sanctification we have to be honest and believe that we have setbacks and continuous sin in our lives.  It is in us, that is, our old self (sin nature) versus our new selves and identity in Christ.  When we do fall, we do sin, we do mess up, do not be discouraged.  Confess and repent for our God is merciful.

Confess and Repent (turn from sin), "1 John 1:9 (ESV) ⁹ If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

What are some of your thoughts?

Blessings,

Dante

Teach me your way, O Lord

Psalm 86:11-12

English Standard Version (ESV)

¹¹ Teach me your way, O Lord,     that I may walk in your truth;     unite my heart to fear your name. ¹² I give thanks to you, O Lord my God, with my whole heart,     and I will glorify your name forever.

How to be a man, Part 1

This blog, www.legacydad.com,  talks a lot about manly things, dad things and building our relationship with God in order to be the man that he wants us to be.  Lance and Gary have talked in great length about their journeys (road maps) and right to passage for their kids/grandkids.  As the merchant in this group of three (one already home and two homeward bound) I have sat back and watched their progression and slowly ebbing and flowing what that will look like for my son.  I have a great dad.  A dad who taught me that a man needs to have his integrity and honor and to do what he says he is going to do.  He has taught me the value of being and living debt free.  I have not always heeded that advice, as you have read in several previous posts, but I can tell you the older that I get the more I treasure what he has instilled in me. The world (Culture) tells us their definition of what it takes to be a man.  How to be a man and the pleasures that we can have by pursuing this manly stuff.  The wisest man in the world said that without God this is all vanity.  Lance had asked our readers some things that they wanted to hear from us and the question arose on how to be man.  An excellent question if I do say so myself.  There are three things that we need to concentrate on and I will address them all here shortly, but first, I want to match some things up with Scripture.  First off, turn to John 12:26, (ESV) “26 If anyone serves me, he must follow me; and where I am, there will my servant be also. If anyone serves me, the Father will honor him.”  Jesus was asked by religious leaders of their time what was the greatest commandments.   Without missing a step he said the first is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, body, soul and strength.  And the second was to love your neighbor as yourself.  All other commandments hang on these two.  Did you catch it?  As a man we not only have to have a relationship with Jesus Christ, we have to center our lives in him.  Secondly, we have to love our neighbor as ourselves.

Here is a list of traits that we think a godly man exudes: Trustworthiness, Respect, Responsibility, Fairness, Caring, Citizenship, Courage, Perseverance, Loyalty, Duty, Self Service, Honor, Integrity, Grace, Justice, Humility, Mercy and Discipline.  This is a life-long process and even the best men do not always get each of these cylinders going at the same time.  However, you will note that a godly man has a humility like no other.  A spiritual maturity that can only be explained by God’s redemptive love for us.  Some can argue that these traits are inherited while others say that they are taught and others say that they can be learned.  I like to think (and believe) that when we align ourselves with God and his will, then he gives to those who love him.  In the Book of James we are told to ask for wisdom.  If we don’t have an earthly father figure (or a father that was never around or let alone a good example) then we have confidence that we have a heavenly father that loves us so much that He sent HIS ONLY son to die for us.

Here is a self-examination to see where you are at on the road to how to be a man:

1)      Know that God has made each one of us our own way.  Each one of us are fearfully and wonderfully made.  For instance, Gary rightly coined us three:  The Cowboy, The Warrior and the Merchant.  We are all different but we share the same passions.  We love, we learn, we grow and we are comfortable in our own skin.  We have to know our self.  We have to be content with who we are and where God has put us.  That doesn’t mean that we cannot strive to be better, we just have to be content with each day God has given us.  We have to respect ourselves as men.

2)      We have to know right from wrong.  C.S. Lewis has excellent books on this (read them all to find out what I mean).   We, as humans, have this inherent code of right and wrong.  If you are fortunate enough to have kids you can see that as early as of two years of age the child knows right from wrong even if they don’t know how to convey the wrong – they know.  WE have to be able to admit when we are wrong (to our neighbor), we have to confess our sins and trespasses to our God the Father.  We have to admit to those we love when we are wrong.  We have to be able to expressly state that we were wrong, that we can say “I’m Sorry” and be able to express why we are sorry.

3)      What we put in is what we get out.  This is true in mind, body and spirit.  We have to make sure that we are in God’s word daily.  We have to pray continuously.  We have to repent from sin.  To repent means to turn away from and to avoid doing it again.  That being said, many of us think that we can serve two masters, that is, that we think we can have destructive sin in our lives and yet be in fellowship with a Holy God.  That is not possible.  We have to humble ourselves.  We have to breathe in the grace of God and walk out our salvation with fear in trembling.  Knowing that we can never earn our way to heaven, we then can confidently except this amazing gift of love and after accepting this incredible gift we can find that our faith is alive in both works and deeds to give thanks for this incredible gift of love. 

4)      Has True Grit –my dad always quotes Shakespeare to me, “not a lender or borrower thee be, pay thy debts or it dulls the edge of husbandry.”  To me, this was more than just about lending money.  With my dad it meant so much more:  Character, Integrity, and so on.  We have to be willing to be the stewards that God wants us to be.  The stewards of His Time, His Treasure and His Talent.  These are all things that God, the most high, has given us.   The best way to describe integrity to you is to say how we act when no one else is around and whether or not we make the right choice.  Job puts it best in chap 29 (Read Job 29 here).

5)      Memorize and lives Proverbs 3:5-6, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding.  In all your ways acknowledge Him, and he will make your paths straight.

6)      Have a Kingdom Purpose – It is not about us, it is about God.  The sooner that we learn that the freer we are to make a difference in the short time that God has given us.  To love our neighbor, our wives, our children and so on.  To give without expecting anything in return.  To serve as a servant leader.

7)      Know your purpose – why are we here.  What am I good at?  Where can I serve best?  What has God made me to do? 

8)      Walk with other men – no one should do this alone.  That is not God’s plan.  He wants us in community.  He is the Trinity:  God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.  He knows community and he knows what we need.

9)      Take care of your vessels (body) – eat healthy, sleep healthy and make the right physical choices (exercise, diet, healthy choices).

10)   When in doubt of how to be a man pray – more to follow

Psalm 112:1-10 (ESV) The Righteous Will Never Be Moved

112 [a] Praise the Lord! Blessed is the man who fears the Lord,     who greatly delights in his commandments! 2 His offspring will be mighty in the land;     the generation of the upright will be blessed. 3 Wealth and riches are in his house,

    and his righteousness endures forever. 4 Light dawns in the darkness for the upright;     he is gracious, merciful, and righteous. 5 It is well with the man who deals generously and lends;     who conducts his affairs with justice.

6 For the righteous will never be moved;     he will be remembered forever. 7 He is not afraid of bad news;     his heart is firm, trusting in the Lord. 8 His heart is steady; he will not be afraid,     until he looks in triumph on his adversaries.

9 He has distributed freely; he has given to the poor;     his righteousness endures forever;     his horn is exalted in honor. 10 The wicked man sees it and is angry;     he gnashes his teeth and melts away;     the desire of the wicked will perish!

In order for us to move from Part 1 to Part 2 – let’s take another self test (please read Psalms 139).

More to follow on this awesome question:  How to be a man.

Thanks for the challenge!

Please give me your thoughts,

Dante

Goodbye Dear Friend - Godspeed

It is with a heavy heart and tearful eye that I report to everyone that our dear friend, saddle-mate and fellow Legacy Dad - Gary Taylor - went home to be with our Lord last night at 6:45 PM.  Gary was a remarkable man, father, husband and grand-father.  Gary lived his life for the Lord and embodied the true spirit of a Legacy Dad.  As Stevenson wrote "Some people come into our lives and quickly go. Some stay for a while, leave footprints on our hearts, and we are never, ever the same"  - Gary left a lot of footprints on many hearts.       The following email was sent from Gary's son.

"I write this with joy as my best friend, comrade and saddlemate has finally stepped into "full inheritance" Ephesians 1:14.  Gary passed into the arms of Jesus this evening at 6:45pm. His final breath was in total peace as he tilted his head up and looked at his wife one last time." 

We are envious of you Gary, as you now get to spend your days with God in Heaven basking in all His glory.  I'm sure the first words he spoke to you were - Well done good and faithful servant. You have fought the good fight, You have finished the race, You have kept the faith.

R.I.P. Brother - Your Legacy Will Live On Forever - Your Brothers Lance and Dante

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, Loved and were loved, and now we lie In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe: To you from failing hands we throw The torch; be yours to hold it high. If ye break faith with us who die We shall not sleep, though poppies growIn Flanders fields.

Who said Facebook cannot be useful....two cups of coffee :)

THE MAYONNAISE JARWhen things in your life seem almost too much to handle, when 24 hours in a day is not enough, remember the mayonnaise jar and two cups of coffee.A professor stood before his philosophy class and had some items in front of him.

When the class began, wordlessly, he picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise jar and fills it with golf balls.

He then asked the students if the jar was full. They agreed that it was.

The professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured it into the jar. He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles rolled into the open areas between the golf balls.

He then asked the students again if the jar was full. They agreed it was.

The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up everything else.

He asked once more if the jar was full. The students responded with a unanimous “YES”.

The professor then produced two cups of coffee from under the table and poured the entire contents into the jar, effectively filling the empty space between the sand. The students laughed.

“Now,” said the professor, as the laughter subsided, “I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life. The golf balls are the important things - God, family,children, health, friends, and favorite passions. Things, that if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full. The pebbles are the things that matter like your job, house, and car. The sand is everything else -- the small stuff.” he said.

“If you put the sand into the jar first,” he continued, “There is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls. The same goes for life. If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff, you will never have room for the things that areimportant to you...” he told them.

“So... pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness. Worship with your family. Play with your children. Take your partner out to dinner. Spend time with good friends. There will always be time to clean the house and fix the dripping tap. Take care of the golf balls first -- the things that really matter. Set your priorities. The rest is just sand.”

One of the students raised her hand and inquired what the coffee represented.

The professor smiled and said, “I'm glad you asked. It just goes to show you that no matter how full your life may seem, there's always room for a couple of cups of coffee with a friend.”

Please share this with other "Golf Balls"

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I saw this on FB this am and it made me smile.  So often life can get really busy, but when the music fades and we are called to give an account of what we did with our time, talent and treasure (READ Ecclesiastes) - what will your life say....?

Thoughts?

Dante