Okay, I’m working on Book Two of my psychological thriller series about “Samantha Caldwell”, high profile psychologist who deals with celebrity clients. In the first book, she dealt with the first African-American female presidential candidate whose daughter died under mysterious circumstances. In this next book, Samantha is called to CA by an agent whose celebrity (movie actor, playboy type) client is in jail for murdering his wife (well-known social media influencer and wannabee model) and is pleading insanity. Did he do it or is there something foul going on?
As I’m writing this, I need your help in giving this celebrity male client his name. I am still creating his character. So, as I write, I want you to take part. What would you like to see happen to (what would be his name) and what unexpected thriller situations would you like him to have? This is the first time I am asking for input for my fiction. I think I like this idea. Okay, give me your ideas. Maybe you will see it in print (and no, you won’t get paid or royalties. However, you might see your name in the acknowledgments.) Thanks.
I don’t know about you but I’m going through a situation that is calling for a complete belief that God is who He says He is and can do what He says He can do. That means not only trusting but having complete faith in Him.
This morning I was reading out of my daily “Utmost for His Highest” by Oswald Chambers. Interestingly the title for today’s reading was “The Theology of resting in God.” I would like to share part of this to encourage you. Perhaps you are going through a situation or crisis where you don’t know what to do. You’re fearing because of something that might happen in the future and all you feel is God’s silence. Be encouraged by these words.
“God expects His children to be so confident in Him that in any crisis they are the ones who are reliable. Yet our trust is only in God up to a certain point, then we turned back to the elementary panic-stricken prayers of those people who do not even know God. We come to our wit’s end, showing that we don’t have the slightest amount of confidence in Him or His sovereign control of the world. What a stinging pain must’ve shot through the disciples as they surely thought to themselves, “We missed the mark again” and what a sharp pain will go through us when we suddenly realize that we could have produced complete and utter joy in the Heart of Jesus by remaining absolutely confident in Him, despite what we are facing. But it is when a crisis arises that we instantly reveal upon whom we rely. If we have been learning to worship God and placed our trust in Him, the crisis will reveal that we can go to the point of breaking, yet without breaking our confidence in Him.”
I hope and pray this will encourage your heart to trust and believe despite the clouded voices of fear and doubt.
What fear is preventing you from taking that next step?
 I hope you are enjoying and finding encouragement through this series. Tomorrow, we will have a post from one of my favorite people and inspirations, David Green. He will be sharing an amazing post called, “A Father’s Influence” about his experience with fatherhood through the good and the bad. Please watch out for it tomorrow.
Today, I wanted to bless men, especially fathers. I predominately speak, teach, counsel, and work to encourage women regarding their past and present issues and situations that impede them from moving toward the future. However, a key in a female’s life stemming from childhood is held in her father. Hate it or appreciate it, the role of a man is vital to the femininity of girls as well as the masculinity of boys. One of the issues we see today in our search for identity stems from the fatherlessness (absent and/or passive fathers) in the homes.
Today’s post is not about blame or beating up men. It is about offering a blessing. In a society where, men are constantly torn down, can’t watch a toothpaste commercial without seeing a half-naked woman, and are continually put in positions of wanting to shut down, I wanted to offer men a blessing and a prayer from God’s perspective.
“Hello, son,
Yes, you are living in times of stress and confusion. I know each day you wake up full of stress and doubt putting on a strong face believing that it is required of you to lead your family. You go to work aiming to prove your worth to others who hold little value than a paycheck yet something burns inside you. You put on a face with the belief that you are strong and need to hold it together yet inside you are crumbling, heartbroken, and want to scream out your pain.
I know that over time, you have tried to shut down your pain with other things that are still not filling you. Around you lies an angry mate who has little respect for you due to your heart that refuses to lead. Your mind is available but your heart and passion to be more have left. Life, pressure, everything has become overwhelming.
Different lies come into your head. You might believe that because something happened to you long ago, you are destined to be what you experienced or what you were told. That is a lie. You might believe that because you feel good when you say there are no boundaries or consequences for your choices, there actually will be none. That is a lie. You might believe that because of wanting the freedom to show emotions and love and gauge uncertainty, you need to choose a certain identity. That is a lie. What you do is not who you are.
I am the Lord God. “The Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.” (Rev 22:13) I created you from dust by my very hand to own and rule the earth. You are My prize. Your masculinity is given to you by Me not the world so it cannot be taken by the world. It cannot be taken by abuse, by bullying, by comparisons, by performance, by women, by employment, relationships, families, or anything else. Â
You don’t have to prove yourself to Me or to others that you have what it takes to be a man or to do whatever the world deems is important or masculine. You have My approval and My love so you do not have to wait for a father figure to give it to you to bestow manhood in order for you to be a “real” man. You do not have to hunt down “Bambi”, beat your chest, or go through any rituals in order to be declared a man. I created you once and for all, a man, and I am proud of you.
However, I created you for even more. I created you for the Garden, not the craziness you are experiencing now. No, you were not there with Adam. But when an offensive lineman jumps offside, the whole team, not just the lineman goes back. Unfortunately, when the first Adam made a choice, he made it for everyone to come. Yet, I gave you the gift of the second Adam through my Son, Jesus Christ. He laid down His life so you would not have to pay the price and be able to return to the Garden (Heaven) one day and have a relationship with Me. There is no trick or cost. It is a matter of simply saying, “Yes, I believe in Jesus Christ and desire to follow Him as Savior in my life.”
I created you to lead. Lead when you are dating a woman or in a marriage relationship. Treating her with kindness and understanding, being kind, gentle, and protective of her (1 Peter 3:7).
Lead your wife and family in taking initiative and responsibility for the direction of the home. Listen to your wife and always seek to do what is in her best interests (Ephesians 5:25, 28, Colossians 3:19).
Lead in treating the women in your life not as someone lesser but as an equal and fellow heir of eternal life in Jesus Christ (1 Peter 3:7).
Lead in training your children in My Word. (Ephesians 6:4).
Lead in providing for the home(1 Timothy 5:8).
Lead when you are in a position of temptation, resists the devil and stand firm against the flesh (James 4:7).
Lead in studying My Word (2 Timothy 2:15)Â
Lead in being a man devoted to prayer (1 Thessalonians 5:17), and be a man who loves Me with all of your heart, soul, and strength (Luke 10:27).”
Be Still and Know that I am with you and I am Proud of you!
Your Abba Father
Be encouraged, it’s a journey, not a destination. Charlotte
In nature young mammals must be taught by their parents and other mentors the skills necessary to survive. They teach those skills through modeling behaviors over and over again until the young have assimilated those behaviors. Without that training, they perish. A young bear, elk, or cougar dies quickly without a parent around. Our young people are the same way. Without proper training on how to succeed in life, they make choices that cause them and their offspring to perish rather than thrive.
Because males are so visual, boys need to see healthy masculinity modeled in order to learn it. All males need older males to guide them through life. It is the natural order of things. Every man who has succeeded at anything has had a mentor or group of mentors in his life. No man, despite his protests to the contrary, is self-made. We’ve all had to help along the way. If we have good help it influences us in one direction, if we have bad help it steers us in another.Â
Children, especially those without healthy models, are often “pre-programmed” to exhibit certain tendencies or make specific choices merely by what was modeled for them when they were growing up. Traumatic events during childhood are especially ingrained in a child’s psyche. Old programming, just like old habits, dies hard. This causes certain “generational cycles” such as abandonment, abuse, addictions, and even criminal behavior to get passed from one generation to the next. These “cycles” are often deep in the subconscious and difficult to change.
But direct intervention in their lives by positive male role models can make a difference. Fathers are the best but nearly any man will do in a pinch. Do you know that as men we can heal wounded boys just by spending time with them, caring about them, investing ourselves in them, by sharing our masculine “essence” with them? It’s one of the powers that God gave to men—we can fix broken boys just by spending time with them. And usually, we don’t even have to do anything special. Often times it is just letting a boy stand next to us and watch what we do and how we do it that heals the tear in their soul.
I have a friend who went on a field trip with his daughter’s third-grade class. On the bus ride to their destination, a little boy he had never met before came up and sat down in the seat next to him. The boy engaged him in conversation the entire trip. After arriving at the site of the field trip the boy continued to walk and talk with my friend, eventually reaching out and taking hold of his hand while they strolled down the sidewalk. On the bus ride back to school the boy again sat next to my friend. Halfway home he laid his little head on my friend’s shoulder and said earnestly, “I wish you were my daddy. Do you wish I was your son?”
My friend related this story to me with tears in his eyes.  The yearning and craving this boy had for masculine “essence” were overwhelming. He was like a dry sponge soaking up my friend’s maleness.
Boys and young men also need to be tested as part of the maturation process. Young men who never test themselves against life, never find out what they are made of. They never become confident and secure in their manhood. Trials mature a man in ways that books or lectures never can. If boys are rescued (typically by female mentors) too often growing up they never learn self-reliance and the skills to succeed in life. Most often a boy needs a man to help teach him to navigate his way through the brambles and thorn bushes of manhood. Without that guidance, too many young boys and men grow up angry, frustrated, anxious, and scared. Too often they compensate for that by exhibiting a false sense of bravado and self-confidence as a way to cover their insecurities.
Several years ago we began presenting seminars for women on raising boys to become good men. We found a huge segment of our culture where women were being forced to raise sons on their own. Many of these women faced big disadvantages raising boys and understanding what their sons needed not only by not being male themselves but by not having been raised with a father or brothers while growing up. In response to their dilemma of not being able to find positive male role models for their sons, we started a program called Standing Tall.
Standing Tall is a mentoring program for fatherless boys. It is similar to a faith-based Big Brothers program. It originally started in partnership with a local bible college. There we trained male seminary students to spend a couple of hours a week with fatherless boys identified through our seminars for moms. Almost immediately we started seeing some startling results. Mothers of the boys began reporting that their sons’ entire countenances were changing. They reported that their sons were better behaved, less angry, and doing better in school. Some even credited the presence of the mentors with their sons’ improvement in reading scores (even though they never read together) and behavioral changes such as cessation of bedwetting. Nearly all of the boys experienced more self-confidence and composure during their daily life activities.
Through our work, we have observed numerous behavioral obstacles that fatherless boys face, one of which is their unwillingness to accept challenges. Because they have no self-confidence and a hyper-reluctance to experience humiliation through their failures, many of these boys do not receive the valuable lessons and self-esteem provided by failing and persevering until they succeed. They also become frustrated and quit anything the first time it becomes difficult. They tend to cry easier than most boys. Very often they have been feminized by having only female influences in their lives. They come to expect to be “rescued” by mom (or another female) and frequently will not try new things. In fairness to them, they don’t know any better—mom has always rescued them.
As they become older they get indecisive, passive, docile, and unable to commit to a relationship. They tend to rely on females to make all the decisions that govern their lives and seldom take on natural leadership roles. When they fall down and scrape a knee they will instantly cry and wait for mom to come and rescue them. If a man picks them up and dusts them off they recognize they are not really hurt and stop crying right away. Again a male’s presence helps to guide and encourage them to persevere until they succeed thereby gaining the positive self-image and confidence to accept risk and attempt challenges in other areas of life.
I have another friend, an ex-NBA player, who grew up in the projects of an urban city. He was raised by women—a mother and three sisters. He shared with me that one of the biggest problems he faced as he became a man was that he was never taught healthy coping skills by a man. He only had female influences early in life and so he found himself frustrated and angry in stressful situations. He had learned to make decisions based on his feelings. Because he couldn’t channel his emotions properly he made irrational choices that led to consequences like being kicked off his high school basketball team despite being an All-American and then losing a full-ride college scholarship by fighting with his coach. The problem followed him into the NBA because the players are generally only surrounded by “yes” men—no one ever tells them when they are wrong. It was only by finding some strong male mentors and role models to help guide him that he was able to turn his life around. Today he devotes his life to helping young men understand what it takes to be successful by giving them hope and knowledge.
Fatherless boys are also often angry. Frankly, they have a right to be angry—they have been deprived of their God-given right to a father to teach them how to make their way in this big, harsh world. They do not have a father to teach, protect, and empathize with their struggles. Frequently though this anger is being used to cover other emotions such as fear, humiliation, anxiety, vulnerability, or even pain. Unless these boys are taught to recognize this they are doomed to believe they can solve any problem in life using anger and other unhealthy coping mechanisms.
I am convinced that the greatest, most effective way we help other people is through mentoring. Being mentored or guided by positive role models is also the best way that people, especially boys, learn. Males are extremely visual and so the need to actually see an example is imperative to our learning and development process. If we continue to produce angry young men that kill each other and prey upon others our culture is doomed to collapse.
If you are a man, someone needs you. You won’t have to look far to find a male younger than you are who desperately needs what you’ve already learned. Open yourself to the opportunities to be used. I promise you will not regret it. The satisfaction you will get from seeing how you are helping to change lives with such very little effort on your part will be a magnificent blessing in your life. It will make you feel like a man!
This article is excerpted from bestselling author Rick Johnson’s book, The Power of a Man: Using Your Influence as a Man of Character, by Revell. Find out more about Rick and his work at www.betterdads.net.Â
“Unfortunately, the greatest lie Christians believe when suffering, struggles and loss comes to our door is that somehow we are being punished or God is angry with us. While, we certainly need to check and confess any known sin, unforgiveness or harm on our part, we can rest assured that the trial we are going through is part of a purpose and not revenge for behavior. In our pain, we fail to realize that life happens to all of us and God can stop anything. If our situation is allowed, there is always a purpose for our good, his glory and other edification involved.
It is through our trials, suffering and struggles that we find him and he remakes us for his great purpose. We learn to trust, love and unlearn the wrong through his loving allowance of trials in our life, not through times of joy and success. It is difficult to name one single person of greatest or even a great Bible character who escaped suffering and trials in order to prepare them for their purpose.”
Often our dreams do not move forward because of our expectations. We expect doors will automatically open, the road will be simple, the dream will happen quickly and little risk and courage will be needed on our part. In time, our dreams fall by the wayside as we learn to settle – not because the dream is impossible, but because we give up too quickly during the journey.
Anyone can follow a dream when knowing the exact details of the road ahead. Only a few dare to follow a dream madly, pursue it wildly and trust completely without the details while resting in the One who has the plan. How much are you willing to leave what is safe to pursue greatness and a life that matters?
I challenge you to do something you have never done before. Challenge yourself to try something new, get out of your comfort zone, and push past what you think you are capable of doing. Your only limitation is you.