These last two chapters have really hit me, and I've started to realize a few things about my own life. In writing this blog my plan was never to appear to have it all together. In so many ways I'm still on this journey, and those who read this are simply getting a glimpse at the one I'm taking. As I've read and written about the wound and healing it I've seen first had how difficult it can be. And at the same time I've started to see just how crucial it is for God to be central in this journey.
"Masculinity is passed from father to son, and then Father to son. Adam, Abraham, Jacob, David, Jesus - they all learned who they were out of their intimacy with God, with the Father. After all 'who can give a man this, his own name? God alone. For no one but God sees what the man is.'"
God must play the most central part in this initiation to manhood. It is only God who can give a man his true name, because it is only God who sees what the man really is. I have recently realized that my dad had his own wounds, and I don't know that he had anyone to help heal them. My dad did the best he could, the best he knew how to, but because of his wounds, there were gaps in my life. And so God brought some other men, in the form of mentors and brothers, to fill in some of the gaps. But even they can't fill them all in.
Recently as I've talked with some of them about things at the end of the conversations I'm feeling about in the same place as when I started talking with them. The questions I've asked haven't really been answered, and it's left me very frustrated and feeling like they really just don't care. But that isn't the case. The issue isn't with them, but with me.
A few days ago my wife and I were talking, and as I shared some of those feelings something hit me, the men I've looked to over the past few years for guidance have taken me as far as they can. My dad did what he could, and now these men have done what they can. The rest is up to God. "What God sees when he sees you is the real you, the true you, the man he had in mind when he made you."
I think parents tend to see us as they would like us to become. They have an idea of what we should be. A mentor sees who we are at the moment, and I think sees some of the potential we have in us to become and works to guide us. I think brothers, (not necessarily blood relatives, I have a few guys from college that are more my brother than my actual brother ever will be) have the opportunity to see us most clearly because they are with us side by side through thick and thin. But even then they simply see bits of who we are and what we can become. It is only God who can see us fully as we were meant to be, because God is the one who created us.
"You must ask God what he thinks of you, and you must stay with the question until you have an answer." At one point during college I was sitting alone in the balcony of the Chapel. It had been a rough stretch for one reason or another, don't really remember the specifics, but I remember sitting there in the dark, the light pouring through the stained glass windows didn't illuminate that are too well, and I asked God, "Who am I?" I only got one word that day, "Mine."
"It's a battle to get to this place, and once words like these have been spoken then Enemy rushes in to steal them." It took about three and a half years of college to get to that point, and at that moment my problems didn't go away. Graduated, went months with no job. Finally got a job that was really rough. Went another seven months after that waiting, got a rougher job. And now it's back to one of the most difficult stretches of wilderness I've ever been in. But in this I am learning and I have to admit, journeying onward to the Man of God I was created to be.
"True strength does not come out of bravado. Until we are broken, our life will be self-centered, self-reliant;our strength will be our own. So long as you think you are really something in and of yourself, what will you need God for?... it is out of your brokenness that you discover what you have to offer the community. The false self is never wholly false. These gifts we've been using are often quite true about us, but we've used them to hide behind... When we begin to offer not merely our gifts but our true selves that is when we become powerful. That is when we are ready for battle."
Before we can ever fight, the wound must be healed. There is a reason why wounded soldiers aren't sent to the front lines. There is a reason for basic training. In order to be dangerous warriors they must be healed. In order to be powerful they must be built up, but first they must be torn down, so everything false, everything weak, can be replaced with strength and confidence.
This is what God is working to do in our lives. We're in God's boot camp so to speak. The wounds are healed, the false self and the weakness is broken away, and we are built up as the men He created us to be, ready to step out onto the front lines and face the enemy.
I have been being broken down for years now, this isn't an over night thing, it takes time. But now God is beginning to fill in the final gaps in my life. God is putting in the the last stitches and removing some other ones that have scared up. I'm beginning to know my name.
My name is William Edward Gunsalus;
Servant of Christ;
Minister of the Gospel;
Beloved Son of God the Father Almighty;
Husband to the Proverbs 31 Woman;
Future father of warriors and princesses;
And I will glorify God in this life and the next.
What is your name? You have one that God wants to show you. He created you to be a man of God, and everything in your life, good and bad, He is using to mold you into that man He sees you to be. He doesn't see you as a failure. He doesn't see you as a hopeless waste of time. He sees the Man you can become, the man He has always intended for you to be. He will heal you, give you your name, and make you ready and fit for battle.
"Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen." Ephesians 3.20-21
To God alone be the Glory!
Strength and Honor
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