"Most men want the maiden without any sort of cost to themselves. They want all the joys of the beauty without any of the woes of the battle." Most men want to look like the warrior, but don't want to bleed like one. They want the beauty without going through the dragon, and it doesn't work that way.
A friend of mine is working on a series of novels. I'm pretty stoked about reading them, and not just because one of the characters who is alluded to in book one and shows up in book two is based on me. It's a story about an epic journey, full of battles and boys becoming men and those men becoming warriors (can't give much more than that, but trust me, you'll want to read them). He would talk with me about the series back when we were in college and as he would describe situations my character faced he'd occasionally ask if I had any ideas.
On this particular occasion we were talking about some battle and I recommended an epic speech. Every series needs to have an epic speech before a battle, it's a rule. I suggested something along the lines of "Freedom is never free. There is always a great price that must be paid for it. Those who are willing, follow me." And then it all begins. (Who else is ready to read these?)
Freedom isn't won by people who sit at home. The beauty is never yours without a fight. "Pretty women endure this abuse all the time. They are pursued, but not really; they are wanted, but only superficially. They learn to offer their bodies but never, ever their souls. Most men, you see, marry for safety; they choose a woman who will make them feel like a man but never really challenge them to be one."
This is one of the saddest realities out there. Boys who have never really become men get to the point where it is time to find a life mate. But because there has been no initiation for them, they have no strength to offer to her. We end up with lonely women left to raise the kids on their own. You have a wife who feels abandoned and who remains in the tower because the one who is supposed to rescue her refuses to. He is in this for himself and doesn't want to be challenged to be something more. And so he marries someone he thinks will make him happy without asking him to rise to a challenge.
These are the guys who can't rise to the challenge. They can't suit up and storm the fortress because they don't know how to. But then there are the guys who won't. They guys who for one reason or another find a reason not to offer what they have. "Why don't men offer what they have to their women? Because we know down in our guts that it won't be enough... This is where many men falter. Either they refuse to give what they can, or they keep pouring and pouring into her and all the while feel like a failure because she is still needing more."
This points to a reality for both them and us. "She needs God more than she needs you, just as you need him more than you need her." I never dated in middle school or high school. In college I dated one girl, and I'm really glad that ended. But as senior year came around, pretty much everyone I knew was either married, getting married, planning on getting engaged, or really seriously dating, and I was single. It was a rough and slightly depressing stage of life. But in that time God and I got close. I got to the point shortly after graduation where I realized that I didn't need a wife, that I was enough in and of myself to be able to do what God had called me to do ministry wise. Now I'll be the first to admit that having my wife makes things so much easier and that I don't ever want to have to do this without her, but before I could marry her, before I could begin to rescue her from the tower, I had to be more dependent up God, and closer to God, than I ever would be to her. And before she could ever be rescued by me, God had to rescue her.
"Do you see now that you can't bring your question to Eve? No matter how good a man you are you can never be enough. If she's the report card on your strength then you'l ultimately get an F. But that's not why you love her - to get a good grade. You love her because that's what you are made to do; that's what a real man does."
My strength comes form God, and so I offer what I have to her, knowing that I can't satisfy all her needs, knowing that I can't bring all of the healing to the brokenness. But as it says in Ephesians 5, "Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her, so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she would be holy and blameless. So husbands ought also to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself" (verses 25-28).
It is my job to love my wife, and lead her to God. I am to show her that God will protect her and fight for her as I do. I am to show her that God will delight in her beauty and be captivated by her as I am. I can give her but a glimpse of who God is, and that is the role I must play. But before I can lead her to God's strength, I must first recover mine. Before I can point her to God, I must know God deeply and intimately.
"Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another."
To God alone be the Glory!
Strength and Honor
great post man - paragraph 5- pretty convicting. Thanks for that! Love you bud. Keep leading as he leads
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