A Hard Man
Remember the Marlboro Man?
He was a John Wayne type of guy with a cigarette.
He was the epitome of what cool guys wanted to be.
Not just a cowboy, but the image of that solid, strong, masculine guy.
A man’s man. A tough man.
A HARD man.
I may not be able to speak for you, but for my friends and I when we were younger, all tried to be that guy.
Guys like John Wayne, or Charles Bronson, or Sean Connery, or Steve McQueen or so many other men who, each in their own way, we saw as cool guys, iron willed, admirable as a hard man.
Just like those Apostles on that boat…we also may have entered Christianity with that same mindset.
☆ When a strong man, fully armed, guards his own palace, his goods are safe;
• Luke 11:21
We thought we were hard men too, just like those men we emulated.
I know I did.
But we may have ignored that those men were just models or actors. Simply images & facades.
I know I ignored it, even being IN the industry.
Because of that refusal to recognize that truth, I didn’t acknowledge that I was not really a hard man.
– The strength I had in my life,
– The power it had on my life,
– The control I had over my life,
Was a lie I lived within my life.
It was a veneer I applied to cover the weakness, the discomfort, the shame, the guilt and the fear I really felt.
And, as the scripture continues from the last one, I was overcome.
☆ But when one stronger than he attacks him and overcomes him, he takes away his armor in which he trusted and divides his spoil.
• Luke 11:22
I realized I was not a hard man.
I just had a hard heart.
Even though I was in a church.
Like those Apostles on that boat, I didn’t understand it.
Instead of having compassion, forgiveness, mercy and grace
– which I always thought was weak –
I lived with the ‘perceived’ toughness, bravery, machismo and iron will
– that actually MADE me weak!
That realization effected every way I thought.
But then…there was a moment of clarity…
I came to believe that I needed a new heart.
So I prayed for one.
I used this scripture.
☆ Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me
• Psalm 51:10
It worked.
I saw immediate change.
I saw that the desire I had to change my heart,
Was the first real change that happened to renew my heart.
As I started to feel my heart soften, I started feeling my soul deepen.
I stopped being 2 dimensional. Being just the outside, and inside guy…
But started seeing so many other levels of my spirit that I never knew even existed.
I found an ability to relate, communicate and share with others that I would have never thought possible before.
People I would never had interacted with, I now do.
People I never cared for before, I now do.
People I never understood before, I now do.
Even though I stopped trying to be a hard man,
I did not become a soft man.
I became a real man, a solid man, a man of new heart.
A man of a new, powerful Spirit of God.
☆ And I will give them one heart, and a new spirit I will put within them. I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh
• Ezekiel 11:19
So, are you a hard man?
Because that is really only a hard heart, masked under the weak lie of fear that the enemy wants us to live in.
– Or –
Are you a man with a new heart, a new spirit?
Which actually makes you the strongest man on the planet.
I love you guys!
