Men

Why More Sex Doesn’t Fix Porn

/ Jana / 1 Comment

It makes me sick when pastors tell wives that if they had been sexing their husbands enough, then their husbands would not have turned to porn. But it makes me violent when pastors tell these now broken, betrayed wives that it is their duty to keep giving their porn addict husbands sex to make them better.

These same pastors misquote scripture to further beat up these wounded women. Well played guys.  Because orgasm is the god of the age.

One commonly misused passage is 1st Corinthians 7: 1- 7 Continue reading →

“Where are the good men?”

/ Jana / Leave a comment

My friend’s eyes filled with tears as she asked these pertinent questions: Where are the good men? Who love God and want to do what’s right?IMG_4922

If this was an isolated case, it might not be blog-worthy. But I have heard these questions for ten years as I’ve walked with women. I should start a match-making service because I have been honored to walk with outstanding, hard-working, motivated, Jesus loving women.  But when I look around for available men to be good husbands to these women — the list gets quite short. Instead I find mamas boys, porn addicts, leeches, gamers, and stoners. And, might I add, they are quite content to stay that way.

These women are not perfect. But the secret lies in they know they are not perfect and seek health and wholeness in God. They are working on their stuff to build a better future. But so many of the guys we have seen are stuck in this perpetual teenage boy stupidity:

I want to play. I don’t want to commit. I want sex anyway I can get it. I want to escape.

These Christian women are saying this is the best they get INSIDE the church, let alone those outside the church. One women aptly asked the question, “are my only options to stay single, or, take on a life long project of helping a guy get sober and learn how to get a job and be a husband and dad?”

Listen, before you blast me, I know some outstanding men too. Those guys don’t last long on the marriage market. They are in high demand. But if we are honest, the good men shortage is reaching epidemic levels.

I readily admit I am old school.  I come from a heritage of men who know how to work, hard.  The passage of my brothers and cousins into manhood was bailing hay as teenagers.  Nobody cared if those boys were tired, or sore, or unhappy, or horny. There was work to be done. And you worked full out until the hay was up in the barn just like all the other men did.  They were changed by this calling out. We need more of this. A lot more.

Many Christian men I know today, married or single, are walking through life crippled at worst or undeveloped at best. They are lacking fathers in some cases, but in many more cases, they are lacking wise mothers.

If you are a parent to men-in-the-making, may I make a few suggestions for raising them strong:

1) Stop babying your boys.

They will rise to the standard you set. If you do everything for them from laundry to finances to cleaning to cooking, you are setting an expectation that “someone else” will always do the dirty work. In fact, they will let you do all the work, all their life.  I heard someone say once “never do for your child what they can and should do for themselves.”  This is a powerful gift of personal responsibility. Believe it or not, taking care of yourself begins at a much younger age than most of us like.

2) Men are here to serve others.

Women seem to get this naturally. It is part of our maternal, relationship DNA I suspect. But many young men carry this attitude that “I am the center of the universe.”  This does not make for a successful employer, employee, husband, father or friend. You have to teach them to care for others from a young age, and emphasize it all the more when the hormones start raging.

3) Strength must be tested.

The absence of strength is fear of weakness. It doesn’t even mean they are weak. But they fear they will be weak, that they don’t have what it takes in work, life, and family. Obviously, I mean more than just physical strength, but mental and emotional as well.

In the same way a woman constantly assesses her beauty, and man is constantly assessing his strength. If he is never allowed to test his strength, or develop his strength (ie, mom is afraid he will get hurt) then what grows instead is a distorted weakness. This is debilitating to adult males. I believe this is a root cause to most addictions.

He lacks confidence. He lacks initiative and drive. He lacks the ability to be the Man for his family. So what happens? They marry strong women who try to carry both buckets of man and woman inside their families. It doesn’t take long for these marriages to be strained beyond survival. We need strong men and strong women to have healthy families.

The current culture has a lot of bad definitions of men and women. We can’t let those become the norm in our homes. We are kingdom builders. We are co-heirs with Christ. We need godly men and women raising the next generation.

God give us wisdom and power from on high to this noble calling.

 

 

Good Man Answer #462

/ Jana / 1 Comment

You know, I love men.  In fact, I am married to one. Still. And they never cease to make me laugh — especially my man when we are in a snit. So we had been having a few tense days. (You know the ones I mean…) In attempts to kind of break the ice instead of each other, we decided to go get coffee. No problem, it’s public, it’s safe.

Well several minutes into our “Awkward-trying-to-connect” conversation an attractive woman walked by and her perfume left this small cloud as she passed. I said off-handedly, “I think I know that woman and I definitely still smell her.”

Chuck says innocently, “I like it.”

Stop the film. Now this is from a man who has stopped most scented products in our house because of his sensitivities to smells.  We move at church and movies because of perfume wafts that irritate his sinuses. I have abandoned my favorite cologne because he can’t endure it.

And he says of the green fog, as only a man can say it, “I like it.”

I just look at him. Blankly. Trying to decide if this is when I kill him or do I wait until we are in the car. He must have sensed the possible danger because he added ever so carefully,
“It reminds me… of something…you used to wear.”

We busted out laughing. I gave him a High Five and told him that was one of the best saves I had heard in a long time. I told him that he should write a book called “Good Answer Manual” and put that as entry # 462, under the CYA chapter.

I tell all my young brides the same thing. With men there are only two choices: Eat them with a spoon or hack them with an axe.

The Wonders of Men

/ Jana / 2 Comments

Okay, so admit it.  You know that you’re curious as to what this blog is about…Well I just finished a really powerful marriage retreat. (Thank you Lord for coming, and thank you friends for bringing your hearts!)  And while I was prepping for that, I ran across this book, written by a man, that actually admitted that men “do goofy things.” His words. Goofy. Funny, inane and sometimes altogether inexplicable.

Shortly after reading this chapter, I had this telling experience. Chuck was flying around getting ready for work and he brought me a shirt that had some faint dirt marks on it. “Is there anything I can do for this?” he asked. I suggested a Clorox pen, but he said he was afraid the chemical would irritate his neck since the smudge was on the neck line.

“Got it.” I said. “So instead, spray some Shout on it, rub it to remove the dirt, then moisten a paper towel and dab it off.” Simple, to the point, clear and precise. He bustled off in search of the Shout spray.

“You good?”  I hollered over my shoulder as I was finishing up the girls’ lunches.

“Yes,” he mumbled.

Several minutes passed and he came back in the kitchen in his t-shirt with his dress shirt still in his hand. “Did that not work?”  I asked perplexed, being confident of my solution.

“No.”

“Really?”

“Well I couldn’t find the Shout so I sprayed Wrinkle Release on it and it didn’t seem to help any.”

I searched his face to see if he was making a joke. He was not.

I stood there dumbfounded myself; do I laugh out loud, or cry hysterically?

“Honey,” I began carefully, “what exactly did you think Wrinkle Release would do for the dirt? Help it stay fresh and crisp?”

Now he looked at me searching my face. We both cracked up. “Is it just a lot of fun being a man?” I asked.

“Yeah sometimes. This is how new discoveries are made you know.”

Goofy. That’s all I could think of it. But you know what I have discovered, I like goofy.

There are crazy differences about us, male and female. But both are in the image of God.  And it is in these funny moments I see that God is so smart for making us so polar in some ways and then saying to us, “Okay, ya’ll, live together in the same house!”

But laughing with Chuck also made me think about how big God’s capacity must be when we do inane things ourselves with Him. He gives us clear instruction and we go off in left field and wonder why His plan isn’t working. We’re goofy. Plain and simple. I can just hear God say sometimes, “How is that working for ya? You are using the wrong remedy for the wrong issue, but still expecting the same good results.  Want to try it My way this time?”

And even better, I really think God laughs too.  I think He likes our goofy too.