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The loftiest statement of your cleansing and redemption--after all the pain you've endured--is that now you realize what God was doing and you can get on with that high calling for your life.
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Stephen Mansfield |
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You are destined for your hardships because you are destined for great works of God.
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Stephen Mansfield |
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But the truth is, when it comes to emotional pain--the pain that registers inside--the greatest damage is often the thing that continues to resonate when the feeling of the pain subsides. It is that message that the pain tells us about ourselves and about the meaning of our lives.
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Stephen Mansfield |
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If forgiveness is nothing more than a rearranging of our feelings, we have no defense against this. But if forgiveness is a formal process of sending sins and wrongs away from us and placing them upon Jesus on the cross, we have a barrier between us and the darkness that tries to come back in.
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Stephen Mansfield |
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God will not free us until we free others.
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Stephen Mansfield |
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It is time to let them go. Open the cages, tell them you're sorry, forgive them as Jesus forgave you, and burn that trophy room to the ground.
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Stephen Mansfield |
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By 1831, he had determined to leave the grocery business and to begin manufacturing chocolate and cocoa. He had convinced himself that "drinking chocolate" could become an alternative to the gin and whiskey that were ravaging so many lives."
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Stephen Mansfield |
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When I look at those I want to forgive, I strive to not see them in evil terms, but to find the compassionate narrative behind their hurtful actions against me.
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Stephen Mansfield |
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It may even be that you can find absolutely nothing redeeming about the people who have wronged you. Perhaps the only hook of compassion you can find is to pity them in their sinful state. Whatever the case, if you can find even the smallest opening of compassion for their lives, that charizomai spirit of mercy and grace can flow in. Forgiveness can reign and you will be free.
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Stephen Mansfield |
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The Bible teaches repeatedly that we each have a destiny--a specific calling and/or purpose--that is determined in advance by God.
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Stephen Mansfield |
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The very gifts God has given us, the very calling on our lives, is about investing our gifts into the lives of others in order to lift them to their purpose.
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Stephen Mansfield |
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There is no such thing as perfection on earth and certainly not in a church.
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Stephen Mansfield |
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Hear me, gentlemen: true men do things--manly things. Mere males who want to seem like men just talk. Manhood is in the doing. There
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Stephen Mansfield |
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Here is the lesson: Great men and women of God are not exempt from hurt and offense. Instead, enduring the wounds of fellow Christians with mercy and grace seems to be the call of every true saint, and we should not expect it to be any different in our own lives.
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Stephen Mansfield |
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It is not enough that the mess is cleaned up, like a house being prepared for company. We can only be satisfied when the condition of our hearts that led to the mess in the first place is challenged, healed, and turned onto a healthy, Christlike path.
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Stephen Mansfield |
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we will never become the men we are called to be unless we learn the art of friendship and intentionally cultivate deep, meaningful, rowdy relationships with other men.
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Stephen Mansfield |
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But you will always be tempted and you need to know this. The devil is trying to shape your life with wounding and offense in order to keep you from a life defined by the purposes of God.
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Stephen Mansfield |
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The more you rehearse the wrongs against you and the more you stay in that trap, the more the syringes of bitterness release their toxins into your soul.
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Stephen Mansfield |
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The solution is to forgive, to let go of the bait in that trap and pull yourself free.
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Stephen Mansfield |
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Second, a man is meant to carry such responsibility that he will descend into exhaustion and resentment if he does not have the inner resources that come from living in connection with God. This is much the same for women, but that is the subject for another book by another author. The issue for men is, as much as they might try, they cannot do what they are assigned to do without strength and energy beyond their own.
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Stephen Mansfield |
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WE MUST DEVELOP AND MAINTAIN THE CAPACITY TO FORGIVE. HE WHO IS DEVOID OF THE POWER TO FORGIVE IS DEVOID OF THE POWER TO LOVE. THERE IS SOME GOOD IN THE WORST OF US AND SOME EVIL IN THE BEST OF US. WHEN WE DISCOVER THIS, WE ARE LESS PRONE TO HATE OUR ENEMIES." --Martin Luther King Jr., from "Loving Your Enemies," a sermon delivered at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama,"
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Stephen Mansfield |
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Because of what a man is meant to be for his family, his society, and his God, he cannot allow failure and loss to destroy him. He should live knowing that such seasons are possible, and he should have a firm grasp on the truth that will help him rebuild.
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Stephen Mansfield |
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FAR BETTER IT IS TO DARE MIGHTY THINGS, TO WIN GLORIOUS TRIUMPHS, EVEN THOUGH CHECKERED BY FAILURE, THAN TO TAKE RANK WITH THOSE POOR SPIRITS WHO NEITHER ENJOY NOR SUFFER TOO MUCH, BECAUSE THEY LIVE IN THE GRAY TWILIGHT THAT KNOWS NOT VICTORY NOR DEFEAT." --Theodore Roosevelt, in his speech "The Strenuous Life, A Speech before the Hamilton Club," Chicago, April 10, 1899"
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Stephen Mansfield |
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e38486b
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Passive men wait for knowledge to come to them. Weak men assume what they need to know will seek them out. Men of great character and drive search out the knowledge they need.
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Stephen Mansfield |
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How many men have failed to stay intellectually sharp and so gave up ground in their professions to others with more active minds? How many have lost money through uninformed investments or have not taken opportunities in expanding fields or have missed promotions because they had not bothered to learn about new technologies or what changes social media, for example, would bring to their jobs?
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Stephen Mansfield |
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A man ought to invest in knowledge because it is part of living in this world fully engaged and glorifying God. Yet our times also make it essential.
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Stephen Mansfield |
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men know themselves, work to understand their God-ordained uniqueness and their unique brand of damage, and accept they will always be a work in progress, always be a one-man construction project that is never quite finished in this life.
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Stephen Mansfield |
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Men acquire a particular quality by constantly acting a particular way . . . you become just by performing just actions, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave actions.
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Stephen Mansfield |
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While Churchill was relieving himself, one of the leading nationalizers entered the room and began doing his business right next to Churchill. The irritated conservative moved to the far end of the trough. "Feeling a bit stand off-ish today, Winston?" the new arrival asked mockingly. "No," growled Churchill. "But whenever you see anything big, you want to nationalize it."
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Stephen Mansfield |
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men know that Churchill was stating a broad truth about an important matter. You liberals are nationalizing everything you can in our society. But, listen up: it isn't yours! It shouldn't be nationalized just because it is big! And you're probably just envious anyway!
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Stephen Mansfield |
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Finally, in more serious situations, man humor confronts fear and prepares the heart for action. It's a tool for dealing with danger, quieting panic, and calling comrades to prepare to charge. Call it gallows humor. Call it foxhole humor. Wherever it happens, it is how men use the sometimes crass but always funny comment to force a laugh and encourage their brothers-in-arms.
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Stephen Mansfield |
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Merely having an open mind is nothing; the object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.
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Stephen Mansfield |
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I've searched all the parks in all the cities and found no statues of committees.
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Stephen Mansfield |
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The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.
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Stephen Mansfield |
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Historians Will and Ariel Durant have written in The Story of Civilization: The Reformation that at the time of Luther, "a gallon of beer per day was the usual allowance per person, even for nuns." This may help to explain why beer figures so prominently in the life and writings of the great reformer. He was German, after all, and he lived at a time when beer was the European drink of choice. Moreover, having been freed from what he conside..
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Stephen Mansfield |
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We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affections. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearth-stone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
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Stephen Mansfield |
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9a51052
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A second legacy from Nancy might seem more a curse than a gift, but it may have helped to give us the Lincoln our nation reveres. She would pass on to him her own struggle with depression, with that enveloping darkness that lurks, for some, ever at the soul's door. This would merge with a Lincoln family heritage of mental illness to become a force in Abraham that he fought to subdue all his days. It would leave him scarred, and it would eve..
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Stephen Mansfield |
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Abraham Lincoln avoided the extremes of his family's psychological deformities, but he still suffered from a dark, draining, despair-inducing force that seemed at times to bore into the center of his being. Shortly after Lincoln's death, Herndon described his slain friend as "a sad looking man: his melancholy dripped from him as he walked."17 Townspeople reported that he was indeed the saddest-looking man they had ever known. Lincoln's frie..
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Stephen Mansfield |
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So we forgive. We send away the wrongs done to us. We let people out of the little cages we keep them in while we enjoy our feelings of moral superiority. We hand the feelings of wrong to God and refuse to ever take them back. Then we shut up and never mention the matter again. When the time comes, we put our arm around the offender and we ask him how he is.
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Stephen Mansfield |
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Nonetheless, Lincoln's story is, in part, that of a man who beat back the spirits that came for him in the night. He might well have been crushed by his woes, by the death of the first son and then the second, by the madness of his wife, or the hatred of his foes--even by the devils in his thoughts. He did not yield, though, not ultimately. As important, he mined the valleys of depression for what riches he could find. He emerged to see lif..
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Stephen Mansfield |
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332ee02
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A second legacy from Nancy might seem more a curse than a gift, but it may have helped to give us the Lincoln our nation reveres. She would pass on to him her own struggle with depression, with that enveloping darkness that lurks, for some, ever at the soul's door. This would merge with a Lincoln family heritage of mental illness to become a force in Abraham that he fought to subdue all his days. It would leave him scarred, and it would eve..
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Stephen Mansfield |
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But running from emotional pain is never a good idea, as it only leaves us damaged of soul and hindered in our ability to fulfill our purpose. We have to turn and face our torturous seasons and the scars they try to leave on our hearts.
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Stephen Mansfield |
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It is a great art of living to be able to hear truth in the mouth of your enemies. Even those who hate you and mean to hurt you may still be right about what they see in your life. Though they shout their observations and probably intend them to wound you rather than help you, still they are giving you insight that can help you improve.
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Stephen Mansfield |
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The happy life is regarded as a life in conformity with virtue. It is a life which involves effort and is not spent in amusement." --Aristotle, from The Nicomachean Ethics"
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Stephen Mansfield |