Mighty Men, by Daniel Montgomery

I love reading about mighty men in the Bible. It gets me going. Especially when you read the parts of the New Testament referring to the Christian life as a fight, a battle against sin and the devil. I want to be a mighty man. I want to fight the good fight that Paul fought, I want to fight the good fight that David’s mighty men fought. Maybe it seems like simply a testosterone issue, but it’s not. It’s a God issue.

Looking through the Scriptures, a common portrait of a ‘mighty man’ of God takes shape. Mighty men are marked by four aspects:

1. They take initiative. They don’t passively wait for things to happen. Abraham left his homeland, Elijah picked a fight with Ba’al, even the boy David stepped out from the cowering line to slay the giant. Mighty men take initiative in response to God.

2. They cultivate. Mighty men know hard work and they embrace it. Adam named every living beast before he had Eve as his suitable helper. He responded to God’s call to subdue Creation and he did the hard work.

3. They are warriors. That’s very apparent in today’s devotional reading. In the Old Testament, this was very clear – God sent Israel to war and mighty men responded and fought great fights against hordes of enemies. After the full revelation of Christ, the battle shifted and now, though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does, but with unworldly weapons with the divine power to demolish strongholds (I Corinthians 10).

4. They are men of wisdom. One of king Solomon’s highest distinctions was his wisdom, which he requested of God above any other possible blessing. Now if only he had employed that wisdom in selecting a wife (i.e. stopping with one…)

Unfortunately, the tendency we have as men is to abuse, abandon and avoid our calling in these four areas. Instead of working hard as cultivators, we fall into patterns of laziness and getting by with as little as we can. Or we abandon the call altogether and live in our parents’ basement until we’re 40 and they take out a restraining order. Instead of being godly warriors, we abuse the calling and are just violent and aggressive for the sake of ego. We invert the calling outlined in the hymn ‘O, Church, Arise’ – we don’t love the captive soul and rage against the captor, we rage against the captive souls for the sake of their captor. Which is a pretty crappy thing to do.

This can all sound pretty intimidating, especially if you perceive these to be areas of weakness. But be encouraged – it’s by God’s grace that we’re saved for such a mighty task as being men of integrity, and it’s by God’s grace that we’re equipped to grow. It’s not a self-help/behavior-modification thing, it’s a thing of surrendering your life to Jesus Christ and letting Him change you into the man you ought to be.

So, my heart is filled with the challenge to study these distinctives of a godly ‘mighty man’ and to grow in them by God’s grace. If you’re a dude, I hope your’s is, too. Married men, do it for the sake of leading your families. Single men, do it for the sake of attracting a godly mate. All men, let’s step up to this challenge for the sake of our church (wherever our local body happens to be) and for the hope of a lost and watching world to see the many blessings that come with obedience to God’s design.

If you’re a married woman, I hope you desire to help your husband grow in these areas, and if you’re not married, I hope you have these high standards for your mate. Ladies, please pray for the men in your life and in your church, that their integrity would be centered on Christ and contagious wherever they have influence, for the sake of Christ’s fame in our city.

I encourage you to study this further, both men and women. I borrowed a lot of this language from the International Council for Gender Studies, which has a great book called Five Aspects of Manhood. They have extensive resources on biblical womanhood as well. So definitely check it out.

Any thoughts? Anyone have amazing feats of mighty manly strength to share? Like this guy?