All men come up against the world...come into the fight all too soon against our enemy. Our enemy is shrewd...a studied tactician of war. He knows far better than us who we have been destined to become and he fears it. His objective is to always wound us in some great way that alters our course---changes who we become. He wants us to be diminished and disqualified from using our voice and becoming who we were always intended to be.
In springing an attack before we even realize there is a war at hand....he gets the upper hand and gets us to make an agreement. These agreements can be very subtle at first, but they continue to grow and wear a path deep into our persons. It becomes a mask as I call it, an identity that works for us--at least for a season...and we continue to do what works for us. It's very subtle at first when we decide this mask has helped us get through that situation or crisis, but it becomes a path we count on repeatedly more and more often. For example--a man is left alone and makes an agreement he has been forgotten. He takes on the mask persona of strength albeit a defensive profile...but he succeeds in pushing others back from attacking him or bothering him. He also pushes others back from knowing him and perhaps his truest intended strength was to use his ability to speak to others and speak to them deeply while building a bond with empathy and compassion. What better way to take this man out of the equation than to take away his voice, his relational side with others and have him desire to be left alone?
The sad part about what is attacked is that it's usually very close to a unique feature or strength that was God given and intended to be given out to others from our truest self. By taking that out of the picture we flounder with substitutes or masks that provide us a level of identity but make no mistake---it is not our true self or who God intended us to be.
The great part of the mask is that sooner or later in a man's life, that very mask that provided identity and a type of internal compass will fail him...it will actually work against him. While this will provide a crisis in that man's life, it is also the only way for God to get our attention as men and lead us to a place of looking deep into the story in a different way. God wants to father us and share and show us a picture of what he always intended for us to be. If we allow him he will take us back to the pain of the place where we made our first commitment...a place I call the fracture.
The fracture was where we took that first fatal hit---and veered off course to survive--but not thriving in the glory of that truest self God desires and created us for.
The good thing is that if we ever get a change in perspective and softening in our heart...then God will take us back to that point--show us truth in that---and reset the fracture. He cloaks us with a gift of transparency. If we decide to wear transparency instead of the mask...we have chosen to live from God's strength instead of from our masked identity and self strength. If we do this--others see the transparency and it points back to God, it is different--we are different. It will also reveal over time what it is that God uniquely gifted us with and what he intended for us as our true identity.
What true male brotherhood and companionship provide are brothers sharing what they see and a vision for who we are becoming...this is true brotherhood.
When a fracture heals there might be extra calcium around it, a little more pronounced...but it is stronger than ever in that area. The place of wounding therefore becomes a place of great strength. Out of our scars God brings gold--a place of discovering a new strength. It is the great healer meeting our hurt head on--nothing short of amazing. The hero of the story arrives and sets things right. This is not a different mask though--because of our willingness to be transparent in our lives--it shows us as our truest selves--the one God had in mind when he uniquely created us.
If we do not step into that--then the world will miss out on us--because there is no one else exactly like us designed specifically for that purpose. What is that purpose? Shed the mask, step into transparency and allow God to father you towards that realization.
There are very few men I have spoken to in life that truly live from this transparency...but those that do and it is obvious when you meet them...for they speak with a bold authority--they realize who they are and they are confident of that identity with Christ. They speak as kings of a kingdom.
