Christian men: God wants us to be meek, not weak



On August 15, two Americans on a UFC fight card said the quiet part out loud.

Prelim winner Tresean Gore had just secured a decision that cost him two front teeth. With a mouth full of blood, he told Joe Rogan that he no longer smoked weed, drank, or watched porn and that Jesus Christ had saved his life and soul.

King Solomon foresaw the day of physical failure: 'If you faint in the day of adversity, your strength is small.'

On the main card, winner Jalin Turner’s first statement to Rogan was also a profession of faith.

Professing athletes are not new. Tim Tebow, Harrison Butker, and the Oklahoma women’s softball team have all said the same thing in public: Prowess and its rewards are not solely their own doing.

Toga-clad therapist

Gore and Turner moved us for a narrower reason. During our Bible study, we had been talking about the decline of masculinity among Christian men. When those men surrender responsible, loyal, trustworthy headship — as Scripture defines it under God the Father and His Son — instead of becoming humble, they disappear, leaving a hole that the spirit of the age fills.

American Christian men have forgotten, or were never taught, that their King was the strongest man who ever walked the earth, physically and spiritually. Jesus is the pattern for both. Following Him should produce men who pursue strength of body as well as strength of soul. Too many church leaders have taught the opposite. They have offered a Jesus who is only mild, never mighty: a toga-clad therapist who affirms all and judges none. That is not the Christ of the Gospels, and it is not the men who preceded and followed Him.

Other than Christ, no man in the Bible is without sin. God shows us these men so we will learn that Christianity requires faith, repentance, and obedience — not a clean record. Adam shifted blame. Samson and David yielded to lust. David’s sin was worse than just appetite: he deceived, murdered, and committed adultery. Scripture hides none of it.

Restored to strength

It also does not hide what these men were and what they did. Blind Samson pulled down a Philistine temple with his hands. David defended his flock against wild animals, then dropped Goliath with a stone. His elite guard, the Gibborim — Josheb, Eleazar, Shammah, Abishai, Benaiah — were remembered in 2 Samuel because they could fight. Four times God tells Joshua to be “strong and courageous.” Joshua then defeats 31 kings on the way to the promised land. God preserved Moses’ vigor at 120 (Deuteronomy 34:7); fed Elijah strength for the desert road (1 Kings 19:7-8); and promised through Isaiah that those who wait on the Lord will not faint (Isaiah 40:29-31).

The God of mercy and love is the same God who trained David’s hands for war and his fingers for battle and helped him bend a bow of bronze (Psalms 18:32-34 and 144:1). In 1 Peter 4:11, the apostle directs all who serve God to do so with the strength that God provides. All these men knew sin, fear, and confusion. Faith restored them to strength and courage for God's glory. It did not restore them to softness.

RELATED: Do you follow a diluted Jesus — or the full-strength one?

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The weight of the cross

Then there is Jesus. He walked the land for three years knowing His own people would reject Him and kill Him, and He finished the work. The distances of that ministry are measured in thousands of miles, on foot.

On His last day, He was beaten and scourged, and He marched the Via Dolorosa under a patibulum that likely weighed 65 to 110 pounds. He fell because of pain and blood loss that would put most modern men on the ground before the first step. The contrast is not cute. A church that cannot tell the difference between meekness and weakness will baptize the second and call it discipleship.

We would rather live in the world Jesus describes: among people who worship without shame, who speak of Him as plainly as Tresean Gore and Jalin Turner did, and who pursue the holiness He demands. He is not playing. In the wedding parable of Matthew 22, the man without the garment of faith and repentance is bound and cast into the outer darkness. That is the same Lord who walked those miles.

'Act like men'

So the question is not whether Christian men should be kind. It is whether they will be men. No more porn. No more anesthesia by weed and liquor. No more sexual chaos. Less devotion to entertainment that mocks the faith and more time in churches where men teach what Paul taught: Put your house in order (1 Tim. 3:1-5; Titus 1:5-9 and 2:1-2 and 6-8), and “be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong” (1 Cor. 16:13).

Drawing on the Old Testament, Jesus does tell His followers to love their enemies and pray for those who persecute them (Matthew 5:44 and Luke 6:27, from Proverbs 24:17 and 25:21 and Exodus 23:4-5).

That command is real. It covers the neighbor who hates you, the official who slanders you, even the man who would harm you. It is not a mediation tip. It is imitation of the Father. It is also not a ban on strength. Prayer for a human enemy does not mean pretending he is harmless, refusing to restrain him, or talking to Satan as if he were your neighbor. Scripture never asks anyone to treat the devil as a prayer partner. It does ask men to resist him, to protect the innocent, and still not let hatred become their creed.

King Solomon foresaw the day of physical failure: “If you faint in the day of adversity, your strength is small” (Proverbs 24:10). The next two verses are the gut punch. If you stand by while people are led away to death, God sees, and He will weigh your cowardice.

This is a day of adversity. American Christian men will come up big or small. They will find their strength in God, or they will keep drawing upon a smaller Jesus who demands nothing of their bodies and their nerve. They should pick up where Tresean Gore and Jalin Turner left off: Believe and profess the truth with blood still in your mouth, and then live as if the truth has hands.

Ladies: If he wanted to, he would



Is five years too long for a man to wait to propose?

A recent post on X asked users this question and referenced a real relationship between a woman who is 32 and a man who is 35. The relationship has lasted five years, but the man claims he’s not ready to move in with her or “commit.”

Allie Beth Stuckey has an answer, especially considering the post doesn’t give any extenuating circumstances or reasons besides not being ready.

“Based on that knowledge, I am saying goodbye. Goodbye, you break up with him and you move on,” Stuckey says.

“He is a manchild at this point, there is a failure to launch, there is something going on here.”

Stuckey believes that when a man truly loves a woman, committing is a non-issue.

“If he wanted to, he would,” she says.

“He will stop at nothing to pursue you, to secure the relationship, to make sure that you are together forever,” she adds.

However, the age of the two in the relationship referenced is a huge factor in Stuckey’s opinion — as women have a biological clock to consider. Since they’re in their 30s, he is simply wasting her time.

“You are wasting your most fertile years on losers. Do not do that. Do not waste your most fertile years on weak men who will not commit,” she explains.

Stuckey has a parting message for those stuck in relationships with men who won’t commit.

“I know you’re scared of being single, I know you’re scared of being alone, I know that you’re sad because all of your friends are getting married and you’re tired of being the bridesmaid and never the bride,” she says.

“Do not settle. It is better to be single and sad than married and stuck.”


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Fearless: Monty Williams and Chris Paul are why believers in Christ should watch the NBA Finals



You should be watching the NBA Finals.

Phoenix Suns head coach Monty Williams is a disciple of Jesus Christ. Phoenix's most important player, point guard Chris Paul, is a believer as well.

The NBA has let us down. Its full-on embrace of the Marxist-fueled Black Lives Matter movement in the aftermath of George Floyd's death soured my passion for professional basketball. I skipped last year's playoffs and never watched a full regular-season game this season.

I watched the first round of this year's playoffs solely because I wanted to see LeBron James lose. Once that happened, I started watching all of the games.

These playoffs have been joyful and super exciting. For the most part, the TV commercials don't annoy me.

But the real reason to watch is that God placed a messenger inside the NBA's secular madness. Monty Williams might be the most important man in sports. The 49-year-old former Notre Dame and NBA player is the leader and example America needs.

Last night, Monty's squad took a commanding 2-0 lead in its best-of-seven series against the Milwaukee Bucks. The Suns are just two victories away from giving Phoenix its first NBA title and expanding Williams' platform to expound on the power of Jesus' gospel.

Do you know the Monty Williams story? It belongs in a new Bible.

Five years ago, a 52-year-old white woman high on meth drove her car head-first into the car driven by Williams' wife, Ingrid. Three of Williams' five children were also in the car. The white woman died at the scene of the accident. Ingrid Williams died a day later. Williams' children survived.

A week later, Monty Williams stood at his wife's funeral and delivered the most amazing seven-minute eulogy and testimony I've ever heard. He started with scripture.

Psalms 113:1, "Behold how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity."

Psalms 73:1, "God is good."

John 4:16, "God is love."

He then shared the story of the doctor who told him, as an 18-year-old freshman at Notre Dame, that if he continued to play basketball, he would die because of a heart condition. His wife, then his girlfriend, Ingrid, told him, "Jesus can heal your heart."

Williams played in the NBA for a decade.

He closed his wife's funeral by asking his family and friends to pray for the family of the driver who killed his wife.

"Now, I'm gonna close with this, and I think it's the most important thing that we need to understand," Williams began. "Everybody's praying for me and my family, which is right. But let us not forget that there were two people in this situation. And that family needs prayer as well. And we have no ill will toward that family.

"In my house, we have a sign that says, 'As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.' We cannot serve the Lord if we don't have a heart of forgiveness.

"That family didn't wake up wanting to hurt my wife. Life is hard. It is very hard. And that was tough, but we hold no ill will toward the Donaldson family, and we as a group, brothers united in unity, should be praying for that family, because they grieve as well. So let's not lose sight of what's important.

"God will work this out. My wife is in heaven. God loves us. God is love. And when we walk away from this place today, let's celebrate because my wife is where we all need to be. And I'm envious of that."

You should be watching the NBA Finals. You should be telling your children the story of Monty Williams. There are still great lessons we can learn from sports. There are still role models in the world of sports. Sports still have the power to unify us. Sports can still show us the way.

When the Suns won the Western Conference Finals two weeks ago, Williams explained to an ESPN interviewer the foundation of his success as a coach.

"I expressed from the time I got the job in Phoenix and to every new player that comes to our program, the essence of my coaching is to serve," Williams said. "As a believer in Christ, that's what I'm here for. And I tell them all the time, if I get on you, I'm not calling you out, I'm calling you up."

It's not just Williams. The same night, Phoenix star Chris Paul shared with ESPN that he's written the title of a gospel song on his shoe for the past year. It's a song by the group Mary Mary. It's called "Can't Give Up Now."

This Phoenix team is special. It's not a coincidence that they're playing the Bucks in the Finals. Milwaukee is the team that walked out of a game last year and shut down the "bubble" in protest of the shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

The players on the Bucks are not bad guys. They're young, emotional, and obsessed with social media. They're no different from most young people. They're not based in a higher understanding of the world.

They don't have someone like Monty Williams showing them the light and the way.

Maybe the Bucks will climb out of this 0-2 hole and win the NBA title. Who knows? I can't predict the future. But I'm going to enjoy these games, pray that Williams and Paul win it all, and hope that their message is shared and understood.

You should join me.