Recognizing God’s Voice

Learn to recognize God’s voice. The Holy Spirit will speak to you but so will your own selfish flesh along with your enemies in the spiritual realm, so it’s important to learn to know the difference.

There are some ways you can tell the difference between God’s voice and other voices. God’s voice lines up with scripture. God’s voice may be unconventional, but it isn’t ever okay with sin. God’s voice will not lead you to self-worship.

You can hear it in your mind, and it almost seems to come from another place in your brain than your regular thoughts.

You can also test it to be sure it is really coming from God, but there will be those times when you will just need to listen quickly to escape potential danger. Sometimes God will highlight something in your mind, and you will need to instantly be cautious.

There may be a few times in life when you hear God’s voice audibly, but from my experience, those are extremely rare.

With the Holy Spirit in you, it’s only natural to hear his voice. You don’t have to go searching for it or get caught up in a highly emotional musical worship service to hear it. He will speak to you when he does.

But the easiest way to hear God is through his Word.

If you want to clearly hear what God has to say to you, open up the Bible and start reading. The Bible isn’t a Magic 8 Ball toy though. You must study it and learn what it means, but you are smart and wise, and you have the Holy Spirit to guide your sincere heart.

Our Only Hope

When it comes down to it, no matter what you do with your life, you’ll be forgotten someday by this world. When you walk through a cemetery, you see flowers and decorations on some of the newer graves, but the older ones are often left bare. This is because great-great-grandchildren don’t spend that much time thinking about their great-great-grandparents.

Little if anything is probably known about your great-great-grandparents, but there’s definitely no clear memories of hugs and kisses.

Many young men seek immortality through being remembered by the world. They aim to do something grand, so they will be considered great and never be forgotten, but even the “great” ones from history are still not remembered. Yes, their name might be remembered, or what they did might be remembered, but no one knows what they were really like anymore. No one can know their true essence as one knows a close family member or friend. All those who knew and experienced life with them are now dead too.

The only hope to immortality is Jesus.

He won’t forget you.

He won’t leave you.

And he’ll always love you.

Instead of wasting your life foolishly trying to become a name that will be remembered, preach his name instead.

Preach Jesus.

He’s our only hope; he’s our eternal life.

Study Scripture to Know God

It’s not uncommon for young Christian men to go through the adolescent stage of wanting to debate scripture. This stage is often annoying to others around them, but it’s a common stage nonetheless.

Study scripture ardently, but do so to know God, not just to gain support for your arguments.

The Bible’s main purpose isn’t to prove science or show history. It’s to help us know God, so that we can worship him. The Bible and the Holy Spirit work together for this important purpose.

Study scripture to truly know God. Everything else comes secondary to deeply knowing him.

Even the demons know God, but they don’t know him the way a little boy knows his loving father.

Remember that before everything else in life, you are a child of God.

Study the Bible searching for God, not arguments. As you do, you will see grace upon grace in the New and Old Testament. Then you will see that same grace in your life even more, and this will help you learn to extend grace to others.

Many around you will need extra grace from you. You will need extra grace from others as well at times.

Study scripture, so you know God more. The more you know him, the more genuine your worship will be. And we were created to worship.

Boring Guys

It has been said that nice guys finish last. Nice guys don’t finish last. Boring guys do.

So don’t be boring.

There is too much wonder and awe in this world for you to be boring. There’s too much to do and not possibly enough time to experience all that God has provided for you in this world.

If you don’t explore and take some rational risks in life, you won’t experience all that God has created for you.

Imagine a loving father who gives his growing child a whole playroom of toys, and the little boy just keeps playing with his baby toy year after year.

A life led by the Holy Spirit is not a lame one. It’s an adventure.

There are going to be some seasons of slower movement in life, but find adventure in those seasons as well.

Find the mystery of God in the little things of every common day, and you will not live a boring life.

Girls sometimes end up with the bad guy not because they like bad guys but because the nice guy is just too boring.

Men aren’t created to be boring. They are created to be courageous, adventurous leaders.

Now don’t go off doing all sorts of crazy-stupid stuff, but be the man God created you to be, which is not lame and boring.

Be a Builder

Some people are builders, and some just try to knock everything down.

In this world, be a builder.

From the moment you walk into a room, consider how things can be fixed, advanced, improved, and restored.

Apply this to people as well. Too many people are just looking for weak points in others to tear them down. Our job isn’t to tear down but to help heal.

In those few times where tearing down is necessary, do it for the purpose of building back up even stronger.

The best deconstructionists tear down to improve the foundation to build back up even stronger and higher; there’s an honorable and purposeful reason for the deconstruction.

It’s always easier to knock something down than it is to build.

Live your life so someday you can look back at all you helped build instead of all you tore down. And I’m really talking about people because they are what’s important.

Build them up. They need it more than you can possibly imagine.

Become an Everyday Researcher

You may finish school someday, but you will need to be a researcher for your entire life. If you don’t learn to research or are too lazy to research, you will be forced to rely on other people’s research, and they might not always have the greatest minds or the best intentions.

Be careful trusting others.

Researching will save you in areas of money, stress, time, health, and safety. It will also benefit those who are with you.

If you are going to be the spiritual leader of a family someday, you need to develop a lifestyle of daily research.

You need to be able to learn well on your own.

Where would the Christian church be today if great leaders never learned on their own?

Researching and learning takes time and focus, but the payoff is great.

Be someone who learns. Someone who knows. And then you can be someone who truly teaches and leads.

Live as One

It’s natural to seek division. People tend to categorize others in the most minuscule ways. It is easy to adopt the us versus them mentality.

Really, the only true division is those who are on the narrow road and those who are on the wide road, but just like Jesus, we treat them all with love. All humans are valuable because every single one of them was made by God—they have his fingerprint still.

For most men, it is natural to be safe and cautious, but we have to work at being on the same team as others. This includes being a supporter of others even when we are natural leaders.

When Jesus prayed towards the end of his life, he prayed that we would be as one.

He prayed for you and the fellow Christian who you don’t agree with to be as one.

Christ knew this would be challenging, which is why he prayed about it.

In all the different scenarios that life will bring, always have an overall goal to be as one with your brother and sister in Christ, and if you treat the lost the same way, they might not be lost any longer.

For no one was meant to do life alone.

Goals and Dreams in Perspective

You may be able to do anything, but know that you can’t do everything. Success often comes by doing something well for a long period of time, not by being the best for a moment.

You don’t have to be good at something to enjoy it. Not every hobby has to be monetized. You are a person, not a product. Life should be enjoyed, not marketed.

The older you get, the more options will be limited. Some things take 20 years to get really good at, and you’ll eventually find out that you just don’t have that much time anymore.

Also, as life changes and your responsibilities become more about your family than yourself, your goals will change as well. You might be less excited to start a rock band when you know that it’ll steal away time from your wife and children and your aging parents.

Too many people have become dancing street monkeys, throwing themselves around to entertain strangers, hoping for a coin or two.

You were created for more than that.

When you become a parent someday, your children seem like they’ll be little forever at first, but it’s really only a short few special years.

You won’t be able to stop these years from fleeing, but you can live them in a way where you won’t regret missing out by being absent or absent-minded. When you age and your children grow up and leave, life will be easier to process knowing that you truly lived every single precious moment you had with them.

Aging grandparents and parents will suddenly be gone, and you won’t remember what project or thing you put before spending time with them. But you’ll wish you hadn’t.

Still have ambitious goals and always be a dreamer, but know that the daily life you live right now and the people you serve are always far more important than any future goal or dream.

Society will tell you differently.

Don’t listen to society.

Have your perspective be a heavenly one.

Save, Give, and Enjoy

There’s a simple way to gain financial success. But most people won’t do it.

As soon as you are old enough, put away money every month in a mutual funds account that will earn interest, and don’t touch it. As your income grows, keep adding more money.

And don’t touch it.

Also, if you live in the right place, buy a house, and pay it off as soon as you can. Buy a gently used car instead of a brand new one. Budget money to give to the church and people in need. Use some of it to simply encourage people with tiny gifts.

Enjoy some of it too, and go out to dinner occasionally.

Save for a rainy day because storms will come, and you never want to have to go into debt, and you definitely don’t want to stay in debt.

Pay off everything.

A good practice to get into is to take 20 percent of your paycheck to save and give immediately. Pretend it’s not even there.

Don’t ever think some of your money is your money, and some of it is God’s money. It all belongs to God, so handle it with that perspective. Money is a blessing to the faithful believer, so save some, give some, and enjoy some. But it is a curse for those who live in the darkness.

Always pursue God, your family, friends, and yourself before pursuing money. It’s good for there to be financially successful Christians in the world, but it’s even better for there to be faithful ones. You might come across a real opportunity to become extremely wealthy someday, but it may come with a price that you are not willing to pay.

Seek to be financially stable, so you do not become a slave to debt, but also seek to be content with what you have, so you do not become a slave to ambitious desire.

Men Who Yell a Lot

Yelling is what some men do when they don’t have control of a situation, and they feel powerless and scared. Don’t be like them.

There are few times in life when you actually need to yell, and those times are normally surrounded by occurrences of potential danger. For example, a toddler is about to run out into a busy street to chase a ball, or maybe someone is about to be physically attacked by another person, and you yell to help.

Never yell because you’re angry. Remove yourself from the situation for a moment. Calm down. Practice empathy. Consider all that you have in life and give thanks for your blessings. Then come back with calm and clear words.

Don’t confuse people’s annoyance with respect. People who yell might get their way sometimes, but it’s not from respect but by annoyance instead. It’s similar to people saying, “Just give the screaming kid the piece of candy to shut him up.”

You don’t want to be viewed as a screaming kid.

It’s sad when people adopt a lifestyle of yelling thinking it gains them respect, but really people will just try to stay away from them to have as little conflict as possible.

If you’re walking down the street, and you see a small, growling dog, you typically stay clear from it—not because you respect it or even really fear it but because you want to take the easiest path.

Yelling because you can’t control your emotions makes you the small, growling dog, and the people of high quality in this world will do their best to stay away from you.