Am I Becoming the Man God Wants Me to Be?

Christian men, biblical masculinity, discipleship, spiritual growth, Christian leadership, faith, brotherhood, accountability, and iron sharpens iron. Am I becoming the man God wants me to be?

It's a question many Christian men quietly ask themselves.

Am I growing spiritually?

Am I leading my family well?

Am I doing enough?

Am I becoming the man God has called me to be?

In this episode of The Valiant Forge, we look at the story of Elijah after his greatest victory on Mount Carmel. Despite witnessing the power of God firsthand, Elijah became exhausted, discouraged, and convinced he was the only faithful man left.

The problem wasn't simply that Elijah felt alone.

The problem was that isolation distorted his perspective.

When we try to follow God alone, we lose the ability to accurately evaluate our own walk with Him. Our feelings start sounding like facts. Our fears start sounding like truth.

Elijah's story reminds us that God never intended men to forge themselves.

Just as iron sharpens iron, we need other godly men to challenge us, encourage us, and help us see what we cannot see on our own.

If you've ever wondered whether you're becoming the man God wants you to be, this message is for you.

Join the Cave of Adullam Community:
https://www.skool.com/the-cave-of-adullum-1668/about

Email:
TheValiantForgePodcast@Gmail.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Have you ever wondered if you're actually becoming the man God wants you to be? Not whether you're perfect, not whether you have all the answers, but whether you're even heading in the right direction. Because that's a hard question to answer when you're trying to do it all alone. The Bible says that iron sharpens iron, but iron can't sharpen itself. One of the greatest mistakes that Christian men make is trying to follow God in isolation. Today I want to look at a man who discovered that the hard way. A prophet named Elijah. I'm Mark Osborne, and this is the Valiant Forge, where Christian men come to forge purpose and strength in Christ. I'm starting a series today called Broken Men, Faithful God. I'm going to be talking about men in the Bible who have done great things for God, but they also had their faults and their failures, and we're going to be looking at how those failures reflect on what we're doing today and how we can overcome them. Today I'm going to be talking about Elijah. What we know of Elijah is that the big story on Mount Carmel, where he faced hundreds of prophets and even taunted them. He set out a challenge, and all of us men, we love to set out challenges. But Elijah had the confidence that God was going to show up in this challenge. He challenged all those prophets to show who the real God was. And if we know the story, I'm not going to go too far into it. But we know Elijah called down fire from heaven on a wet altar. And the fire of God came down on that altar and lifted up. And in front of all of Israel, Elijah showed everybody who the true God was. Was it Baal or the God of the Hebrews? And it was the God of the Hebrews. It was God. He showed up. But what's interesting about Elijah's story is what happened after that. And if there was ever a moment that Elijah should have been confident in his faith, that was the moment. But instead, when he found out that Jezebel was going to was talking about cutting his head off for slaying all the prophets, he ran. He ran because he was exhausted, discouraged, and he felt all alone in this fight. I'm not going to read this story, but we know he ran into the wilderness, sat down underneath a juniper tree, and God met him there and said, Elijah, what are you doing here? And his response was very interesting, as if you go back to what I said in the beginning, sometimes we feel like we're all alone. We don't know if we're doing the right thing or not because we don't have anybody to help us. Elijah's response in that moment was I alone am left. One of God's greatest prophets had convinced himself that he was left all alone, that he was the last faithful man standing. And maybe a lot of us find ourselves in that same place today. Not that we're the last Christians on earth, but wondering to ourselves Am I leading my family well? Am I doing enough? Am I being faithful enough? Am I growing spiritually? Am I becoming the man that God wants me to be? And the problem with those questions is they become almost impossible to answer when we have no one to talk to, no one to bounce our ideas off of, no one to say, I felt like I heard this from God. What are your thoughts on it? I'm blessed because I have people like that in my life that I can bounce things off of. But where are you today? Do you have that? When you're all alone and you have no one to talk to, no one to sharpen you, your perspective can be distorted. Your feelings start to sound like facts, your fears start to sound like truth, and eventually you start measuring yourself by your own thoughts rather than God's truth. In the book of Judges it says everyone was doing right, everyone was doing what was right in their own eyes. If you have no one to talk to, no one to share this journey with, how do you know you're doing it right? How you know you're not doing what you think is right and what's really right? And that's exactly what happened to Elijah. His feeling was real, his exhaustion was real, his discouragement was real, but his conclusion was wrong. He wasn't alone. He just couldn't see clearly anymore. And I love the way God responds to him. He doesn't tell him to pull himself up by his bootstraps and you know get up and keep going. There is a time and a place for that. This wasn't the place. The way that God responded to Elijah was with compassion. He gives him rest. He provides food and water, he strengthens him. Sometimes we walk this journey and we feel tired and we feel stressed out, and maybe what we need is just to step back for a second, take a rest, have a meal, get some perspective, pray, go through your phone and look through your contacts and say, who is someone I can reach out to in this phone and tell them how I'm feeling right now, and maybe they can help shift my perspective. That's what happened to Elijah. After Elijah got some rest, got refreshed a little bit, God starts to restore his perspective. Eventually God reveals something to Elijah. There were 7,000 others in Israel who remained faithful. Seven thousand. While Elijah thought he was all alone, God was working through thousands of others. Elijah's problem wasn't that he was all alone. His problem that he was in isolation, and that isolation narrowed his vision. And I think the lesson we can learn from this is we were never designed to forge ourselves. We were never meant to be our own coach, our own guides, our own accountability partners. That's why Proverbs says, as iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another. We need each other to encourage each other, to lift each other up, to help shape our perspectives. There is a thing called self-awareness, and self-awareness works to a point, but we're just not always that good at self-awareness. Sometimes we need to bounce something off of somebody else and say, what do you think about this? When we try to figure it out on our own, we can tend to be too hard on ourselves or too easy on ourselves. Have you ever been at that place where you're like, man, I suck at this? Or I'm fine. I got this. I don't want to say it again. Joby Martin says all the time, I got this is the three most dangerous words a man can say. How about we've got this together with God? The way God designed it, men helping each other, pulling each other up, encouraging and uplifting one another. We should not do this alone ever. Isolation is dangerous. So let me ask you, who is sharpening you? Who has permission to speak into your life? Who can challenge your blind spots? Who can encourage you when you're feeling discouraged? Who can remind you of God's truth when your own feelings start to take over? If your answer is, well, I really don't have anyone, then you're carrying a burden that God never meant for you to carry alone. Even Elijah needed to be reminded that he wasn't seeing the whole picture. He just proved that God was real up on Mount Carmel in front of all of Israel. There had to be faithful people in Israel. He couldn't have been the only one. And if Elijah needed that, so do we. I'm hoping that the words that I'm sharing right now are the words that I've shared in the past and the words I'm going to share in the future will help sharpen you. But even me speaking to you through a camera isn't enough. You need to find a brother that you can talk to, that you can bounce things off of. If you don't have anyone, find a church. Get in a community of men. That is the best place to start. I know it can be hard sometimes. I'm a little bit of an introverted person myself, or at least I used to be. It's becoming less evident now. But it's you just have to step outside yourself. You have this within the Holy Spirit and just say hi to someone at church. Get to know them a little bit. Don't just, you know, go find somebody and say, hey, I want to share all my feelings with you. I want to know if I'm doing the right thing. That is the right thing to do. You want to know if you're doing the right thing. Go to a someone in the church who has a higher authority, who's like learned the Bible, teaches the Bible. That's one way to do it, but you definitely need a friend, a brother that you can share this journey with. If you know my journey, you know I've tried to walk this journey alone for a long time. That's one of the reasons that this podcast exists. Because I don't want other men to be out there feeling alone, like no one hears, no one cares. I hope the words that I say like spark something in you, like, man, I need this. I need to hear some of this stuff. And that's fantastic. But I am not enough. My words coming through a screen is not enough. Find someone. I can't I can't say that enough. I know I already said it, but find someone that can help you. Now, if I'm saying that, you know, you're hearing me talking on a screen isn't enough. I do have a community that you can join called the Cave of a Doom. It's a school community, S-K-O-O-L, and I'll have a link in the description or in the show notes below where you can join. You can DM me there, and we we can talk back and forth, which is way different than me trying to encourage you through a camera. You're not talking back to me, so I can't bounce we can't bounce things off of each other. With that being said, if you have something that you're struggling with, let me know in the comments below. I might have a perspective for you. I will research a perspective. Maybe someone else is listening will read the comments and they may have a perspective for you. That's what this is all about. This is brothers pulling each other up. So I'm gonna end with this. If you're trying to become the man that God has called you to be, don't do it by yourself. Find men who will sharpen you, men who will challenge you, find men who have a biblical perspective on things, because iron doesn't sharpen itself. Iron sharpens iron. It doesn't do it alone. God never intended you to forge yourself. With that being said, I hope to see you in the community or in the comments below or in my DM. If you don't want to DM me on school, you don't want to join the platform. It's free, by the way. But if you don't want to join the platform, you can always email me at the ValiantForge Podcast at gmail.com, and that will also be in the show notes and in the description. With that, stay strong, stay valiant, keep forging your path, and be blessed.