A Call to Manhood

FamilyLife Today® Radio Transcript  

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A Call to Manhood

Guest:                        Dennis Rainey          

From the series:       Stepping Up (day 5 of 5)

Bob:  As a husband and as a dad, Dennis Rainey has not always done it right.  He remembers times when he embraced his role to lead courageously.

Dennis:  I remember one time when our daughters came downstairs ready for church, and one of our daughters was wearing a dress that was immodest.  Instead of telling her to go change I was wimpy.  I didn’t engage her because I didn’t want to experience the pain of the conflict, and so I was a good man who did nothing.  

All of us make mistakes that we can look back on and have some regrets about, but the key is, as we look forward, how are you going to protect your family today?  How are you as a man going to take responsibility and not give evil a chance to triumph in your family?

Bob:  This is FamilyLifeToday for Friday, March 11th.  Our host is the President of FamilyLife, Dennis Rainey, and I’m Bob Lepine.  We’ll talk today about what it means for a man to be on the alert, to stand firm in the faith, to act like a man and to be strong, to let all that he does be done in love.  

And welcome to FamilyLife Today.  Thanks for joining us.  You think those who have been with us all this week have been kind of feeling the – smelling the testosterone as we’ve been talking about what authentic manhood ought to look like?

Dennis:  Calling men to step up.  In fact, a call to courageous manhood is what we have been talking about.  You know, here’s the thing, Bob:  We watch TV.  We watch a sporting event.  We watch the golfers, the football players, the baseball players, basketball, doesn’t matter what season it is, and you hear somebody say, “He stepped up his game.”

Bob:  Yes.

Dennis:  We’re used to using this phrase, stepping up.  It is used all the time.  Now I know I am sensitive to those two words because that’s the name of a book that I just finished, that I’ve been working on for more than 10 years.  But I do feel like men today need someone in their lives calling them to step up and out of boyhood and adolescence and step fully into manhood and to be the man God made them to be.

Bob:  Well, and we’ve already acknowledged this week that this is a theme that God seems to be stirring in our culture today.  We talked about the movie that’s coming out in the fall that the folks at Sherwood Baptist have put together called Courageous.  It’s around the same theme.

Dennis:  It is.  In fact it’s interesting that so many different Christian organizations, groups, and churches are all raising the same issue.  The guys at Sherwood seem to have their fingers on a pulse that I believe is something God wants to do in the church.  I think this movie is going to stir individual Christians, and I hope men to step up and be courageous in their most fundamental callings in life.

Bob:  Give me a definition of courage.  Can you do that?  I mean, how do I understand what courage looks like biblically?

Dennis:  Well, courage is doing your duty in the face of fear.  Doesn’t mean you don’t have fear.  In fact, one of my favorite questions to ask at a dinner table – I think you’ve probably been at a few meals –

Bob:  I’ve been the victim of this question before, yes.

Dennis:  You get at a table that’s a round table and has four or five couples at it, or ten people at your table.  You hate to bore one another with yourselves, you know.  Life is too short.  Let’s cut to the chase; let’s talk about some stuff of meaning, you know?  So I like to ask the question, “What is the most courageous thing you’ve ever done in all your life?”  It’s been interesting to look at how people have answered it.  

People have talked about a decision at work to push back against deceptive business practices where it could have cost them their jobs, maybe stepping away from their existing job and pursuing a dream.  Others have protected an unborn life.  I’ve heard young men answer this question talking about stepping up and away from pornography.  

But the most frequent answer to the question, “What’s the most courageous thing you’ve ever done?” usually involves the person’s father, where they stepped up and either took another job and didn’t go to work for the family company – recently I was at a dinner table and a man said “It was my decision to not go to work for my father but go to college.  I was the first person in our family to go to college.”  

There’s something about our parents, standing up to our parents and taking a stand for what we believe God wants us to do that calls upon a bedrock of courage from a man’s life.

Bob:  And not to do that disrespectfully; to do it in the context of honor, but there is something about declaring, “I can navigate life apart from your guiding me.”

Dennis:  I actually think it is a form of a rite of passage, as you’ve said, to adulthood, where we take a stand and we go, “You know what?  I’m my own person.  God has a plan for me.  I’m fulfilling that plan, and I will honor you, but I am going to be obedient to the God who has called me to do this thing.”

Bob:  What you’ve done in the book is kind of chart the trajectory a man follows from boyhood, which dads can help make more intentional for their sons by pointing them in the right direction and calling them onto the right path, and then adolescence, which is full of all kinds of traps that a young man needs to be navigated through so that he can get to mature manhood.

Dennis:  And one that every man needs to understand that his son desperately needs him to engage him during this period of time and not just kind of wipe his hands and say, “It’s done.  He’s a teenager now; he’s 16, 17, 18 years old.  My influence is over.”  No it’s not.  

There will come a time when your influence will be lessened substantially, but until that time we’re charging men to reach down to those young men in adolescence and call them fully up to the manhood step.  Step on up to what it means to be a man, and step away from, well, the lure of childishness and acting like a boy and prolonging youthfulness too long.

Bob:  Well, if a guy is going to call younger man to step fully up onto the platform of manhood, he’s got to be there himself, and to be there he’s got to know what it looks like.  And as we’ve already said, a lot of guys just don’t know what it looks like. &...