All biblical references used in this book, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the

New International Version, 2010

2013, Beyond the Shades of Gray .ORG BOOK MANUSCRIPT Last Edit Date: August 31, 2013
Finding Masculinity
 For my loving God and Savior, Jesus Christ,
For my beautiful and loving wife, Della,
For both of our daughters, Amber and Amanda,
For my loving brother and friend, Oscar,

and

For Pastor Andy, the friend who said,

You need to write another book!
 If Masculinity could be described as a place, then it is one
that has become foreign, distant and elusive to far too many of us.

As men, we set out on this external journey toward

westernized ideas of what masculinity is supposed to be, only to
find that our masculine heartthe one place that masculinity
should resideis left confused, and devoid of any truth, substance
or direction. What is it that we are trying to find?

As only a Savior who has taken this journey before me

could have, God met me in that place of internal confusion, and
then He led me on a journey to find my masculine soul. My
brothers, Id like to share that journey with you.

All these people were still living by faith when they died.
They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and
welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were
foreigners and strangers on earth. People who say such things
show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had
been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had
opportunity to return.

~ Hebrews 11:13-15
Table of Contents:

Chapter 1: Finding Your Masculine Journey

Chapter 2: Finding Your Self
Chapter 3: Finding Your Way The Destination & a Sinners Prayer
Chapter 4: Finding Your Way Where You Are Now
Chapter 5: Finding Your Way The Obstacles Ahead
Chapter 6: Finding Your Sister and Knowing Your Wife
Chapter 7: Finding Your Brother and Knowing Yourself
Chapter 8: Finding Fatherhood
Chapter 9: Finding Sonship Again
Chapter 10: Finding Masculinity

Appendix A: Vintage-American Photographs of Men

Appendix B: Contact & Additional Information

Author Info: About the Author

Chapter 1: Finding Your Masculine Journey

Are you a man who appreciates a more condensed bookand getting to the
point as directly as possible? Then lets take a journey together!

My hope is that you will appreciate the concise length of this little book. My
intention was to keep the reading short and to the point, while also being
diligent to point out as many of the different variables to you that I can, in the
journey itself.

As I share, please remember to also keep in mind that I am not you, and you
are not me. God has made us each unique in our own way for His purposes.
And so we do have our differences about us.

What we do have in commongiven the fact that you are reading this book
is that we are both men who are on a journey of searching for and trying to
define this elusive thing they call Masculinity and Manhood. It helps if we have
something to relate our understanding to in the process. So I am going to use
a map to help us do that.

When I was in the military, the Drill Instructors taught us map reading as one
of our basic skills of soldiering. The thing about a map, though, is that it is
absolutely useless in getting us to where we want to go, unless we are able to
first discover where it is on the map that we actually are.

Orienting the map and triangulating our position, they call it. The process
involves moving to a place of higher or more open ground, where we can
better see more of the terrain that is surrounding us. Once we find a location
that has a good vantage point in all directions, we turn the map so that the
north edge of the map is also facing toward the north horizon.

After orienting the map to true north, we look for at least twomore
preferably, threedistinct landmarks in the surrounding terrain, to use them
as known points of reference while we triangulate our position.

Easily identifiable land features such as a mountain, saddle, lake, valley,

ridgeline, or a fork in a riverany of these will due. But you can also use
man-made features like radio or water towers, and road intersections too.

Once we pinpoint each of the two or three prominent land features weve
selected, by locating them on our map, then we could easily find our own
position as well. We did that by using a compass and back-azimuths.
To get a back-azimuth, we simply point our compass toward the two or three
surrounding land features we had chosen, one at a time, and then we read the
compass heading. The back-azimuth is the heading that is directly opposite
(180 degrees opposite) of each compass heading toward our land features.

With our back-azimuths calculated, we can then return to our map and find
those same two or three land features weve chosen, and locate them within
the map topography and symbology itself. By using a compass protractor to
draw the back-azimuth lines from each of those points on the mapwhen
done correctlythe lines from the reference points will then all cross each
other at our own exact location on the map.

Only then can we finally begin to use our map as the directional tool it was
designed to be. And a properly oriented map is a tool that can help us to find
our way from where we are, and accurately guide us to the place of our
desired destination, every time!

Just as a journey between two different points on a map would be next to

impossible if you dont even know where it is on the map that you are starting
from; so also, the journey through life itself can be just as challenging.

For example, you may have some idea of where it is in this masculine journey
that you desire to be, but you are not sure enough of yourself as to how you
get there, or confident enough to know where you are now in relation to that
masculine place. This is certainly how I felt at various stages in my own lifes
journey, as I searched to try and become who I was meant to be as a man.

If you feel similar confusion and doubts about yourself while trying to define
and discover your own masculine place within this worldyou are not alone,
I assure you! You desire a confidence and assurance within your masculine
soul to know when youve finally arrived there, in place of the uneasiness,
fear, and doubts that you sense now.

What, exactly, does it mean to be a man, anyway? Is there some sort of

roadmap we can use to get us to that place? Do we have to make the journey
all alone, hoping to eventually figure everything out for ourselves as we go?
And where do we even begin? Which direction should we go?

The one thing we do know right now is that we have somehow become lost
and confused with regard to finding that sure place of masculine confidence,
which every man desires to have within his own heart.

From our current perspective, would you be willing to agree with me that
God is God, and we are notyet God knows exactly where you and I are, at
every moment in time; and that God also knows exactly what He designed
into our masculine nature, and what He intended it to become?

What I am saying is that God already knows both points on the roadmap to
where we are trying to get to right now, in this masculine journey of manhood.
God knows where each of us is right now, and he also knows where each of us
needs to go next in our own journey, and toward becoming confident in our
own masculine nature and soula journey to discover the heart of the real
man whom God has uniquely created each individual male person to become.
Only you can become the masculine male person whom God intends for you
and you alone to be.

Now I have an important question for you to consider: Since you admit that
you have become unsure of yourself in searching out this masculine journey
and place, are you at least willing to trust in the One God who knows all about
the troubles of your journey so far and knows the way there?

Even during the times when we become so unsure of our own self, we can still
be confident that God already knew about every obstacle that we would face
and have to overcome along the way. And though we may be surprised and
set back by them, God never is! He knows exactly how we must rightfully
negotiate each one of them to successfully find the genuine inward confidence
and masculinity that we seek to have as men.

There is just one tiny little flaw in this whole masculine idea of, Im a man,
and so I need to be able to figure this whole thing out on my own. The problem
with that idea is that God never intended for us to do it that way, first of all.
But the real flaw to that idea is simply this: It doesnt work!

While searching on my own, I found that the masculine journey itself proved
to be much more difficult and confusing than simply trusting in God. So why
not choose to trust God, and follow him in this journey, instead?

Thomas said to him, Lord, we dont know where you are going, so how
can we know the way?
Jesus answered, I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes
to the Father except through me. If you really know me, you will know my
Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.
John 14:5-7 (emphasis, mine)

We may feel lost at times, but God always knows right where we are. And
wherever that happens to be, I found that when I began to trust God again, I
was somehow always in exactly the right place at the right time for him to
lead me in a right direction, once again. The same will be true for you,
wherever you happen to be right now in your own masculine journeyeven
if you feel completely and helplessly lost at this point, in it!

Lets return to the metaphor of the map again for a moment. There are many
men weve known or known about throughout our livesbiblical and
otherwisewho have given us good examples of the type of man that we also
desire to be. Those men are our surrounding terrain featuresthe ones who
help us to orient our own position on the map, in this journey toward
becoming masculine men ourselves.

The masculine place or destination we desire to eventually be also has its own
unique position on the map, with its own surrounding terrain and
distinguishing landmarks that are unique to that individual place. So Id ask
you to also define what it is about that place that sets it apart as your
destinationwhat makes that place of masculinity so desirable to you? And
what makes it so appealing to your unique and individual attributes as a
person?

Perhaps it is the character of one of those good male examples that youve
had at a notable point in your life. Just like a prominent terrain feature along
the way in our journey, we can use it to guide us as we go, and it also helps us
to find our own location when we get lost.

But also, even when we are beyond it in our journey, we can still see a
prominent landmark like that from a long distance away, and it continues to
help us get to the place where we are journeying to, as we often look back at it
to verify that our course remains true.

Even after arriving at our final destination, if a landmark is big enough to be

seen from great distances, that prominent landmark will continue to remain a
valuable and indispensable reference point to us, for as long as we remain
there in that place. In other words, it actually becomes a part of the beauty
and uniqueness of that place, and a comforting part of our own familiar
surroundings, whenever we return home to it.

Perhaps there are things about that distant masculine location that you cant
quite see yet, because you arent close enough. But you know that those
landmarks are there, nonetheless, because youve identified the point on the
map where you are going, and you can see those landmarks depicted right
there on your map.

These yet unseen landmarks represent the knowledge that we have been
given about the masculine place where we are going. Biblical and otherwise,
there are things we have learned and have been told about what it is to be or
become a man What it is to actually be in that masculine place.

What makes it all so confusing to us is that we dont actually know that place
for ourselves yet. Though it has been described to us in different kinds of
ways, we still dont feel like we could actually recognize the place because we
have not actually been there.

And so we wonder if the valley or hillside that we see depicted there on our
map is actually the same one that someone else has described to us with their
masculine words? Or, if indeed the landmark we see on our map is one and
the same as the landmark someone has once described to us, then well
wonder if we have pictured it clearly enough in our own imagination, so as to
be able to recognize it for ourselves once we get there?

Without a right perception of the actual landmark that we are looking for, we
run the risk of not even recognizing the location once we arrive there, and we
could even pass our masculine place right on by without even realizing it.
Again, I am using metaphors here. But it is our own individual masculine
journey itself that I am actually speaking of.

The Bibleonce you begin to clearly understand itwill provide you with
the best descriptions of all in beginning to clearly picture all the landmarks of
your masculine place. And youll see all of them clearly, right there in your
own heart and mindthe one place where we all desire to be confident and
content as masculine men.

Let me be clear about our masculine place in also saying that my perfect place
as a man may not be your perfect place as a man. We may have two entirely
different places on our map where God intends for us each to be, and for good
reason!

The uniqueness and individuality that God has created within each one of us
to bear independentlyindependently of those differently unique traits in
other men, not independently of God or of human companionshipis also a
prominent landmark on your own individual masculine journey.

The inward idea that we are not very comfortable with this particular terrain
feature may, in fact, be our biggest obstacle of all. In other words, are we
trying to become someone else, or are we trying to become who God desires
and intended for us to be? Or are we trying to avoid who God intended for us
to be, all for the wrong reasons and a lack of deeper, more complete
understanding of the great value that our own uniqueness holds?
Going back again to the map as a metaphor, this is why it is so important to
know where we are located right now in our masculine journey, before we
just blindly proceed and get ourselves even more and more lost. It would be
completely useless for us to plot someone elses location on the map as our
own starting point, thinking that we are over there when, in fact, we are
actually right here.

Seeing other men as examples to aspire to is fine, of course. But the only
comparisons we should ever be making of ourselves to other men is by that of
an already established and proven, third point of reference. That is to say, we
never draw our back-azimuths to locate someone else on our map, but only to
locate ourselves. And that is also why three back-azimuths are always so
much better than just two.

Even the Apostle Paul (author of over of the Bibles New Testament) said,

Follow my example, [only] as I follow the example of Christ.

1st Corinthians 11:1 (added clarification, mine)

And in closing this first chapter, my brothers, I will tell you right here and
now that the very best proven and established point of reference that any of us
will ever have in this masculine journey, is the tried, tested and proven
example of the life of Jesus Christ himself. He is always our very best and most
reliable, third point of reference.

I want to know Christyes, to know the power of his resurrection and

participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow,
attaining to the resurrection from the dead.
Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my
goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.
Philippians 3:10-12
Chapter 2: Finding Your Self

In this chapter, I want to share more about becoming comfortable with that
unique person whom God has made you to be. In order to do that, I am going
to rely heavily upon sharing the ways in which God revealed that person to
me, in who hed specifically created me to be as a complete and confident
masculine man, living for Christ within this distorted and broken world.

No one else on earth can become the one person that God created and
intended only you to be, within your masculine self. So, none of my sharing
about myself is intended to persuade you to become anything like me
Please understand that point.

What I share is only intended to provide you with an example of how God can
show any one of us who we are, and where it is that we are supposed to go
and eventually arrive at, inside of this masculine journey. And for each one of
us, becoming comfortable with our own God-given individuality and
uniqueness as a man, is always an appropriate first step in our own journey.

As I share more about myself and my own masculine journey, I hope to help
you readily identify with some of your own similar feelings of reluctance and
confusion toward all of these conflicting ideas of masculinity and maleness.

It is unfortunate, today in our society, that the usual place of our truly
common ground as menespecially here inside of westernized culturesis
to be this confused and disoriented about the true place of masculinity. But let
me also say that God has never been confused about it. In fact, it was God who
created masculinity!

This is what I want you to relate to: Rather than so much in understanding
any of the specific individual issues of personal brokenness that I have
experiencedwhile once becoming so completely and hopelessly lost in this
journey myselftry instead to understand the Christian process of how I
found myself on the map, and continued onward in the masculine journey. In
other words, try to identify more with sorting through the confusion I was
feeling, than in trying to understand any of the specific issues that I was so
confused about.

As I mention those issues, if you find that you would also like to learn more
about sorting through any of those specific things, my first book, Beyond the
Shades of Gray, is completely devoted to a Christ-centered understanding of
them. It was written to be a testimonial guide and tool for other men, women
and the loved ones of people who seek to come to terms with the same issues
that I was able to face in my own lifeovercoming them through the help of
the Lord, Jesus Christ.

But for the sake of our masculine journey, I will do my best to focus upon the
journey itself, here within this book, and the commonalities of our individual
masculine journeys as men.

In trying to cope with having grown up as the lonely and confused son of a
father who very frequently abused and relied upon the effects of alcohol, I fell
into the lure and trap of homosexual behaviors as a young boy. I was trying to
find some sort of viable comfort to fill the masculine brokenness and
confusion that I was feeling and experiencing, both then as a boy and well on
into my young adulthood.

Suffice to saywith an added, very personal understanding, and a very

intentional contradiction to what our broken and confused world is trying to
convince us to believe about itthis is what homosexuality always is: A
manifestation of our own human brokenness, and a direct result of sin itself.

Can you imagine all of the turmoil this particular issue caused me in trying to
find my masculine self both as a man, and as a Christian believer? Simple
things that might otherwise be acceptable in this whole idea of Christian
masculinity caused me to become even more confused and apprehensive
about it, because of the place of sexual confusion where sin had brought me.

For example, in my culturally westernized Christian experience, I began to

reason that even my inward desires for non-sexual forms of masculine
affectionespecially if I personally found it to be enjoyable in any way
must be an unrelenting symptom of my past homosexual behaviors and sin.

I tried to completely shut out that very human and God-given part of myself,
rather than simply embracing it, and finding the biblical balance in what is
permissible in Gods eyes. What I needed to realize and understand was my
own need for masculine affection, and understand it through Gods clearly
defined biblical guidelines about it.

In other words, I was completely mistaken and confused to reason that

sharing intimate, non-sexual physical affection between two men is another
form of homosexual sin, simply because I sensed a need for it within my own
masculine soul and human experience.

In the Bible, God clearly defines homosexual sin as sexual relations between
two men or two women. However, the Bible never even once prohibits the
sharing of loving, non-sexual affection between two people of the same
gender. In fact, the Bible actually forms a very clear distinction between these
two different forms of human intimacy!

I am not suggesting here that every man reading this book, or on this journey,
needs to embrace intimate, non-sexual masculine affection as part of their
own masculine journey. No! What I am saying here is that every man who
embarks upon this masculine journey needs to also understand who God
created him to be, and to also be willing to embrace your own uniqueness and
individuality as a man, within the clearly defined boundaries that our loving
God has established. Once again, I am me, and you are you.

But as a man trying to overcome homosexual sin through Christianity,

balancing the personal realization of the sin I was guilty of, with the idea that
God also created me to be an affectionate manthis idea was a difficult part
of myself to understand or embrace, because it didnt fit inside the box of the
westernized Christianity I had come to know.

Relating all of this back again to the metaphor of our map, this was one of
those unique things about myself that I absolutely had to recognize as a
prominent landmark in my own masculine journey, or I would never find the
masculine place of peace that I was still desperately looking for at the time.

What I had to do was to find and embrace myself in whom God had created me
to be as a mannot in some presumption of my westernized thinking. And
then we must also consistently validate that unique location within our own
masculine journey, against the always reliable back-azimuth of truth that is
found only in Gods Word, and in the biblical principles that govern life itself.
We all must be willing to do the same in that regard.

Like I did, you will probably also have to face down some internal questions
like these, within your own masculine journey:

What will other men think of me?

Should I be concerned about what others think of me?

What gives me the right to reject what other men may say about me?

What gives me any real place or authority to try and influence the lives
or decisions of other men?

If only Gods opinion of me truly matters, how will I know his opinion?
 And how can I truthfully discern the teachings of mere men who would
try to teach or tell me what Gods opinion is?

Take, for example, the question of the authority to suggest what other men
should do. I am facing that one right now in the writing of this very book! I
keep hearing those doubtful challenges right there in my own mind: Who am
I to write a book like this, my thoughts continue to say? What if I am the only
man who actually feels like this and the rest of the world is actually just fine?

One fear I deal with is that of rejection. I reason to myself that some men may
reject what I have to say based largely upon my truthful admission of the
homosexual sin and brokenness that I had to overcome in my own life and
masculine journeyand the tendency there is for me to fear their rejection,
or any judgment from them that says of me, You are less than a man.

But do I ignore that very significant aspect in the brokenness of my own

journey, simply to make myself feel more secureor to seem more credible
to the people who may think like thatso as to avoid any thought of their
projected shame and rejection? Or, do I find the integrity it takes to follow my
own advice, and do exactly what God told me to do in writing this book?

I know the biblical truth there is that I will find my greatest peace and
confidence hidden within the courage of godly Christian obedience and
integrity. In the wise words of the Psalmist, Better is one day in your courts
than a thousand elsewhere; I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my
God than dwell in the tents of the wicked (Psalms 84:10).

Many of you might also have a personal Christian testimony that you fear
sharing with other people, and especially fear sharing with other men. But
begin to see the value that God sees in your personal testimony, and the value
it has to the people who are touched or inspired by it. It is never about what
we have done; but about what God has done, and wants to do through us.

If God can take a man like mesomeone who fell into the spiritual darkness
and deep masculine brokenness of something like homosexual sin; set me
free from the chains of it, and then allow me to become the confident and
masculine man that God always intended for me to beif God can do a work
like that in me, then perhaps you can also have the confidence to believe and
trust that God can and will do a work of masculine restoration in you.

Quite often, the questions like the ones I listed are cultivated out of our own
lack of self-confidence and fear. And as Christian believers, that lack of
confidence can also have a direct correlation to our level of personal
knowledge about biblical truth. The more truth-knowledge that is gained
through our personal time spent in studying and reading the Scriptures, the
greater our inward confidence level becomes.

All it takes for me to overcome any doubts or fears I may have had about
writing a book like this is to do a realistic assessment of where I have come
from, and how far from that broken place that God has already brought me in
my own journey.

When we look at things through Gods eyes, then we become more confident
in what he has placed in our heart to say or do. I believe it is Gods desire that
I should not burry this treasure he has given me in the groundso that it
remains hidden from everyone else who might have otherwise benefited
from itbut that I should willingly pass it along and share it with other men
who can be inspired by the testimony of it, once the book is written.

My pastor always says that you cant lead someone else down a path where
youve never been yourself. And so I recognize the fact that my own
knowledge and experience in overcoming these things might well be of great
benefit to someone else who is making the journey behind me. I have the
ability to make their journey far less difficult than mine was, simply by
sharing my own experience and newly found confidence with them.

Havent you ever asked someone before, How do I get there, or, How do I do
that? Some people are unwilling to tell you because they want to keep the
beneficial kinds of knowledge all to themselves. But in Christs Kingdom, love
was willing that no man should ever perish because of a lack of knowledge.

The choice to either accept or to reject any information I willingly provide

and share always remains solely in the hands of those individuals who make
those choices for their own masculine journeys. Another mans acceptance or
rejection of what I personally know to be the true within my own heart does
not affect me in the least. It only affects them.

I know what I know to be true only because of what Jesus Christ did for us all,
and because I continue to trust in the one true God who has brought me this
far in my own masculine journey already. The knowledge is really not mine to
begin with. So why should I keep it to myself?

I say all of this not to sound my own horn, but so that you might also realize
the necessity of personally knowing and trusting Jesus within your own
masculine journey. That is the real lesson that I desire to teach you through
sharing my own Christian experience and journey.
 This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in
words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught
words. The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from
the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them
because they are discerned only through the Spirit. The person with the Spirit
makes judgments about all things, but such a person is not subject to merely
human judgments, for,

Who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?

But we [who have believed in Christ] have the mind of Christ.

1st Corinthians 2:13-16 (clarification, mine; see also Isaiah 40:13)

Now allow me to be blunt. Very rare genetic and gender abnormalities aside,
if you were born with a penis between your legs, then God certainly created
you to be a masculine man! He did not create you to be feminine, but
masculine.

The thing that makes your individual masculinity shine throughnot just to
other men, but also to the entire world around youis the confidence you
have in who you believe yourself to be in Gods eyes, when youve learned
how to fulfill your role in life as that man. This confidence comes from
pleasing God, rather than in pleasing people.

The fact that you like sports or dont like sports has no bearing. The substance
of true and biblical masculinity is not found in such superficial things. The fact
that you are muscular or have a smaller frame also has no bearing.

Athletic or not, fat or thin, big or small, tall or short, introvert or extrovert,
affectionate or macho, emotional or reserved, fast or slow, businessman or
farmer, white-collar or blue-collar, financially well off or in need, high IQ or
low IQ, single, married or a family man, younger or older in agenone of
these superficial things has any real bearing at all upon your true masculinity
as a man!

It is when you discover who you truly are in Christ, and you know in your
heart what you believe about yourself, and why you believe itthis is the
confidence that shines through to other people as true masculinity! This is
also the confidence that causes you to be at perfect peace in having found
your unique and God-given masculine soulat perfect peace within this
confusing place we call manhood, and at perfect peace as a self-confident and
secure, man among men in this world.
Chapter 3: Finding Your Way The Destination & a Sinners Prayer

Lets go back to our map once again. There are just two locations on any
journey that are of primary concern to us: Where we desire to go on the map,
and where it is that we currently are now. But lets clearly identify our
destination first. Because if we dont even know where it is that we are
headed, then how will we ever determine where we are right now in relation
to that place?

Do you recall that important, third point of reference I mentioned earlier?

Here is another application of that: Remember that in locating our own a
position on a map, it is betterfar more accurate, actuallyto have three
points of reference than it is to have just two.

Three points will give us accurate triangulation to an exact point, wherein

just two points of reference will only get us close by. So, if masculinity is our
destination on the map, then we also want three points of reference to plot
that destination correctly.

As far as masculine traits go, I will go so far as to insist that there are only
three true masculine traits that you ever really need to concern yourself with:
Those traits are faith, hope, and love. But the single most important one of
these masculine traits is love. So lets begin there.

I say love is most important, first of all, because Scripture tells us plainly that
it is. But I also say this because our truest example of human masculinity is
Jesus Christ himself. And Jesus is the absolute quintessential epitome,
example, embodiment, and demonstration of Gods own agp love toward us.
Everything we endeavor to do or accomplish as a man should be tied back to
love, somehow.

Take our reverence and obedience to God as a prime example. If biblical

obedience is also a masculine trait (and I certainly believe that it is), then even
our obedience is tied right back to love itself:

Jesus replied: Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all
your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment.
And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the
Prophets hang on these two commandments.
Matthew 22:37-40

Even when a man becomes angry or engages in war, the love of God and of his
kingdom, his righteousness, his justice, and of his perfect peace, should be the
central motivation behind every battle we fight, in order to defeat the tyranny
or evil that has come against us, or against those whom we love and protect.
 If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am
only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and
can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move
mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor
and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain
nothing.
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not
proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered,
it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the
truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love
never fails.
But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are
tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we
know in part and we prophesy in part; but when completeness comes, what is in
part disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I
reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood
behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see
face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully
known.
And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of
these is love.
1st Corinthians 13:1-13 (emphasis, mine)

Did you see it? Embedded right there within the longest and most descriptive
of the Bible passages that we have available to us concerning love, is this very
clear reference to the connection that love does indeed have to our
masculinity in becoming a man. Everything else we do as men will hang upon
this one, most important of our identifiable masculine traits. Biblically
speaking, when you get love right, youll get masculinity right as well.

So, biblical love is the greatest masculine trait that we will ever have or aspire
to as men. And therefore love is the one most important trait that we need to
concern ourselves with, in developing it to its fullest potential within our
masculine journey.

Also mentioned within the Bible passage from 1st Corinthians 13, and in the
very same context with love, are faith and hope. These are the other two
masculine traits that we should concern ourselves with, if we want to
triangulate masculinity correctly as our true destination.

Now faith is confidence in what we hope for, and assurance about what
we do not see. This is what the ancients were commended for.
Hebrews 11:1-2
There is also a certain saying that my wife just adores, and that she counts as
one of her very favorite inspirational quotes:

Hope is hearing the music of the future. Faith is the ability to dance to
it today!
(Bishop Bill Frey, in a September 2001 sermon)

Just as we give love the place of being the most important masculine trait that
we will ever have as men, so also we must understand that faith and hope are
two masculine traits that will always go hand in hand together. You cant
really have faith without something tangible and biblical to be hoped for, and
you cant really have biblical hope without the faith that is required to make it
come to pass. Faith is what sees a hope fully realized with your own eyes.

The difference between human hope and biblical hope is the faith factor itself.
Human hope hopes that something good might actually happen. Biblical hope
is a sure hope that knows something good will happen, simply because God
said that it would.

As the passage I quoted from Hebrews also tells us, biblical faith is being sure
of those things that we have hoped for. Another translation of that verse says
that faith is the substance of the things we hope for, and the evidence of things
yet unseen. In other words, our biblical faith-believing itself is the God-given
creative power we have that actually creates something out of nothing.

We were made in Gods own likeness, after all (Genesis 1:26, 5:1, & Acts 17:28).
And God himself used this very same creative power of faith in order to create
the entire world. He is, the God who gives life to the dead and calls into being
things that were not (Romans 4:17).

By faith we understand that the universe was formed at Gods

command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.
Hebrews 11:3

Going back to my own example of how this all works and flows together,
recall again the apprehensions I once had about being a man who enjoys
masculine affection, because of the way I related that desire back to my
broken past. Once I began to accept that this is who God created me to be,
then God began showing me all kinds of landmarks which held me true to a
course, and God showed me the biblical truth that is their back-azimuth. This
helped set my heart and mind completely at ease in accepting that this is a
uniqueness that God has placed inside of me as a person, and as a man.
One of the things God brought to my immediate attention was seeing the
innocence of the deeply intimate masculine affection that appears in such a
multitude of ordinary vintage-American black and white photographs, which
picture two or more men together. The affection I was seeing displayed so
openly in those vintage photographs would be almost unthinkable to see it
today among heterosexual men in our American culture. And yet, there it was!

But these photos all come from a much more innocent time in our history,
when the stigma about homosexuality was still something very foreign and
un-thought-of among the men in the photos.

None of us can assume that any of the men in those photographs are gay
either, because an open display of homosexual behavior in that period of our
history would also have been absolutely unthinkablenot to mention,
lawfully criminal in every state, and probably incredibly dangerous to ones
own safety and physical wellbeing, as well.

No, these were all very ordinary and very heterosexual men, who obviously
had no thought or concern over what other men may think about their
displays of intimate affection toward each other. I have selected a small
assortment of such photographs, which are available to you in the appendix
section, in the back of this book.

In confirmation of what I was seeing in those photographs, God also showed

me a clearly established biblical distinction between the innocence of the
intimate affection I was seeing in those vintage photos, and homosexual sin
itself. The acceptable sharing of more intimate kinds of non-sexual masculine
affection was clearly mentioned within different passages of Bible Scripture,
and I had never noticed it until it seemed to jump out at me one morning.

For example, Paul the Apostle closed four of his own letters to the different
Christian churches by actually encouraging such affection. Ironically, one of
these four letters was his letter to the Church at Rome, which itself contains
the strongest condemnation of homosexuality that you will find anywhere in
the New Testament of the Bible. If Paul was not making a clear biblical
distinction there, then he was contradicting himself within the very same
letter.

Now Paul was writing primarily to the leaders of those Christian churches,
which were all men in that time. And this is how Paul (the same man who so
strongly condemns homosexual sin in Romans 1:18-32) closes four of his letters
to the men who looked after all the other Christian believers in these regions:
 Greet one another with a holy kiss. All the churches of Christ send
greetings.
Romans 16:16

All the brothers here send you greetings. Greet one another with a holy
kiss.
1st Corinthians 16:20

Greet one another with a holy kiss.

2nd Corinthians 13:12

Greet all Gods people with a holy kiss.

1st Thessalonians 5:26

Additionally, the Apostle Peter also closes one of his two biblical letters in this
way:

Greet one another with a kiss of love. Peace to all of you who are in
Christ.
1st Peter 5:14

Once again, it is not a case for intimate masculine affection that I am trying to
make here. What I actually want you to see and understand is the importance
of accepting your own individual uniqueness as a man, within this masculine
journey. And I am sharing with you how God helped me to do that very same
thing in my own journey of self-acceptance, within the larger journey itself.

We all have things about ourselves that we dont like, or that we could stand
to improve upon, of course. But what I am speaking of here are those deeper
things which we really have no control overour individual talents, likes,
and dislikes; the color of our hair, skin, and eyes; the fact that we were all
born into this earth with a fallen sinful nature wherein we will indeed fail at
certain things, and make many mistakes in life; or even those wrongful things
done to us by other people while we were still young, and innocent of sin.

When it comes to those things we have no real control over, these are the
things we need to work at in accepting about ourselves, and about our past
history. This self-acceptance also ties itself right back to love.

Remember that Jesus told us, Love your neighbor as yourself (Luke 10:27).
But also notice what Jesus didnt say He never told any of us to love anybody
greater than we love ourselves! I also made this important point in my
previous book, and it bears repeating in this one.
Jesus knows that we are all unable to love any other person to any greater
degree than we are able to love our own self. And that is why self-acceptance
of the unique person whom God created you and I to be is so very, very
important within the masculine journey itself.

As for those things done to us by other people in our youth, over which we
had no control, I choose to look at it this wayand this also holds true for the
shame and regret we have about things that we, perhaps, could have
prevented if wed just done things differently, or if wed made a different set
of personal choices:

What is in the past is forever in the past. What has been done yesterday has
already been done, and there is absolutely nothing that any of us can do to go
back there in time and change it! What we can do is learn from it, and have a
positive attitude about the future; and not continue to dwell there within the
crippling thoughts and memories of such things.

We are who we are today because of everything that we have experienced in

life, to include those bad, unfortunate, and very tragic things. But in this sinful
and fallen world of ours, we are also never the only person who will ever face
such things. And the people who face them behind us, quite often, are looking
desperately for someoneanyonewho can rightfully understand their
inward pain. You my friend, as one who has been there, are a person who can
turn your own pain into something good, because you can now comfort them!

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of
compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so
that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive
from God. For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our
comfort abounds through Christ.
2nd Corinthians 1:3-5

God uses people to help other people, within his loving Kingdom. And God
will indeed bring such people across the healing place of your more
experienced pathway, in order for you to comfort them and lighten their
heavy load. You are able to help them find self-acceptance beyond their pain,
just as you also did. And if you ask me, that is an extremely masculine reason
and motivation to keep on moving forward in your own individual journey.

The hidden gem in all of this is that as you provide comfort to another person,
you yourself are also comforted by the Holy Spirit.

Self-acceptance may also require some self-forgiveness for something that we

feel guilty about or ashamed of from our past. This was certainly the case for
me, as a Christian man who was struggling to overcome the sin of homosexual
addiction that I had allowed to invade my masculine soul. But when Jesus
Christ taught us about forgiving people, he never intended for us to exclude
ourselves from our own forgiveness.

Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you
will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven.
Luke 6:37 (Jesus speaking)

When we do not include our own self in Jesus command to forgive, we may
think that we are being humble. But what we are actually doing is taking on a
sinfully prideful attitude, which says, Jesus sacrifice and death upon the cross
for all of humanitys sin was not adequate enough to cover my sins.

And then, the Apostle Paul also gives us this very wise bit of advice:

For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of
yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober
judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you.
Romans 12:3 (emphasis, mine)

But notice, again, what Paul did not say here He never said not to think
highly of ourselves! What Paul said was not to think more highly of ourselves
than we ought to, and to use sober judgment as we look inwardly and evaluate
ourselves.

So, once again, it is very important that we learn how to value ourselves every
bit as much as God values us. And the very personal cost with which God
values each one of us is extremely high, indeed!

Do you honestly think that our all-knowing God would have paid such a high
price for anything which was valued any less than the price he chose to pay
for it? Well, purchasing humanity back from sin cost God the greatest and
most cherished price of allthe very life of his one and only begotten Son!

Surely God must love and value each one of us just as much as he loves and
values his own Son, Jesus, since he was willing to give Jesus as the ransom
cost for our sin and redemption. So, yes! We are all greatly loved and highly
treasured by God.

Use that truth as the starting point to begin to also appreciate and value
yourselfand your individual, God-given uniquenesswithin this very
worthwhile masculine journey ahead of you. And in doing so, when you do
reach your masculine destination, you will have learned to deeply appreciate
the uniquely masculine person that God made you to be.

I have spoken a great deal in this chapter about the personal relationship
with God that true, biblical Christianity always is. Christian belief is not just
mere religious belief. Christianity is relationship! And if you do not have a
daily, personal relationship with God that is an integral part of your Christian
experience, then you may need to re-evaluate what kind of man-made
christianity it is that you have believed in? I say this only to help you, and
not to judge you.

Before we move on, if you have not already done so, I want to give you the
opportunity to become a Christian, by inviting Jesus Christ into your life right
now.

Christianity is not a commitment to be taken lightly, and it will not suddenly

solve all of your personal problems. But Christianity is the best commitment
you will ever make in this lifetime, and it does place you into Gods hands
where He can help you to sort through any problem that you have, or will
ever face!

Simply pray this prayer of salvation, or one just like it that is spoken from
your own heart, and in your own words; and believe it in your heart as you
pray it to our Father God:

God, I know in my heart that I am a sinner who is in need of your loving

forgiveness. I also believe that you sent your Son, Jesus, to pay the full ransom
cost of my sin. I believe that Jesus lived, went to the cross, and then to the grave
in my place, and that you raised him up from death to life again, and now Jesus
lives forever to be the Savior of our human race. That is why I can now be
forgiven of all of my sins. So I ask you to forgive me, God, in the name of your
beloved Son, Jesus Christ, and I ask you to send your own Holy Spirit to live in
my heart, and to guide me for all of the days of the rest of my life. Amen!

If you are a Christian believer who has wandered away from God, and you
would like to rededicate your commitment to following Christ, then you can
also say that prayer.

If you did pray that prayer for either reason, then I encourage you to
remember it by writing down todays date on the next page, and where you
were today when you said it.
I said a prayer, God heard it, and I received Gods eternal gift of Salvation, on
this day:

________________________________________________________________________________________

Gods promise to me from this day forward is that he will never leave me or
forsake me! I am his forever, and nothing will ever separate me from his love!

Here are some Bible Scriptures for you to also meditate on, concerning this
incredible gift of Salvation:

Romans 3:23
Romans 6:23
Romans 5:8
Romans 10:9-10
Romans 10:13

Deuteronomy 31:6

John 3:16

Romans 8:37-39

Just like any other precious gift that someone desires to give to youthough
it may be fully purchased and intended for you to have itthe gift is not
actually yours until you have received it from the Gift Giver. So again, if you
have not become a Christian by receiving Jesus Christ into your life as your
Lord and Savior, I urge you to reconsider and pray a prayer for Salvation, like
the one on the previous page, before you move on in your masculine journey.
Chapter 4: Finding Your Way Where You Are Now

Since we have an idea now of what our masculine destination should look like
once we get there; in this chapter, lets try to narrow down where we are
right now in relation to that masculine place.

Wherever you are right nowespecially if you are a man who has ever said a
sinners prayer for salvation like the prayer found at the end of the previous
chapteryour current location is in Gods loving, very capable and willing
hands. And that is a great place to be, no matter where on the map you are
right now in this masculine journey!

Because, you see, no matter where you are right now, or what you have done
or regret doing in your past, God can use it and turn it around for the good of
the journey that lies ahead of you If you are a person who loves God.

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who
love him, who have been called according to his purpose.
Romans 8:28 (emphasis, mine)

You have been called according to Gods purpose, I assure you. We all have!
We have been called to his purpose both in this masculine journey, and in life
itself, to leave earthly legacies behind us that testify both to Gods grace, and
to his glory, here in this earth. But only you can know if you love God or not.

This is Gods promise to those of us who do love him: What lies behind us is
never a moment of defeat to God, but always a stepping stone that He can
readily use to bring about his greater good within our lives, and toward our
futures. And how could we not love a God like that!

The more you read about Gods character in the Bible, the more you will
know Him and desire to love him. It is realizing Gods own love toward us that
forms Gods own love within us. And that exchange happens simply by
spending time with him, and allowing him to reveal his loving character to
you through his own written Word.

I am also confident that in spending time with God, you will also discover
your God-given purpose as a man, and reach your masculine destination. I
have seen how God is always at work toward that end in my own life, and I
know that he desires to do the same for you:

He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until

the day of Christ Jesus
Philippians 1:6
The fact is, as a Christian son of God, it is absolutely impossible for you to fail
in this journey, so long as you continue on in Christ, and are willing to
continue to trust God:

What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us,
who can be against us! He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for
us allhow will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things!
Romans 8:31-32

I have intentionally spent a little time encouraging you, before you pinpoint
your own location on the map, because I what you to know that no matter
where you triangulate your own position to be, the journey ahead of you is
completely possible for you through your faith in Jesus Christ.

The deck is stacked in your favor, and the race is fixed! God desires that
we all succeed in becoming the men he has called us to be, and to also be
confident and sure of ourselves in that masculine place. So, always know
within your own masculine heart that, I can do all this through him who gives
me strength (Philippians 4:13).

Pinpointing your own present location in this journey is always as simple as

shooting your back-azimuths from the three masculine landmarks of biblical
Faith, Hope, and Love.

Do you love God? Check your love back-azimuth against the truth of Gods
Word to be sure:

Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For
whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot
love God, whom they have not seen. And he has given us this command: Anyone
who loves God must also love their brother and sister.
1st John 4:20-21

If, for example, you find that you are holding bitterness toward a brother or
sister in Christ, then this is something that you would want to bring to God
through prayer and confession, because your love azimuth needs to be
corrected.

Do you have faith in God? Check your faith back-azimuth against the truth of
Gods Word to be sure:

And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who

comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who
earnestly seek him.
Hebrews 11:6
As an example here, do you find that you can believe that God rewards the
people who seek him, but that you have doubts that he would actually reward
you for doing so? Then this is a faith-trust issue that you need to bring to God
in prayer and confession, because your faith-azimuth needs to be corrected.

Do you have hope in God? Check your hope back-azimuth against the truth of
Gods Word to be sure:

Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? Put your
hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.
Psalm 42:5

If you read this verse but find that you have been feeling depressed or
anxious about things, then perhaps you have placed your hope in unreliable
things, rather than in God. This would also be something that you would want
to bring to God in prayer and confession.

There are, of course, many other Scriptures on Faith, Hope and Love
throughout the Bible, besides just these three. But the point here is that it is
within the Living Word of God that is contained in the Holy Bible, that you can
guide yourself toward living more biblically and godly within these three
masculine traits.

The other important point that I want you to understand in this triangulation
process is that if you do find yourself falling short in these areasand we all
do at times in our livesthen you need to run to God, and not away from him!

For [with Jesus] we do not have a high priest who is unable to

empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in
every way, just as we areyet he did not sin. Let us then approach Gods throne
of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us
in our time of need.
Hebrews 4:15-16 (added clarification, mine)

If we [even as believers] claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves

and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will
forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.
1st John 1:8-9 (added clarification and emphasis, mine)

God is not angry with you, and his promise is to never abandon you. But we
can still make the choice to run away from him, forgetting the fact that Jesus
Christ has already paid the full price for all of our sinsthose we committed
before coming to know him as our Lord and Savior, and those we will also
commit over the course of the rest of our lifetime with him. Jesus own blood
paid the full ransom price for them all!

Gods grace and mercy are not free license to go on sinning or living our lives
however we want, however. There should, of course, be a genuine pull that
you sense within your redeemed Christian heart, which desires to please God
and to be obedient to him.

But if you are anything like me, this desire can also become religious to the
point that your Christianity is no longer a relationship, but a cold, dead and
unfulfilling set of rules. However, Jesus did not intend a life with him to be
that way. Jesus intended a life with him to be more fulfilling than anything we
have imagined:

I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.
John 10:10 (Jesus speaking)

So where is the balance? How do we aspire to live the holy life that God calls
us to live, without turning the Christian relationship with God into just
another religion of dos and donts?

Do you remember how I pointed out in the previous chapter that everything
we do should be tied back to love somehow? Here is even more biblical proof
and clarification of that, in fulfilling our masculine aspirations toward an
obedience to Gods law:

Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the

law.
Romans 13:10

The key to obedience is this: If you are walking in Gods love, then you are
also walking in obedience to Gods law. And if you are doing good toward
your neighbor, then you are walking in love. It really is that simple.

On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. Teacher,

he asked, what must I do to inherit eternal life?
What is written in the Law? he replied. How do you read it?
He answered, Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all
your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind; and, Love your
neighbor as yourself.
You have answered correctly, Jesus replied. Do this and you will live.
But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, And who is my
neighbor?
This passage of scripture, from Luke chapter 10, further testifies to the truth
of what I have been saying with regard to living a life of love. Can you begin to
see now from the examples of the Scriptures that I have given you, that loving
God is done primarily by showing Gods love toward other people?

This expert in Gods law, in the passage, then asked another revealing
question: If I am to love my neighbor, how do I know who my neighbor is?
The expert in the law was looking outwardly to try and justify which people
God actually meant when he said, Love your neighbor as yourself. But Jesus
told him a parable that tells us that we should not be looking outwardly for
our neighbor, but inwardly at our own hearts as we identify who our
neighbor is. The passage continues,

In reply Jesus said: A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho,
when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and
went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same
road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite,
when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a
Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he
took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and
wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and took
care of him. The next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the
innkeeper. Look after him, he said, and when I return, I will reimburse you for
any extra expense you may have. Which of these three do you think was a
neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?
The expert in the law replied, The one who had mercy on him.
Jesus told him, Go and do likewise.
Luke 10:25-37

So we see here that our neighbor is any person to whom we take the
initiative to show Gods love toward, showing our own self as neighborly
through our actions. In other words, my neighbor is any person whom I have
loved. And there is certainly no shortage of opportunities in this broken world
to do that. There are people in need of Gods love all around us.

This is how we love This is how we love God. This is how we know where we
are at any given time, and this is how we know that we are on course in this
journey toward our true masculine place.
Chapter 5: Finding Your Way The Obstacles Ahead

Once we know our destination, and we know where we are located in relation
to that place, a person might reason, The easiest thing to do now is to draw a
straight line between the two points on my map, and follow the course. If only
life were that simple!

Just as there will be many other obstacles on a map that fall upon the straight
line in between our two points; so also, life itself has a tendency to throw us
unexpected curve balls, and usually at the moment when we least expect it. It
is rare that we will ever be able to just follow a straight line to our intended
destination.

Even the Lord Jesus told us,

I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this
world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.
John 16:33 (emphasis, mine)

Our own mind, and the tricks it so often plays on us, is very often our biggest
hindrance of all in the masculine journey. It does things to us like wondering,
What are those people saying or thinking about me, when in reality, those
people arent talking about us at allmuch less giving any thought
whatsoever toward whatever it is that weve become so concerned about.

Our mind also tends to debate with our heart as to what the right thing is
that we should be doing at any given juncture. It would be quite easy if the
right solution were always to just follow your heart when those internal
conflicts arise. But that kind of a default solution is unscriptural.

Both the reasoning thoughts of our own mind, and Gods Holy Spirit, will
speak to our heart. So it is the decisions of our heartwhether or not to follow
the Holy Spirit when our minds are in errorthat we must focus on.

The Bible instructs us to take control of the thoughts our mind is thinking,
rather than allowing our minds own thoughts to take control of us. God has
given each of us this power of choice and human ability to set our minds at
ease. Otherwise, God would not have inspired Paul these four times to
instruct us to do so:

We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against

the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it
obedient to Christ.
2nd Corinthians 10:5 (emphasis, mine)
 Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.
Colossians 3:2 (emphasis, mine)

Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what
the flesh desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their
minds set on what the Spirit desires. The mind governed by the flesh is death,
but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace.
Romans 8:5-6 (emphasis, mine)

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble,

whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable
if anything is excellent or praiseworthythink about such things.
Philippians 4:8 (emphasis, mine)

The best way to do this is not by trying to stop our mind from thinking
negative thoughts, but to purposely think about other things instead. Of
course, it helps to already have something wholesome stored up in our hearts
to start thinking about, when our minds begin to run hog-wild on us like that.

Memorized truths from your favorite Scriptures and key passages of the Bible
are obviously the best weapons to have available for these mental battles
which we all face on a daily basis. As the Psalmist has also said,

I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.
Psalm 119:11

If you find your mind worrying over something, then find a verse about Gods
peace and occupy your mind with that instead. Memorize it. Meditate on it.
Say it out loud to yourself if you have to! But have it ready the next time you
need it.

If you find your mind doubting, then find a biblical truth about Gods
faithfulness. If you find your mind is in fear about something, then find a
scriptural truth about who we are in Christ, or one which describes the
confidence we have through him. These are the ways in which we overcome
the obstacles of our own negative thought patterns.

You may be thinking right now, Come on now Positive confession and all
that? It cant be that simple. Youre right! And make no mistake. It is never a
simple thing to retrain our minds to think differentlyto think godlywhen
they have become so accustomed and conditioned by our surroundings to
think doubtfully, negatively, or in fear. And this masculine journey is often a
very real spiritual battle in that regard, rather than just some leisurely human
stroll through our surroundings.
 For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers,
against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the
spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.
Ephesians 6:12

For everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that
has overcome the world, even our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world?
Only the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.
1st John 5:4-5

If you are not that biblically fluent yet to be able to search out such key
scriptures for yourself, then make maximum use of the concordance or the
index that is in the back of most Bibles today, to help you to find them.

If you have access to the Internet, then make use of a wonderful and
completely free website called Biblegateway.com, which also has most of the
reliable English translations of the Bible available to you right there, with
word-search capability to help you find what you are searching for. The Bible
is available in many other languages on the Biblegateway website as well.

Another major obstacle we all have in this journey is the crippling influence
that our own past history can have over us. Many of us have something about
our pasts that we are either ashamed of or regret. And many of us also have
hang-ups and bad habits that we have used for years to try and cope with our
past, through a means of addictive comfort or escape, rather than dealing
with the real issues of our emotional pain and distress more directly and
permanently.

I said it before in my previous book, and I will say it again in this one: We
didnt get to this broken place in our lives overnight, and so it would be
foolish of usand very disappointing to usto have an unrealistic
expectation that we can somehow solve all of those accumulated issues we
now have in just one day, either.

As I mentioned before, our Christian Faith is not a quick-fix for any of our
issues. It is merely a committed step in the right direction that, over time, will
indeed lead us to where it is that we desire to be. And I will also say this:
Christianity is the only sure and proven road to that better place that I know
of, or that I would try to encourage anyone else to follow, both for this life and
the next.

Hopeful progress in our journey is realized when we can look back at our
lives a year ago, and see that we have grown, and how God has brought us out
of some very difficult things. Encouragement does not come when we look
day to day, and see more of the little failures that we will have along the way.

So the best thing we can do is to keep our eyes focused upon Gods direction
each day, rather than upon the speed of our own progress in the journey.
Because, if we are staying focused upon God in the journey every day, then we
will certainly move forward and eventually be able to clearly see the good
progress and strides that we have made along the way. As someone else once
said, Even the longest journey is taken just one step at a time.

Turning our focus outwardly to love other people in Gods way will overcome
just about any obstacle of self that we face. When we are focused upon
trying to help other people to reach their goals, then our own journey always
seems to become less formidable. Our once impossible obstacles begin to
seem small to us again by comparison, and it will become easier to see them
through the perspective of Gods far greater grace and ability.

This is something that I had the opportunity to do for someone in my own

journey. And in doing so, it turned out to be the long awaited answer to one of
my biggest prayers. I will share more with you about how that all happened
in a couple more chapters. But for now, I want to tackle just two more major
obstacles with you.

You may also need to clean up your surroundings a little bit, and completely
cut off the harmful and destructive people whom you allow to influence your
life in negative ways. Sometimes, it is even the members of our own extended
families who do this to us, and cutting them off completely is not a realistic
option for you. But you can take steps to guard your soul from the harm that
they can inflict upon you.

Loving them from a safe distance and praying for them is often the only
option we have in situations like that. But do empower yourself with the
wisdom and personal freedom to remove yourself from an unnecessary
situation at the moment that it turns negative again. You have no biblical
obligation to continue wallow in the mud of someone elses unrepentant
personal destruction.

It would have been better for them not to have known the way of
righteousness, than to have known it and then to turn their backs on the sacred
command that was passed on to them. Of them the proverbs are true: A dog
returns to its vomit, and, A sow that is washed returns to her wallowing in the
mud.
2nd Peter 2:21-22
The last obstacle I will mention is when the unexpected happens. In that place,
we can be thrown for a loop and simply not know what we are supposed to
do next.

Sometimes these unexpected things even cause us to wander around in circles,

because we tend to return to our old and more familiar coping habits in order
to deal with the stress of the unexpected. For an alcoholic, they call it falling
off the wagon. And without some sort of intervention to help us through the
unexpected, this can all put us back into dangerous emotional places, and get
us completely lost all over againnot only in our masculine journey, but in
sorting through life itself.

If this happens to you, just as they tell someone who is lost in the wilderness,
go back to the last known point if you can get there. If not, then stay put and
try to get a rescuers attention from right where you are. Staying right where
you are is better than wandering aimlessly in circles, or farther down into the
unknown, where the chances of being found and rescued start to become
hopeless.

For our journey, our last known point might be the last time we knew we
were doing things right. So begin to do those things again! Or, if you are
uncertain if you were doing anything right, then ask for someone to help you
from right where you are. There is no shame in seeking the professional help
of a licensed Christian counselor, either.

Having someone to ask for help if we ever do experience one of these

frightening setbacks is absolutely essential. Remember how I said that God
uses people to help people, and how I have also encouraged you to become a
person who focuses on loving other people? Well it is no different when you
suddenly become the person who desperately needs to be loved!

By already having a personal support network of trusted people in your life

who you rely upon and trust to stick with you in your personal journey, you
will already be in a position to be lovingly rescued by them if the unexpected
ever suddenly happens to you.

And just as we already established how we know who our neighbors are, we
also form these close bonds and relationships with other people by being the
kind of loving friend to them that we desire to have.

As a man, our unique male gender plays a very important role in

understanding the kinds of fulfillment that a woman brings into a mans life,
vs. the very different but just as necessary role of fulfillment that another man
brings into a mans life. Men and women are very different creations, and God
created us differently for good and specific, God-ordained reasons.

The thought that, All we ever really need is God, is, in my humble opinion,
unbiblical and clich. The Bible simply does not teach this! Balanced human
companionship is indeed very necessary to our masculine journey.

Also, the religious-minded reasoning which teaches us that a mans place is to

love his wife, and that the God-ordained connection and deep devotion to his
wife should be only human companionship that the man will ever focus upon
or need in his lifethat is also, in my opinion, a very inaccurate teaching
within Christian circles.

It is much more biblical and balanced to understand how, as masculine men,

we need to have our relationship with God as our first priority. I call this
spiritual priority our vertical relationship. And if that very important vertical
relationship isnt right, or isnt being given its due priority and attention, then
we will have a very difficult time in managing our horizontal relationships in
life, too. The horizontal relationships are, of course, our human connections.

We need God in our lives, yes. But it is biblically clear to me that God created
us also with a genuine need of human companionship in our lives as well. And
not only that, but it is quite clear to me personally that most of us have a very
masculine need for both a loving wife, and for a closely connected bond with a
significant brother figure in our life.

As men, we need close relationships with all threewith God, and with a
human member of each genderin order to truly find the greatest balance
within our masculinity and human existence. This is certainly true of my own
masculinity. And though this book is not being written for women, I will also
mention here that this same, three-way biblical balance is just as necessary
and true of most women as it is for men.

But this is also good stopping point to move on to the next chapter.
Chapter 6: Finding Your Sister and Knowing Your Wife

A wife of noble character who can find? She is worth far more than
rubies. Her husband has full confidence in her and lacks nothing of value. She
brings him good, not harm, all the days of her life She sets about her work
vigorously; her arms are strong for her tasks. She sees that her trading is
profitable, and her lamp does not go out at night.
Her husband is respected at the city gate, where he takes his seat
among the elders of the land.
She is clothed with strength and dignity; she can laugh at the days to
come. She speaks with wisdom, and faithful instruction is on her tongue. She
watches over the affairs of her household and does not eat the bread of idleness.
Her children arise and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her,
saying, Many women do noble things, but you surpass them all.
Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the
Lord is to be praised. Honor her for all that her hands have done, and let her
works bring her praise at the city gate.
Proverbs 31 (condensed)

Husbands, in the same way be considerate as you live with your wives,
and treat them with respect as the weaker partner and as heirs with you of the
gracious gift of life, so that nothing will hinder your prayers.
1st Peter 3:7

About 23 years ago (it was sometime in mid-1990), I and some of the other
singles from my church were attending a Kim Boyce concert at the Christian
University of Mary Hardin-Baylor, in Belton, Texas. After the concert that
night, I was planning to drive back to Alabama to see some friends that Id
been separated from months earlier, and had begun to miss them.

Before I left, a beautiful young lady from our group approached me and asked
to pray for me; that Id have safe travel that night and during my trip. Della
was her name, and we sang in the choir together at church. I willingly agreed
to her request, and then Della took both of my hands in hers and she began to
pray for me.

I did not know Della well enough then to have thought anything like what
came to me as she prayed for me that evening, and we had never dated. But
somehow, I knew it in the very instant that Della began to pray for me that
night, that I wanted her to become my wife someday. And the idea that God
would bring that hope to pass was planted in my heart, within that single
moment.
What do you do with something like that when it hits you? And how does a
man determine if it is his own presumptive mind that is speaking to him, or if
it is actually the voice of God speaking to his heart?

I have to admit to you that I fumbled through the process of knowing what to
do myself, at the time. But I will also tell you this: That beautiful young lady
did eventually become my wife, in December of the very next year. And
looking back at it now in hindsight, I believe I can share some things with you
in how I actually fumbled through it correctly.

First of all, if God speaks something to your heart like this about another
person, no manipulation whatsoever is needed. He will indeed be speaking to
the heart of that other person as well.

It is never just a one-sided proposition when it comes to a covenant marriage

between a man and a woman who are also brother and sister in Christ. And,
though it was unknown to me at the time, I later learned from Della herself
how God was indeed also speaking similar things to her heart, during the
days and months which followed that night.

As I said, God never does something like this in a one-sided manner. In that
case, I would have had to convince Della all on my own about this idea of
marrying her. But then, this wasnt a two-sided proposition, either! And this is
why:

God was speaking to us both, and so it was his idea from the very beginning.
And that, my brothers, is called a three-way proposition. No genuinely
Christian marriage covenant should ever be just a two-sided relationship. If
God is not invited into the middle of it, then how can he bless it?

Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of

three strands is not quickly broken.
Ecclesiastes 4:12

I am not suggesting that God cannot or will not bless the relationship of a man
and a woman who fall in love and marry one another outside of his initial
inspiration to do so. All I am saying is that God must be at the center of any
truly Christian marriage covenant and relationship, whether he is there
from the very beginning, or whether he is invited in to become a part of the
marriage covenant that a man and a woman are making with each other.

As I admitted earlier, I did not know what to do with such a thing when it first
came to me, and so I kept it to myself out of my own ignorance, rather than
out of any real wisdom. But that is actually the best thing you can do with an
inspiration from the Holy Spirit, such as one so personal as this. Keep it
hidden in your heart, and allow God to either do his work and bring it to pass,
or to reveal the error of our own mistaken presumption. If there is something
more that God requires, then he will also reveal that to us when it is time.

Therefore, in the present case I advise you: Leave these men alone! Let
them go! For if their purpose or activity is of human origin, it will fail. But if it is
from God, you will not be able to stop these men; you will only find yourselves
fighting against God.
Acts 5:38-39

I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me
heavenward in Christ Jesus. All of us, then, who are mature should take such a
view of things. And if on some point you think differently, that too God will make
clear to you.
Philippians 3:14-15

Something else I did not do was to go out and tell anyone else the very
precious and personal revelation that had been dropped into my heart that
night. It was no one elses business to know! And I dont think that I even
shared it with Della, until after wed actually become man and wifenor did
Della share what God had placed in her heart about me, with anyone else,
until after it had come to pass.

We did eventually share with other people that we were each attracted to the
other. But any mention of what God had inspired us about marrying one
another, we both kept hidden within our own hearts.

If we had not done that, I believe it would have opened the doors for other
people to get in the way by helping God to bring it to pass, or that we might
even have rushed into it too soon, and messed it all up ourselves.

We can also see God working this way within Scripture. Quite often, I believe,
when he reveals something to us that is personal and intimate like this, it is to
encourage and guide us, rather than something that he intends for us to go
out and share it with the entire world:

As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus gave them orders not to
tell anyone what they had seen until the Son of Man had risen from the dead.
Mark 9:9

As I mentioned previously, if there is something more that God requires of us,

then he will reveal it to our hearts when it is time.
Something else that I fumbled through was the trusting Trusting God to
bring it all about.

There came a time after Della prayed with me that I faced being separated
from her, because of something history now calls, Desert Shield-Desert Storm.
And as that military deployment approached in September of 1990, I became
anxious that I would lose Della to someone else during the time I was gone.

In my own mind at the time, I reasoned that Della did not even know that I
liked her yet, because I had not found any right opportunity to reveal it to her.
And so I thought, Why would a beautiful young woman like her wait on the
likes of me, if some other guy comes along and wins her heart before I do?

But I did not want to seem to be rushing Gods timing, either. And only by the
grace of a loving God did I put down that fear, and I prayed, God, if you mean
for Della to be my wife, then I know that You will save her for me until I return.
Little did I know that I was doing exactly what God needed me to do as I
prayed those words from out of my heart.

In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know
what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through
wordless groans.
Romans 8:26

As soon as I prayed that prayer, I felt a peace come over me, and I just knew
that everything would be alright. If Della was taken by someone else when I
returned, then I had been mistaken about what Id felt. And if it was intended
by God to be, then she would still be there for me when I returned. Either
way, I determined that I would trust God in the matter.

It was the very next day, after I had prayed and left it all in Gods hands, that
the singles from church were all gathered together again, one last time,
before I deployed with my unit to the Middle East in the days that followed.

As I was leaving that gathering, a young lady-friend of Dellas caught me

outside, and she revealed to me that Della was attracted to me, and she
wanted to know if I liked her too? I admitted that I did, and when Dellas
girlfriend began to persuade me that I needed to share my feelings with Della
before I left for war, I took that as Gods confirmation that it was time. I
waited a moment for Gods leading within my heart, and then I went back
inside to ask Della if I could speak to her alone.

After I shared my feelings with her that day, I wrote Della a letter for every
day that I was gone well over a hundred of them. I returned home the next
April, and we were married that December. The rest is history, and we will
celebrate 22 years of marriage together this December, as I am writing this.

The moral of this story is, Learn Gods distinctive voice within your own heart,
and purpose in your heart to trust him when you hear it! More than likely, you
will sense Gods voice not as something thunderous and terrifying to you, but
as a knowing in your heart Much more like, a gentle whisper.

The Lord said, Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of
the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.
Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and
shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the
wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After
the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire
came a gentle whisper. When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face
and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave.
1st Kings 19:11-13 (emphasis, mine)

When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and
his sheep follow him because they know his voice I am the good shepherd; I
know my sheep and my sheep know me.
John 10:4 & 14 (Jesus speaking)

I have learned over the years that Gods leading is usually always a nudging in
my hearta sense of knowing what He desires in the momentif I will
simply take the time to listen.

When God desires that I am to stay put and not do something that could be
harmful to me, or that would sidetrack his purpose, then I sense that spiritual
direction as a very distinct apprehension in my heart.

Again, Christianity is relationship, not religion!

I titled this chapter, Finding Your Sister and Knowing Your Wife. My choice of
these particular words is meant to stress the importance that, if and when
you do seek to have a close masculine connection with a woman, you should
look for her among those women who are like-minded and also believe in
Jesus Christ as you do. They also highlight the greater importance of finding
the one special woman whom you intend to spend the rest of your life with in
a marriage covenant, also from among those godly women as wellif
marriage is what God inspires you to pursue for your individual life as a man.
And though I can share with you my own story of finding her as I just have, I
cant tell you how to hear God with your own heart, or how to know it if and
when you do meet the one woman whom God intends for you to marry.

What I can tell you is that the more time you are willing to spend with God by
reading the Scriptures, meditating on them, and seeking God in devotional
times of prayer; the more you will surely learn to recognize his voice when
you do hear it.

This chapter is not meant to imply, either, that every man reading this book
must become married in order to find his own masculinity. God intends some
men to remain single for good reasons as well:

I would like you to be free from concern. An unmarried man is

concerned about the Lords affairshow he can please the Lord. But a married
man is concerned about the affairs of this worldhow he can please his wife
and his interests are divided I am saying this for your own good, not to restrict
you, but that you may live in a right way in undivided devotion to the Lord.
1st Corinthians 7:32-35 (condensed)

Paul said this not to restrict any of us from finding a bride to fall in love with
and marry, but to also point out the value in remaining single; and to never
feel less than masculine for remaining unmarried, if this was your own higher
calling as a man.

Finding a loving bride to marry was certainly one of Gods highest callings
upon my own life those 23 years ago. My time spent with Della these twenty-
one-plus years in marriage covenant is a rare treasure that I wouldnt trade
for anything or anyone else in the entire world. We have built a wonderful life
and family together, and Jesus is still at the center of all of it.

So, given what I have also shared in previous chapters, can you imagine the
emotional alarm and turmoil I began to feel all over again, as I sensed within
my masculine soul a lingering and unrelenting need for male companionship,
which Della was simply incapable of ever adequately fulfilling as a woman?

Because of my wrongful presumptions about the true origins of my past

battles with the homosexual sin, I had reasoned to myself that once I was
married to a woman whom I truly loved, that I wouldnt feel the need for male
companionship in my life any longer I was wrong!

But for the longest time, I still avoided that part of my masculine soul,
thinking that it wasnt masculine at all to desire the companionship or
comfort of another mans love in my life. I reasoned that this masculine desire
was related to the kind of forbidden and shameful brokenness of my past sin,
which I so desperately wanted to leave behind meuntil God showed me the
huge difference!

Once again, this book is not about the battle I had with that particular sin, and
I do have another book that is wholly devoted to that topic. But I mention and
use it frequently as an example, to help others see how important it is to
avoid religious presumptions, and to learn to value the unique person whom
God created each one of us to be as individual men.

Although homosexuality itself is a sexual sin, the root issues and causes of
homosexual behaviors are never about sex at all. Just as every other form of
masculine brokenness always is at some level, homosexual behaviors are also
rooted in the same masculine need to simply be accepted as a man, and to see
and accept ones own self as the uniquely valuable and irreplaceable man
whom God treasures, and has intentionally created him to be.

So now, lets go find that balance.

Chapter 7: Finding Your Brother and Knowing Yourself

How the mighty have fallen in battle! Jonathan lies slain on your
heights. I grieve for you, Jonathan my brother; you were very dear to me. Your
love for me was wonderful, more wonderful than that of women.
2nd Samuel 1:25-26 (King David of Israel speaking)

Friendship or genuine closeness and connection with other men has always
seemed elusive to me. From my childhood into my adulthood, it seemed
difficult to find and form the masculine bonds of the closer kinds of friendship
and connection to other men that my masculine soul longed for.

I often blamed myself for the difficulty. And I did, of course, always have some
part to play within the difficulty that I think we all, as men, experience in that
aspect of our human relationships. But my tendency to always blame just
myself was greatly misguided, and yet another byproduct of my own
masculine insecurity.

Any relationship at allfrom that of a casual acquaintance, to a friendship, to

a family member, or in marriage itselftakes the committed work and desire
of both individuals, in order to become and remain a close relationship.

But especially within our male-male relationships, I have found that it takes
an even greater effort on our individual part, because so many men today are
fearful, broken, and extremely superficial within their own maleness.

So, as one of us musters the courage to try and befriend another, not only are
we trying to get a grip upon our own insecurity as a man, but we are also
trying to break our way through all of his! If there is not a mutual effortand
eventually, a much deeper trust from both mencloseness is just never going
to happen between two superficially masked and soulfully broken men.

For those men who are fortunate enough to have come from backgrounds of
closeness and connection with their Dad, with their brothers, or with at least
one very significant and lasting male role-model in their life; this kind of male
connection is not as difficult, nor as great of a sensed need for them.

But for men like me, I will admit to you that every time I found
disappointment in yet another attempt at a close, masculine friendship, it
made trying to form another one even more difficult. This makes it easier to
begin again to rely upon superficial substitutions for this closeness and
connection, rather than in seeking it legitimately through the workings of
genuine relationship.
This is just one of the reasons why it is also so very difficult for so many men
to break free of the addictive behaviors that we begin to rely upon, and which
do provide that addictive and superficial form of comfort to us, as a substitute
for the real thing.

But genuine male companionship and acceptance is indeed a very necessary

part of our secure place in our masculinity, and it is something you can still
find if you keep praying and looking for it And working at it!

After I had looked high and low for it over the course of my own lifetime, I
stumbled upon it quite unexpectedly one evening, simply by loving my
neighbor as myself, just as Jesus has clearly instructed each one of us to do.

I was at church one Wednesday evening about three years ago, when I
noticed another Christian brother in the front entry area of our church who
looked discouraged and sad about something. He did not look overly sad, but
sad enough that I noticed it on his face as I looked at him.

The man I speak of was a complete stranger to me, since my church family is a
very large congregationlarge enough that it is impossible to know or even
recognize everyone who attends church there, if we were to pass each other
outside of the church itself.

But when I saw this mans face, I knew in my heart that he was troubled about
something, though I did not know what. And at that point I had a simple
choice: Become involved and make him my neighbor, or ignore him for the
many other legitimate reasons that us men are so skilled at in providing
ourselves with the excuses and rationalizations we need. I chose, on that
night, to make him my neighbor by approaching him, and sincerely offering
him my ear to listen to his need, and a willingness to pray for him if he
desired me to do so.

Do you recognize a familiar trend here? This is the exact same situation I was
in when I discovered my wife for the very first time. Only it was her praying
for me on that night, those years ago.

And I did not tell you so in the previous chapter. But when Della prayed for
me that night, I was later involved in a traffic accident that could have easily
been a deadly one, on that very same night as I traveled. To this day, I believe
that it was Dellas prayer for safety and protection that allowed me to walk
away from that accident without so much as a scratch.

When we become a Christian Neighbor to someone, the real blessing inside of

such exchanges might well be the hidden one that God desires to bestow
upon you, simply for doing so! I can see now that this was certainly the case
for me after I approached Oscar to pray for him that night at church.

In the three years since that night, we have become more like twin brothers
than just friends, in how close we both are to each other. And Oscar would
debate it with me as to who actually received the bigger blessing within the
bond of our brotherhood and friendship that has grown out of our otherwise
brief connection as strangers that night.

I dont know that I could feel any closer to a biological brotherif I actually
had onethan I feel to Oscar, within the brotherly love that we both share so
mutually with each other today. But because of the unexpected blessing of the
brotherhood that God bestowed upon me for taking time to love my neighbor
that night, I never have to wonder anymore, what it would be like to have a
real brother, either! I and Oscar count each other as real brothers in every
way, just as much as we also treasure each other as a beloved friend.

Now that I have experienced this renewed balance of feminine and masculine
human companionship within my life, I can see much more clearly how
unique and how indispensable that both of these relationships are to me,
within the differently important qualities that both women and men bring in
fulfilling a mans life.

My wife is the one who completes me in every way, because of our unique
and engendered differences. Where I am lacking, she fulfills and completes
me. And where she is lacking, I fulfill and complete her. Together we become
one flesh in all of the ways that God intendsbody, soul and spiritand in
the one uniquely divine and loving way that only a married man and woman
can do so together, within the clearly ordained boundaries of Gods divine
love toward, and covenant with all of humankind.

My brother is the one who meets me at all of the masculine places of

understanding where only another man can, simply because of the fact that
we are both men. Because of the fact that men and women are created so
differently, only a brother can know and experience everything in the exact
same way that I experience it as a man, and also be there to provide each
other with that deeper level of encouragement and understanding, when we
feel inadequate within our own masculinity.

The Lord God said, It is not good for the man to be alone
Genesis 2:18a

It was in the Garden of Eden, before humankind ever fell into sin, and while
the first man, Adam, was still in perfect, complete, and unbroken fellowship
with God, that God himself said, It is not good for the man to be alone.
Therefore, it does not take a rocket scientist or a biblical scholar to figure out
that the aloneness that God was speaking of there in the garden is that of
human companionship itself.

It is God himself who ordained that it is not good enough for men to merely be
in perfect fellowship with God, when there is no human companionship to go
along with it. It is, in fact, the sharing of Gods love with other human beings
that makes our joy in the Lord complete:

The bride belongs to the bridegroom. The friend who attends the
bridegroom waits and listens for him, and is full of joy when he hears the
bridegrooms voice. That joy is mine, and it is now complete.
John 3:29 (John the Baptist speaking)

We write this to make our joy complete.

1st John 1:4

I have much to write to you, but I do not want to use paper and ink.
Instead, I hope to visit you and talk with you face to face, so that our joy may be
complete.
2nd John 1:12

I titled this chapter, Finding Your Brother and Knowing Yourself. I chose this
wording to demonstratefor me at leastthat even as a married man, I still
needed to find a brother in order to truly know myself as a man.

And lest there be any confusion or doubt here about what I am saying, love is
never synonymous with sex. And making love (sexual intercourse) is an
expression of human love that God has reserved to be shared between one
man and one woman alone, within the confines of their marriage covenant:

Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a person commits are
outside the body, but whoever sins sexually, sins against their own body.
1st Corinthians 6:18

It is Gods will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid
sexual immorality; that each of you should learn to control your own body in a
way that is holy and honorable, not in passionate lust like the pagans, who do
not know God; and that in this matter no one should wrong or take
advantage of a brother or sister. The Lord will punish all those who commit
such sins, as we told you and warned you before.
1st Thessalonians 4:3-6 (emphasis, mine)
 Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, submit
yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the
head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the
Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their
husbands in everything.
Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and
gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with
water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church,
without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this
same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves
his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed
and care for their body, just as Christ does the churchfor we are members of
his body. For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united
to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. This is a profound mysterybut
I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you also must
love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.
Ephesians 5:21-33 (emphasis, mine)

In closing this chapter, I guess that I should also share with you that in the
past three years of knowing Oscar as my brother, he and I have seen literally
everything restored to him and his family that we prayed so earnestly
together for that night at church, when we first met each other.

God is abundantly good, and he longs to be abundantly good to us! His

greatest opportunity to do so comes at the moments when we are abundantly
good to one another.
Chapter 8: Finding Fatherhood

Start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are
old they will not turn from it.
Proverbs 22:6

Honor your father and motherwhich is the first commandment with a

promise: so that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on
the earth.
Fathers, do not exasperate your children [do not irritate them; do not
provoke them to a high degree; do not annoy them extremely]. Instead, bring
them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.
Ephesians 6:2-4 (clarification, mine)

My father was a soulfully broken man. Of course, I did not realize this
as a boy, and so I internalized every negative thing that I felt from him as if it
were a fault or shortcoming of my own, until I grew up soulfully broken
myself.

Notice that I did not say that my Dad was a bad man. I said that he was a
broken man, just as so many of our human fathers were. My Dad did the very
best he could do in being a good father to me, given the broken legacy and
example of fatherhood that he had also received from his own biological
fatherwhom, by the way, I have never even met, because this biological
grandfather of mine disowned my Dad while he was still just a boy himself.

I mention this chain of masculine brokenness within my own family, because

it is not just within my own family that it is occurring. This is a broken and
growing trend within our misguided society itself, and the only way to fix it is
to decide to be the one man in our own family who refuses to allow it to
continue to pass down to the next generation of our very own children.

The only way to break the sinful chain of this brokenness is to become the
man who decides, Im going to love God, so that God can teach us again how
to love our own children.

for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for
the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me.
Exodus 20:5 (emphasis, mine)

This is not a trend wherein a so-called loving God is punishing children for
something that their fathers did. No, this is a trend of human fathers passing
sins brokenness on from one generation to another, simply because the
previous generations refused to love God, and never dealt with their own
brokenness through Gods provisions of love, grace, and forgiveness.

According to Fatherhood.org and the US Census Bureau, as of 2011, there are

24 million children in America (one out of every three) who live in biological
father-absent homes. Fatherhood.org further contends that as a direct
consequence, there is a "father factor" in nearly all of the social issues facing
America today.

You can scroll down through their website to view the data on the effects of
father absence upon poverty, maternal and child health, incarceration, crime,
sexual activity, teen pregnancy, child abuse, drug and alcohol abuse,
education, and childhood obesity.

The sad part is that it becomes very difficult for these children to learn how to
trust in a biblically described Father God, when the only real example of
fatherhood or fathering that theyve ever experienced has been a sinfully
broken and sometimes very painful one.

Our job, as masculine men who become fathers to children, is first of all to
learn that we ourselves are all precious and deeply beloved sons of the Most
High God! No matter what our own earthly fathers may have said to us (or
didnt say to us when they could and should have), those negative internal
ideas we have come to believe about ourselves are all lies, and untrue in the
eyes of the God and Savior who died to love us!

And he said: Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little
children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
Matthew 18:3 (Jesus speaking)

From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the
whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the
boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps
reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. For in
him we live and move and have our being. As some of your own poets have said,
We are his offspring.
Acts 17:26-28

We must learn how to trust the love of God in our own lives again, so that we
also can love God, and so that God can teach us also how to pass that secure
sense of love and fatherhood on down to our own children, and break any
cycle of brokenness that has occurred in our own family trees before us.
Fathers who are still so soulfully broken while raising their own sons or
daughters are usually passing their brokenness down into the hearts and
lives of their children, without even realizing what they have done to us. It
may be innocently unintentional, and done in complete ignorance. But that
fact does not lessen any of the negative impact it still has upon their
childrens lives and their future.

If the cycle goes unbroken, then these sons will each grow up to become the
next generation of fathers, who will start the cycle all over again. But with a
new life in Jesus Christ, that family curse is broken forever!

He then brought them out and asked, Sirs, what must I do to be

saved? They replied, Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be savedyou
and your household. Then they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all
the others in his house.
Acts 16:30-32 (emphasis, mine)

To a child, every man they come in contact with is a powerful force. Our
power over a child is wielded not only in the things we do, but also in the
things we say, and how we say them! And with that great power, we can both
influence and inspire the heart of a child for their good, or we can also do
great damage and inflict years of painful harm and suffering.

Even the men who may never have children of their own do have an
obligation and duty to be very mindful of the hearts of the children around
them, over whom they may influence and interact with, even if it is only
through our spoken words.

So you see, we all have a responsibility not only to ourselves in this masculine
journey, but we have a responsibility to the generations that will follow on in
our footsteps after us, as well. So we must do all we can to love God, love
ourselves, and to love other peopleespecially the children in our lives
because we know that they are also Gods children.

We need a generation of fathers, and of men with fatherly hearts, who will
raise their sons and daughters into a selfless generation, rather than another
selfish one And most especially, we need to do this for our sons, because
they will soon become the next generation of fathers!

Young men today have become so troubled and lost because they have been
raised by a generation of fathers who were lost themselves. All of us have lost
our own masculine way.
Our post-modern, westernized society has turned biblical discipline into a
crime, so that our sons no longer have any real mindful respect for our
fatherly authority. Society says that our discipline can no longer inflict the
physical pain that is intended to be a much stronger and more keenly
memorable deterrent from doing wrong a second, third and fourth time. Our
children learn quickly in this passive, undisciplined society, that they can do
whatever they want to despise the authority of their parents. But discipline
needs to hurt for a very biblical reason, and it needs to be present in the
childs memory to be an effective persuader to our sinful human hearts!

Whoever spares the rod hates their children, but the one who loves
their children is careful to discipline them.
Proverbs 13:24

No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on,

however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have
been trained by it.
Hebrews 12:11

Love your sons enough to discipline them for their future good, and by
effectively spanking their little behind whenever they need it! Do this before
they become an unruly older son who despises both your authority, and your
love.

Do this only at home and behind closed doors, and not so intensely so as to
scar them (dont abuse them; dont leave permanent marks). But spank them
hard enough for them to remember it, and hard enough for them to know that
they have been spanked! Just one effective swat to severely sting their
buttocks is all it takes to apply disciplinary correction. And if you were ever
spanked by your own father, then you know exactly the sting that I speak of.

If they are unruly in a public place, tell them the consequence immediately,
and then always follow through with your discipline after you get back home,
or to a private place that is completely out of the publics hearing and view. If
a child knows what a spanking is already, then just your promise of one will
be effective enough to control their unruliness in a public place, where a
proper spanking could get you into trouble with the law these days.

Also speak to your children and reassure them of your love every time you
discipline, so that they clearly understand what they have done wrong, and so
that they never doubt your love toward them, or confuse your discipline with
their self-worth. Never, ever discipline them in your anger!
We also need to teach our sons not to accept societys broken perceptions
about human sexuality. If we, as their fathers, are sexually brokenviewing
pornography and looking at women (or men, in some cases) as sexual
servants rather than as our sisters and brothers in Christs Kingdom, then
nothing we say to our sons on this topic will be effective.

That old saying, Like father, like son has much bearing, and it is a truthful
saying. So be mindful of it in all of your ways, and especially in your own
thoughts, actions and attitudes about human sexuality.

And just in case theres any doubt, shame on you if you are the father who
thinks it is okay to throw your sixteen-year-old son a rubber, and tell him to
be careful, thinking youve just done your fatherly part to steer him in the
right direction.

If you dont know how to handle this topic in speaking with your older son
about it, then seek out some better advice from a Christian counselor,
Christian pastor, or a trusted and well-grounded Christian friend.

Our sons need to understand how to love and respect the woman who will
become their wife someday, by seeing how their fathers love and respect
their own mothers, both in our homes, and out in public.

They need to be taught to value and understand virginity as a sacred and

precious thing again. They need to be taught that every woman is another
mans precious daughter, and that every woman is potentially another mans
future wife in Gods eyes. Not only that, but our sons need to know also that
they themselves are potentially some other womans future husband
someday, and that their own virginity is just as sacred and precious to God as
any womans is.

Our sons need to be taught the value of work and earning a righteous living,
and to respect another mans property And I could go on, and on, and on
with this, but I think you probably get the point well enough now if I stop
right here.

Suffice to say that what we need to teach our sons is the reverent fear, love
and respect of the Lord our God, so that we, as fathers, do help them to grow
into the same kind of masculine man that each one of us is now seeking to
become in our own journey.

One final note: The only way that we can teach our sons and daughters in a
way that is effective, is to spend intentional time with them. No amount of
correction or discipline can compensate for time that weve never spent
simply being involved in their precious and very impressionable lives, while
they are still young, and then loving them all the way into maturity. And
likewise, no amount of teaching will overcome the witness of the visible
example that you set, through the life that you live daily, right in front of them.

May we all find Gods wisdom and grace to provide our sons and our
daughters with righteous footsteps to follow in after us, as we ourselves
continue onward in this masculine journey, in Christ Jesus.
Chapter 9: Finding Sonship Again

Remember your Creator in the days of your youth, before the days of
trouble come and the years approach when you will say, I find no pleasure in
them.
Ecclesiastes 12:1

In the previous chapter, I mentioned that in order to become good fathers

ourselves, we need to first find the heart of the son inside of us againthe
heart of the son who knows that he is highly treasured and dearly loved.

As men, we were all sons at one time. But as broken men, there are no doubt
some of usperhaps, many of uswho may not have felt like we were loved
as sons, or treasured as such. So we need to stop there for a moment, and
forever realize right here and now, that in Gods family, we are indeedeach
one of usbeloved sons! We dont need to stop here long, but we do need to
stop here before we can move on in our masculine journey.

This is, unfortunately, not something that I can believe for you. This is a truth
that you must grab hold of for yourself, and determine in your own heart to
forever believe that it is the truth about yourself. And many of us will have to
look beyond our earthly fathers, and look heavenward in order to believe it.

First, if there is something that you need to forgive your earthly father for,
then let it go and forgive him! Forgiveness does not mean that your father did
not hurt you. Forgiveness simply means that you refuse to carry the pain of it
anymore, and that you give it all over to God.

God cannot work very well with the heart of a man who is holding on to
unforgiveness there. If you find difficulty or doubt in this, then ask God to
help you, and remember that forgiveness is a decision, not a feeling.

Believe it or not, the real benefit of forgiveness is the healing that takes place
within your own soul once you choose to do it, rather than for the release of
the person whom you are forgiving over into Gods hands.

Second, if there is something that you need to forgive yourself for, then do
that now as well. Gods love toward you is never determined by anything that
you have or have not done. You simply cannot earn Gods loveso stop trying
to! God loves you because God IS love, and because that is what He has
determined to do. Love also is not a feeling. Love is a decision of the heart!

You will never be successful at loving other people Gods way, until you can
learn to love yourself!
 For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and
blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us for adoption to sonship through
Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and willto the praise of his
glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves.
Ephesians 1:4-6

Third, say this out loud to yourself each and every morning when you get up,
and again each and every night before you go to bed:

God loved me enough to die for me. God loves ME! And because he loves me, I
can also love myself. It is okay to love myself, and I do love myself!

Do this again and again, for as many days as it takes to firmly believe it within
your own heart Just do it! And with that, now we can move on.
Chapter 10: Finding Masculinity

My brothers, if you have been able to glean at least three inspirational and
useful pieces of information, which you intend to apply to your own life from
out of the previous nine chapters; then congratulations! You have just plotted
yourself on the map, and you are now walking in the path of your own
individual masculine journey.

I never intended this book to give you all of the answers that you need in this
journey, because we are two different people. All I intended was for it to help
you to see your masculine world a little differently, so that you could identify
some key terrain features for yourself, and figure out for yourself where you
need to go next in this masculine journey of manhood.

Everything that the world around us tries to convince us of, in telling us what
men are supposed to be All of that junk is subject to error, because none of it
is based upon any sure foundation of reasoning. I am not saying that you
automatically reject the worlds definition of maleness and masculinity. What
I am saying is that if the reasoning or opinion itself is not based upon
Scriptural truth, then it is probably not the truth.

The feminists have emasculated us to the point that we are ridiculed and
chastised for doing something as simple as holding a door open for a lady.
They say we have no choice but to give women more place and authority
within once traditionally-male roles. And they make most men out to be
absolutely incompetent idiots in the ways that they portray husbands and
fathers on todays television shows. This is because most feminists are
soulfully broken women, and they are trying to convince the world that the
biblically traditional male role no longer has any legitimate place.

The equal rights crowd has encroached upon almost every single one of our
environments that use to be exclusive to men, saying that this sort of all-male
seclusion has no lawful place within a fair and equal society. And in the
process, they have denied many men of that fulfillment within their primal
character and soul, to simply gather together with and be men among men.
This crowd, too, is trying to convince the world that biblically traditional
masculinity no longer has any legitimate place.

Our young men are no longer taught the value of treating a woman like a lady,
and they grow up lost and confused about what, exactly, their own role and
place as a male human being is supposed to be. It is painfully obvious to them
that men and women are created vastly different, and yet they are forced into
a world that is trying to convince them that absolutely everything should be
exactly the same between the two genders. What tragic stupidity!
And do I even need to mention how far down the immoral toilet that the
sexual freedom crowd has taken us, or just how greatly all of this so-called
freedom has confused and misled our children in their own internal view of
themselves and other people? Every toilet leads to a sewer Im just sayin!

Likewise, the pro-choice/abortion crowd has introduced a society to our

children wherein the most precious gift we havelife itselfis freely taken
from the most helpless and defenseless among us.

So, how do you suppose this makes our children feel when they also begin to
feel helpless and defenseless? Isnt it obvious? They devalue their own
confidence, self-worth, and value as a person, because they reason that
someone with more power than they have has the human right to come
along and take life from them whenever it becomes more convenient to do so!

And then they too come to the place of reasoning where they also eventually
begin to live their own life as if they should have the right to do the very
same thing to anybody else who is weaker than they are, simply because our
society has already taught them, Thats just the way life is!

My point here is that we are living in a godless society, my brothers. And to be

masculine in the ways that I believe truly matter the most, we are going to
have to be prepared to come against all of that immorality from a place of
sound biblical truth and confidence.

There is no way that a book like this can cover the What should I do? for
every situation any of us ever will face in life, and that was also not my intent.
My intent was simply to try and help you to set a course that is in the
righteous direction. But we can revisit some of the key points in this final
chapter to make the journey much simpler.

My brothers, I do not have all of the answers. But I have pointed you toward
the One who does! His name is Jesus Christ. And if that sounds at all clich,
then you have completely missed the greater understanding of exactly who
Jesus is, and what he came to do for each one of us.

If you lose your way; Jesus said, I am the Way! If you dont know what the
truth is; Jesus said, I am the Truth! If you desire a far better hope in this life
than what you see now, and a hope for all eternity; Jesus said, I am the Life!

Jesus answered, I am the way and the truth and the life. No one
comes to the Father except through me.
John 14:6 (Jesus speaking; emphasis, mine)
If you forget what is most important and dont know what to do, then simply
remember to love. If you feel trapped by other peoples opinion of you, then
free yourself with Gods opinion of you.

If you still find yourself, at times, wondering what it means to be a man, then
follow the example of the one true Son of the Living God who created all of
mankind!

Follow Jesus Christ, and the good examples of those men in your life who also
follow him in visible daily devotion and genuine relationship, rather than in
mere religion. You can recognize such men by the evidence of the love,
courage, and great peace and contentment that you will see in their lives.

But most important of all, learn who Jesus is! Discover the Good News that is
in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Discover his love; discover his character. Discover
his human life and his divine sacrifice. Discover the gift of the Salvation that
Jesus purchased for you and me.

Read the four biblical accounts we have of Jesus lifethe books of Matthew,
Mark, Luke and John. These are the Gospel Accountsthe Good News! And
they are the first four books of the New Testament.

You personal and daily relationship with Christ begins by having prayed a
sincere prayer, like the one I have provided for you at the end of chapter 3.
Once you belong to Jesus Christ, that is when the true masculine journey really
begins!
And finally, my Brothers, <FONT: begin size 9.5>

Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is

faithful. And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good
deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but
encouraging one anotherand all the more as you see the Day approaching.
Hebrews 10:23-25

In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have
had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven
genuineness of your faithof greater worth than gold, which perishes even though
refined by firemay result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.
Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him
now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you
are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls.
1st Peter 1:6-9

For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and
to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control,
perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, mutual affection;
and to mutual affection, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing
measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your
knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
2nd Peter 1:5-8

If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your
children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit [our
comforter and counselorthe One who never leaves us] to those who ask him!
Luke 11:13 (Jesus speaking; additional clarification, mine)

I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his masters
business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my
Father I have made known to you.
John 15:15 (Jesus speaking)

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own
understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths
straight.
Proverbs 3:5-6

Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God
[reverently love, honor and respect Him] and keep his commandments, for this is the
duty of all mankind. For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every
hidden thing, whether it is good or evil.
Ecclesiastes 12:13-14 (clarification, mine) <FONT: end font size 9.5>

Godspeed!
Appendix A: Vintage-American Photographs of Men <FONT: begin size 9.5>

The vintage photographs in this collection tell a story of another timea time
when men could gather together and simply be men among men.

The prevalence and complete innocence of the non-sexual masculine intimacy,

affection, and even the social male nudity which appears in so many of the photos
from this era, are all indicative of a time in our history before open homosexuality
and gay activism.

With the approach of the American sexual revolution in the early 1960s, and the
introduction of destructive ideologies like sexual freedom and the other social
rebellions which were spawned out of that era, male social interaction was deeply
affected. Men saw a need to withdraw to an acceptable social distance from one
another, in order to avoid any accusation or suspicion of the depraved behavior of
homosexuality, and it has been their sonsour own generationswho have
suffered the most for it.

One cannot viewmuch less begin to understand and appreciatethe intimacy

so openly displayed within these photographs, when viewed through the
distorted lenses of our post-modern, westernized ways of thinking, which have
become so sexualized in nature.

As one of those sons now viewing these photographs through a revived and
awakened understanding of that era, however, I find that I grieve the loss of a
much simpler and less complicated time gone by. It was a time where completely
heterosexual men would demonstrate their love toward each other and share in
their deep sense of brotherhood, through open displays of the kinds of
affectionate touch and interaction that are shown in so many of these vintage
photos.

Without so much as a passing thought toward any of the kinds of depravity that
our society will readily associate with such affection today, it is clear to me that
the men in these photos simply enjoyed being together with each other. They
were not at all reluctant or shy about showing it openly in front of other men, or
to a camera lens. To them, this was just a natural way of being men among men,
and there was nothing sexual about it.

If only Id known in my youth what I have discovered now, later in life, so that I
might have experienced this kind of closeness and camaraderie without ever
having felt like there was something wrong with me for desiring it. But by the
grace of a loving God, this innocence has been restored to me now, as an adult
man.

It is my hope and prayer that other men might also see it evident right there in
these photos, find an appreciation of it, and begin to have this masculine
innocence restored to their own heart as well. <FONT: end font size 9.5>
 Masculine Photo Gallery
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 If you are interested in owning my complete collection of digital
photos, feel free to contact me with regard to purchasing a photo DVD
containing over 4600 digital images in bitmap (bmp) format. Parental guidance
is suggested, as the complete collection also contains images of non-sexual in
nature, social male nudity. My collection of vintage photos is intended as a
historical learning tool, and it is not intended for pornographic use.
Appendix B: Contact & Additional Information

Please feel free to contact me with any comments or questions that you may
have, or to purchase a DVD with my complete vintage photo collection.

mail@beyondtheshadesofgray.org

Also, here is a listing of web articles that also address some of the issues of
masculinity, which I personally enjoyed and found to be helpful. All of these
links were still accurate at the time of publishing:

Bosom Buddies
A Photo History of Male Affection
artofmanliness.com/2012/07/29/bosom-buddies-a-photo-history-of-male-
affection

The Gospel Coalition

Sexual Freedom Always Curtails Other Freedoms
thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevinwax/2012/12/06/sexual-freedom-
always-curtails-other-freedoms

HistoryLink.org
Young Mens Christian Association (YMCA) of Greater Seattle
Part 3: Readjustment
www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&File_Id=3100

Torah Follow the Path

A Torah View on Homosexuality
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My first book, Beyond the Shades of Gray, can be purchased directly from
WestBow Press bookstore, or from any major book retailer.
bookstore.westbowpress.com/Products/SKU-000509722/Beyond-the-
Shades-of-Gray.aspx
About the Author

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Dean Bailey was born and raised in the east San
Francisco Bay area, and remained a resident of
California until he graduated high school at the age
of 18, and began his military career in the armed
services.

His military career spanned the course of 28 years,

with 23 years of active service, and sent him to
many different locations across the United States,
and around the world. The foreign locations
included Germany, Belgium, France, the Sinai of
Egypt, Israel, South Korea, and also included
combat tours to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Iraq.

Including tours of duty as both an enlisted soldier and as an officer, his active
service began with a two-year assignment in the Military Police Corps, and
then he spent the remainder of his career as a Chief Warrant Officer and
helicopter pilot.

Since his retirement from active military service, Dean continues his close ties
with the U.S. Military, and he remains a strong and outspoken advocate for
truth concerning homosexual behaviors, and speaking out against the Obama
Administration's aberrant and forced repeal of the Department of Defense
"Don't Ask Don't Tell" policy.

During two different breaks in his active military service, the author returned
to a career in law enforcement, where he served 3 years as a Sheriff Deputy in
Contra Costa County, California, and another 3 years, as a city police officer,
within the State of Texas. The author still resides in Texas today, together
with his wife of 23 years, and their two daughters.

Dean met his wife, Della, while attending their local church in Texas, and she
has been a constant source of support, encouragement, and inspiration to the
author in his life journey, ever since.

The author became a Christian believer in 1983, while still serving as an

American soldier, stationed in Germany. It was there that he began a long
process of coming to terms with the undesired homosexual feelings that he
had been experiencing since his childhood.
Along the way, he found that he also had a passion for writing, and he
unknowingly began the project of his first book, Beyond the Shades of Gray, by
writing down a brief one-page testimonial to Christ, in January of 2001. Over
the span of the next ten years, the accumulation of his writings became the
manuscript for the book, which was finally published in January of 2012, at
the encouragement of his wife.

Additionally, a videotaped interview with Dean, which recently aired

nationwide, and which discusses the issues addressed in Deans first book,
Beyond the Shades of Gray, is also available from Pure Passion TV, at this web
address URL:

www.purepassion.us/index.php/pure-passion-tv/tv-program-schedule

If you would like Dean to come and speak at your church or event, please
send your inquiries to him at the e-mail address listed in the contact
information appendix.
 <BACK COVER>
If you are a man who has ever had doubts or questions about your
masculine soul, then this book was certainly intended for you! It is a book
written specifically for men, from a male authors own Christian journey
and perspective, in sharing the heart of what he learned while searching
out his own masculine place and role in this world.
The book is intended to help men discover how to find their own
masculine place in this world, both through inward searching of the soul,
and through a process of discovering what truly matters in this life. The
book also intentionally leads men on a journey into the heart of Christ.
Women are also invited to read this book, and glimpse into the
places of this masculine journey, that you may discover how to better
understand the man you love, and how to better cooperate with the divine
work of the Holy Spirit upon his masculine soul.

Category: Christian, Self-help