Biblical Masculinity: Empowered to Build & Protect
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
Benjamin Kreps (02:18):
Hey everyone and welcome to the Mark Prater podcast where our aim is to connect our global family of Sovereign Grace churches with our executive director. Mark, you are not in Pennsylvania. You are on the road again. So where are you and what are you doing there?
Mark Prater (02:44):
Well, I'm actually in a hotel room, Fairfield Inn in Conroe, Texas, which is a northern suburb of Houston. And I am here to participate and speak at a regional men's conference, the South Central region. They call themselves the Texas region appropriately. So Regional Men's Conference. And the theme of this conference is Empowered. It is really men empowered by the Spirit to live for Christ. And Jon Payne will be teaching a main session tonight on Union with Christ. Walt Alexander, tomorrow morning is preaching on How the Word of God Empowers us to Live for Christ. I'm doing a message tomorrow night, really Empowered by the Spirit to live for Christ. And in that I want to just clarify what it means to be a man as biblically defined and how men follow Christ. And then a main session on Saturday morning from Billy Raies on Empowered by the Father's Love. And then there's some breakout sessions. Tomorrow afternoon I'll be teaching one of those on The Gifts of the Spirit.
(03:55):
So it's a wonderful conference that these men have planned and it's an honor to be here. And it's just one of the ways I see God at work among the men in our churches in Sovereign Grace. And I think it's an important time because there are many in our society right now, our culture, if you read, that are saying we have a crisis of masculinity in our culture today. And there would be some stats that would back something up like that; men feel undervalued because of changing gender roles. They wonder about are they going to have less economic opportunity, et cetera, et cetera. Some pundits will talk about how suicide rates among young men are up, all those pointing to a crisis of masculinity. But I think for the Christian, we don't really have a crisis of masculinity.
(04:49):
Not that we don't have struggles and issues. What I mean is that scripture gives us clarity about what it means to be a man, clearly defined in scripture. And so there's not a searching for definition or even identity as a man because we have God's word in a world that's very confused about gender right now. And masculinity being one of those areas where they're confused. So I'm very grateful for Darrel Schiel, regional leader here, putting this conference together because he just wants to strengthen men in Christ. And part of a biblical understanding of masculinity is that it's centered in Jesus Christ. So very grateful for this conference and it's a joy to be here.
Benjamin Kreps: (05:37):
Sounds wonderful. 'Sure a bunch of us would love to be there with you, but you are currently immersed in thinking about talking about men and what God's word has to say to encourage and help men because you're at this conference. And last week you were at the Northeast Men's Conference, Northeast Region Men's Conference, which a number of our guys from Living Hope came, 'wasn't able to go sadly, but Josh Blount, our friend Josh Blount, spoke there. 'Looking forward to listening to the audio. I just got those in my email, his messages recently. Tell us about that Men's retreat.
Mark Prater (06:17):
Yeah, that was a men's retreat sponsored by Covenant Fellowship Church, a church where I'm a pastor and we invited several churches from the region. You had guys there from Living Hope, from your church as you mentioned, Ben. And it was just a wonderful time because of Josh Blount. Josh Blount is a gift to our family of churches. If you don't know Josh, he is a pastor at Living Faith Church in Franklin, West Virginia. So he made the long five hour drive up to the Philadelphia area. We were actually out near you more in the Lancaster, Pennsylvania area at a retreat center. And Josh taught three times on the topic of masculinity. And he just defined it really, really well. It is a God-given lifelong calling to build and protect, is essentially what Josh was teaching. And it really did root men, and not only in a biblical definition of masculinity, what Josh did is he rooted us in what we are called to do as men encompassed in two verbs, as he says, to build and to protect.
(07:24):
And along with that, he then centered us in the gospel because as men, true masculinity is a Christian man centered in Christ. And so there's those gospel connections that are made. And that was very, very helpful because as we try to be men, we are going to sin along in that process and there is forgiveness in Christ as we seek to grow as men who are in Christ. So he just gave a wonderful, essentially biblical theology of masculinity and really called us to live as men. And I can't wait for you to know this, and it's just a bit of a heads up, but he's written a book on masculinity, Josh has, that I think is going to serve our churches and bring clarity not only into the culture, but I think even in the evangelical world because I think Josh gets his definition of masculinity right, because he is a wonderful student of scripture and a wonderful teacher of scripture as well.
(08:31):
And throughout the retreat we had wonderful discussions. After a second message, we broke down into groups. And the conversation I was in with my group was just really edifying. We were talking about some of our challenges as men, how we can help each other as men. And then we just also just had times to respond to the preaching of the word because the Spirit of God was at work convicting men of areas where we need to grow. One area in particular, bitterness, that he drew out in his third message. And there were a number of men that responded to that sermon by repenting of bitterness and how that affects their marriages, for example. So just really wonderful work by Josh. It is just, I think again, another example of how God is at work in our small family of churches. And one of the ways that he's at work is he's strengthening men, men who want to follow Christ in a world that's confused about masculinity. And may we be men by the grace of God who build and protect our lives, our homes, our churches, and our workplaces. And may we all do that for the glory of Christ.
Benjamin Kreps (09:48):
Amen. Constantly you're hearing about this crisis of masculinity that you referred to earlier. And part of that is there is this appetite for encouragement and wisdom when it comes to how men think about themselves, even just broadly in our culture. And there are a number of resources, secular resources, more secular where there's some common grace insights and some help there perhaps. But we have the straight up 100 proof, uncut wisdom of God's word full of all that we need when it comes to instruction and encouragement and direction from God's word. We have that in our hands to give to our people. And so it's important for us as pastors especially, to be thinking about how can we serve men? How can we bless the men in our church and equip and strengthen them because we have just what they need when it comes to them growing up in maturity to be men who glorify God with their lives.
(10:49):
So sounds like you're having a great couple of weeks focused on this topic and serving the folks down in Texas, the men down there with your breakout. So God bless you. Looking forward to hearing how that goes. And thank you to everybody for watching the podcast, checking out the podcast. See you here next week. Lord willing. Bye for now.