The Daily Blade: Joby Martin & Kyle Thompson
The Daily Blade, hosted by Pastor Joby Martin of the Church of Eleven22 and Kyle Thompson of Undaunted.Life, is a short-form devotional show that equips Christians to apply the Word of God to their everyday lives.
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The Daily Blade: Joby Martin & Kyle Thompson
#67 - Kyle Thompson // A Godly Man Does Not Rely on His Own Strength Alone
We continue our ten-element series on biblical manhood by tackling Element Nine: a godly man does not rely on his own strength alone. This counterintuitive principle challenges our cultural conditioning toward self-sufficiency and stoic independence.
• Review of Elements 1-8: surrender to Christ, selflessness, holiness, repentance, loving one's wife, sexual purity, protecting the mind, and humility
• Element Nine directly confronts our natural desire for self-reliance
• The problem with stoicism: looking inside ourselves for power and contentment
• Jeremiah 17:9 reminds us the heart is "deceitful above all things"
• Philippians 4:13 is often misapplied but actually speaks to God infusing us with His strength
• God empowers us specifically for His purposes and will, not unlimited personal endeavors
• The "lone wolf" mentality leads to isolation and vulnerability
• True strength comes from acknowledging our need for God's power
Come back tomorrow for our final installment - Element Ten of a godly man.
Welcome to the Daily Blade. The Word of God is described as the sword of the Spirit, the primary spiritual weapon in the Christian's armor against the forces of evil. Your hosts are Joby Martin and Kyle Thompson, and they stand ready to equip men for the fight. Let's sharpen up.
Speaker 2:All right, guys, over the last couple of weeks we've been looking at the 10 elements of a godly man that we see in Scripture. So, element one a godly man has surrendered his life to Christ. Element two a godly man is selfless. Element three a godly man strives for holiness. Element four a godly man is repentant. Element five a godly man loves his wife as Christ loved the church. Element six a godly man is sexually pure. Element seven a godly man protects his mind. And element eight a godly man is humble. Today we're looking at element nine of a godly man.
Speaker 2:A godly man does not rely on his own strength alone. Now, I'm just going to tell you this right from the jump I hate this one. I mean, I hate it and I'm the one that wrote it right. Okay, that's you know. When I was going back doing these speeches, let's give like my top 10 list of elements of a godly man as we see from scripture. And this one was just so readily apparent I didn't want to put it on the list, but I did. Why? Because I'm a very conscientious guy. If you take the big five personality tests, I'm incredibly high. I'm like a 99 out of 100 on conscientiousness. Not only am I going to get it done over? In order to get it done, I love relying on my own strength because that typically works out for me.
Speaker 2:But that's a problem, right, and part of that is because you know I, as many others in modernity, have been kind of pulled to more of a stoic philosophy. You know the philosophy of stoicism, so we see people going back and reading you know Zeno of Sidium, that's the founder of stoicism and then they'll read Marcus Aurelius and Seneca the Younger, and you know they'll read stuff from some modern day Stoics, if you can call them that, like Ryan Holiday or Tim Ferriss or Donald Robertson and guys. There's a lot of value that you can get from Stoicism, from Stoic philosophy. Again, we've seen people that are like you know Jordan Peterson will say themselves to be the guy that's under control and there's a lot of value in that, I promise. But there's a big, probably the main problem with stoicism is that it requires that we look inside of ourselves in order to gain power and contentment. We have to look to us, to ourselves, and look. Jeremiah 17, nine should disabuse us of that notion because it reads this the heart is deceitful, above all things, and desperately sick. Who can understand it. But the thing is, guys, is we should look outside of ourselves for power and contentment. We know this as Christians.
Speaker 2:So in order to elucidate this point further, I want to use one of the most annoyingly misapplied scriptures perhaps in the entire Bible, and that's Philippians 4.13. A lot of you already know it, so say it along with me. Philippians 4.13, I can do all things through him, who strengthens me. Some translations I can do all things through Christ, who strengthens me. So why did I say that the scripture is one of the most annoyingly misapplied scriptures in the entire Bible? It's because it is. I mean, it's on t-shirts and coffee mugs and bumper stickers and on the walls of elementary school classrooms and it's up on the walls of football locker rooms all throughout the South and in gyms. And the thing about it is is, when you apply that scripture to an assignment you've gotten from a professor or to you know a one rep max you're trying to do on deadlift or something like that, it minimizes and in a lot of ways, bastardizes the whole meaning of the scripture.
Speaker 2:So let's go back to the verse I can do all things, okay. So essentially, I have strength for all things we lack for nothing. This reminded me of really a core verse for Undaunted Life, which is Psalm 3410. The young lions suffer wanton hunger, but those who seek the Lord lack no good thing. Again, in the context of the scripture, I mean, there are young lions all over this area where the author is writing this, and they're strong, they're young, they're young, they're virile lions, right, but they suffer because they have to constantly worry about where they're going to get their next meal. But for us, as sentient human beings, if we seek the Lord, we lack no good thing. He's got us, and how exactly are we able to do all things right?
Speaker 2:Again back to the scripture through him, who strengthens me? So in there is a causative verb, okay, it means to pour power into, to infuse strength into. And this begs the question why would God, through Christ, pour or infuse power into us? Mainly for our sake, so that we can get a good grade and be up on the wall on the thousand pound club or whatever? No, it's for him. That's why he's doing this, for his glory.
Speaker 2:I love this quote from J Vernon McGee. He writes this whatever Christ has for you to do, he will supply the power. Whatever gift he gives you. He will give the power to exercise that gift. A gift is a manifestation of the Spirit of God in the life of the believer. As long as you function in Christ, you will have power. He certainly does not mean that he is putting into your hand unlimited power to do anything you want to do. Rather, he will give you the enablement to do all things in the context of his will for you. That's where we get our strength.
Speaker 2:It's not from this Western American pull myself up by my bootstraps mochismo, lone wolf type thing. No, what happens to lone wolves? Guys, watch the Nature Channel. They die alone. Right, these animals? They get taken out, they get put out from the pack and they die alone. They either starve to death or freeze to death or they're killed by another animal. Is that really what you want to be? You want to be the guy that's constantly doing things on your own, relying on your own strength. I'm telling you it's a terrible idea. And if you read the Bible, you will understand that Element nine of a godly man a godly man does not rely on his own strength alone. All right, guys, tomorrow we wrap it up. We wrap up two weeks of this. Come back tomorrow for element 10.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to today's episode Before you go. If you want to help equip other men for the fight, share this podcast around and leave us a five-star rating and review. Stay sharp.
