When I was five years old, I found a steak knife lying in the grass of our side yard. According to Luck family legend, my brothers had been peeling oranges the night before and left it sitting in the tall grass.
When I laid my eyes on the six-inch steel blade that morning, I got jacked up. A boring playtime in the yard now got very interesting. The possibilities were endless.
With my coonskin cap on, I regarded the knife for a moment, wondering what to try first. I know—I could throw the knife at our fence and watch it stick in the wood. Back then I didn’t know the difference between a steak knife and a buck knife—I just wanted to see that sharp weapon stick in the wood just like on television. After many failed attempts, however, I could not get the knife to stick, so I moved on to a patch of ice plant in the front yard.
It was like Edward Scissorhands meets Extreme Makeover: Gardening Edition. I hacked away at the ice plant with my shiny knife—until I saw some bugs crawling around the ground. A wicked thought crossed my mind: How many legs does a spider need to walk? Then I spotted a worm wriggling in the dirt. I threw the knife at him but missed. I thought about cutting him in half but shrugged off that idea. As you can see, my imagination was running wild.
So was my little body. I sprinted toward the garage with the knife held high in my right hand—attacking marauders unite! I was about to stab my invisible adversary when I tripped over a crack in the sidewalk. I did a face plant and rolled into a heap—and suddenly I felt this intense pain on the right side of my face. I looked at my empty—and bloody—right hand and screamed. What had happened?
In shock I stood up and staggered toward the front door like the Mummy, screaming my lungs out. My oldest brother Pat (twenty-two years old at the time) heard the commotion and came running out. I’ll never forget his look of horror.
“Oh my God!” he yelled. “You’ve got a knife in your face.” Pat scooped me up and rushed me into the house, where he laid me on the kitchen table.
My big brother took stock of the situation. He proceeded to gently pull the knife out of my face very slowly because the tip of the knife was less than a quarter of an inch away from my eyeball. When that operation was successfully completed, he carried me to his car for a frantic ride to the emergency room where, nine stitches later, I learned a hard lesson about playing with sharp knives, the number one lesson being: don’t run with a knife in your hand.
In the Luck household, one thing you could always count on was a sharp blade. My dad had an electric sharpening stone (just like the pros), a razor strap for his straight-edge razor, and an electric can opener that had two different kitchen knife sharpeners built into it. He even had a handheld sharpening stone for his pocket knives. Dull blades, my dad reasoned, had no place in his workbench or in his home. A knife or blade needed to cut sharply and decisively when called upon.
Surgeons, chefs, butchers, hunters, landscapers, gardeners, and even your local hair stylist all know the value of sharp blades. A razor-sharp edge makes all of these blade runners efficient and happy in their work, whether they’re cutting out an appendix, chopping an onion, sectioning off flank steaks, gutting a deer, mowing grass, or cutting hair.
Knives and scalpels need to be sharpened regularly, and professionals use sharpening stones. These steel-shaping instruments come in various sizes and shapes for all sorts of jobs and cutlery. While these stones are as diverse as the knives and implements they service, they have one central mission: creating the edge.
Sharpening stones accomplish this task because they are made from aluminum oxide, diamond-bonded steel shafts, and silicon carbide, which are all harder than the metal they actually sharpen. They even have levels of coarseness, like sandpaper, ranging from extra coarse to fine, depending on what level of sharpness or angle of cut is needed. Some of the more sophisticated devices sharpen and realign the cutting edge of a blade at the same time. Why am I telling you all this?
In a word: function. When called upon, these instruments and tools have to perform an important task.
Now that you’ve heard about my close encounter of the sharp kind, let’s talk about how being sharp affects your walk with Christ. My point is that every young man needs another young man in his life to sharpen and realign him in his walk with God. To be God’s young man requires placing a high value on male relationships that keep you spiritually strong. One of my favorite Scriptures says it best: “As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another” (Proverbs 27:17).
Most young men I counsel overlook this important biblical principle, which is a shame. Think about when you were younger. Making friends and having relationships was easy. Your entire life was about playing and having fun and letting your imagination run wild.
If you’re unsharpened by the presence of another committed friend, your commitment to God won’t perform.
Now life has changed as you’ve grown and matured. You have a natural desire for adult things because you’re no longer a kid. At one time, watching Saturday morning cartoons was fun. Now you’d rather read Playboy cartoons. At one time, yanking on Sally’s hair was the height of hilarity. Now you’d rather pull her top off. Truth or Consequences isn’t as fun as Truth or Dare, since the latter game involves what you will or won’t do sexually.
If you’re unsharpened by the presence of another committed friend, your commitment to God won’t perform. It will be duller than a steak knife that’s been played with in the dirt all morning long. But a young man who’s got a spiritual sharpening stone in his life—another brother headed down the same path toward God—can make the transition to the bigger issues of manhood with support, confidence, and encouragement to do the right thing.
Take Jordan for example. He had no sooner lugged all his stuff into the dorm during freshman orientation week when this guy knocked on the door. He said he was with a campus group that sponsored a guys’ Bible study on Tuesday nights. Jordan accepted the flyer and remarked that he was a Christian too. “See you there,” Jordan said, remembering what his parents had told him during their teary departure earlier that day. His dad said that one of the first things he needed to do was get involved with a ministry on campus. Now was his chance—an opportunity handed to him on a silver platter.
That yellow flyer found a spot on Jordan’s desk, but a couple of days later, as the excitement of new classes, making new friends on his floor, and the rush of independence took front and center position in Jordan’s life, he ignored it. Then one evening he tossed the flyer into his trash can. There isn’t time, he thought. I’m meeting a lot of new people, especially those girls on the floor above and the floor below. They sure are friendly.
Let’s step back and be objective for a moment. At this crucial juncture in his life, Jordan is not:
• reporting his raging temptations to anyone
• connecting with any guys headed the same way
• giving any significant time to God’s Word
• accountable for his eyes and mind on the Net with anyone
• realizing any spiritual growth
As Jordan experiences go-for-the-gusto total freedom, he is:
• isolated and vulnerable to spiritual attack
• connecting with non-Christians who do not share his faith or his values
• giving a lot of thought to what it would be like to sleep with that hottie from Sacramento
• going backward in his faith
• well on his way toward becoming toast
I know we’ve talked about the fairer sex a lot in Every Young Man, God’s Man, but the number one dilemma facing God’s young men today is not sexual temptation. It’s isolation. It’s a pattern passed down to you by your culture and by a generation of dads for whom independence was the highest virtue. Growing up, they were told to blaze their own trail, and it’s been that way for generations. It’s still headed in that direction. From my seat in the bleachers, I don’t think that a majority of young men are connected to other guys for any meaningful or deep purpose. Guys who wouldn’t think twice about risking it all to get a date with a girl won’t risk getting honest with another guy to stay true in their commitment to Christ. Make no mistake: isolation is not God’s plan.
If you’re like most young men, you live a double life between your public image and private reality. This is not unusual; you wouldn’t be normal if you didn’t pay attention to how others perceive you. The public guy is the cool dude you trot out there for others to see. He is synthetic, planned, and created to make an impression of having it all together, someone who is cool and strong at the same time.
The private guy is hidden away. He’s the one with conflicts and problems that create personal stress for him and, eventually, for others. The private guy has secrets he hides from people—habits, sins, attitudes, feelings, and worries. He keeps the public at arm’s length by making sure that conversations stay in the shallow waters of school, sports, girls, or weekend happenings. Others can talk to him about the Bible as long as they don’t get too serious about it.
If you’re like most young men, you live a double life between your public image and private reality.
You never let the public self discuss private matters, because then the whole image that you’ve worked so hard to build up would be obliterated. People would know who you really are versus what you have them thinking you are. That’s why the private guy desperately needs people who he can talk to because this is the way he can make progress with God.
I have found that young men who aren’t making the transition to spiritual manhood have reached their sad state because they’re connected to other guys who dull their edge to their goals as God’s men. In this group of friends, they don’t:
• risk getting honest about the tough stuff burning a hole in the pit of their stomachs
• watch one another’s backs spiritually
• pray for one another regularly
• push one another to be in God’s Word
• ask how a guy’s walk with the Lord is going
• encourage one another to take bold risks for Christ
• care enough to confront behavior that doesn’t square with Scripture God’s standard and plan are different for you and your group of friends.
They should help you become the man God created you to be:
My brothers, if one of you should wander from the truth and someone should bring him back, remember this: Whoever turns a sinner away from his error will save him from death and cover over a multitude of sins. (James 5:19-20)
When you are connected to other guys for the purposes of spiritual growth, you won’t need to trot out the public guy anymore. You can be you—warts and all. Listen, the guys you think have it all together are just as whacked out as you! The discovery that is helping today’s young men win their big spiritual battles is that they are learning they need better relationships with their God-focused peers. When I encourage young men to pursue relationships with their guy friends, I see many change their thinking about their guy connections and use them in ways that God intended.
I remember when I was in college and I flew to see my brother Lance in Alabama. Lance had led me to the Lord, so I was naturally looking forward to connecting on a spiritual level with a brother I rarely got to see. I looked forward to three things happening during my visit: eating massive amounts of greasy food, playing his guitar late into the night, and talking about Jesus until our eyelids wore out.
The script played out exactly as I thought it would on the first night: mounds of fried chicken and rounds of laughs combined with picking the “gee-tar.” But then I saw what looked like a cigarette sticking out of Lance’s vest pocket.
“What’s up with that?” I asked with a “You idiot” frown on my face.
Lance pushed back. “Uh, what’s it look like, Ken? A cigarette.”
“Why?”
“It’s just a few a day—tops.”
At that moment, I whipped out the Bible that he had bought me and plopped it open. I fanned over to 1 Corinthians 6:19-20, pointed my finger at the verse, and then slid the Bible across the table for Marlboro Mouth to read. “Doesn’t it say right there that your body is a temple where God lives and to glorify God with your body?” I asked.
A long pause followed. Then Lance did the unthinkable: without saying a word, he snapped the cigarette in half and threw it in the trash. “That’s enough of that,” he declared.
Awesome.
It wasn’t about me so much as his respect for God’s Word: If God says it, I’ll stop doing it. (If you are reading this, and you’re a smoker, I realize that the Bible doesn’t specifically prohibit smoking. But it’s a no-brainer that your body was designed to breathe air, not smoke, so do your lungs a favor and quit.)
It wasn’t about me so much as his respect for God’s Word: If God says it, I’ll stop doing it.
Lance never looked back. He made his decision, and that was it. No patch, no scaling back. He quit cold turkey in front of my eyes and has not touched a cigarette in twenty-one years. I’m confident that his decision will buy him many more years to enjoy his wife, Gina, their children, and his children’s children. But as I look back to that day, I can assure you that I felt totally connected to my brother when we got real about his smoking.
The reason God wants His men connected to one another is because when you come together under his banner, He shows up too. “How good and pleasant it is when brothers live together in unity!… For there the LORD bestows his blessing, even life forevermore” (Psalm 133:1,3). The bottom line is that you can experience more of God when you team up with other young men. You will stretch one another spiritually. You will be there for one another. But just in case you are tempted to abandon your God-given sharpening stones, here’s what God has to say about the science of being sharp:
• Jonathan said to David, “The LORD is witness between you and me” (1 Samuel 20:42).
• “An open rebuke is better than hidden love! Wounds from a friend are better than many kisses from an enemy” (Proverbs 27:5-6, NLT).
• Paul advised Timothy, “Pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace, along with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart” (2 Timothy 2:22).
• King David commented, “My eyes will be on the faithful in the land, that they may dwell with me; he whose walk is blameless will minister to me” (Psalm 101:6).
• “And let us not neglect our meeting together, as some people do, but encourage and warn each other, especially now that the day of his coming back again is drawing near” (Hebrews 10:25, NLT).
• “Let the godly strike me! It will be a kindness! If they reprove me, it is soothing medicine. Don’t let me refuse it” (Psalm 141:5, NLT).
• “I will fulfill my vows to the LORD in the presence of all his people” (Psalm 116:14).
What’s God saying to every young man? You’re a better man when you’re connected and accountable. So the question now is, are you?
Marcus Junius Brutus and Gaius Julius Caesar had been through a lot of ups and downs in their relationship. In fact, historians would record that Julius had developed a brotherly trust and healthy love for Brutus. Then on March 15, 44 BC, with Brutus standing by, sixty plotters attacked and began stabbing his friend, the Roman military leader. One of Caesar’s final images was Brutus rushing at him with a dagger and plunging the blade deep into his chest.
The shock of seeing a trusted friend among the assassins moved Caesar to utter, “Et tu, Brute?”—“You, too, Brutus?” Caesar didn’t know who his friends really were as he drew his final breath.
Your journey to become God’s young man has to include real friends who provide real accountability. You need to have guys in your life whom you can have fun with and share your failures with. So often I see that the margin of victory for a young man is simply another guy battling with him. Like Caesar, you could be swimming with “friends” who don’t have your best interests at heart. You and your friends have to adopt a foxhole mentality—a band of brothers outlook on your campaign to end the stranglehold of sin in your life and for years to come.
Brian made a really hard decision last semester. He decided he needed a different set of friends. They might not be as cool or as accepted as his old friends, but he needed a new set to hang out with to become God’s young man. It was easy for the old group to pull him down to their level—“Dude, everyone’s going to be at the kegger.” For sure, Brian knew if he fell in with that crowd that his actions wouldn’t cut it with God because of the compromises. He would be traveling backward.
You need to have guys in your life whom you can have fun with and share your failures with.
The big step was meeting Shaun at a chapel event during a lifestyles week on campus. He fell in with a break-out group of guys, and the leader laid it out there. “We’re going to talk about sexual purity, masturbation, and stuff on the Internet.” It just so happened that these were issues that Brian was dealing with.
Shaun was the first to open up. “I have been no saint,” he began, “which is why I need you guys to help me get past this stuff.” Brian found himself nodding approval. The campus chaplain said he would host a group for Bible study for the rest of the semester, and if everyone jelled, they could keep going in the new year.
Five months later, this cell group of guys was like a band of brothers. It’s been a simple deal: they meet weekly, talk honestly, pray for one another, and watch one another’s back. They see the progress that young men who make a strong decision for God experience. Instead of being shipwrecked and becoming spiritual castaways, they have a supporting cast behind them.
Brian, the last time I checked, had his edge back. But it took courage to subject himself to the sharpening stone. As we’ll see in the next chapter, when you’re trying to get razor sharp as God’s young man, you’re gonna see some sparks fly.