God Guy

I believe that the God Guy (occasionally referred to as a Double G) is the STRONGEST guy on the planet, not because of what he does but because of who he WORSHIPS.

Everything he does is affected by the fact that he knows and is related to the most powerful being in the universe. Because of that he knows where he came from and where he’s going. His life isn’t perfect; it wasn’t meant to be. It’s sometimes obnoxious, sometimes loud, and sometimes messy. He has big plans, big hopes, and big prayers. He wants what every other guy wants: respect and acceptance. He wants people to like him and to look up to him. He wants a life of peace. He wants to be a hero. Some days he’s on top of the world and nothing can bring him down, and some days he hits bottom, but what makes him different from just any guy is the God he serves. His right relationship with the Creator of the universe. What’s a right relationship? Imagine asking God with the most reverent attitude, “We good?” And God responds, “We’re good.” That’s a right relationship. And unlike the average guy, a Double G can admit that he can’t do this messed up and crazy life on his own, and he is totally willing to trust that God can. When life is more than he can handle, God is more than he needs.

UNLIKE THE AVERAGE GUY, A DOUBLE G CAN ADMIT THAT HE CAN’T DO THIS MESSED UP AND CRAZY LIFE ON HIS OWN, AND HE IS TOTALLY WILLING TO TRUST THAT GOD CAN.

The life of the God Guy is not affected as much by what others think of him or do to him as it is by who God is. He defines his life by the fact that he belongs to God. The most crucial moment in his life was the moment he said, “Yes, God, I believe.” The second most crucial? When he realized he can’t do it alone. It was when the Double G came face-to-face with all power and all strength and didn’t run and hide. When Jesus reached out of the pages of that old Bible, grabbed him by the hoodie, and said, “Come with me. Make me Lord of your life, and I will be with you always. You will never have to fear again.”

I remember when I said yes. I had been searching for a long time for something bigger than me. Bigger than my ego, bigger than my faults, bigger than my shame. I was seventeen when I said I believed, but it was over a decade later when I finally said, “I can’t do it alone.” I think I have a pretty lame testimony, because I spent almost fifteen years of my life faking like I was a Christian but living a lie. I’d lie, cheat, steal, and hop from one girlfriend’s bed to another, saying, “Well, she’s the one, so we might as well.”

I lived the life of the nice guy turned bad boy before I realized that God just wanted me to be real and honest, and he’d work on me from there. No frontin’, as he may have whispered to me once or twice. And that’s when I finally said, “I surrender all, because finally realize I’m not good at being perfect, but you are.” Yeah, I’m quick like that. Instead of just talking a good game, I started to live it and started talking about my real life, not the one that a Christian guy was supposed to have. Now I believe and freely testify that I mess up daily, with the exception of when I let God stay in control.

God changes lives. There is no question. If he hasn’t changed yours, then it’s your own fault, not his. He wants to; you just haven’t let him. It’s easy to believe that he won’t come through, that you’ll be duped into believing some lie. But I’m living proof that that isn’t true. He was there all along; I just didn’t have the facts or purposely ignored them to stay in control or do and get what I wanted.

That may or may not have changed your life up to this point, but look out, because we (God and me) are about to rock your world. I believe that if you are reading these words right now, you’re reading them for a reason, and it isn’t because you are being punished or Granny is trying to fix you by buying you this book. It’s because God has something to do in your life. He wants to make you into the man you were created to be. So you’ve gotta trust that a change is coming and get ready to take the wildest ride of your life.

If you are a God Guy, it’s because of who you worship, not who you are or what you’ve done or failed to do. His reaching out and choosing you changed who you were at the very core. You might not feel it every day, but trust me when I say that it did.

Yet deep down inside you might feel like a failure, like you’re not the man you were meant to be. All those missed opportunities, so many wrong decisions. Sure, you’re a good guy—you haven’t turned your back on him or tried to be a bad guy; you’re just human and sinful. That’s how the story goes for a lot of us.

But now you want MORE.
You want MORE of him,
MORE of the real you,
MORE FAITH.

It’s true what they say, you know, that “there is no one righteous, not even one” (Romans 3:10 NIV). So it should be no surprise that your life might not be exactly what you pictured. And it’s good that you want more, because more is exactly what you’re gonna get when you take a fearless look at God’s Word and are willing to let it shine some light on all your bruises, cuts, bumps, and zits. When you let it into the very center of your thumping heart with all its selfish motives and unmet fantasies, all its noble hopes and dreams, you set yourself up for a soul renovation. Anyone can benefit from exposing their life to God’s Word. And as a guy who wants God’s thoughts to be your very own, you cannot fail to open up Scripture and be changed. The only question is, how much change are you willing to go for?

It’s true what they say, you know, that ‘there is no one righteous, not even one.’ (Rom. 3:10) So it should be no surprise that your life might not be exactly what you pictured.

Do you want more of God in your life? More of his love, more of his peace, more of his presence? Do you want to be different than the typical guy who just wants more of God’s presents like he’s Santa Claus? Then strap in and hang on, because that’s just what’s in store for you. Your natural human tendency is to move, to wander, and to squirm. Staying, or abiding, is often one of the hardest things, but it’s that thing that brings the very Christ in whom you abide deeper into your life.

I want you to imagine a branch, and this branch isn’t attached to anything. Not to a tree or a vine. It is connected to nothing bigger than itself.

How long do you think that branch will remain flexible and grow leaves or even fruit? How long till it gets brittle and snaps under the weight of someone’s foot? Or before your dog makes like a beaver and chews it to bits?

Remember how I said it took me fifteen years to realize I couldn’t do it alone? I was that branch—alone, without anything or anyone bigger than myself, until I realized that I needed to be attached to something stronger, something that would feed me spiritually and emotionally so that I could grow muscle, real spiritual muscle.

Jesus, in the book of John, describes us as branches, but he also describes himself as the vine. And he promises us that if we are willing to remain in him (in other words, stay attached to that something bigger), we will have everything good to show from it. In Galatians, the good—the stuff that grows from a healthy branch that stays attached to the vine—is called fruit. And in human terms it’s stuff like this: it’s love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (see Galatians 5:22–23). It’s you at your best. It’s everything that you think and do that is good. It’s all the stuff that brings glory to God and makes him look amazing in the eyes of others. It’s the cool part of your life, and God’s main goal is to bring that stuff out of you.

So let’s take a quick look at the entire verse about the vine and the branches, shall we? Just to help it sink in, as you read, do this. Put a cross above all the words that stand for Jesus (like vine, I, etc.). And draw a cloud around all the words that refer to the Father (like vinedresser, he, etc.). Then underline all the action words (like removes, prunes, etc.).

[Then Jesus said,] “I am the true vine, and my Father takes care of the vineyard. He removes every one of my branches that doesn’t produce fruit. He also prunes every branch that does produce fruit to make it produce more fruit. You are already clean because of what I have told you. Live in me, and I will live in you. A branch cannot produce any fruit by itself. It has to stay attached to the vine. In the same way, you cannot produce fruit unless you live in me. I am the vine. You are the branches. Those who live in me while I live in them will produce a lot of fruit. But you can’t produce anything without me. Whoever doesn’t live in me is thrown away like a branch and dries up. Branches like this are gathered, thrown into a fire, and burned. If you live in me and what I say lives in you, then ask for anything you want, and it will be yours. You give glory to my Father when you produce a lot of fruit and therefore show that you are my disciples.”

He is the vine.

The vine is the trunk of the plant. It’s the big part that has all the roots and grows out of the ground.

And the branches are us.

Believers live in him, get our strength and our life from the trunk, the vine, Jesus.

And the vinedresser is God the Father.

He walks the vineyard and tends to the branches, pruning them, cutting them and cleaning them. The vinedresser’s main goal is to grow more fruit. The more the better.

Jesus says that if you live in him

you will bear lots of fruit.

And if you don’t live in him then you aren’t going to grow any fruit.

It’s a beautiful sunny day in the middle of this huge vineyard. The roots are old and big. They climb up the trellis and shoot out all kinds of branches that are covered with leaves and fruit. The vinedresser is there, and he is tending to his most prized possession, working his hardest to get the most fruit he possibly can out of his plant. He has on his big Italian hat and his dirty work gloves. (Hey, with a name like DiMarco, you know I got to go Italian on you, right? My grandfather even grew grapes and made wine old school with foot stomping and such. But I digress.) He has a big ol’ bucket of water and a sponge. He moves across the vineyard, picking up the weak branches that are crawling along the ground and scrubbing the mold off of them; he rubs off the mud and places them on the trellis high up in the sun so that they can start to grow fruit. He cuts off the smaller shoots, refusing to let them crowd out the fruit that will come on the bigger branches. He prunes, he cuts, and all is done in a powerful yet gentle way that will clean the fruit and help it to get big and fat.

You’ve gotta understand the job of the vinedresser in order to really get the full impact. His goal is not to stress out the vine or the branches. He’s not grabbing the stuff in anger and just pruning willy-nilly, chopping haphazardly. He’s not even cutting just to make things look better. He’s working with a purpose, and each move he makes has one goal: to improve the production of the plant.

But what does this dresser of the vino—I mean vine— have to do with you, God, and Jesus?

This scene is the symbol of your life. It’s like this: when your life is messed up and you’re down in the dark mud, with worms and vermin eating away at your leafy growth, showing all kinds of mold and producing wimpy pieces of fruit if any at all, the vine-dresser— God—comes along and cleans you up, lifts you up, and gets you out into the sun. When God forbids you to do stuff but you do it anyway out of weakness or rebellion or just because you can, your branch gets sick, dirty, and weak. And when that happens fruit can’t grow. Nothing can. You’re not healthy enough to produce anything good, so you get moldy and muddy and weak. And life starts to feel out of control.

But the vinedresser is there working, cleaning, doing his part to increase your fruit. If you look at that list of fruit in the verse you read a minute ago and see any of it lacking in your life, then your fruit production is lower than it could be, and that’s when things start to get shaken up. Things get cut and pruned and moved around. And cutting and pruning isn’t pretty. It hurts when it’s happening to you. But the results can be something incredible if you are willing to let the vinedresser do the work.

A God Guy, by definition, is A GUY CONNECTED TO GOD. Not a guy who likes God or who is interested in God, not just a homeboy, but one who is connected to him.

A God Guy knows that he has to remain attached to the vine, continually getting strength and nourishment from it and never moving away from it. And he knows that being lifted out of the mud and occasionally washed and even pruned is a necessary and good thing.

All this branch and vine talk can sound weird. You hear people talking about abiding in Christ and staying or remaining in him, but what does that mean in your day-to-day life? How do you work that out practically?

Maybe, just maybe that’s why this book is in your hands—to help you figure that out. As you read through this book, I’m gonna give you practical ways to stay connected to Christ when it comes to your friends, your family, girls, strangers, and even your enemies. I also hope you learn what it means when it comes to knowing yourself and how to express yourself to the world around you. So let’s take a look at the life of a God Guy and see how becoming more like him will change your life for the better.