MANCHURCH: Warrior's Code

Here we go. So let me open in prayer. Father, we thank you for a chance to gather together around a word this morning. Gather as men. Let your grace and peace be with us in Jesus' name. Amen. So I wanted to just talk on something called a warrior's code of conduct. The last few weeks I've been doing a series of podcasts. Just had a fantastic one with Rocky the other day, and I'll make sure you all get a. I'll link to that. And so one of the things that I'm continually hearing in conversations is, who are men? How are men supposed to live? How are men supposed to act? And it's not necessarily for our generation, but the generation coming through, because there's been multiple decades now of confusion as to what it actually is to be a man. So a few years ago, I wrote out a warrior's code of conduct, and it's one that I Do my best to adhere to and live to. And if you're live on Instagram, you're more than welcome to pop onto Man Church itself, and that's going to be at Man Church Online. Let me just try and fix up your. I've got an internet connection problem here. There we go. Try that one. See if they. Resume, and you're more than welcome to hop onto manchurch.online. So warriors code of conduct. So let me read you a couple of scriptures, scriptures. Then we'll just jump into it, and we'll wrap up in about twenty minutes and have a conversation. So couple of scriptures for you, and I'll share my I'll share my screen with you in case you want to follow that along, and I'll also make sure that there's there's notes available. Um, and we put it in the Phoenix Collective app. So if you haven't yet got the Phoenix Collective app, I encourage you to get it. You'll have all the previous, um, content for Man Church. There's a couple of things that you can do. There's about a collection of 160 videos that you can watch speaking to various issues across from trauma recovery to, uh, performance mindset. 1 Corinthians 2:2. I'm about to go the way of all earth. David speaking to his son Solomon. Be strong and show yourself a man. Now, once upon a time in our society, that came with a set of nuances, beliefs, and expectations, and people could say, okay, I know what it is to be a man. That's easy for me to understand. 1 Corinthians 16:13. Be watchful, stand firm in faith, Act like a man and be strong. So again, there's this exhortation to be something that is assumed. One Corinthians thirteen. When I was a child, I spoke like a child. I thought like a child. I reasoned like a child. And when I became a man, I gave away these childish things. So there's a graduation point. You move from being a child to being a man. So often we'll understand what it is to be childish. But now we've got a generation of people graduating, and they don't know what they're graduating to. And finally, in Ephesians 4, until we all obtain to a unity of faith and knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, and to the measure of the stature of Christ in fullness. So again, there's a sense of graduating. I once was a child, and now I'm graduating. So, so what does that look like in today's society? What does that look like? How What is a definition of man? Now, what I'm going to focus on today is a code of conduct for manhood, and that's what I'd like our takeaway to be and something for us to work around. So most men are pussies, and when I say pussy, I mean pussification that they're in. That's the, the original term and, and view of it. To be a pussy is to be a coward, to be afraid, to be scared, to be unsure of something. So, three reasons I find that most men are pussies is number one: they never put themselves in a situation to be tested. Most men nowadays are scared. Number two: they don't have a code or a compass or a set of rules that measure life by. And if you don't know what you're standing for, then you're going to fall for anything. And the third thing I found over time is. Most men nowadays don't have a sense of honor. We've had that sense of honor removed from us for thousands of years. Honor meant having a reputation judged worthy of respect and admiration by a peer group. So, so nowadays we don't have things like the, the Knights of England or the Spartans or the Samaritan people and men who would be prepared to die for code, because a lot of those codes have been removed from our lives and we don't know what codes to live for. So I want to give you a code. This is my code. These are qualities that I aspire to manifest in my life that I try to live by. And understand that this code comes with, with the knowledge that you will fail. I live this code daily, knowing that I'm going to fail daily, sometimes hourly. Yet in this failure lies my genuine success. So here are 9 things that I want to encourage you to be And examine, and one thing I urge you not to be. Number 1, strength. Having the physical ability to need what— do what needs to be done, not just of character but of physical strength. I believe as men we're supposed to be strong. We're supposed to be able to protect our family, protect ourselves, and do whatever it takes to get a job done. So it doesn't matter what age you are. It doesn't matter how old you are, you have to have a desire to be physically strong. You don't have to be bowed over, weak and pathetic at 60 or 70 years of age. We know neurologically that's not the case. We know physically that doesn't have to be the case anymore. There's no reason why you can't be strong now. Over age, does that strength change due to muscle mass? Yes, but there are things you can do. But it's not just of character. I believe a man should be physically strong to do what he can do when he needs to do to get the job done. The second quality or code of a warrior that I believe we should have and imbibe as men is courage, possessing the determination and stamina to see something through to the end. Now, courage is not the absence of fear, but it's the decision to push ahead In spite of fear. Being worried about what an outcome is doesn't necessarily need to be our— doesn't necessarily need to be our obsession. We don't need to be worried so much about what will be as opposed to just the effort of engaging and trying to get it done. Whenever we go into any situation in life, there is always going to be an element of fear. And I just want to encourage you to push beyond that fear and engage that. And that is a quality of what a man is. Now, the third thing— strength, courage— the third thing is mastery. I believe as men, we should hone skills that protect and provide for those that we love. Now, I don't have to master everything, but I must not be mediocre at the things that are important to me. Now, I'm a reluctant gardener. In fact, I'm a terrible gardener. I am more than— I excel at mediocrity lawn mowing. Now I can mow a lawn, I can edge a lawn, I can pull the occasional weed, but I'd rather let them grow into a forest because it really kind of doesn't matter to me. But when it comes to something like writing, I'm committed to being the 1% in the world because that's very, very important to me. When it comes to being a husband, I'm committed to being— and you're like this, Dad— 1% in the world. I want to excel at being a husband. a father and a friend. Those things are very, very important to me. Just recently, I attended a 3-day shooting course, and at the end of that course, I shot better than the majority of local law enforcement nationwide, which makes me better than most criminals or the general population. So I don't need to be better than the 1% warfighters in the world. That's just not a goal I'll have. I'm 62 and it's not— I don't have 40 years to train those skills. But what I can do is be good at something that's important to me to protect my family. And I think that's just how we need to assess these things. What do I need to do to be better at being a man? Now, mastering those skills, I don't think it has to be everything. I think it needs to be those things that are important to you. Whatever it is, those things. And it's the discipline of mastering something, the discipline about rising above mediocre that I think is an important trait of manhood. The 4th thing is loyalty. Stand up and if need be, lay down your life for a brother. Let me share one of the best clips of all times here for you. I need your help. I can't tell you what it is. You can never ask me about it later, and we're gonna hurt some people. 10 years old. Whose car are we gonna take? I love that. Whose car are we gonna take? I love the attitude that sits behind it. Listen, I love you and I trust you. I don't know what we're about to get into, but if we're gonna get into it, Let's get really into it. Let's just commit to getting this thing done. And am I talking honestly about being prepared to lie down your life for a mate? Well, it might come that point. It might come. Are you prepared to put yourself in harm's way for your friend or in harm's way for your friend's family? I think they're qualities of manhood. It doesn't necessarily have to be literal, but it certainly has to be attitudinal. If you're sitting having a beer with someone and they're making comments that you know aren't true about a mate or their family, then you should address it. Or at very least, you need to walk away from it, because by staying in the presence of those companies, you're complicit to something that is undermining the value of a relationship that you hold in your heart to be true. If someone decides to push their ideology down your throat at a dinner party, And it's totally counter to everything you believe, you have a responsibility to echo your truth, to say what you believe is true. I think that we've lost that sense of discussion and having conversations in our current generation. And having conversations is iron on iron sharpening each other. And I don't think we need to be fearful of pushback. I think it needs to be the other way. We don't need to be like dicks about something, but I think we should be prepared to engage in conversations with people that are going to enhance us, enhance our life, and enhance the lives of other people around us. I think that's integrous. I think that's important to what men should do. So the 4th thing is integrity, is being true to yourself. So, so far we've touched on courage, mastery, loyalty, Integrity, being true to yourself. And this is probably— this is something I'm going to camp on at some point for a whole Man Church, maybe next time, is the issue of authenticity, being true to yourself. A liar has integrity because they lie. A thief has integrity because they steal. So my question to you is, who are you? Who are you? What's important to you? And are you being true to those things that are important to you? Because if number one, you don't know who you are, number two, you can't be true to yourself. Number three, how are you going to stand in a world when everything's crumbling? When we have a moral collapse in our society, a political collapse in our society, we have ethical collapses in our society. If you don't know who you are, then how can you stay true to that? And staying true to who you are is a fundamental cause and value of what a man is. And we need to take time with that, to sit with that, to dwell on that. What are these things that are really important to me as a man, for my family, for my country, for my faith? What are those things? And there should be essences of your life that you are prepared to die for. You are prepared to make a stand. Now, die in reality or metaphorically? Yes. You know, are you prepared to walk away from a job? Are you prepared to be fired from a job for standing up with what is right? Are you prepared to lose a friendship because you're standing up for another friendship? Are you prepared to have hard conversations with people around things that are essentially important to you? Number next is resilience, is being able to hold my ground until my brothers get to me. The reality is whatever you're going through probably won't kill you, so suck it up. I went through a particularly dark time just, just a little bit ago, and it was very, very dark. A whole range of things had happened and a whole range of pressure was on me. And I remember getting up one Saturday, Sunday morning and being wracked with depression. I mean, wracked to a point of not knowing how I was going to get on. And I had a look at my day. I had a look at what I was doing, and I made a decision. I was going to have to ring a mate. Now, I could have made a rash decision, an irreparable decision between that 48 hours, but I didn't. I said, I'm going to do it. I'm resilient. I know I need to have a conversation, and I'm going to do it. I'm going to have to talk to a mate. I'm going to have to wait until my brothers get to me and can get back to me. I think knowing that tomorrow the sun comes up and you can breathe again is one of the simplest ways that you can measure resilience in your own life. That regardless of what you're going through, there is always going to be a tomorrow. You just need to be able to settle that and get it down and be prepared to reach out for help. My statement with resilience was being able to hold my ground until my, my brothers can come and get me. At some point, you need to understand that whatever you're going through, you can't do it alone. And you have to have people in your life that you can reach out to and invite in and say, listen, I need help on this. And then you've got to have the wherewithal to be able to stick it out until they arrive. So number next is ruthless. I think as a man, you have to be ruthless with some things. If it comes down to it, hit hard, hit first, and make sure the other guy doesn't get up. You got to set some minimums in this situation. Now, I'm not only talking about a physical action, but I'm also talking about a spiritual or philosophical action. Some things you just shouldn't tolerate. You shouldn't tolerate it in yourself, and you shouldn't tolerate it in other people. And those are minimums in your life. Like, what is important to you? What are those things that are important as a Christian man, as a man living in America, as a man having his place and making his way in business? What are those minimums? You don't have to be loved by everyone, but you certainly have to know who you are so you can be loved by some. So be ruthless with yourself, because if you're not ruthless with yourself, you live in a world which is tolerant of everything, and tolerant of everything really just isn't acceptable. Well, who are you? Are you prepared to be ruthless with those things that are minimal to you? And the last of the 9 things, number 9, is forgiveness. As a man, part of our code of conduct, I believe, is that we should always extend forgiveness to those that are worthy. And that means you. You are worthy of forgiveness. You are worthy of being forgiven for the things that you've done wrong. You're worthy of being forgiven for the mistakes that you've made. And you need— if you can't extend forgiveness towards yourself, you're certainly not going to be able to extend forgiveness towards others. And I want to encourage you to look at that, because sometimes men carry mistakes through life like anchors. They're anchoring us to our past. They're holding us down and holding us back from rising above and becoming all that we can be. So we might be great, very comfortable extending forgiveness to our wife, to our children, to our work buddies, but we really do have a hard time extending forgiveness to ourselves. And in my dealing with men over the years, that's been one of the major challenges that I've found in helping men is allowing them and giving them permission to be able to forgive themselves. So here are the 9 things I encourage you to look at and examine. Number 1, strength. Number two, courage. Number three, mastery. Number four, loyalty. Number five, integrity. Number five, resilience. Number six, I think we're up to relentlessness. Number seven, ruthlessness and forgiveness. And here's one thing I want to encourage you not to be. I encourage you not to be an asshole. I just encourage you that the world is full of assholes. People who will walk all over you and not stand up for you. Don't be one of those. And I also want to encourage you not to hang out with assholes. Assholes are people who betray you and lie about you and will do anything for some sort of worthless reason like money, promotion, or power. You don't need those people in your life. You don't need to be that sort of man. And you don't need to be that sort of person. Men like that, I honestly believe you should disdain. Those men you call out, those men you warn brothers about, those men— I personally don't shake a hand with them. I won't have a beer with an asshole. I've been in business with some people that you, you just are no good whatsoever. I won't stand in a room with them. I'll walk away. I'll go to the other end of the bar. I'll move to a party. I'll leave a gathering because those people are a stain. And me being in their presence somehow gives them the right to continue on their passage. And I don't want to do that because the stain of their weakness, the mediocrity of their life, will contaminate and compromise your soul. And I just don't think that's worth it. I honestly don't. So there you go. Codes to a warrior mindset.