Man, Are You Fulfilling Your Role?

Once again, the message the Lord led me to share with the brothers and sisters at the 12 o’clock service, and I am going to base it—I deliberately have not made any notes or anything because I want it to come out with the same spontaneity with which it arose last Sunday at 12. But I am going to use the passage the Lord gave me in Ephesians, Chapter 5, beginning with verse 21, and I will elaborate from there....

It says, ‘...submit to one another in the fear of God.’ Notice that the first thing it says is that we should all submit to one another, and then a call begins. I want to speak to the men this morning, and I also want to speak to the women from the context of the family, from the context of marriage, from the context of fatherhood and motherhood, from the context of the healthy masculinity and femininity that God wants to instill in all of us who belong to His kingdom. God wants to restore the human relationships that were broken in the fall of man in the Garden of Eden. And now God wants us, as children of God renewed and saved by the blood of Jesus Christ, to have family lives that exemplify and reflect the healing image of Christ Jesus.

Then it says, ‘...wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord, because the husband is the head of the wife, just as Christ is the head of the church, which is His body, and He is its Savior.’ There He is speaking to married women, to women.

Now, in verse 25, He says to husbands, ‘...husbands, love’—that is a very strong, very powerful, very weighty verb—‘love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave Himself for her.’

Perhaps a man wonders, well, how should I love my wife? What does it mean to love my wife? I love her, but I am not sure; she no longer feels loved, and how can I know whether or not I am loving my wife? Well, it says there: as Christ loved the church. You have to search the Scriptures for the way Christ loved the church, and then you must use that as the standard and point of reference for how you should love your wife. Love is not merely an emotion. Love is not that little warmth we feel here in our chest when we see a young woman for the first time and fall in love with her. Love is something that gains weight, gains texture, gains density, gains quality, gains depth as the years go by, and becomes more beautiful, more powerful even when passion is waning, our bodies are growing weaker and losing their firmness or beauty or definition, pregnancies have weakened the body a little more, and the years have perhaps made the belly grow a little larger. Or the ardor for life and the fire in our eyes have faded, and we have fought many battles together and become worn down together; then, right there, is where I believe love takes on its true meaning. It is an act of the will. To love is a verb. To love is a decision of the will. Many people get divorced and leave their wives or their husbands because they say, ‘I no longer love him,’ ‘I am no longer in love,’ ‘I no longer feel what I used to feel,’ ‘I no longer feel that thrill, that certain something, that indescribable thing’; the charm is gone, and therefore they no longer want to be hypocrites, so they leave their wife or their children and go in search of a fantasy, in search of that impossible thing they believe they will find in another woman or another relationship.

But God says, no, love is an act of discipline. Love is a covenant. Love is a promise. Love is something you embrace because you once said before the altar, ‘I am going to love this woman, I am going to remain with her,’ or, ‘I am going to love this man, for better or for worse, in sickness or in health, in poverty or in wealth; through everything life gives and everything it takes away, we will be faithful to one another.’

So the Lord calls men: ‘...love your wives,’ but He also clearly calls women to love their husbands, and He says to the woman, ‘Submit to your husband,’ and He also says to the husband, ‘Submit to your wife,’ I believe in the sense that one submits to the truth. And if the truth is in my wife, I have to submit to the truth that is in her. Yes or no?

If the Spirit of Christ is in her, I also have to submit to the Spirit of Christ in her. That is part of what God calls us to. Without confusing matters, there is indeed a relationship of submission and leadership to which God calls us in marriage.

So, ‘...love your wife as Christ loved the church and gave Himself for her, to sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water through the word. In the same way, husbands should love their wives as their own bodies.’

Now, when we go back, brothers and sisters, far into the past, to the book of Genesis, we see here that God created man and woman to complement each other, to love and serve one another, and to have a relationship of deep intimacy.

The Lord said, ‘...for this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.’

God’s intention and desire has been for marriage to be a way for man and woman to become deeply united, not only sexually, in the act of love, but also in their spirits, their emotions, their perspectives, and their way of seeing life and perceiving the world. When a man and a woman marry, it is so that, as the years pass, the man may learn from the woman’s perspective how to look at the world. And so that the woman may learn to look at the world from the man’s perspective. It is so that the man and the woman together, through their temperaments and their makeup as man and woman, may sharpen one another.

The word of the Lord says that as iron, as one sword sharpens another sword, so the heart of one man sharpens the heart of his friend. And there is something there whereby the friction between a man and a woman in the context of marriage allows them, as the years pass, to continue learning and becoming more like one another.

Have you seen couples who have already been married for 40 or 50 years, and when you look at them, they seem to resemble one another? The man has his masculinity and the woman her femininity, but there is something that makes it seem as if you were looking at one person divided into two. It is a strange experience. That is what God wants for marriage, but do you know what? That was what God did when He created man, but sin—the fall in Eden, when man sinned and disobeyed God—left that relationship of intimacy, like everything else in nature and the cosmos, torn and violated; and that precious silk of the intimate relationship between man and woman was ripped by a dirty hand with sharp fingernails that broke through the veil and tore it apart—the veil of the relationship between man and woman.

And so we see here that a curse fell upon the human race, one that we are still experiencing in our relationships between men and women.

And in Chapter 3, verse 15, God, speaking to the serpent, said, ‘...and I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed. She, the woman, will strike your head, and you will strike her heel.’

And then He said to the woman, ‘...I will greatly multiply your pain in pregnancy; in pain you will give birth to children, and your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.’

And to the man He said—you see, each one received something—‘...because you obeyed the voice of your wife,’ because the man sinned too. Sometimes we place all the blame on the woman: ‘She was the one who made me sin back there in Eden by giving me that apple to eat.’ We do not know whether it was an apple or a pineapple; we do not know, but it was a forbidden fruit.

It says, ‘...because you obeyed the voice of your wife and ate from the tree concerning which I commanded you, saying, “You shall not eat from it,” cursed is the ground because of you.’

Even the earth, the cosmos, was cursed: ‘...in pain you will eat from it all the days of your life; it will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field, and by the sweat of your face you will eat bread until you return to the ground, because from it you were taken.’

You see, brothers and sisters, today we live in a fallen world that is reaping the consequences of that violation of God’s will. And relationships between men and women still reflect that curse of sin.

And what motivated me last Sunday to change... I regret not having more time to develop this message. What originally motivated me to change the subject of my message was when Sister Genoveva read that poem that speaks to a wife about being a support to her husband and about speaking gently to him when they are fighting. And what I saw was that the picture presented by that poem assumed a stable marital relationship between a husband and a wife in a home, having their difficulties and their issues but resolving them and growing through those difficulties, with good communication and a stable marriage: a father, a mother, a husband, a wife, children, and that couple struggling but pressing forward.

And as I listened to that poem, I realized, brothers and sisters—though it was not really a realization, because it is already something I have lamented as a pastor—that in our church, as in so many churches throughout this nation, and certainly even more so in society outside, many marriages do not correspond to that stable, complete picture of a husband and a wife, struggling indeed but harmonizing their struggles, continuing to move forward, blessing their children, and dealing with life together, hand in hand and as a blessing to each other. Because in our church, as in so many other churches, unfortunately there are many broken marriages, whether—quite honestly—and again, this is not meant to make us feel bad. The good thing about the word of God is that it heals when it is preached.

And sometimes the word of God is like a harsh soap that we feel rubbing against our skin, but it cleanses us. Afterward, one feels the freshness of skin that has been stimulated and whose pores have opened, and then the blessing comes. That is what the word of the Lord is like. This is not meant to make anyone tense or to have anyone leave this morning feeling beaten down.

But I realized that there are many unhappy marriages in the churches and in society in general at this time. And not only are there many unhappy marriages, but sometimes there are few marriages—not even enough to be unhappy ones. There are many single women in our churches, many single mothers whose marriages have been broken by the sin of a man.

Many times—and brothers, here I want to be very careful. Men, relax, take a breath, breathe; I am a man, and I am not going to beat you down, but I do want to speak the truth to you. So many marriages today are limping or broken because many of us men have not exemplified, shall we say, the image of leadership that Christ offers to men. The image of Christ in us has been broken, has been violated, and we are not the men Christ wants us to be.

In the counseling office—and my wife says the same thing, as do the Vallés brothers who work in counseling—we can tell you, and it is not only we who say it but many counselors as well, that a significant number of marriages are wounded, torn, and destroyed by a man who, many times, did not fulfill the role of a servant leader, or a leader who serves, in the home. Many marriages today are limping because we men have not fulfilled the role of integrity that Christ wants us to fulfill.

I know there are shameless women too. I am sure there are rebellious women, and there are women who can be quite a handful as well. I am sure there are, and there are also women who have been traumatized by life and by their own wounds and who sometimes, like María Ramo’s little cat, throw the stone and hide the hand. And women are very skillful in that regard, playing the victim and manipulating men.

But, brothers and sisters, in all honesty I want to tell you that most of the problems society is facing today with respect to the family are due—I say this respectfully, with fear and trembling—to a man who is not fulfilling the role Christ wants him to fulfill.

Oh, it pains me to say that, because it applies in some measure to all of us, even the one speaking here. And I have been married for 23 years, and I still have to come before the Lord and say to Him, ‘Father, continue healing me and help me to be a benevolent and noble influence, a benevolent and noble presence, for my wife and my daughters, and to be a good example for my community and my church.’

But there are many men in whom the image of Jesus—and this is what the Lord tells me, something I perhaps did not develop very well last Sunday—the image of Jesus has been violated in many of us. The masculine image God wanted us to have has been violated, and today, in women as well, the feminine image of Christ is also being torn. And the devil is doing everything possible to destroy the original image God wants to implant in us as men and women.

The church of Jesus Christ must fight tooth and nail to reclaim it, return to the word, and see there what God wants from a man and a woman, so that, once we have been healed by the Holy Spirit, we may pass that image on to our children.

There are many young people today who do not know what it means to be a man, because being a man is more than simply something biological. There is a purely biological dimension to being a man, but there is an entire culture, an entire mindset, an entire way of behaving, an entire attitude, an ethic of manhood that can only be learned when a man models it before us from childhood, with the boy observing every decision, every intervention, the bad and the good in the man; little by little, he adjusts his own image and behavior and then learns to be a true man of God.

And there are very few healthy, healed men in society, particularly in Latino, African American, and other Third World cultures, although it is obviously an extremely serious problem in Anglo-Saxon culture as well; but we can speak about our own. There are very few men truly exemplifying the character of Jesus. And there are many wounded women in our churches.

Many women whom I believe to be noble women love the Lord and are not rebellious. They do not... I do not hear any woman, at least here in this church, saying, ‘I don’t respect that idea of male leadership; the man isn’t the head of anything; here we’re both equal, etc.’ I do not hear that kind of feminist version, at least not in this church, but I do hear women saying, ‘I wish my husband would play a more priestly, more pastoral role in my marriage and in my home.’ These are women who are actually longing for the true leadership of a man.

And what does it mean to be a leader? That is why I say true leadership. We have... obviously I do not have time to develop that, but we have to return to the Bible and see what it means to be a leader in the home. Brothers and sisters, it means that the leadership God has given us is actually a responsibility; it is a privilege we have to—Scripture says—love our wives as Christ loved the church.

For me, being the leader in the home is a tremendous responsibility, because the well-being of my household depends on the decisions I make as a man and on my behavior as a man. That means, brothers and sisters, that I have to do everything possible to immerse myself continually in the Word and try to understand the mysteries of the Lord’s Word, to know the teaching of the Bible so that I may learn to be a leader who blesses my wife.

I believe that the first calling of a servant leader is to make sure that his wife feels protected, that his wife feels covered by that man’s authority. His wife should know that this man is a lion who is watching over her well-being at all times.

I also believe that a woman wants security. A woman wants to know that, humanly speaking, her husband loves her above all else, that her husband will be with her at every moment of life, that even if she grows a beard, he will go on loving her, that no matter whether old age or anything else comes, he will remain there with her, because she is faithful to him and, even though he is no Robert Redford, she loves him, cares for him, and chooses him above all others. And a woman wants to feel secure that, as the years pass, he will remain faithful to her, no matter what may come.

A woman wants a man who communicates with her. We are closed off, and we live happily and very comfortably inside our own skin. And when we have problems and when we are upset, what happens? The woman cries, the woman expresses herself, the woman wears her emotions on her sleeve, but the man retreats inward when life’s problems come. And so we shut ourselves away, while the woman wants access to us and wants to come in and wants to help; and God made her that way so that she could counsel, support, and affirm. But the man is locked inside himself and cannot get out, like a prisoner inside his cell; he does not know how to get out. And what we do is retreat even farther inside, and the more she wants to help, the deeper we dive into ourselves. And we lose the opportunity to heal our wounds and to be ministered to by her.

A woman wants a man who admits his vulnerability—who, when he does not know what to do, or when he is afraid, or when he has made a mistake, has the courage, integrity, gentleness, and meekness to say, ‘I was wrong,’ or to say, ‘I need help,’ or to say, ‘Look, you know more about math, so you keep the accounts. I’m going to delegate that to you, as an executive would. You keep the accounts.’ And that does not diminish you, it does not weaken you, it does not threaten your masculinity. On the contrary. Only a man who is secure in himself can have the courage to tell a woman, ‘I need help.’

How did Christ love the church? Christ never monopolizes leadership. Notice that Christ always shares leadership. When he left, he left twelve disciples and many followers, and he told them, ‘Preach the Gospel. Go throughout the whole world, and I will be up there interceding for you, and I will send the Holy Spirit to lead you forward.’

He could have monopolized the evangelization of the world by sending a cherub or a seraph to preach the Gospel—one that neither eats nor needs a salary, nor makes mistakes, nor anything else—and by now the whole world would have been evangelized. Imagine one appearing to someone and saying, ‘Convert.’ Wouldn’t that person convert immediately? Of course they would. We have to sweat and plead and twist ourselves into twenty thousand shapes to get someone to receive.... But no, God wanted us, his church, to accompany him in preaching the Gospel because he wanted to develop in us the gifts and qualities of a servant of God, a man and a woman who exemplify the character of Christ, and that is why he allows us to work with him. And that is also why we men have to share leadership with our wives, help women enter into the fullness of their humanity, encourage our wives to learn, to study, to develop in their spiritual leadership, to grow as human beings; and I have to do everything I can to encourage my wife to become a better human being. I have to do it, and if I have to wash dishes for three months until she earns her GED or takes a university class, I should do it gladly. When I have a stronger wife, I will be happier. Amen. Besides, perhaps when she earns more money, I will be able to have nicer things in my house. A man who shares with his wife and takes her to another level is a wise man.

Many times, we men want to turn our wives into rag dolls, and then, once we have turned them into rag dolls, we despise them and go after the mistress—the rebellious one, the daring one, the one who breaks the rules—because, you know what? No man wants a rag doll for a wife.

But it is as though we have a contradiction in our minds. We want a woman who is a passionate lover, but we also want a piece of flesh that obeys everything we tell her and never questions us. And so we struggle with that, and we hate the woman and turn her into something else that we later despise.

And God wants a man who has enough masculinity to feel content beside a fully fulfilled woman. God wants us to be friends in marriage, and how difficult it is for a man to have a friend. Because our fathers often taught us not to trust anyone. And only among our fathers did they talk and open up when they had a bottle of rum in their stomachs. Then they talked and said foolish things.

And so what we have is an inadequate image of vulnerability and communication, instead of a healthy image of a self-confident man who is willing to share his vulnerability. And that opens a woman’s heart. When a man makes himself vulnerable, brothers and sisters, look, that is the greatest aphrodisiac for a woman. When a man is sensitive toward her and is vulnerable and communicative, the woman flourishes, her femininity opens up, and her heart as a mother and a lover becomes more open to the man’s touch, to the man’s approach.

But when a man is closed off and so macho and so hard that he breaks easily because he has no flexibility, that is not pleasing to a woman’s heart.

So, brothers and sisters, we have to strive in the name of the Lord in all these things so that God may open up that aspect of our lives. And you know what? I am in agony because it is already eleven o’clock, and I am going to continue a little longer because, brothers and sisters—forgive me, teachers, forgive me, teachers—but there are times when.... If God wants to minister, perhaps we will fall a week behind in the classes, I don’t know, but we are going to take a little more time. Please grant me that... grant me that prerogative as pastor, and I kneel before the teachers and apologize to them for this, but there are times when, if we want to conduct God’s business, we have to.... I still have to prepare a very delicate presentation, but this—the Lord’s moment here—is more important.

Because God wants to bring healing to families. Because, brothers and sisters, every Sunday we come to church and sing choruses, and I am already tired of standing here preaching, and preaching, and preaching, but often there is a wound in the body of the church through which the church is bleeding to death. And society is bleeding to death as well.

Do you know why tonight we have to go to Tremon Temple for a televised service to sound the trumpet concerning the crisis in this country with respect to homosexuality and same-sex marriage? Why is there so much doubt today about sexual identity? Why are there so many men with wounded masculinity who feel uncertain about their sexuality? Why are so many men today attracted to other men? They are seeking in other men an apparition like those desert mirages that disappear when you throw yourself upon them, because they were only a mirage. In the same way, today the homosexual man goes around seeking in another homosexual a masculinity that he does not possess within himself.

Why do you think the homosexual movement places so much emphasis on muscles and the body? When a homosexual reaches a certain age, he has already lost his marketability; let us say he is no longer attractive. Don’t you see that homosexual culture is all about young men and muscular men? Why? Because within the homosexual movement there is an essential insecurity about masculinity. And the homosexual hopes to find in another male that masculinity which he himself lacks, and to obtain it by possessing him, because every sexual act is a desire to possess the other person, to enter into the other person, and to become one with the other person. And the homosexual feels insecure about his masculinity and is seeking another person who, in that union or relationship, will give him what he lacks.

But what happens? The other person has the same problem, so they can never satisfy one another. And that is why homosexuality becomes an addiction from man to man, to man, to man. The promiscuity in the homosexual movement is incredible. Often hundreds of partners in a single year.

Because that is there; and why have we reached this point? In part because society, including the church, is not playing its proper role, and there are many sick, unhealed men in their own masculinity. And the devil has seen to it that so many disorders are created in this society at so many cultural levels that there is a terrible virus attacking our young people, our children.

The devil has seen to it that men are filled with anxiety and work, and the economy in this country forces us to work so much, to neglect our children; and sometimes even the church steals the time we need to spend with our children. And we are tired, and we are neurotic, and we are rebelling against the world, and we are sick, and we have no time, we have no emotional or spiritual reserves to share with our children and make time for them. Instead, the devil has seen to it that, like the Israelites in Egypt, we are burdened with work—to work, work, work—in order to weaken us and weaken the image of God in us, so that we cannot pass on to our children the masculinity they so desperately need.

So we are creating disoriented children, insecure children, and when they do not fall into homosexuality, they fall into the other extreme, which is violence. Why is there so much violence in the African American community, for example? The gangs. Because an immense percentage of African American men are in prison, and because another percentage is growing up in homes where there is only a mother and no father. And more than 40% are born outside marriage, and that is also happening in Hispanic culture.

And so our children are growing up without a role model, and often, even when they have a father who is physically present in the home, he is not emotionally present in the home.

Thus, there is no ability to transmit the masculine image to the man. When we lived in our villages in Guatemala, Colombia, or the Dominican Republic, there was an entire social mechanism that allowed the manly image to be imprinted on a man’s heart through uncles and cousins, grandparents, friends, and neighbors, all of whom helped create a healthy image of a man. But today—and even then it was not a healthy image, let me tell you, because it was sometimes an image that exploited women—but at least that masculine, manly component was being imparted.

But today, no. Today the environment in which we live is hostile to a healthy image of a man and a woman, to the formation of a healthy image of manhood or womanhood. And it requires working much harder to produce healthy men and women. Because now it has to be done through an all-out effort. Before, at least society cooperated a little. But today, when you go to a school, perhaps that child’s teacher is homosexual, or perhaps the principal is pro-homosexuality, and your child will be presented with a positive image and told, look, whether you are heterosexual or homosexual does not matter. Choose whatever you want. What are you feeling inside? And then be true to what you feel.

Unless a child has a healthy image, it is going to be very difficult. And what are young girls being told? Young girls are taught to, how shall I put it, encourage and exalt their sexuality, wear provocative clothing, and show off their bodies. There are so many young girls who are insecure about their femininity, brothers and sisters. Today, a young girl cannot trust that if she reflects the values of a woman in the sense of seriousness, honesty, and feminine sensitivity, that will be enough for her to find a partner.

Today young people—the males—are in the driver’s seat, they are in the driver’s seat, and they say, ‘Well, I have to sample the merchandise before I decide.’ And young girls are competing sexually and believe that they first have to give themselves away, and that if they do not play the little sexuality game, they are not on the market and will not get a boyfriend, or one day have a husband; and fewer and fewer young women enter marriage as virgins because there is within them an essential insecurity about what it means to be a woman.

And many times a woman learns a great deal from her father. It is not only from her mother that a young girl learns what it means to be feminine. There is a very important element that a woman needs when she is a young girl and a child: to have her father’s warmth in order to learn what a man’s touch is like, and to learn to trust a man, and to learn to open herself appropriately to a man. And for that, healthy fathers are also needed, as are mothers who are role models for their girls.

It is very important, women, that you adopt your adolescents, both your daughters and others. I ask the Lord to raise up in our Lion of Judah church a collective community, so that we may be like a village—all of us together, one great tribe watching over every one of our adolescent girls, modeling what healthy femininity is, adopting our adolescent girls, and showing them the character of a woman who has truly been healed by Christ Jesus.

May we watch over our young women, and may we men ask the Lord for the strength not to take advantage of women’s fragility today. And, sisters, I also tell the women that we must teach our daughters, and ourselves, not to tempt men, not to manipulate men, not to use them, because when..... what we find there in the image from Genesis chapter 3 says that the implication in the original Hebrew is that the woman would be manipulating the man and resenting the man’s leadership. And the man would lord it over the woman.

And we have to say no to those destructive patterns. That is not what God wants from the church of Jesus Christ. We have to—the woman must ask the Lord to heal the image of women in this culture, where the image of women has been sexualized. And today women are a commodity; even at a time when women’s liberation and women’s power are so highly exalted, women have lost value in this age.

And today it is the woman who is being sold and exchanged as though she were an object in the marketplace of the sexes—men and women—and of marriage. Because women are inherently—let me tell you—women are powerful in many ways, in many very powerful ways, and have the power to destroy or build up a man, but at the same time they are also fragile.

There is something about women called pregnancy and giving birth, and the constitution of their bodies, that makes them inherently fragile. Women are strong in spirit and emotions, but there is a fragility in their bodies. Men do not become pregnant; women become pregnant. And God has created women with emotional, spiritual, and mental wiring such that, when a woman violates that configuration established by God, she is off her axis and outside her position of power, and then she falls into the traps of exploitative men and falls into the traps of the devil.

Today, then, there is a tremendous imbalance in society. The sexes are completely off their axis, outside their definition. And in the church of Jesus Christ there must be healing and a return to the original image God had for marriage.

Men, God is telling us that we have to repent of a great deal of behavior that does not honor the Lord. And you know what? When we do so and begin to change and acknowledge that we are not being what God wants us to be, instead of being defeated and losing respect, we will then begin to be truly happy.

The blessing will begin to flow in our lives, because the word of the Lord says that when a man is harsh with his wife, when a man oppresses his wife, when a man is not flowing in the true priesthood that Christ has delegated to the man, his prayers are hindered. The man falls under God’s judgment; he is walking in weakness, and his spiritual life does not flow with the same effectiveness because the Lord has declared certain things. When we flow in accordance with what God has declared, there is blessing. When we rebel, whether man or woman, there is a curse and there is judgment.

When we align ourselves with what God commands, our masculinity is restored; it is blessed. Our children are strengthened, our women revive like a little plant that has gone without water longer than it should have, and they begin to flow once again in their femininity; and we ourselves feel at ease, knowing that we are within the Lord’s will.

What there is in many churches today is men who give money, serve, sing, evangelize, and rebuke demons, but deep in their hearts they know that there is one area they are denying and resisting, and it is that healthy, noble, gentle, vulnerable leadership of service that God wants us to exercise.

You know, man, when you are weak, then you are strong. When we make ourselves weak in obedience to the Lord and become friends to our wives, and become a resource for our children and our wives, when we restrain men’s natural laziness, because that is in our biology, and take on the superhuman mantle of Christ Jesus within us, then we become a benevolent hand, a gentle voice, a help to our wives and our children, a resource, a source of love, of counsel, of a good word, of asking forgiveness when we make mistakes, of making things right when we mess them up, as Dominicans say—brothers and sisters, blessing comes to the home, blessing comes upon the man, blessing comes upon the child.

I ask the Lord to restore marital relationships and relationships between men and women in this church. And I also speak to the young people, the unmarried, the singles who are thinking about getting married, and I say to you, parents: teach your sons to be a benevolent presence in their home. Teach them that there is nothing wrong with a man putting on an apron and washing some dishes, or learning to cook, or making a bed, or folding a sheet, or ironing a shirt. That enhances a man; that makes him more masculine, more of a man, more human, more complete. And it makes him happier in marriage, because a woman who is rested and helped is a better lover and a better friend. Yes or no? There is the answer.

And again, I am not—I hope no one feels beaten up by this, brothers and sisters. Because this is the word of the Lord dealing with us and with our lives. And, women, if you have a man who is making an effort and showing signs of wanting to change, and who is doing everything possible, look, encourage him, spur him on, love him, recognize that he is making an effort; and whatever little sign of life there may be in him, encourage it and fan it so that it grows. Do not accuse him when he makes a mistake, because transformation takes a long time. Shepherd him, in a sense, right? And encourage him. At any sign of transformation, say, ‘Glory to God. Hallelujah!’ Dance, jump around him, bless him, and encourage his leadership.

Woman, when you rebel—Christian woman, in particular—when you rebel against male leadership, healthy leadership, know that you are off your axis, because the Lord has given man leadership, mysteriously, because the truth is that I believe there are so many women who would be better leaders than we are, but God has chosen the man to be the leader in his home. And there is a blessing both for the man when he enters into healthy leadership and for the woman when she gladly accepts her husband’s leadership. There is blessing.

I believe that a marriage—and that is the problem, look—a marriage in which the man is passive or oppressed and is not being allowed to play his proper role, or has simply abdicated and rejected his role as leader, as priest in the home, is a crippled marriage, a marriage in weakness, and a marriage in which the woman and the man—both of them—and the children will pay the price. That marriage will be bleeding to death.

And many times, unfortunately—and this is the sad thing—we men have made it difficult, if not impossible, for our wives to accept our leadership, because we are not making healthy decisions. They do not feel safe. They do not feel that their children are in good hands or that the household finances are in good hands. And with a leader like that, they do not dare go into battle, because they know their heads will be blown off in the first war they face.

So it is not that women do not want to accept leadership, but we have not made it easy enough for them to accept our leadership, and so we put them at a disadvantage. Because we are forcing them to fulfill a function for which God did not design them.

I believe that women have much to give. As I say, to me women are made more powerful in spirit and emotions than men, because men are emotionally fragile. Just as a man is physically strong, so his masculinity and sense of security are fragile. And the woman is a covering.

I believe that when God said, ‘I will make a suitable helper for Adam,’ what He meant was, ‘I am going to create a being who complements him in such a way that this man will be completely strengthened on every side. I am going to give this being, who is the woman, qualities and a personality configuration that equip him, strengthen him, and help him.’ And I believe that is what a woman possesses.

Now, when a woman does not play her role in that way, when there is a weak woman, not filled with the Spirit, who is not filled with the Word, who is not filled with the image of Christ within her—a woman who is always bleeding away her femininity, watching foolish things and not seeking the anointing of the Holy Spirit—that woman will not be able to be the suitable helper that man needs.

But when both of them flow in their calling, and the man is exercising his leadership, his priesthood, his calling, and the woman is supporting him and being a warrior, and the man delegates certain functions to her while he performs the others, and both work as a team—listen to me—there is an incredible blessing in the home. And society is blessed, and the children grow like plants planted beside fresh, clean streams. And that is what God wants for the church, for this church.

We live in a culture, brothers and sisters, that has lost its compass. There is no definition, there are no definitions; everything is up for negotiation and reinvention, and that is why it is paying the price. Today, more than ever, the church of Jesus Christ is being called to receive what Romans chapter 12 says: ‘...do not conform to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.’

In other words, let us not become accustomed to the world, let us not accommodate ourselves to the culture in which we live, but let us be transformed through our thinking, through our patterns being renewed by the word of God continually coursing through our lives.

There is a call to men and women today, and especially in the church. Every time we speak about homosexuality and this and that, they throw it in our faces: ‘But if the church has as many divorces as the world, if there are as many discontented women and as many marriages limping along inside the church as outside it, who are you to tell us how we should live?’

Many of those homosexuals even come from Christian homes where there was no father who invested himself in those boys in order to instill his masculinity and sense of security in those young men. And in this we have to change. God cannot be mocked, nor will He be bribed by your money, or by your singing, or by your dancing, or by your tongues, or by your service, if you are living in disobedience.

The Lord Jesus Christ says, “Why do you call me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say?” Do you remember that? The eyes of the Lord penetrate to the very depths and pierce through the foliage of our superficiality and reach the heart, and if there is inconsistency and rebellion there in a man or a woman, the Lord points His finger at it and says, Until you set that right, My blessing will not flow in you as I want it to flow.

So we ourselves, whether man or woman, are the first to benefit. God wants healing in the churches, brothers and sisters; God wants to heal us. And I want us to take a moment now, as we are finishing. Thank you, Samuel; you can begin to play something there.

I want to take a moment to call all of us, brothers and sisters—I did so at twelve, and I want to do it now—so that we may come and reason together, as the Lord says. Singles and married people, young people, let us promise ourselves that in our land we will integrate the values of the Gospel letter by letter, word by word, phrase by phrase, commandment by commandment, principle by principle. We will search the Bible from Genesis to Revelation to discover the laws and commandments of the Lord, and we will integrate them into our masculinity, our femininity, our marriages, and our parenthood; and then God’s healing and blessing will come upon our lives, upon our church, and upon our community.

When the church is healed, when marriages are healed, when the Christian family is healed, there will be healing in society out there. Because the church is the mother of the nations. And if the mother is sick, the family will also be sick.

The Lord is calling us to repentance, and He is calling us to an awareness that we must be a holy, set-apart people. What did God mean when He told Israel, “a holy people”? He meant a people who would live differently from the way the nations around them lived.

We men in the church of Jesus Christ must be different from the men of the world. It is an insult to the holiness of our God when there is no difference between the way Christian men behave and the way men who do not have Christ behave. It is an insult when women—Christian women—behave in the same way as those who do not know the Lord. It is an insult to the holiness and promises of the Gospel when our Christian marriages limp along with the same ailments and the same ugliness as marriages that do not know the Lord. And it is an insult when we Christian husbands fail to exemplify the values of the Gospel and live just as the world lives.

It is time for that to change, brothers and sisters. It is time for healing to come to the people of God, for awareness and confession of sin to come, and for us to say, Yes, Lord, I recognize that I have a long way to go, and I am not ashamed to admit it. I ask You to heal me, set me free, and help me in this resolve I am making to be a man, a woman, who exemplifies the transformation brought about by Your Word.

And this morning I want to ask every man who feels convicted by this word to stand for a moment—and if you do not feel convicted, please have the courage to remain seated—and to say to the Lord, Father, I want You to heal me, and I want You to make me a man who exemplifies those values of the Kingdom of God.

Stand and receive. Turn the volume down a little for me, Samuel, just a tiny bit.

And receive that word and examine yourself. I want to ask you to come here to the front for a conversion, an act of testimony that we will make. There is no shame in this, my brothers, but rather healing and restoration.

Receive the word of the Lord. As men, let us be converted anew, and let us promise ourselves that we will be a blessing to our family and a blessing to our community, amen. I join my brothers as I did last Sunday, because I too need a touch from the Lord, and I also need to examine myself and make sure that... because I know that there are things in that word that apply to me too. And this morning I join my brothers in asking for that healing in my life, in my marriage, and in the wounded masculinity of every one of us here.

We need healing from the Lord this morning. And let us ask the Spirit of God to plant this word deep within our hearts and to unfold the entire message throughout the rest of the week; may the Holy Spirit continue speaking to us.

And, sisters, I ask you to pray for us at this moment. Stand up and bless these men who need—we need—the touch of God in our lives. And brothers, you men, help us here.

Let us cry out to God, and know that right now you are in the place of power, which is the place of humility and the place of repentance and acknowledgment. There is no place more powerful than when we humble ourselves before the truth of God.

Cry out to the Lord. The Bible says, “Let us examine our ways.” Let us examine our ways, because the Lord is faithful to forgive, the Lord is faithful to extend His hand, the Lord is faithful to restore. What God is waiting for is often the slightest sign of drawing near, of submitting to the values of the Kingdom of God, so that He may begin a healing work in us.

Let us ask forgiveness for the times we have exploited women. Let us ask forgiveness for the times we have abused our sexual energy. Let us ask forgiveness for the times we have taken advantage of the insecurity of so many women today. Let us ask forgiveness for the times we have failed to play the role we should play as fathers in our homes. Let us ask forgiveness for the times we have allowed work, money, and weariness to rob us of the privilege of blessing our children with our masculine warmth.

And let us also rejoice to see God’s blessing beginning to flow in our lives from this day forward, if we take this to heart and say, ‘Father, I am going to devote myself to exploring and examining what it means to be a renewed man, a healed man, a blessed man, a man who reflects the character and supreme masculinity of Christ Jesus.’

And let us work together, brothers; let us be priests in our homes and in our community. Let us exemplify Christ Jesus’ leadership of ministerial service.

Lord, we love You and submit ourselves to Your truth. We ask Your forgiveness for falling short of Your calling, and this morning, Lord, we desperately want You to heal and bless us and to create a church made up of healed men and women.

Teach us, teach us how to raise healthy families, how to be suitable husbands for our wives. Speak to us, Lord. Speak to us; heal us first, Lord. Heal our wounded masculinity. Heal the image of Christ in us, torn and violated by sin. Heal the sins of our ancestors that still live in us.

Heal the wounds and the bad examples that still reverberate in our minds and cause us to resist the truth of Your Word. Heal us, Lord. Cleanse us and make us more like our Lord.

Thank You, Father. We stand in the gap this morning and thus intercede for this fallen society, and we ask, Lord, make us right now that representative humanity upon which Your healing may fall and then spread to the streets, neighborhoods, homes, and communities of our city, so that this city may be restored and blessed and so that the devil’s accusation may be neutralized and blessing may come to our city.

And begin with us first. We constitute ourselves as representatives of that fallen and needy humanity. We ask for Your blessing, Lord. Your blessing. Heal us, heal us, heal us, heal us.

And now I also want to ask the women to have... to have their own moment of confrontation with the Lord. Perhaps you have been wounded and scandalized by the behavior of a man in your life. It may have been your father; it may have been the husband you have, or the husband who left you and went off with another woman, or who despised you or abused you so much that you could take no more and left the relationship. It may have been the man who raped or abused you when you were a child, and you carry those burdens.

And I want to ask you, in the name of the Lord, to cast that at Christ’s feet right now and no longer live with those thoughts, that resentment. You are a daughter of God, restored, healed, set free, beautified by the presence of Christ. You are a princess.

Christ healed your wounds. That man’s mark is no longer in your spirit or in your emotions. Christ healed them; everything depends on whether you retain it in your mind, but it is merely a fiction—it no longer exists. It does not exist in itself, and if you let it go right now and leave it at the Lord’s feet in order to embrace what God has for you, the future is an accomplished fact in the name of Jesus, in the name of Jesus.

And if some wound inflicted by your husband in the past is preventing you from giving yourself fully to him and once again embracing the call to work together for a happy marriage, I implore you in the name of Jesus to say, Lord, I am going to give one hundred percent; I am going to strive alongside my husband. I forgive him, I forgive him in the name of Jesus, and I thank You for the signs of restoration in him. And from this morning onward, I will continue working with him so that together we may build a blessed marriage and so that our children may also be blessed.

And let all of us, as one being, renounce the devil’s curses upon our families, those accusations, those legal rights that he claims over our lives and our homes, and let us tell him, No more, Satan, in the name of Jesus. I will do my part, and I trust in the Lord’s grace for the rest.

And we constitute our homes as temples of the Holy Spirit, refuges for our children and also for those who come there wounded. We are going to pay the price, brothers and sisters.

God wants repentance from His church. God wants healing for His church. Before the healing that the world out there needs can come, the church must be healed; the church must pay the price. A healed church is irresistible. A healthy church, a church moving along the axis of the power of the Word, brothers and sisters, is an atomic bomb in the midst of hell; it is an example, and it becomes immensely attractive.

So let us ask the Lord that, like miners, we may explore every nugget of gold in the Word of the Lord and integrate it into our lives: the small and the great, the everyday and the sublime—everything. The Lord wants us to integrate it. Men, women, let us embrace God’s calling this morning. Amen.

Father, this church, Lion of Judah, says to You, Heal us, heal us, heal us, Lord, and forgive us, Father, because we are far from being what You want us to be. But, Father, we will not resist Your calling, nor will we disguise it, nor call it something else, nor pretend that we did not hear it. We know what You are calling us to, and we embrace it, and we will wrestle with it, Father, until Your Word prevails in us.

We will not slip free from Your embrace, Father. Change this church, Lord. Change it, heal it, send Your grace, send Your grace, Lord, upon this church, upon those who are far away and upon those who are near. This morning we make a covenant, Lord, to walk in and obey all Your commandments, particularly those that apply to Your family, the family of God. Thank You, thank You. Give thanks to the Lord. Receive God’s calling upon your life.