Quotes from Stephen Mansfield

For example, many men are convinced it is somehow manly to produce children yet unmanly to take responsibility for them. This is why there are American households teeming with children but absent a father.

It is not enough that the mess is cleaned up, like a house being prepared for company. We can only be satisfied when the condition of our hearts that led to the mess in the first place is challenged, healed, and turned onto a healthy, Christlike path.

Merely having an open mind is nothing; the object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.

Psalm 23:3 every day. Lord, please be my good shepherd and restore my soul.

The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.

By doing rather than merely studying, we create a culture. Newcomers and the young feed on that culture. They watch. They do. They, too, are changed. Our culture expands. You Americans create a system of thought. The most you ask is that people contemplate new ideas. You might ask them to give or to sometimes attend meetings, but no contagious culture is created.

a man cannot fulfill his purpose if he is living for applause, approval, and affirmation in this world. It simply will not come—not enough, certainly, to answer the needs of his soul.

If a man lives for the glory of God, he stops looking for affirmation from other human beings after every good deed, a pat on the head every time he does his duty. Instead, he throws himself into his role unselfishly. He contents himself with knowing he is fulfilling his purpose in this world and pleasing the God who made him.

Every human soul is different. We are all shaped by both experience and design, by callings and the way our gifts mold our inner lives. Every soul has a bent, a drift, a way it wants to go. And when hard times come and the inner person writhes in torment, the soul reaches for what it thinks is anesthesia, for something to medicate the pain.

Here is where it leads us. And let me make this clear: there is nothing that happened in that wounding experience with that church that is worth what is happening to you now.

Life has meaning only in the struggle, Victory or defeat is in the hand of God, So let us celebrate the struggle.

Honorable men don't settle for lives of regret.

G. K. Chesterton: "The most extraordinary thing in the world is an ordinary man and an ordinary woman and their ordinary children." And

David knew what it was to be a man. As he lay dying, he called his son Solomon to his bedside and gave him final instructions: "I am about to go the way of all the earth. So be strong and show yourself a man." These are the last recorded words of one of the greatest kings to ever live. Of all he might have said to his son with his final breath, he chose to instruct him to be a man. They are words we should never forget.

Being a man is a privilege, not an entitlement. It is a surrender of our priority. It is a laying down of our lives, not physically but inwardly—our preferences, our pleasures, sometimes even our dreams. Our version of Witold Pilecki's medals comes in the lives we offer to God, lives we have bled and sweated and prayed and given ourselves for. This is what it means to be a man.

The confirmation of history is that we are not called despite our wounding and betrayal; we are wounded and betrayed because we are called. And God yearns to make your pain redemptive in your life.

As you forgive, you are allowing God to clean up the mess and start making your life right again. The demonic taunts are coming to an end. Peace is returning. Perhaps relationships are even being restored, and your faith is rising.

John Wesley drank wine, was something of an ale expert, and often made sure that his Methodist preachers were paid in one of the vital currencies of the day—rum. His brother, Charles Wesley, was known for the fine port, Madeira, and sherry he often served in his home;

Your horrific time of trouble offered you truths about yourself, windows into your own soul, and maps to the terrain of your inner life. Wise people learn to gather this intelligence to help them conquer themselves and then to live in loftier ways.

Ultimately, though, you only know who a man is and what he believes by what he does. Not by what he sits around talking about.

Beer, well respected and rightly consumed, can be a gift of God. It is one of his mysteries, which it was his delight to conceal and the glory of kings to search out. And men enjoy it to mark their days and celebrate their moments and stand with their brothers in the face of what life brings.

What are you reading, watching, memorizing, and applying that will make you an exceptional man?

Do not suppose that abuses are eliminated by destroying the object which is abused," he once wrote. "Men can go wrong with wine and women. Shall we then prohibit and abolish women?

Action is character. Manhood is action.