John 8:31-32, 2 Timothy 2:2, Titus 2:6-8, 1 Timothy 5:1, John 4:35-38, John 15:1-8, 12-13, 20-21
Ask a Christian man succeeding in life, “What’s your secret?” and he’s probably going to tell you, “I had a mentor.” Or “A man took me under his wing and showed me the ropes.” Or something similar. There’s no greater pathway to Christian success than for one man to intentionally coach (mentor, disciple) another man about how to integrate faith into all aspects of his life. Join Patrick Morley and learn how you become a coach or be coached.
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Do Something Great With Your Life
If You REALLY Want To Do Something Great, Pass It On!
Edited Transcript
Patrick Morley
Good morning, men. Please turn in your Bibles to Matthew chapter nine verse 35. As we begin, this will be the wrap up for Do Something Great With Your Life, the series, today. Before we get started, let’s do a couple of shout outs. The first one goes to First Baptist Iron Men, a group that’s led by Wayne Burroughs, one of our ADs in Attica, New York, area directors in Attica, New York. Eight to 10 men, they meet on Saturdays at 8:00 AM in the First Baptist fellowship hall. Wayne writes, “We meet to help each other navigate the maze of life. Don’t do life alone.” Great. I wonder if you would join me in giving a very warm, rousing Man in the Mirror welcome to First Baptist Iron Men. One, two, three, hoorah. Welcome. Wayne, thank you for your leadership and, guys, we’re glad to have you as part of our Bible study.
Then, we have been doing shout outs to Man in the Mirror team members. These are men who are disciple makers around the country. Today, we’re going to actually greet a number of them. I’m going to ask them to stand because they’re with us. They’re in town for a bootcamp. You can’t see their pictures very well, so that’s why I’m going to ask them to stand as I call their names. Don Allen from Illinois, Don. Hold your applause. We’ll do the shout out for them all at one time. Guys, if you just stay standing because you’re such a good looking guy. Bert Bernier from Connecticut over here. Jamison Brown from Colorado, Jamison. Phil Elmore, Ohio. Greg Hood, Texas. Jonathan Murray, Alabama. Steve Neal, Tennessee.
Then, Dale Redder and Tyler Sutton from Oviedo, Florida and Arizona, respectively, are the trainers this week. Then, also not pictured but present is the chaplain, the regional director for Chicagoland and the chaplain over all of the area directors, Ron Reed. Ron, where are you? These are the bootcamp people this week, and I wonder if you would join me now in giving them a very warm Man in the Mirror welcome. So glad to have you with us. One, two, three, hoorah. Welcome, guys. You can now take your seats.
Hey, my wife and I came back from a little trip over the weekend. We were on the tram out at the airport. A guy had a t-shirt. It said, “Of course your opinion matters, just not to me.” I thought that was appropriate since we live in an age in which opinions now, at least in the media, opinions are given the same credence as facts. Opinions are equal to facts, and so I thought that was a pretty clever way of handling it. We had a man visit our Bible study a few weeks ago. His name was Alan. As I listened to his story, he was the only visitor that week, as I listened to his story, at the end of it, I said, “You know, you just really seem to me like a well-put-together guy. Am I right?” He said, “Yes, as a matter of fact, I feel like that’s true. My walk with God is strong.” I said, “Well, tell me, what’s your secret?” He said, “Well, it’s very simple. When I was in high school, the pastor of our church took an interest in me. He took me under his wing, and he met with me several times a week. He just poured his life into me over a period of two or three years all the things that he had learned. By the time I went off to college, I was well-grounded in my faith, and I never turned back. I never looked back.”
I was thinking about that for the last three or four weeks since he was here. I thought it would be a good idea to finish up this session with a topic of basically: How can we help other men experience what Alan has experienced? The title of today’s talk: If You Really Want to Do Something Great, Pass It On.
WHAT IS THE COMPELLING PROBLEM SCREAMING FOR AN IMMEDIATE SOLUTION?
As with every talk, there needs to be some compelling problem that’s screaming for an immediate solution. That’s addressed by our text. I think we might find that today. Let’s look together at this text, Matthew chapter nine beginning at verse 35. Let’s look for the compelling problem screaming for immediate attention that’s being addressed by this text. “Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness.”
What was Jesus doing? He was meeting the eternal and the temporal needs of people. He was proclaiming the kingdom of God, salvation, but he was also healing every disease and sickness, so he was helping to meet their temporal needs as well. This is one of the verses that I look at almost every week, this next verse, in preparing to talk to you about the gospel of Jesus and how it impacts our lives. Verse 36, “When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them because he saw that they were harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd.” The problem that Jesus saw, even though he’s proclaiming his gospel and meeting the temporal needs of the people, he looked at the people, and he saw that they were harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd. That’s the presenting problem, but that’s not all he has to say.
He also gives us the root problem. The presenting problem is that people harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd. By the way, if you look around, if you wanted to play Jesus today, you could look around at people everywhere on either side of you, to your neighbor to the left, your neighbor to the right, your coworker in the cubicle in front of you or behind you, or the person next to you at the stoplight, or the person in front of you in the grocery line or any other place, and you can be 100% sure that most of those people are like the people that Jesus is talking about in this text. They are harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd. By the way, if you want to be like Jesus, he had compassion on them, and we can too instead of flicking them off or whatever you do.
That’s the presenting problem, but Jesus goes on here, and he actually gives us the root problem, the cause, the reason why we have this symptom of harassed and helpless people. Verse 37, “And then he said to his disciples, ‘The harvest is plentiful.’” There’s no problem with these harassed and helpless people out here. The harvest is plentiful. He says, “But the workers are few.” There is the root problem. He also then goes on and actually gives us a solution. He says, “Ask the lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.” Ask the lord of the harvest, that would be to pray that God would send out workers into his harvest field.
Let’s just do a little scenario here. You meet a man. You help him become a believer in Jesus, but when he comes, he comes with baggage. Rather than putting him into a support group or coaching him or mentoring him or discipling him, you do a catch and release. You put him back into the same environment that he was before. The problem of course is that he’s not equipped now to take this new life that he has and work it out in the environment because he hasn’t been equipped or coached on how to do that. When the existential challenges that come our way every day come that man’s way, he has not been mentored how to live by Christian principles, so, I mean, there you are. That’s the thing. What could go wrong? You lead a man to Jesus. What could go wrong?
Well, the bottom line is that everything can go wrong. Now, there are two approaches to this. You could talk about who’s at fault or you could talk about what’s the opportunity. I mean, we have to have intellectual integrity. We need to mention that it’s, a lot of times, it’s the fault of the man himself because he is just nonresponsive. He wants Jesus, but he doesn’t want to give up his idol, or he’s just not humble. He won’t take instruction. He refuses to be coached. He’s not coachable. He’s not teachable. You can’t teach an unteachable man. Sometimes it’s just the guy’s fault, but sometimes it’s also our fault too because we’re not willing to be the coaches. We’re not willing to be the workers who go out into the harvest field. That’s part of the fault. I’d rather us focus on the opportunity in our time.
What is the opportunity? Here’s the opportunity, and it is the Big Idea for the day. To really be part of the solution, take another man under your wing and show him the ropes. If you really want to be a part of the solution, if you really want to be a worker, if you really are torn by people who are harassed and helpless like sheep without shepherds, if you really want to be part of that solution, just take another man under your wing and show him the ropes. This is how Jesus intends for it to work. Now, how does God provide to solve this problem? The problem that’s screaming for a solution is that you have men who are harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd. Presenting problem, root problem: The workers are not enough. There are too few. How does God provide to solve this problem?
HOW DOES GOD PROVIDE TO SOLVE THIS PROBLEM?
It’s a process that the Bible calls simply making disciples. Turn with me to 2 Timothy chapter two verse two. 2 Timothy chapter two verse two happens to be the theme verse for this Bible study. It’s the only theme verse we’ve ever had. The leaders know this because at the top of our job descriptions we have this verse. It’s the only theme we’ve ever had in this Bible study. This is the solution that God is providing for those harassed and helpless men who are like sheep without a shepherd. “The things that you have heard,” Paul says, “The things that you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses and trust to reliable people,” faithful, same word, “faithful people who will also be qualified to teach others.” God has a solution to the problem that there are people who are harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd.
God has a solution to the problem that the workers are few. That is that those who are entrusted with, what does it say? The things that Paul has said, the gospel of Jesus, entrust those things to reliable people who will also be qualified to teach others. It’s a very simple calculus. I’m not a math guy, so it may not even be calculus. Maybe it’s multiplication. I don’t know. Anyway, this is the idea of how God wants to solve this problem. He wants to equip people. He wants to have people be coached into Biblical manhood. One of the guys that I was talking to about the book The Christian Man, he said, “You know, in this culture, it seems almost impossible to live out a Biblical model of manhood.” Can you imagine being 30 years old and feeling like, and really being a strong Christian, but feeling like it’s almost impossible in culture to live out a Biblical model of manhood? Is that true? Absolutely not true.
What’s the problem? The problems is that if you enlist a man in the army and issue him a weapon, but you never teach him to clean and shoot the weapon, he’s not going to be much good on the day of battle. God has a solution for that. That’s for us who have been coached to coach others. Those who have been entrusted with the things of God, to entrust reliable people who will also be qualified to teach others to pass it on. If you really want to do something great, pass it on. God has a solution to this problem, both the presenting and the root problems, and that is for us to coach others with the same principles of Biblical manhood with which we have been coached ourselves. If you have not been coached, what would be the step? It would be to get coached. This is the Big Idea here for the day. To really be part of the solution, take another man under your wing and show him the ropes. Coach him.
Now, where does the motivation come from to do this? I’m going to teach a message to you sometime here. I’m probably going to teach you a series sometime in the next year or two on the greatness of God. I remember Bill Bright talking. Bill Bright, the founder of Campus Crusade for Christ, one time talking about where the motivation comes from to live the Christian life. I asked him this one on one. He said to me, he said, “Oh, that’s simple.” He said, “By meditating on the character and attributes of God.” When you think about … One my daily prayers, one of the prayers that I pray each day is, “Lord, I worship you in the beauty of your holiness, the majesty of your creation, the unconditionality of your love, the generosity of your salvation, and the mystery of your providence.”
It just takes my heart and my mind and turns them towards the greatness of God. When I’m overwhelmed, when I have that sense of awe, I want to do something. I want to respond to this greatness of God. When I am sitting around thinking, “This guy really needs help. I really should do something to help him. Let me check my calendar and see if I have any time to do that,” what is that? That’s basically trying to self-will myself to help others instead of out of the overflow of abiding in Jesus and being filled with gratitude for his gospel and being motivated by the greatness of God. Okay, that’s enough for now. I didn’t mean to teach you the whole series. Then, the final piece here I want to talk to you about is The Christian Man coaching challenge.
“THE CHRISTIAN MAN COACHING CHALLENGE”
I know you care about what we’ve been talking about here this morning. I know you care, but what can you do? You’re nobody special. Right? I’m nobody special. We’re just ordinary guys, so what can you do? I mentioned that a pastor in Georgia says that a church should be life begging for structure, not structure begging for life. A Bible study should be life begging for structure, not structure begging for life. We are life. You guys have life. You guys are amazing. Some of you guys are already leading multiple men in coaching environments or small groups that you’re coaching. Just out of curiosity, how many of you are, at this time, either coaching, mentoring, discipling one man or a small group of men? Would you raise your hands? Look at this. This is awesome. You really are getting it done.
What I want to do is I want to give you, so you have life. I mean, you have life. A lot of you have the desire, you have the life, but you don’t have a structure to coach or be coached. On the tables, there is one copy for each of you of The Christian Man Coaching Guide, which I just finished at 4:00 AM this morning. Actually, it’s not done completely, but this is a first draft. There should be enough for everybody. It’s a document that has 34 pages. The subtitle of this coaching guide is A Resource to Decide What Kind of Man You Want to Be. I’m going to read with you together. I will read out loud, and I’d like you to read along the table of contents and the introduction. We’re going to start with the introduction, though, which is on page number three, if you turn to page number three and follow along as I read aloud the introduction.
Ask a man succeeding in life, “What’s your secret?” He’s probably going to tell you, “I had a mentor,” or, “A man took me under his wing and showed me the ropes,” or something similar. There is no greater path to Christian success than for one man to intentionally coach another man how to integrate faith into all aspects of his life. This guide will help you coach or be coached through the 10 calls to action in The Christian Man. You can be the coach or mentor who asks another man, “Would you like someone to help you think through the big decisions about Christian manhood?” Second bullet, or you can ask a more experienced Christian man, “Would you be willing to coach me through The Christian Man Coaching Guide?” Or, bullet number three, you can also work through the coaching guide with a new or existing small group.
This coaching guide contains 10 sections. Each section begins with a shaded area which includes coaching goals, a Big Idea, and a discussion starter. Now, keep your finger there and turn over to page five. I want to show you an example of this shaded area at the beginning at the first of these 10 sections. The first section is identity. Number one, identity. If you’ll look at that shaded area at the top, there are four coaching goals and a place for the coach or the man being coached to put in another goal, a Big Idea for identity. Then it says, “Let’s get it started.” Anyway, the two discussion questions that the coach and the man being coached can talk about just to get the ball rolling.
Now, if you go back to the introduction, it says each section begins with a shaded area which includes these things. That’s followed by a short narrative called the big picture. If you want to look back, you can just see there’s, on page five, there are a few paragraphs there giving the big picture about identity. Then, from the introduction, there’s a short narrative called the big picture, a place to interact with scriptures and discussion questions. Then, there’s an action step. If you look over on page five again of identity, at the very bottom, you can see a shaded area called Interact. If you turn the page, on page six, you can see another shaded area called Interact. These are places where the coach, if you wanted to coach a man on identity, these are the areas that you would talk to him about scriptures and questions that relate to this topic.
Then, you’ll notice also on page six there are several action steps that are related to each topic. The reason there are action steps on there is because we don’t want to do catch and release. We want to help men think through and make decisions about the most important aspects of Biblical manhood, which are the 10 we’re going to be looking at on the table of contents, if you turn to that, page two. The 10 coaching areas in this coaching guide are identity, number two, life balance, spiritual growth, marriage, and that says if you are planning to be married, children if you plan or plan to have them, friendships, work, lust, culture, and sharing faith. In the afterword to this guide, I make the point that there is no secret knowledge about what it means to be a Christian man, to live out a model of Biblical manhood.
Once you have been coached through this coaching guide or once you coach another man through this coaching guide, you will basically have a clear picture of Biblical manhood, and you will have the opportunity to either make the decisions or help another man make all of the major decisions that he needs to make to be able to integrate faith into every aspect of his life. That is The Christian Man Coaching Guide. It’s taken from the book The Christian Man. However, what we’re going to do with this is we’re going to be giving this away. I wanted to publicly thank HarperCollins and Zondervan for doing this. They’re allowing us to take this and put it online in a downloadable PDF. It will be all typed set like a book in its final version. People, you, others will be able to download, print off PDF copies of this, and give them away to small groups in your church. You could do it yourself, whatever you want to do at no charge. I do want to thank Zondervan for allowing us to do this.
How I want to finish today is I want to see if you would be willing to take The Christian Man coaching challenge. What is The Christian Man coaching challenge? You now have the document. What is the document? It’s knowledge, yes, but it’s also the basis for an experience, an interactive coaching experience with another man. The Christian Man coaching challenge is this. It’s for you to take this document, our gift to you, and to either, A, find another man. You probably already have two or three guys in mind. Ask the question in the introduction, “Would you like to have someone?” What does it say? Somebody read it to me out loud in the introduction, the first bullet. What does it say? Right there.
Would you like someone to help you think through the big decisions about Christian manhood? In that case, you would be the coach. Again, some men are going to say, “Nah. Not interested. Don’t need it. I have all the Jesus I need.” Of course, you know they don’t, but that’s a different thing. You find somebody who says, “I would love to do that.” Then just start meeting and work through these things at whatever pace. It might take 10 weeks because there are 10 topics. You might take 10 years. I don’t know. I haven’t done it before. We’ll have to figure it out as we go. Or you might say, “I can’t be the coach. I need to be coached.” You would ask the second question. What’s the second question in the second bullet in the introduction?
Go to somebody, say, “Would you be willing to coach me through The Christian Man Coaching Guide? Look, I got it right here.” He’s probably going to say, “Yeah, let me look that over. Probably.” That’s The Christian Man coaching challenge. I would like to issue that to you. If you have more life, if you are life looking for structure, if you are life begging for structure, if you have life in you, and you want to give it away, then I want to encourage you to accept this challenge because to really be part of the solution, you can take another man under your wing and show him the ropes, if you really want to be part of the solution. Of course your opinion matters. There are better ways to do it. Of course your opinion matters, just not to me. This is actually God’s only designated way to release the power of his gospel.
Let us pray. Our dearest Father, thank you for the simplicity. I don’t know why we try to make it so much more complicated. I’m at least speaking for myself, but it’s good to be reminded that people need your gospel. They’re harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd. We need to know that the harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. We need to know that your method, your solution is for those of us who have been entrusted with your gospel to be faithful and entrust it to others who also, in turn, could coach others. Lord, I pray that you would simply just tutor this to each of our hearts and help us to respond in any way you want to work in us both to will and to do of your good pleasure. We make our prayer in Jesus’ name amen.
