“The glory of young men is their strength, and the splendor of old men is their gray head.”

Proverbs 20:29

On this week’s episode of All of Life for God, English schoolmaster Alun Ebenezer charges young men to be strong AND wise in an excerpt from his newest book, “Call to Action.” Check the link in our show notes or visit heritagebooks.org to pick up a copy of this inspiring new release for the young men in your life.

Learn more about One Audiobooks at the link in our show notes.

You are listening to the audio production of "Call to Action: Become the Man God Designed You to Be" by Alun Ebenezer, published by One Audiobooks. This book was originally published by Reformation Heritage Books and is read by Jonathan St. John.

Foreword by Gavin Peacock

On his deathbed, King David spoke these words to his son Solomon: “I go the way of all the earth; be strong, therefore, and prove yourself a man. And keep the charge of the LORD your God: to walk in His ways, to keep His statutes, His commandments, His judgments, and His testimonies” (1 Kings 2:2–3). Last words are important, and David sees fit to tell his son, “Act like a man.” But not just any man—a godly man. In our day, manhood is under attack. Many view it with suspicion and believe that masculinity is dangerous, oppressive, and “toxic.” This has led a generation of “men without chests,” as C. S. Lewis put it. But God loves manhood and masculinity. He created mankind male and female (Gen. 1:27), and He teaches us in the Bible what it means to be a man.

But manhood is not just under attack—it is also not taught. This is because we live in a fatherless generation where dad has either been removed from his place in the center of the home, loving and leading his family, or has abdicated his role entirely. All children suffer in this sorry state of affairs, but boys suffer the most. I coached high school soccer for six years, and I would estimate that eighty percent of the young men in my charge during that time did not have a father or a father figure in their lives. In some cases, dad had left the home due to family strife; in others, he simply wasn’t present in his son’s life. My fellow coaches and I were their first example of what loving, masculine authority looked like and of how a man should behave.

The boys of today are the men of tomorrow. They need to be given a vision of their masculine potential. They need instruction and discipline to learn how to get there. And they need love to fuel them along the way. They need fathers to teach them how to be men of God, men who will be tomorrow’s husbands and fathers. If you get the men, you get the home, the church, and the culture.

This is why the book in your hands is so important. It was written by a man with a father’s heart for young men. Alun Ebenezer is a culture-changer. In 2013, he became the founding headmaster of The Fulham Boys School, and, for nine years, he pioneered a unique brand of schooling with foundations in the Christian faith to educate and raise boys to be men. There are few who have given more thought and time to this task. To that end, he brings a wealth of knowledge on how young men think and what young men need. In thirty short chapters, he lays out a biblical vision of what a man of God looks like and what steps one must take to become that man.

Augustine, a church father and theologian, was a man who wasted his youth in the folly of sinful pursuits. He found no joy and no purpose in that way of life. One day, he was sitting in despair in his garden when he heard the voice of a young child in a house nearby saying, “Take up and read. Take up and read.” He immediately went inside, turned to the book of Romans, and read these words:

Let us walk properly, as in the day, not in revelry and drunkenness, not in lewdness and lust, not in strife and envy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to fulfill its lusts. (Rom. 13:13–14)

Augustine writes about this moment: “I had no wish to read more, nor need to do so. For, in an instant, as I came to the end of this sentence, it was as though the light of confidence flooded into my heart, and all the darkness of doubt was dispelled.” Augustine turned to God and His Word at age thirty-two, and he became a man.

Young man, don’t waste your youth as Augustine did. Life is short. Don’t put off until tomorrow what you can do today. Take up and read this book you hold—let Alun Ebenezer teach you through the Scriptures what it means to be a man even as he points you to the true Man, Jesus Christ. The apostle John writes, “Jesus came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. And Pilate said to them, ‘Behold the Man!’” (John 19:5). Pilate was mocking. But Jesus actually is the Man. A king who died for His people. A shepherd who was slain for His sheep. A husband who died for His Bride. He has taken initiative, and His actions have provided salvation and hope, that you would be the man you were made to be through faith in Him.

Introduction

This book is for young men. Young men who are determined to become real men. Christian men. This does not happen automatically. You must be proactive and take action. There are thirty chapters, one for each day of the month. In every chapter, there is an action to help you become the man of God you are required to be, the man that our churches, schools, universities, workplaces, families, communities, and countries need you to be.

It is important to say at the outset that I have failed at almost every action I discuss (sometimes badly!), which is the reason I wrote this book. I urge you to learn from my mistakes and to take the actions I wish I did. As I look back, I can testify that God knows best and that His ways are perfect (Ps. 18:30). His design and His plan really are to prosper you and not to harm you (Jer. 29:11).

I understand that, overall, young men are not big readers (although you do need to be—see chapter 10!). With that in mind, some chapters are quite short, others a bit longer, but each chapter will take you ten minutes or fewer to read. You will need your Bible alongside this book, and I encourage you to take the time to look up the passages referenced in each chapter.

So, gentlemen, if you are ready, buckle up. Let’s begin.

Chapter 1

Be

The first action is to be. Be a man (1 Cor. 16:13).

This opening chapter is quite technical. It’s a real hot potato, one that flies in the face of modern thinking and that may even sound controversial. In fact, if you adopt the Christian view of manhood, you may very well be accused of bigotry, sexism, chauvinism, or worse. So, as you read this first chapter, hang in there, be brave, engage your brain, and really think!

The Bible is clear that boys and girls are different. Not better or worse, not superior or inferior, just different. According to Genesis 1:27, “God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.” Boys and girls are created differently. This has been confirmed by those who have researched the male and female brains, much less anyone who has ever spent any time with boys and girls. Moreover, whenever anyone hears of a newborn baby, the first question he asks is, “Is it a boy or a girl?”

However, the distinction between the sexes is being blurred today. We are taught that gender is fluid and that you are what you feel. According to transgenderism (the belief that someone is not the same gender that he or she was at birth), God may have mistakenly put an opposite-sex “spirit” into the wrong body, an internal sense of gender that may or may not align with one’s biological sex. The “real you” is who you feel yourself to be on the inside. This means that subjective feelings override objective, biological, genetic reality. A boy or a girl may simply be trapped in the wrong body.

In recent years, this has been accepted as fact by much of the public and has been embraced and promoted by the mainstream media and celebrities. Activists are pushing society toward accepting transgenderism unquestioningly and shutting down the essential debate surrounding it. Instead of providing transgender people with the support they need to embrace the bodies they were born with, society is compounding their confusion, leading to harmful consequences. Drastic and dangerous treatments are being promoted, such as puberty-blocking drugs, hormone therapy, and “gender-affirming” surgeries. Many go on to regret these treatments. The impact on young people is particularly concerning, as the long-term effects are still unknown.

The reality is that, however we feel, a man cannot become a woman, and a woman cannot become a man. It is not loving to “affirm” the idea that a person is “trapped in the wrong body.” It is dangerous, both physically and psychologically. Male chromosomes cannot be changed into female chromosomes. Altering one’s appearance, cosmetically or surgically, cannot change one’s underlying biological makeup. In short, psychology cannot override biology.

As Christians, however, we must accept and embrace the reality that there are precious persons who genuinely struggle with gender dysphoria—a condition where a person senses that his or her gender identity (how the person feels about being male or female) may not align with his or her biological sex, resulting in emotional distress. These people are hurting and need to know that, while we may not agree with them, as Christians, we love them, we’re there for them, we’re ready to listen to them and seek to understand the pain they are facing, and we deeply desire what is best for them.

The Christian worldview can fully explain why people experience gender dysphoria. As a result of the fall, creation has been disrupted—it is not the way it once was, nor the way it will eventually be in the new creation (Gen. 3; Rom. 8; Rev. 21). No part of our existence in the universe has been left undisturbed by sin’s effects. This means that the brokenness of creation reaches into every corner of our lives—even our minds and hearts. We are all made in God’s image, but we all struggle with the brokenness of our bodies, desires, and thoughts in different ways and to different degrees. So, in this created, but broken, world, we understand that not all identities or feelings are to be accepted, because we are all guided by a mixture of righteous and broken desires.

As Christian men (even though it might be particularly hard for some of us), we must acknowledge that God made us—He gets the ultimate say in who we are. For those who do not struggle in this area, we need to speak with compassion, remembering that Jesus did not seek to win debates. He sought to love people. And as his followers, so must we. Importantly, we must also realize that being a man does not mean being a certain type of man. Some men are sporty, others not. Some are more sensitive, others less. The call is to be a man, not a stereotypical macho man.

Chapter 2

Behold

One of the hardest things to be today is a young man. Right now, it is open season on manhood, and to some extent, this is understandable. At our worst, we men are power hungry, aggressive, and entitled. We demean and abuse women, we’re bad role models for our children, we’re addicted to screens and pornography, and we can’t be trusted. We engage in behaviors that have made the streets unsafe after dark, we have developed rape culture at some of our “top” schools, and we are guilty of widespread sexual misconduct—so much so that when women tell their stories of harassment, many others have said #MeToo. Many believe that masculinity is “toxic” and that the time has come to fundamentally change how “boys will be boys.”

So, what should a man be like? A woman? Is that the answer? Feminize boys? Over the years, many frustrated schoolteachers have said to boys, “Why can’t you be more like the girls?!” Everyone’s invited to have their say on this, and different groups use social media to push their agendas forward. But at such a watershed moment in the reconstruction of twenty-first-century man, we should do what Pontius Pilate told the first-century crowd in Jerusalem to do: behold the Man (John 19:5), the Man who sixteenth-century reformer Martin Luther called the “proper man.”

The Man was Jesus of Nazareth. He was no superman, but He was a real man. He looked like a man, indistinguishable from other Israeli men. He developed like a normal child—He learned to speak, read, and write, and He went to school. He experienced tiredness, loneliness, thirst, hunger, sorrow, laughter, and love. He suffered, bled, and died.

He was lower working class. The oldest of at least eight children, He was raised in a small, backwater village in north Palestine, a place infamous for its wildness and wickedness. In tight, cramped conditions, where families have misunderstandings and where tempers fray, He lived in a home made of mud and branches, comprising one large room, with a goat, a cow, or a donkey at one end, and a raised platform where the family slept on mats at the other.

Growing up, He played on the streets of Nazareth with the other children; spoke with a heavy northern accent; learned a trade from his supposed father, who was a carpenter; and spent most of His working life doing building and repair work around Nazareth. He got angry and spoke out against wrongdoing, but He was never harsh or cruel. He was unselfish—He never responded to provocation, nor did He engage in self-justification. He always did the right thing, not the easiest thing. He couldn’t be bought or schmoozed, and He chose a company of fishermen and outcasts rather than the great and successful men of this world. He was kind and full of compassion. As He hung on a Roman cross, dying in agony, He thought about His mother and arranged for her to be supported. Despite being busy and tired, He felt sorry for people, listened to their problems, gave them time and attention, and dealt with them tenderly.

Children wanted to be with Him, and in stark contrast to the thinking of His day, He had a high regard for women. He relied on their help and assigned them a place of honor. In a culture where women were not trusted to give testimony in a court of law, it was women who were by His cross at the end of His life and the first witnesses of His resurrection. Nothing and no one has done more for the dignity of women than this man.

To show His disciples what greatness looked like, He put on a slave’s apron, poured water into a basin, and washed their feet—feet that had walked in sandals along dirty, dusty Palestinian roads. He knew and faced all the temptations of working men, but He didn’t sin. According to those closest to Him, he never did anything wrong. His enemies could find no fault in Him (John 19:4). Even the one who handed Him over to His enemies, who knew Him as well as anyone, later confessed, “I have sinned by betraying innocent blood” (Matt. 27:4).

He respected His parents and dutifully served His family. He may have delayed His entry into public life because His father died when He was young—as the oldest in the family, He would have assumed His father’s responsibilities until the next brother was mature enough to take over. He is a peerless teacher of the ages and taught with authority. Those who heard Him said, “No man ever spoke like this Man” (John 7:46). He never paraded His wisdom, but He combined simplicity and profundity so that “the common people heard him gladly” (Mark 12:37).

But this Man didn’t come into the world just to be an example. He came to actually sort out the mess men have made. He came not to judge but to save. And He did it by being stripped, tied up, beaten, punched, spat on, whipped, laughed at, and, finally, nailed to a Roman cross in a dump outside the city wall of Jerusalem. Here, He took the punishment for, and dealt with, all the mess, guilt, shame, hurt, filth, anger, and sin of the world.

He has forgiven the young men we once were. He’s an example of the men we should be, and He helps us to become those men.

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