Episode Summary. Why did the long-awaited Messiah of Israel have to be the MIGHTY GOD—and what does that title mean for our everyday walk with Jesus today? That is the topic of today’s episode.

For Further Prayerful Thought

1. How would you support the idea that the overall teaching of the OT is that the real oppression of Israel was done by foreign military powers but by SIN? Why might this point to the fact that the deliverer would have to be God, himself?
2. Paul commanded Christ-followers to abhor evil. What stood out to you in this episode about the awfulness of sin?
3. When it comes to being strong in the Lord and the strength of his might, which aspects of appropriating Christ’s power to fight spiritually stood out to you?
4. Which piece of spiritual armor do you most need to start putting on?
5. How does the depth of evil to be driven out by prayer motivate us to persevere in prayer? 

Resources Mentioned in Today’s Podcast

• Check 6 Wallet Card comes in a 5 Pack
• The Check 6 tool is designed to go with the book, Got Your Back: Helping Christian Men Forge the Brotherhood Connections They Need.

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Episode Summary. For the next four weeks, our focus is on the first and most foundational part of our mission—deepening our love relationship with Christ. We will do this by zooming the camera in on four titles of Jesus given in the Isaiah 9 prophecy of the coming Messiah Jesus—Wonderful Counselor, Almighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. What do these titles tell us about Jesus and what difference these descriptions of our Commander in Chief make in our everyday lives? This episode examines Jesus, the Wonderful Counselor.

For Further Prayerful Thought

1. Do you agree or disagree that every man has a little of Pat Tillman in him—a capacity to be inspired by a great mission.
2. How would you argue that the most foundational part of our mission as Christ-followers to deepen our love relationship with Jesus?
3. What stood out to you as take aways from the truth revealed to us by God the Jesus the Messiah would be the Wonderful Counselor?

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Episode Summary: Ideas have consequences. Bad ideas have victims. This episode examines the impact of critical theory aka cultural Marxism, upon some Christians' thinking today in their view of ICE, law-enforcement, and gender roles. 

For Further Prayerful Thought:

1. How does “cultural Marxism” sound like what you’ve heard about (economic), i.e. regular Marxism?
2. If justice means there must be no disparities of money, ability, or power in society, why does it logically follow that the “have nots” will be hostile to the “haves?” Why might they be able to justify a revolution as Mao did in China?
3. Why would it be tragic if the legitimate enforcement of the law were seen as authoritarianism? Knowing that holders of authority can and do use it unjustly, why do you think God takes such a strong stand (in Rom 13 and I Pet 2) requiring Christians to obey authority.
4. What do you think of the argument that the biblical teaching about gender roles and church leadership is so clear that to deny it strongly suggests Christians are being shaped by culture and not Scripture?  

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Episode Summary: As the Apostle Paul issues a direct charge to his young protégé, Timothy, the charge is not, “preach the Word,” “preach grace and not the law,” “care for those under your care,” or even “be faithful to your call.” His charge is to fight the good fight. This episode explains what Paul means by this and practically speaking how Christian men today can answer this call to fight for those under their care.  

For Further Prayerful Thought:

1. If I am called to fight the good fight for those God has sovereignly place around me, and I desert from the battle line, what does it mean for those I’m called to fight for?
2. How does Paul’s statement that God desires humans to be saved from sin and come to a knowledge of the truth related to Jesus’ teaching that we are to seek to dispel the kingdom of evil and darkness from our lives and the world and replace it with the righteousness and light of his kingdom?
3. Why battle for people to see truth?
4. Why are a good conscience and faith prerequisites for successful fighting?
5. How might the things we ask for in prayer for ourselves and others, be impacted by realizing that the good fight is for the fruit of righteousness to be formed in us and others as well as for Satan’s lies to be torn down? 

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Episode Summary: In Psalm 119:97, David cries out, “Oh how I love your law! It is my meditation all the day.” But Paul wrote to the Romans, “You are not under law but under grace,” (6:14) and to the Galatians, “If you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law” (5:18). So, for Christians, which is it? Are we called to live free from the Law or devoted to the Law? As we continue our study of I Timothy we realize that the question of the place of the law for Christians was an issue that Timothy and other church leaders at Ephesus were wrestling with. This episode examines what Paul said to Timothy as well as what the rest of Scripture says about whether a believer should try to be righteous, i.e. keep the law.

For Further Prayerful Thought:

1. How would try to explain to a new believer that when Paul said that Christians don’t live “under the law” he was referring to how we are SAVED, not how we are TO LIVE.
2. What stood out to you about the three categories of biblical law?
3. Look back at the 8 texts and reasons that pursuing righteousness is NOT legalism. Which ones seemed most persuasive to you.
4. In David’s Psalm 119 cry, “O how I love your law! It is my meditation all the day” why might he associate loving God’s law with meditating on it?

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Episode Summary: Paul taught Timothy that genuine Christian leaders are focused not on philosophical speculation or useless theological debate but upon being faithful stewards of what God has entrusted to us. He instructed Timothy, Charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine, nor to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies, which promote speculations rather than the STEWARDSHIP from God that is by faith. This term, stewardship, is a very rich word, with an enormous biblical theme behind it to describe our mission as Christ-followers. In fact, Jesus taught that it is being faithful stewards that leads to hearing “well done” from the Master. This episode provides a rich biblical overview of this concept and 5 ways to rule our lives for Jesus.

For Further Prayerful Thought:

1. Which aspects of being made in God’s image most point to us being made to order every aspect of human life FOR the king, in your opinion?
2.  How would you support the idea that the Great Commission, “Go and make disciples of the nations,” is a renewal of Adam’s original commission, “Be fruitful, fill the earth and subdue it?”
3. How would you defend the idea that if our outer world is ever going to be ordered for God, the reason will be that we’ve become convinced that the inner world of the spiritual must govern the outer world of activity?
4. Which of the 5 steps given to govern our outer world from the inner world do you most want to remember? 

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Summary

The strains of egalitarianism and cultural Marxism which identify biblical authority structures as themselves, “evil,” are infecting our loved ones, causing them to resist the rule of law.  They need a biblical understanding of God-established authority in civil society, the church, and the home despite the flaws of those filling those God-designed roles. This episode reveals a surprising truth: God has ordained leadership in civil society, the church, and the home for the purpose of leaders giving their followers love.

For Further Prayerful Thought:

1. How would you defend the statement, “Though sometimes authority structures are filled by corrupt individuals, undermining God’s ordained authority structures in civil society, the church, and the home is evil, because those structure’s purpose is LOVE?”
2. In your own words, why does sacrificial love issue from a pure heart?
3. In your own words, why does sacrificial love issue from a clean conscience?
4. In your own words, why does sacrificial love issue from a sincere faith?

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Episode Summary. Not only does God have a specific mission for you in 2023, which Paul summarizes in Ephesians 2:10 as good works, but that mission is so important that God specifically designed you for it—to have your specific place and responsibilities in your family, your natural gifts and vocational calling, your specific spiritual gifts with which to contribute to the Body of Christ, and your specific relationships with the lost. God has designed both ME—and THE SPECIFIC OPPORTUNITIES I WILL HAVE IN 2023 to impact my world for Christ. This episode looks at how to overcome a disordered life, so that you and I can stay focused on Christ’s mission for us—and so bring him honor in 2023.

For Further Prayerful Thought

1. What do you think is the biggest cost of living a disordered life?
2. Why might the failure to have a concrete understanding of your mission, make it easy to live a disordered life?
3. What are the pluses and minuses of defining our mission as the MFMfC podcast does, i.e. Called TO Christ, Called TO BE LIKE Christ, Called to EXERCISE DOMINI0N for Christ?
4. What benefits of overcoming a disordered life stand out to you?
5. What do you think are the biggest challenges to living an ordered outer life because you have ordered your inner private world?

Resources Used in Today’s Podcast

Crazy Busy, by Kevin DeYoung

Ordering Your Private World, by Gordon MacDonald

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Episode Summary: Men hate to lose at anything. But these days, many Christian men, including married guys, are losing the battle with lust, looking at porn on their phone and masturbating. Strong, urgent, forceful, and impatient, the sex drive dominates the mind and body of every healthy male. These strong sexual urges start off as simply the result of hormones. But surrendering to lust repeatedly strengthens lustful cravings, sows the seeds of selfishness, and interferes with our spiritual perception. “The pure in heart,” said Jesus, “are those who see God.” We are going to repeatedly lose battle with lust, but the real danger is that we stop fighting and just surrender to it. This episode examines how lust defeated David, bringing devastation into his own life and that of his family. Our goal is to prepare ourselves, by God’s grace, to better defeat it.

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Science confirms the truth we are given in Genesis 2:15—that Adam is designed to shape and protect the garden. Since Adam and Eve’s sin brought Satan, sin, and destruction into the garden, all our efforts to shape our lives and culture in righteousness are opposed by this triumvirate. We must fight, in the power of Christ, for every inch of ground. Today we examine a powerful WEAPON for this fight: prayer. But viewing prayer as a weapon for fighting is probably NOT what most men think of prayer as being for. They see prayer as praise to God, confession to God, thankfulness to God, requesting God’s help for those grieving or having surgery. But rarely do we see prayer used the way Paul tells us in Eph 6”18 it is to be used: as an act of war. And when men understand this dimension of prayer, prayer moves from being a guilt-producing obligation to becoming a life-changing thrill! Could that happen in your prayer life? Yes, and that is our goal in this episode. 

For Further Prayerful Thought: 

1. Why do think Christians don’t see prayer more as a weapon?
2. What is wrong with saying that after the resurrection, Jesus left this world to go back to heaven and be with God?
3. What does Jesus want Christians to during this stage of salvation history, between his ascension to God’s right hand and his final return?
4. Why is it important, that Jesus prefaced his command to make disciples of all nations with, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me, Therefore…”? 

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Summary: “The biblical context for viewing all of life’s events is called spiritual warfare—the age-old conflict between the kingdom of darkness and the kingdom of light…. Biblically and practically speaking, we are in a spiritual war. The Christian’s spiritual enemy is not in uniform, and he doesn’t meet us on an identifiable battlefield. He uses ruthless and unconventional tactics such as deceit, deflection, and disguise…. The church of Jesus Christ needs to know its enemies and his strategies. Above all, Christians need to know how to gain victory over this enemy.” (The Spiritual Warfare Answer Book). In this episode, we take a practical look at HOW TO USE the sword of the Spirit to resist thoughts and temptations that seek to entice us off the path of life and onto the road to destruction. 

For Further Prayerful Thought:

1. Do you think this is a fair statement? If a man is not winning his own spiritual battles, he won’t be very effective helping his wife and children win theirs.
2. Describe in your own words the power of the Word of God.
3. What did you learn from our examination of the way Jesus wielded the sword of the Spirit?
4. Of the 13 temptations, listed, which 2 or 3 do you most need to be able to parry, by quoting Scripture?

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