Latest / Intentional Guy / Grace Is Not the Opposite of Masculine
Transcript
- Michael Chestnut: I told Brett Knight something on the show yesterday that I've never said out loud on a microphone before. Being punished was easy for me. Accepting grace was almost impossible. And I think the reason is that somewhere along the way, I decided grace was the opposite of being a man. I could take accountability all day long. Tell me what I did, tell me what it cost, tell me what I owe. I can carry that. I am a man. Carrying things is what we do. But sit me down and tell me that God is not disappointed in me, that he is not keeping a ledger that the things I did is not the thing I am. That one I could not take. I honestly believed I was the exception. Not that God's grace was not real, but that it was not real for me. Everybody else got that grace. I got the bill. Here's what I have found out since. That is not a Michael problem. That is a man problem. We have grace filed in the wrong drawer. Somewhere along the way men decided grace was soft. It is the word you use when you are letting someone off. It sounds like excuses. It sounds like the guy who never faces anything and calls it forgiveness. So a real man does not take it. A real man pays what he owes. Then there is this other ditch, and it is just as deep. That is the guy who thinks being a man is not. Today means accepting everything, questioning nothing, going along with whatever comes at him and calling that grace. That is not grace either. That is just being agreeable. One guy will not take grace because he thinks it makes him weak. The other guy uses grace so he never has to be strong. Both of them are wrong about the same word. Now, I do not blame men for this. Nobody handed us a definition. I grew up a preacher skid, so I heard that word constantly. Nobody ever showed me what to do with it. In the world I came up in, I am praying for you, Met. Have a good day. Everything stayed on the surface. So when I got to the point where I actually needed to say out loud that I was struggling with pornography and I needed help, I had nowhere to put it. And not because the men around me were bad men, but rather because none of us had ever practiced it. And if you have only ever heard grace preach from a stage and never seen it handed to you by another man in a room, of course it sounds soft. You have never watched it do any heavy lifting. Paul asked God three times to take something out of his life. Three times, and what he got back was this, My grace is sufficient for thee, for my strength is made perfect in weakness. 2 Corinthians 12, verse 9. Read that again slowly. Grace and strength are in the same sentence. They are not opposite in that verse. Grace is the thing that makes the strength work. God did not tell Paul to make To man up. He did not remove the problem either. He said, My grace is enough, and your strength is going to get finished off in the place where you are weak. This is not a soft verse. That is the whole blueprint. What it actually cost me was years. Years of being accountable without ever being healed. I confessed plenty. I never received anything. I would own it, hate myself for it, promise to do better, and then go do it again, because owning it was the only tool I had. Brett said it yesterday and it landed on me hard. Punishment is good at changing behavior. It cannot heal the pain that is driving. The behavior. I was punishing myself for years and calling it repentance. And the whole time I was doing it alone, because telling somebody would have meant admitting I could not fix it myself, which, and I want to be honest here, felt less like a man than the thing I was actually doing. Here are three takeaways I want you to consider. One, own it all the way, and then stop. Take the full weight of what you did. Do not soften it, then put it down. You see, owning it is your job. Carrying it forever is not, and it never was. Brett said Grace tells you that what you did is not who you are. That is not permission. That is identity. Two. Say the actual thing to one actual man, not a prayer request with the details filed off like an unspoken prayer request. The real sentence with the real words in it. Every man I know who got free started with one uncomfortable sentence said to somebody with a face. And then three, go be the one who received it. When another man tells you the ugly thing, do not flinch and do not fix him. Just Stay. That is how grace stops being a sermon word and starts being something a man can hand another man. Here is your challenge. There is a sentence you have never said out loud. You already know what it is. You knew before I finished that sentence. Find one man and say it. Not a room, one man. You will feel like it's making you smaller. It won't. It is the strongest thing you will ever do this year. Drop the word strong in the comment if you are going to do it. I read every one of them. And go listen to Brett Knight from yesterday if you haven't heard it yet. He is a criminal defense attorney and a pastor. He has walked hundreds of men out of the worst days of their lives, and he says grace and accountability were never opposite. That episode is the other half of this one called Grace Is Not Weak. If you are ready to stop white knuckling it, my book Are You Ready? A practical battle plan for Christian men is the plan and it's on Amazon. And if what I described is you right now, do not sit in it alone. Find a celebrate recovery group near you. Let's get coffee. Let me be your brother. Let me walk beside you. And until next time, just keep being intentional.