Written by Jerrold H. Lewis |
Tuesday, November 15, 2022
Being a person of character and marrying a person of character makes the hard work of life more bearable. Plus, these traits also point to a greater probability of marital success. That’s why marital happiness transcends economic strata, culture, and country.  

Looking Around
A recent study conducted on a dating site (with 7 million users) reported that American women find 80% of men “below average” when looking for a husband. Unattractive was the word actually used, but below-average works too. Granted, this study was not conducted by the European Institute for Gender Equality. But 7 million users? That’s a deep pool. If this study is accurate, it means eight out of 10 men are not “husband material” in the eyes of single American women. This also means that 100% of women compete for 20% of the male desirables. Men who “pass the bar,” so to speak. Which, in turn, means that 20% of desirable men get the opportunity to advance with the very best of the ladies. But what about the losing majority on both sides? The 80%-ers. A terrifying statistic was released, which states that by 2030, nearly 50% of middle-aged women in the USA will be husbandless career women. That’s ok if the woman desires to remain single. Single life is as praiseworthy and rewarding as married. In 1 Corinthians 7:7, Paul said, “I wish you were all as I am,” single. We don’t speak enough about the praiseworthiness of singleness. We should. Excellent benefits and blessings for the kingdom of God and man have been accomplished by single people. So this data only poses a problem for those that want to marry. Similar numbers show that many men have given up on finding a wife, or are looking for one in other countries. Think Ukraine, Russia, the Philippines, Taiwan, etc. The statistics of mail-order brides in the USA are astounding.
Some of this seismic shift has everything to do with the predictable stupidity of many young men. They refuse to grow up. Never in the history of mankind has a generation of males been so enamored with staying a child. All previous generations would gladly stand in line, to take this generation out behind the woodshed. The amount of time a young man (even if married) spends in front of a screen pretending to be someone he’s not, is astounding. These men find it hard to manage typical adult responsibilities such as chores, paying bills, keeping a job, and maintaining healthy relationships with those around them. They are at their personal “best” when they have a headset on and are yelling and laughing with their buddies in a make-believe world where they project, by fantasy, everything they are not in real life (the hero, the winner). This phenomenon has been dubbed The Peter Pan Syndrome by psychologists. Young men who refuse to grow up. The low stock value of some young men has everything to do with poor life choices and refusing to turn themselves into their best version. Sensible, intelligent, spiritual women shake their heads. Understandably. And it’s causing women to give up on countless men, or at least begin to weed out the undesirable from the chosen few. The truth is, some very good women are opting out of “settling.” Hence, 80%.
Husband Material
Psychology Today says most young men are single and feel (romantically) lonelier than ever. A real possibility of forever-singleness has settled over many hearts like a fog. It is also why so many men are busy working for “gains” in the gym. They want to somehow break into the top 20% of desirables. Or stay there. If they only knew that modern women of substance want more. Sure, there is a well-deserved component to maintaining a healthy lifestyle and personal grooming. Still, boys’ preoccupation with their looks and physique has everything to do with a warped understanding of what makes a man a man, and what a woman wants. This also explains why many young women are so discouraged! These men are shallow. There’s no mystery, no complexity, no depth. Think about it…if 100% of women compete for 20% of desirable men, then 80% of women are left with the 80% undesirables. What’s the result going to be? They will choose singleness over settling. It’s a foregone conclusion. It’s a love-starved-trapped cycle with no end in sight. These women keep picking up frogs, hoping to get a prince. But they never “kiss” one (friend zone); they never try. And these aren’t frogs anyway; they’re tadpoles.
Young men can fix this. It’s not rocket science, but it is hard. Be better. Find your best expression, and work like a dog to attain it. And maintain it. This does not mean just a career, either. More profoundly, work on those things that will make you even more valuable to a godly woman:

Spiritual depth and growth
Personal character development
Education (however formal or informal)
Steadfast commitment

Take Paul’s words in 1 Cor. 13 to heart, “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.” Then do it. Young men are in desperate need of growing up. Even a generation ago, every man knew these things to be true. Whether he was a Christian or not. Today, it’s a forgotten art. I guess that’s our fault as fathers. Which could be another article. The point is, invest in your whole person.
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Slowly but deliberately drip the truth into our children’s minds and hearts. By reading and re-reading the Bible together, we have introduced them to its primary themes, its main characters, and its central truths. By explaining the Bible as we go, I’ve been able to teach them how to personally apply the Bible’s truths. We aren’t just reading history or poetry together, but hearing divine truths that are meant to change the way we think and the way we live. 

We don’t have little kids around here anymore. In fact, most of the time we now just have one kid around here, and she’s well beyond the little years. We’ve moved past parenting tiny children and into parenting young adults. Toilet training, bike-riding, and grade school drama have given way to navigating graduate programs, assessing romantic relationships, and even planning wedding ceremonies. Our family life has changed dramatically.
But one habit that has stuck is the habit of family devotions. Whenever two or more of us are under this roof, we stumble down to the living room first thing in the morning to read and to pray together. It’s a habit we developed when the kids were tiny, and it’s one that has endured through all the years, through all the change.
I was recently challenged with this question: What’s the point of family devotions? Though the question was asked in the abstract, I thought about it through the lens of my own experience. While I can’t speak to how it may function in someone else’s home, I can tell about the purpose it has served in ours. And maybe in its own way, that will prove helpful to someone.
Before I do that, though, I ought to be honest about a few things. We have never really attempted to do family devotions more than five days a week, so it’s not an every day habit. Sometimes when routines are disrupted we’ve neglected it for weeks at a time. The kids have often been far less than enthusiastic about participating (and sometimes the parents haven’t been a whole lot better). And we’ve rarely been successful at making devotions much more than simply reading and praying together. We have pretty much stuck with a simple formula of dad reading a passage, dad explaining that passage for a minute or two, then dad praying for the family. We’ve kept it consistent and consistently simple. So if I’ve got any authority or expertise to offer, it’s the kind that’s related to experience—to having done this thing many thousands of times.
So what’s the point of family devotions? I wonder if it would be helpful to first consider the purpose it hasn’t served in my family. Family devotions has not been a means through which we have obeyed a specific law or fulfilled an explicit command. There is no commandment in either the Old Testament or the New that tells Christian families they must spend time reading and praying together each day.
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He sent them on their journey with no bread. He forced them to rely upon the provision of the Father for their daily bread. Since they each returned, we can safely conclude that the Father did indeed provide for them. Not one of the twelve starved along the journey. Now just as the Father had given them bread along the way, they returned to have Jesus feed them and a vast crowd with bread, and they even each had a basket full of leftovers! Jesus was teaching them that just as they placed their faith in God, they should also place their faith in Him. 

The apostles returned to Jesus and told him all that they had done and taught. And he said to them, “Come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while.” For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. And they went away in the boat to a desolate place by themselves. Now many saw them going and recognized them, and they ran there on foot from all the towns and got there ahead of them. When he went ashore he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd. And he began to teach them many things. And when it grew late, his disciples came to him and said, “This is a desolate place, and the hour is now late. Send them away to go into the surrounding countryside and villages and buy themselves something to eat.” But he answered them, “You give them something to eat.” And they said to him, “Shall we go and buy two hundred denarii worth of bread and give it to them to eat?” And he said to them, “How many loaves do you have? Go and see.” And when they had found out, they said, “Five, and two fish.” Then he commanded them all to sit down in groups on the green grass. So they sat down in groups, by hundreds and by fifties. And taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven and said a blessing and broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples to set before the people. And he divided the two fish among them all. And they all ate and were satisfied. And they took up twelve baskets full of broken pieces and of the fish. And those who ate the loaves were five thousand men.
Mark 6:30-44 ESV

After witnessing the supernatural hand of God against the Egyptians via the ten plagues, the LORD’s guidance as they fled Egypt via the pillars of cloud and fire, and God’s marvelous deliverance through the parting of the Red Sea, the Israelites were finally free from the yoke of Pharaoh’s enslaving hand. They were now free to worship the Most High and to enter into the land of Canaan that God had promised their ancestor Abraham so long ago.
Yet a new problem presented itself. On the other side of the sea was a great wilderness that the great crowd would need to traverse before they could enter the Promise Land. As the people of Israel began their journey through the wilderness, they began to grumble, crying out that God had only delivered them from Egypt in order to have them starve to death out in the desert. The LORD answered their groanings by giving them bread from heaven. As His sheep bleated out, the Shepherd gave them food.
The Return of the Apostles // Verse 30
As is very common to Mark’s Gospel, our present passage links itself to previous ones. Particularly, the words the apostles returned to Jesus remind us of their short-term journey that Christ sent them upon in verses 7-13. Having gone out in pairs to preach the gospel of the kingdom of God and having seen that even Herod has begun pondering the identity of Jesus upon hearing of the miracles that the apostles were working in Jesus’ name, the twelve now return to Jesus and told him all that they had done and taught. Since they were ministering as ambassadors of Christ, it was only fitting for them to give a report to their Teacher of all that they did.

As we too are our Lord’s ambassadors to the world, His bodily present on earth, we should remember that at the end of our journeys we too will return to Jesus to give Him a report of all that we have done and taught. Of course, let us also remind ourselves that the work of ministry is not exclusively we who bear the title of being a minister. As Paul wrote, God gave leaders to His church “to equip the saints for the work of ministry” (Ephesians 4:11-12). Therefore, it is not only preachers and teachers who will be summoned to give a report; we shall each be called before Him to recount all that we have done and taught. Indeed, the parable of the talents from Matthew 25:14-30 gives us this very warning. We are each given talents by God to steward over. Some receive more, while some receive less. Yet at the end of the parable, they are each called to report on how they stewarded over their talents while their master was away. The servants over five and two talents were both faithful stewards, and their reports were met with praise. The servant over one talent was a slothful and faithless steward who did nothing with the talent given to him, and his report was met with rebuke and punishment. The point of parable is, of course, for us to consider today what kind of stewards we are with the gifts that God has given to us for the advancement of His kingdom. When we give our report to our Lord, we will be found faithful or faithless?

Of course, that does not imply that we will be judged on the last day according to the merit of our own works. If that were the case, then Jesus would not have also taught us these words:
Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’
MATTHEW 7:21-23
The people that Jesus describes seem to be faithful stewards who have done much labor in Christ’s name, who have been valuable servants of the kingdom. Does this passage not seem to contradict the parable of the talents? A closer glance at both reveals no contradiction at all. In the parable, the servant over one talent confidently declared to his master, “I knew you to be a hard man…” (Matthew 25:24), yet we were just told of the master gladly rewarding his other two servants with much after being faithful with only a little. You see, just like those who cry, ‘Lord, Lord,” in Matthew 7, the servant did not truly know his master. Like Jephthah and Saul, his fundamental lack of understanding the character of his master led him into sin even while attempting obedience. If that sounds harsh, we should remember that the biblical concept of sin is to miss the mark, like an archer who fails to hit his target. This is why the Bible so thoroughly laments ignorance of God. Attempted obedience without a proper knowledge of who God is often results in further sin. Indeed, trying to obey a false notion of God is like an archer who is shooting west even though his target is east. The archer’s skills are worthless if he is not actually shooting in the direction of his target. Therefore, we should take God’s message through Jeremiah to heart:
Thus says the LORD: “Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the LORD.”
JEREMIAH 9:23–24

Truly knowing God is the only the real peace that we will have on the day that we stand before our Lord to give our report, and it is the only way for us to be faithful in this life, for we cannot properly serve God without first knowing God.

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