Praying Grace for Men E-Book

David Holland

• Herausgeber: BroadStreet Publishing Group, LLC
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Seitenzahl: 153

Beschreibung

Supercharge your prayer life. These times cry out for men who are grounded in Christ and equipped to push back the darkness around them. A deeper understanding of God's grace will transform you into such a man, and Praying Grace for Men is designed to lead you through that transformation. In these fifty-five meditations and declarations you will - learn how to stop striving for victory and live from the victory Jesus has already won, - root your heart in your true identity as a son of God, and - enter dimensions of rest, freedom, and peace you didn't know were possible.Man of God, get ready to discover grace for courage, adventure, breakthrough, and rest.

Leseprobe

It is not modern society alone that has placed men in crisis, but rather the distance of most men from God. David Holland understands this and so teaches men how to pray manly grace into their lives. This is an essential book by a seasoned leader, one we desperately need in our time.

—Stephen Mansfield, New York Times bestselling author of Mansfield’s Book of Manly Men and The Search for God and Guinness

Our times cry out for men of faith, courage, and compassion. Servant leaders who kneel before God so they can stand against the cultural forces that would tear us apart. That’s why I welcome this powerful new devotional from David A. Holland. In a season in which men and authentic masculinity are increasingly dismissed, derided, and under siege, we stand in desperate need of inspiration that draws us closer to God and opens our hearts to His transforming grace. Praying Grace for Men offers us a hearty helping of such inspiration when we need it most.

—Congressman Mark Green, Tennessee’s 7th District

Oh, how our nation and our world need men graced with spiritual courage and the humility that springs from knowing who they are in Christ. I can’t think of a better tool for cultivating such men than Praying Grace for Men, or a more inspiring and moving messenger than my friend David Holland. As a father and a mentor of young men, I recommend this wholeheartedly.

—J.C. Watts, former US congressman and author of Dig Deep: Seven Truths to Finding the Strength Within

When David Holland writes about the centrality of the good news of grace, he isn’t just writing about a studied subject; he’s writing his heart. It colors every perspective and informs every decision. Glimmers of life-giving light flicker from every sentence. I pray that millions see what he is seeing and that his work will be blessed with abundant fruit.

—Dudley Hall, author and founder of Kerygma Ventures

I’ve discovered through two decades of association and collaboration that my friend David Holland has a gift for making neglected biblical truths accessible, memorable, and impactful. And he has certainly done so in his new collection of Praying Grace devotions for men. We find ourselves in a season in which God’s sons desperately need grace for courage, grace for rest, grace for breakthrough, and grace for adventures with their heavenly Father. That’s why I welcome this timely new resource.

—Robert Morris, author and founding pastor of Gateway Church, Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas

David Holland uncovers the riches of God’s grace like a treasure hunter who has special tools and expertise to unearth the rarest finds. And, on every page, he shares the plunder. There’s spiritual gold in these pages—not just a treasure trove of gospel insight, but real help for men who want breakthrough in their lives. Finally, a book to help men overcome wimpy prayer lives not by moralistic effort but by God’s grace. David is a longtime friend, a trusted theological voice, and an exquisite writer who has given us another jewel.

—Pastor Alan Wright, lead pastor of Reynolda Church and author of The Power to Bless

BroadStreet Publishing® Group, LLC

Savage, Minnesota, USA

BroadStreetPublishing.com

Praying Grace for Men: 55 Meditations and Declarations for Every Son of God Copyright © 2022 David Holland

978-1-4245-6416-3 (faux leather)

978-1-4245-6417-0 (e-book)

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from The Passion Translation®. Copyright © 2017, 2018, 2020 by Passion & Fire Ministries, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved. ThePassionTranslation.com. Scripture quotations marked NKJV are taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations marked NLT are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation. Copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, a Division of Tyndale House Ministries, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations marked NIV are taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version® NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. Scripture quotations marked NASB are taken from the New American Standard Bible® (NASB). Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. www.Lockman.org. Scripture quotations marked MSG are taken from THE MESSAGE. Copyright © 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson. Used by permission of NavPress, represented by Tyndale House Publishers. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations marked ESV are taken from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®). Copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations marked MEV are taken from the Modern English Version. Copyright © 2014 by Military Bible Association. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations marked CJB are taken from the Complete Jewish Bible. Copyright © 1998 by David H. Stern. All rights reserved. Used by permission of Messianic Jewish Publishers. www.messianicjewish.net.

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Editorial services by Babs Coppedge | http://linkedin.com/in/babscoppedge

Printed in China

22 23 24 25 26 5 4 3 2 1

Dedication

For Cole, Jose, and Jansen,

the sons I never had and didn’t know I needed.

Contents

Introduction

Part I: Grace for Courage

Help Yourself to Some Courage

Marrying Strength with Courage

The Spirit of Caleb

The Unintimidatable Man

Your Friend, the King

Fearless Living

The One Question You Shouldn’t Ask God

Circumstances Beyond Your Control

Focus on the Invisible

Pools of Honey at Your Feet

No Fun in the Funhouse

Ride with Him into Battle

Your Shield of Favor

A Sacred Scared

Part II: Grace for Adventures with God

A Masculine Model of Friendship with God

The Adventure of Prayer

Ask Big Things

Come with Royal Boldness

Trained for Battle

Come In, Get Comfortable

You Know That Voice

Strength When You Need It Most

You Are Well-Fathered

Rescued and Restored

Debt Free

Bulldog Love

On Being a Father

With Him Is Where You Belong

Part III: Grace for Breakthrough

Commander or Beggar?

Owning Is Not Possessing

The Key to Breakthrough Praying

Power in Acknowledged Weakness

Bear Bryant Wisdom

Put Your Wallet Away

Discover Your Superpower

Are You in “Airplane Mode”?

What Part of “Clean” Did You Not Understand?

Starve Temptation

Your Vastly Underappreciated Power

Glorious Nerve

The Phrase that Opens Heaven

Dressed for Success

Part IV: Grace for Rest

Your Way “Back to the Garden”

This Land Is Your Land

Stop Trying What Doesn’t Work

Organic Fruit

The Father Is Pleased

You Are Not What You Earn

The Obstacle to Rest

Lighten Up

It’s Your Call

Thousand-Generation Faithfulness

An Abundance of Mercy

About the Author

Endnotes

Introduction

Many have pointed to a crisis in manhood in our day. They’re not wrong. Tens of millions have grown up without a father in the home. Millions of others had role models that were, to be kind, less than honorable. Meanwhile, in the popular culture, authentic masculinity is frequently labeled “toxic.”

That means countless men walk around with large holes in their hearts. There are holes from being unfathered, under-fathered, or mal-fathered. Other holes are gaps in their understanding of who they really are. These are identity holes. There are heart holes created by bad teaching and lifeless religion. These are belief holes.

You are likely walking around with one or more of these different types of holes. We all are.

The purpose of the 55-day journey you hold in your hand is to help you move from being hole-hearted to being a wholehearted man. This involves unlearning some wrong “religious” things we’ve been taught about God. It means discovering some aspects of what Jesus accomplished on the cross that you many have never heard. It means getting a fresh, deeper, fuller view of grace.

So, in each entry you’ll get a Scripture passage to ponder, a meditation that unpacks the truth of that Scripture, and, finally, a declaratory prayer that gives confident voice to the truth just presented.

The meditations themselves are crafted to help you align your thinking (i.e., renew your mind; see Romans 12:2) to the truth of what Jesus accomplished for you and who you truly are as a result. They are about transforming your sense of identity—rooting the truth of who you are in Christ deep into your heart.

Allow me a word of explanation about the “Grace Declaration” you’ll find at the end of each devotion. In Ephesians 6:18 (NIV), Paul exhorts us to “Pray…with all kinds of prayers and requests.” Clearly, there must be numerous types of prayer, each one powerful and appropriate for its purpose. One neglected-but-important type is what I call “declaratory” prayer. These are prayers that put the truth of God’s Word into your mouth in the form of a bold, faith-filled declaration. Your Bible is filled with them. There is something so powerful about this. I encourage you to say them out loud for two reasons.

First, when your own ears hear those words coming from your own mouth, something transformational happens in you. The second reason is this: Your ears aren’t the only ones listening. Invisible angelic hierarchies hear you too. If you had eyes to see spiritual dimensions, you’d see things moving and changing as you speak.

This is not something that automatically happens when you become a son of God; it’s a process. This book is designed to accelerate and facilitate that process. That means that the declarations may very well sound false in your ears when you first start proclaiming them. Even arrogant or boastful. If so, take that as an indicator that you need this process. Keep reading these meditations. Ponder the key verses and speak the declarations that are built upon them. Then watch what happens.

Man of God, may the words on the pages that follow bring you hope, encouragement, strength, confidence, peace, and power.

David A Holland

I. GRACE FORCOURAGE

Help Yourself to Some Courage

“Be strong. Take courage. Don’t be intimidated.”

DEUTERONOMY 31:6, MSG

The story goes that there is an ancient Chinese curse that, translated to English, says, “May you live in interesting times.” It turns out, there is no evidence that such a curse was ever spoken in China, but we do find ourselves living in interesting times, don’t we? Times of turmoil and upheaval. Times of polarization and confusion. Times in which many around us are anxious, angry, fearful, or in despair. Of course, we are not the first generation to live through an interesting season.

I think about my maternal grandfather, born in 1892. By the time he reached his twenty-fifth year, he had already seen two nationwide financial panics, a world war so extreme they were calling it “The War to End All Wars,” and a global pandemic. Before the Spanish Flu burned itself out, a third of the earth’s population contracted it, and between 50 million and 100 million people worldwide perished. In many places, there were so many dead, and so many others sick and weakened, that the dead were being buried in mass graves dug by steam shovel. It had to be terrifying.

By the time Grandad Jackson—a tenant farmer with five kids trying to scratch out an existence in western Oklahoma—reached the age of fifty, history had added a Great Depression, a mega-drought called the Dust Bowl for which he’d had a front-row seat, another global war, and the loss of his wife to a post-operative infection five years before penicillin became widely available. He passed away more than fifty years ago when I was still a kid, but oh, how I wish I could ask him for some insights on living and leading a family in “interesting times.”

Those who remember him better than I talk about his quiet courage. Courage is a vital attribute in a man living through times of turmoil. God understands this far better than we, which is why He spoke the words in the key verse above to the Israelites on the eve of Moses’ death.

The leader they had known and depended upon for forty miraculous years had just told them he was about to die. The Israelites were homeless and surrounded by hostile nations. Across the river lay their goal, but it was filled with fortified cities and giants. They found themselves living in an interesting time. At that moment, Moses commands them to “Take courage.”

Did you know that courage is not something you’re either born with or without? You can “take” courage—that is, reach out and grab it from a source. Where do you find courage so you can take some? The answer is right there in that passage. Let’s look at the whole verse: “Be strong. Take courage. Don’t be intimidated. Don’t give them a second thought because God, your God, is striding ahead of you. He’s right there with you. He won’t let you down; he won’t leave you” (Deuteronomy 31:6 MSG, emphasis mine).

Do you see it? He said they should take courage “because” God was going before them, would be with them, and would not leave them. Every one of those things is true for you today! Your heavenly Father is present. He is powerful. And He is faithful.

GRACE DECLARATION:

Faithful Father, You have already gone before me, working in my future to prepare a path through these “interesting times” for my loved ones and me. You are with me and will never leave me nor forsake me. From these truths, I reach out by faith and “take” a generous portion of courage. I am a courageous man, not because of anything I have done, but solely because of the One who is with me and for me.

Marrying Strength with Courage

“I will be with you; I will not desert you nor abandon you. Be strong and courageous, for you shall give this people possession of the land which I swore to their fathers to give them. Only be strong and very courageous. Be strong and courageous! Do not be terrified nor dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.”

JOSHUA 1:5–7, 9 NASB

“Be strong and courageous,” God told Joshua, not once but three times in a span of five verses in the first chapter of the book that bears his name. There is a reason those two terms are married. It’s possible to be strong yet fearful. It’s also possible to be brave yet weak. The first condition—strong but fearful—is a prescription for accomplishing nothing, for staying frozen in indecision and paralyzed by caution. Strength is wasted on the timid.

That second combo—brave but weak—can get you killed. Trust me on this. I recall a near-death experience at the age of seventeen wherein a couple of friends of mine and I decided to free-hand climb a bare rock cliff face at a state park near my hometown. This was the ’70s, decades before the days in which “free climbing” was a common thing. We were just three high school seniors in jeans and sneakers who saw a jagged, crumbly eighty-foot shale cliff with piles of large boulders at its base and said, “Hey, let’s climb it!” (Testosterone can inspire your inner chooser to write checks your body cannot cash.)

We each chose separate paths up the cliff. I made quick progress until, about nine-tenths of the way up and about six stories above the boulders below, I found myself beneath a slight out-cropping of the stone face. It was so subtle I didn’t even perceive it until I was right up on it. Suddenly, the gravity (pun intended) of my situation became clear to me.

Climbing down wasn’t an option. I couldn’t see the footholds or handholds I’d used to get to that height. Yet moving higher meant leaning backward in order to reach any handhold on that outcrop (if there even was one). And leaning backward seemed like a very, very bad idea.

I felt an ice-cold, paralyzing panic rising inside of me—threatening to rob me of both motor control and clear thinking. Recognizing that panic meant certain death. I forced myself to breathe and think. Rope! I could yell out to the other guys who hopefully were near the top, ask them to run back to the car, drive the five miles back to town, return with a rope…Adding up the necessary minutes in my head, I knew my tenuous grip on the rock would be long gone before they returned.

As a young believer, I began to pray for God to help me. I needed help to know what to do, the courage to try it, and the strength to do it successfully. Up was the only option. I reached up and found a decent handhold, gripped it hard, and felt around for another with my other hand. Found one! I then pulled up with all my might as my legs and body swung away from the rock face. I was hanging by eight fingers. Angels and adrenaline somehow—I’m honestly not sure how—got me past that outcrop. Then I had only a quick scramble to the top, where I collapsed in a quivering heap.

Yes, I understand well why God instructed Joshua, and us, to be both strong and courageous. Your strength is from Him and in Him. And you can be courageous when you know deeply that “the LORD your God is with you wherever you go.”

GRACE DECLARATION:

God, I can move boldly and confidently into everything You have promised me. I will not be terrified or dismayed. I take both courage and strength from knowing You are with me. Your joy is my strength. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.