RENEWAL

1 Corinthians 13:11
“When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways”

Today is a day of reckoning. You started by opening this devotional. Maybe your wife or someone gave you, and that’s all well and good. But you need to know that this isn’t some feel-good, Kumbaya, cry-until-it-hurts, let’s-sugarcoat- everything devotional. You will cry, but hopefully from repentance. You will laugh, but hopefully because that one joke is funny. But the number one thing I want you to do is commit to reading it and the Bible – everyday.
This is a call to men, to be men. And yes, I start with myself. Who do you think this was written for in the first place?
As I grew up, I was intent on being the most ridiculous person in the room, I wanted to be crazy, free, loud, obnoxious. My family may argue that I am still this way.

The day I learned my parents were separating was when I first started compartmentalizing what I was feeling. I pushed down my feelings and told myself I needed to grow up. “Be a man,” I told myself at the ripe old age of 11. I became a hard, moody, stoic, grumpy, and most of all, angry, kid.

In my mind I was acting “like a man,” but I was simply a frightened boy who needed to be loved. A boy who desperately needed a father to talk to him, not at him. A frightened son looking for his mother to speak with him, but was too afraid to take the walls down because, for the for the time being, I was the “man of the house.”

I thought I was acting like an adult because I had rage and anger brewing in my heart. Darkness and fear directed my personality. But it was all a lie. I was still a child, long into my teens and early adulthood.

Even though Jesus plucked me out of obscurity at 13, I held onto my pain like a child with a toy they don’t want to surrender. It brought me comfort. But as I leaned into Jesus, my savior and my rock, I heard the Holy Spirit speak to me verses like: “Draw unto me and I will give you strength,” “Lean not on your understanding,” and “Do not fear for I am with you.”

As I have grown and God has gifted me my own family, I have battled daily with allowing my childish thoughts to pull me back in. As a Bible teacher, mentor, and former pastor, I know all the things I need to do to fight the mental battle raging inside me at times.

But it comes down to understanding the dichotomy of being a child. You see, as a child I spoke, thought, and reasoned like one, just as Paul referenced in 1 Corinthians, but I also had the faith of one. Jesus says that we must have the faith of a child, but rebukes speaking, thinking, and reasoning as one. Men, we must have the “mind of Christ” — and in the case of true believers of Jesus Christ and the Gospel, we have been gifted His mind!
It’s time for a reckoning. It’s time to determine today whether you will continue to be the child or step out and be a man after the Lord’s own heart. Commit these 100 days to your own renewal.

Let’s grow up and stop acting like children. Let’s grab hold of the banner of the Most High and seek after purity and righteousness. Our God is holy and just and has called us after His name. Let’s rise up and cleanse our hearts and minds. Let’s think about purity, righteousness, and justice, and do them! Our thoughts lead to feelings, and they lead to action. Take out the trash Christian. For the Lord dwells in the midst of his people.

I’m excited for you to start this journey.

— Mario
© Mario Quezada | 2023