The need for openness

A friend of mine wrote me the other day, "I know that I have a relationship with God, but somehow I feel that there's still something missing, and I think it's the intimacy that I don't have in my relationship with God. I want to be intimate with God, but I don't know how. So tell me, how?

Though I wasn't prepared to receive such email, I felt really blessed to read his email considering he's a man (male). Normally men don't talk all this kind of emotional thing with each other.

2 things that I wanna raise briefly in here, 1 is about being emotional for men and the other one is about how to have intimate relationship with God. For now, I'll talk about the first one and will cover the latter part in the future.

The society has taught men on how to be tough, how to be strong and how to be great, without addressing the importance of dealing with their emotion/feeling. If a man wants to look cool, he should not show his weak point, he should not laugh out loud, he should not cry, when he smiles he should only smile a bit, he must be strong and he must also look strong even when he's dying, and bla bla bla bla....

I should say that the society has done well in doing so, but failed to make men realise that they are still human being who have emotion, hence would have emotional issue and therefore must deal with their emotional issue. Because of the above perception on men, men don't talk about their struggles, personal challenges or issues in life. And the sad thing is, even at church level most men still don't talk about personal challenges or issues. We walk behind the veil of success, courage, strength, wisdom, maturity and other nice and great stuff that people attribute to men, especially leaders. These made it hard for new or young believers learn how to overcome the challenges, issues and problems in their life from a more matured christians.

To the young believers, their only tools to overcome challenges and issues in life are bible and prayer. To some people bible and prayer are enough, but unfortunately to many, they need more than that. They need to see with their own eyes how biblical knowledge can be applied to real life situation, and it can indeed be successful. If they can't see it, then they need to hear it. But a lot of times, they can't see nor hear it, because a more matured male christians don't share with them about their life, how they've overcomed challenges or issues in life. And this re-create in the church what the world has successfully portrayed men to be, men are strong and men are not to tell others about their weaknesses.

Yes it is hard (and I know this because I'm on the same boat), but as leaders (male) in the house of God, we can not neglect the importance of sharing our life (past, present and future) -our mistakes and success in the past, and our dreams- with members in our group or those whom we're taking care of. If leaders do not cultivate a habit of being open and honest, how can we expect our members to be open and honest. Openness and honesty are important keys in being accountable with one another.

This is what I found.
I've been trying to be so open and honest to my group (the guys group) by sharing with them my past life, starting from the darkest to the greatest moments of my life so far. I shared with them even the temptations that I am still facing as a man and how I failed so many times in overcoming some temptations.

The first time I told them that I still failed overcoming some temptations, they were quite shocked. They thought I don't struggle that much when facing temptations. I was like, "Hello.... I'm still a normal human being, you know. I'm not God at all. If a pastor (who's so spiritually matured and full of biblical knowledge) can still fall into temptation and sin, then I can surely fall into temptation, not just once, but many times.

Over time, I see changes in my group. One by one they started sharing about their struggles and challenges they're facing. It's not a 1 night change, but it takes weeks and months (if not years) to see the real change in someone's life.

The road is long and winding, there's still so many things to do. But I believe, there's a need for men (especially leaders) to be open and honest (to each other) about their life, so other men can learn and grow in their maturity. When we do that, we can be more efficient and effective in helping and building one another up, and live our life as men to the fullest, according to the purpose God has created us to be.