Men of the Master

My brother attends a Christian camp every summer called Deerfoot Lodge, located in the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York. Every month during the year he also receives a newsletter from Deerfoot that is addressed to “Men of the Master.” I love that phrase. It describes men who love the Lord and serve Him as Master. I have been blessed and privileged to encounter several of those men here in Wisconsin. These are men that are unashamed of their love for Him and bear His image in the midst of their own brokenness. I am drawn to the Holy Spirit in them and I always come away encouraged. Godliness is such an attractive quality, but it's a kind of quality that pushes me away from depending on them to wanting to grow deeper in my own walk with the Lord. Yet it is such a blessing to have them walk beside me. Men that love the Lord have a slice of God’s glory within them that is foreign to me as a woman. And I think that in the same sense, women have a slice of the glory of the Lord within them that is different than what the men have. Romans chapter 12:9-13 says,

“Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor. Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality.”

This passage just reminds me that we are to be brothers and sisters in Christ, striving to show honor to one another in the name of the Lord. Because I am a girl I am used to living within the context of women and seeing the ways that they love the Lord, but there’s something that stands out to me when men genuinely love the Lord and “contribute to the needs of the saints” no matter what others say or think. These men are hard to come by, because even in our Christian circles there is a lot of temptation for men to compete with one another or to just stay in comfortable silence. But something in my heart just melts when I see "men of the Master" that go beyond just their duties and fully embody the power of the Gospel in their lives. There is a sense of Biblical manhood that these men are grounded in. They have a certain strength about them that comforts me and inspires me to run harder towards my Master.