Introductory Texts
1. Joshua 1:9 – It takes Godly courage to get into Canaan
2. Titus 1:1-7 – What the Church is supposed to teach
3. II Timothy 2:2 – Faithfulness is the cornerstone of character
4. Deuteronomy 6:7 –Teach to teach to teach
5. I Corinthians 10 – Do not repeat the sins of the Israelites lost in the wilderness
6. I Samuel 27:1 – David’s decision to flee to the land of the Philistines was based on fear
7. Proverbs 10:4 – Slack hands lead to poverty
8. Deuteronomy 7:10 ¬ God doesn’t want us to be lazy
9. Joshua 18:3 ¬ How long have we procrastinated instead of taking what is ours?
10. II Peter 2:9 – God isn’t lazy concerning his promises
11. II Kings 7:3 – Elijah’s prophesy to the King
Two Biblical Truths for Success
1. Everything God does, He does according to a pattern.
2. Everything that God does, He does based on a principle in His Kingdom.
What The Church is Supposed to Teach
1. The Church must require men and women to live faithful lives of character.
2. Faithfulness is the cornerstone of character.
3. Teach to teach to teach
4. You can pattern your life after Godly principles found in the Bible because of God’s new covenant.
David’s Decision to Flee and How he Recovered From a Bad Decision
1. David made his decision in a time of weariness based on perception and assumption.
2. Making decisions in the flesh will often leave you with the ashes of those decisions.
3. David recovered everything when he prayed and sough God’s will.
4. David was not slack. When God said “go” he went immediately.
The Four Lepers Decision to Act on Courage
1. Elijah prophesied the next day that the siege would be over.
2. The only people who believed Elijah were four lepers sitting outside the city gates.
3. They acted based on courage and were rewarded for it.
The Patterns of Courage or Lack Thereof Found in Both Stories
1. David: a decision made in the flesh and based on perception, repentance, encouragement, strengthening, and finally recovering what was lost.
2. The four lepers: made a decision regardless of perception, did so with courage and were rewarded for it.
The Pattern of Sanctifying Yourself From Things That are Unclean
1. Communion is not just for Sunday mornings.
2. Communion is a way to clean ourselves from un-holiness and make a covenant with God that is binding.
Conclusion: If the pattern of your life is not pleasing to God break it and develop a new one, based on acting in faith, meditating on God’s Word and having the courage to act when God and the Holy Spirit tells you to.
THE PATTERN OF COURAGEOUS MANHOOD
I’m dealing with a subject of courageous manhood, talking about the principles, the power of which is the power of courage, and the pattern, which is our subject today, and then the personality. We’re dealing with those because this is an hour when you and I need to recognize we need courageous manhood. And it really depends upon where we are living spiritually what kind of a man we are.
I was in a meeting the other day, and the speaker at that particular time was Brother Lafayette Scales, from Columbus, Ohio. If you have not heard Lafayette Scales, you need to hear him. He’s got to be one of the top 10, if not the top five, greatest preachers and ministers to men in the world today. He’s fabulous. But he was talking about the country or the land in which we live spiritually—in Egypt, which is the land of not enough; in the wilderness, which is the land of just enough; and in Canaan, which is the land of more than enough. I thought that was very good. I still do.
And, of course, it takes courage to get into Canaan land. Joshua had to have it. That’s why God told him, “Be of good courage.” (Joshua 1:9) It’s the God kind of courage; The Christ kind of courage. The courage that’s willing to be undaunted, resolute, determined, willing to pay whatever price is necessary to accomplish the purpose and the goal that we’re aiming for.
I want to talk to you about patterns. If you’ve been with me at any time, you recognize the fact that some years ago during a 40-day fast, God crystallized two truths in my life:
1. Everything God does, He does according to a pattern
2. Everything that God does, He does based on a principle in His Kingdom.
So if you find God’s pattern for your life and base your faith on a principle in his Kingdom, you will be successful.
I want to deal with that subject of the pattern today. You might notice where I am at this particular time. This is a place where not too long ago we had a summit. Men’s lives were changed and transformed by the power of God’s Word and the anointing of the Holy Spirit. For almost 20 years now, we’ve been teaching the truths that God has given to us concerning the fact that manhood and Christlikeness are synonymous.
In the writing to Titus, we read these words, beginning with the first verse, again the Amplified version of the Bible:
1But [as for] you, teach what is fitting and becoming to sound (wholesome) doctrine [the character and right living that identify true Christians].
2Urge the older men to be temperate, venerable (serious), sensible, self-controlled, and sound in the faith, in the love, and in the steadfastness and patience [of Christ].
3Bid the older women similarly to be reverent and devout in their deportment as becomes those engaged in sacred service, not slanderers or slaves to drink. They are to give good counsel and be teachers of what is right and noble,
4So that they will wisely train the young women to be sane and sober of mind (temperate, disciplined) and to love their husbands and their children,
5To be self-controlled, chaste, homemakers, good-natured (kindhearted), adapting and subordinating themselves to their husbands, that the word of God may not be exposed to reproach (blasphemed or discredited).
6In a similar way, urge the younger men to be self-restrained and to behave prudently [taking life seriously].
7And show your own self in all respects to be a pattern and a model of good deeds and works, teaching what is unadulterated, showing gravity [having the strictest regard for truth and purity of motive], with dignity and seriousness.
II Timothy 2:2 says, “Commit to faithful men who shall be able to teach others also.”
Faithfulness is the cornerstone of character. In our teachings concerning maximized manhood, we have used that as the Magna Carta for this. And also in Deuteronomy 6:7 where it says, “Teach your sons that they may teach their sons.” Teach to teach to teach. The Gospel was to be in perpetuity. Even though God only has sons and no grandsons, yet the Gospel was to preach and be preached in perpetuity, and the principle was we were to teach to teach to teach.
The twin fruits of intellectual life are teaching and learning. The Bible says to learn you must want to be taught. Talking about the pattern, we find in the Old Testament, I Corinthians 10 tells us that what happened to the nation of Israel and what happened to some of the men there becomes a pattern for you and me, and those of us who live in the new covenant can take what happened in their lives and apply it to our lives, and the light and understanding and knowledge and revelation that we have today as we live in the moral law of love in this new covenant in Christ Jesus.
And so when we go back, we take up the life of David for just a moment. In I Samuel 27, the Bible says that David said in his heart:
1I shall now perish one day by the hand of Saul. There is nothing better for me than that I should escape into the land of the Philistines. Then Saul will despair of seeking me any more within the borders of Israel, and I shall escape out of his hand.
It’s interesting that David made that decision in a time of weariness. David made that decision in a time when he was facing a difficult situation, and his decision was based on perception. It was based on assumption. And remember that perception and assumption are not necessarily truth and reality, but that’s how he made it. The decision was made in weariness, was made without prayer. It wasn’t until after he had lost everything that he prayed and sought God about what to do, and the Bible said he recovered all. But he made this decision with a natural mind, thinking negatively. Now that’s interesting. Because he wasn’t thinking positively, because he wasn’t thinking with what we call today the Mind of Christ or with the ways of God, and he didn’t seek to know the will of God, and so based upon the experience that he had, he just decided to go down into the land of the Philistines. Well, the decision that he made determined his conduct and it determined his destiny and the destiny of the families of the men who were following him.
Now, the Bible says that while he was in the land of the Philistines and had gone out to war to help them, that back at Ziklag, in his city, there were those who came in and decimated the city and carried off all of the possessions and took all of the people captive. So that when David and his men came back to Ziklag, all they found were the ashes of David’s decision.
I want you to know something. Making wrong decisions—making them after the flesh, making them after the ways of the natural mind—will many times leave us with nothing but the ashes of that decision. It will carry away captive the very things that we consider to be the most valuable and precious.
But when David had last left all, the Bible says he prayed. He sought God. And the Bible says that he encouraged himself in the Lord and he strengthened himself in the Lord. That is to say, he encouraged himself in the Word of God, or rather encouraged himself in past deliverances that God had given to him in his life, and strengthened himself in the Word of God. He went to the Word to get strength for his spirit in order to see, in order to be, in order to do the kinds of things that a man of God would do. His other decision left him dissolute, desolate. This time, instead, he prayed, was encouraged and strengthened himself. God said go and recover them. And the Bible says that he recovered everything that was stolen.
Now, I want to deal with this for just a moment because he immediately did what God said to do. But a lot of times we don’t do just that. And the Bible says in Proverbs 10:4 that, “He becomes poor who deals with a slack hand.” The Bible says in Deuteronomy 7:10 “God does not want us to be slack,” and God Himself is not slack concerning his promises. Joshua says, “How long slack we to possess the land,” in Joshua 18:3. II Peter 2:9: “God is not slack concerning his promises.”
I want to show you what slack means here. In Deuteronomy 7:10, it means to loiter, by implication, to procrastinate. Procrastination will always create consternation. It will produce pressure on others, pressure on self. It will create all kinds of problems because it’s dealing with a slack hand. It’s a type of loitering. Waiting until the pressure becomes so intense that you have to do whatever it is you want to do. In Joshua 18:3, it means to sink, to relax, to let drop, to be disheartened—slack. In II Peter, it’s to delay, to be slow, retard, tarry, and to be permissive. It means treachery, deceit, false, idle, slothful, and lazy.
Many times, we are simply lazy. One of the things that I can remember over the years of getting letters from women who talk about her husband, who may not be the couch potato, but when it comes to doing things, he’s just lazy or slothful or procrastinates. And it hurts the family. It hurts her. It hurts him because his character is character deficiency exemplified and therefore creates a negative attitude.
What I want you to notice is that David was not slack. I mean, when God said go, he went! And when God tells us to do something, we need to obey and not deal with a slack hand because then we will lose and will not prosper. But poverty will crouch at our door because we deal with a slack hand, whether that’s with our children, that’s with our business, whatever it is! Be not slack, the Word says!
In II Kings 7:3, the Bible says that Elijah had prophesied to the king that the next day there would be plenty for everybody because they’d gone through the siege until the people were so famine stricken, so hungry that they were cannibalistic. And the king was absolutely beside himself with the terror and the abject misery that was going on. And Elijah stands up in the middle of that whole thing and he says, “Tomorrow you’re going to have plenty. Tomorrow you’re going to have more than enough. You’re not going to have not enough or just enough; you’re going to have more than enough.” Nobody believed him. And there were four lepers who were sitting by the city gate, and the Bible says that the wicked flee when no man chases. So, God sent into that besieged army a rumor. And they began to flee. Suddenly they were all gone. And the lepers couldn’t hear anything going on, and they said, “Why sit we here until we die?” And they got up and walked into the city, and there they found everything that that army had left—all the riches, all the prosperity—and overnight those four lepers became four of the richest men in the entire city. Samaria was delivered and didn’t even know it.
Courage dies once. The old saying: Courage dies once, but cowardice dies a thousand times. The lepers reasoning, “Why sit here until we die?” brought courage, brought resolution, brought determination, brought action. Their reasoning process brought them to resolution, determination, action, and finally courage. Let’s go! Let’s do something! Even if we die doing it, let’s do it! And so they girded themselves up and went in, and what they found was a land of plenty.
Sometimes when things are dark, sometimes when things are at their worst, sometimes when things look as though it couldn’t get any worse—in that darkness, God is birthing something that is glorious. Did you ever stop to think that the seed of the orchid grows and is produced in darkness? What about the seed of the lilies of the valley? What about the most verdant horticultural glories that grow on our Earth? These are all birthed in darkness. What about us when we were formed in mother’s womb in darkness only to be birthed to live in light? What about the things that are formed in darkness and that you cannot see? Because you see, when we’re in the dark, we can’t see God’s purpose. When we’re in the dark, we can’t see God’s tomorrow. When we’re in the dark, we can’t see God’s light. When we are in the dark, we feel as though we are lost. We feel like we’re groping our way around, and we become despairing. We become discouraged, disheartened, and we really don’t know what to do.
But the wonderful thing is that in that darkness is where God is birthing the glory of our tomorrows! It’s in that darkness when we can’t see anything and we have to trust completely in God and we have to have faith in nothing but God and but God’s Word because we have no other evidence, we have no other circumstance, we have no other sign, we have nothing to believe in except God and except His Word. And it’s in that moment when our faith is complete! It’s in that moment when our faith is seen for what it really is, and the light of our faith shines the brightest in the darkest hour of our experiences!
I want to talk to you about the pattern that has to do with our life. Here’s the pattern that David had: a decision made in the flesh, repentance, encouragement, strengthening, and recovering. Here’s the pattern of the four lepers saying, “Why sit we here until we die?”: becoming courageous, standing up, not knowing what to find, but in their action they found more than they hoped for, more than they believed for, more than they could ever think would ever come into their lives.
In our lives, there are patterns—patterns that we have in our behavior and our thinking—that give us problems.
I was speaking at a world conference in Anaheim, the World Evangelism Conference with Morris Cerullo. I was asked to have a men’s meeting on the Monday night of that conference. I spoke Sunday afternoon and then Monday night was the conference. When I spoke that night, the meeting didn’t start until 11 at night after the conference meeting, and we probably had 1,500 men there. But several things happened to me just before I got there.
I had received a telephone call a couple of days before from a woman who told me that her husband, about 6 months before that, had begun to bring home some very sexual things and wanted her to wear them. Had begun to think about doing, suggesting, intimating, or inviting to do certain things sexually that they’d never done before. And she was troubled by it, and when this kept on for several months, she just finally asked him, “What have you been doing? Where have you been going? What’s happening?” And he denied anything in his life. And then she opened his briefcase that was left home one day and found some porno books in it, and she became very concerned about it. Well, gloriously enough, it’s all resolved today, but at that particular time, she cared enough because of what was happening to be concerned about her husband.
The day that I was to do the men’s event, a lady came and sat down in the concierge level of the hotel where we were staying, and she told me of her husband. Her husband had told her the night before he was filing for divorce. And she said, “He’s a minister here at this conference.” And for several years he had been pressuring her to do things sexually that again was not of faith, and she really didn’t feel as though she could do it. And so, because she didn’t, he was going to file for divorce. Turns out that he was watching sexual things on the Internet. Now, I’ve learned some things since then. For example, I know now that 75 million people around the world watch pornography on the Internet.
But that troubled me and gave me food for thought. The Spirit of God really dealt with my heart, so when I got up to speak that night to the men and I came to the end of it, I said, “If you guys are involved in any kind of pornography, you’re looking on the Internet or wherever you are, I command you to repent and be restored to a right relationship with God the Father through Jesus Christ, by the power of the Holy Ghost!” And I mean, man, they flung themselves headlong down on the rug, down on the floor of that arena! I mean, we had hundreds of men lying all over the place, some kicking their toes, some crying out, others walking around praying for those on their faces. I mean, we had a Holy Spirit outpouring and men seeking God. And I don’t know how long it took, but eventually they began to come up feeling as though God had heard their prayer and began to praise God. And pretty soon the whole place was walking around praising God, giving God glory, for what they believed that God had done in their life in the cleansing and purging of their souls and spirits and minds.
The next day, I went to the place where I was going to be for a few days, another hotel room down near the beach at Newport Beach. And I’ve got a new computer. I went and got a Dell computer with a 233-something-or-other, and it’s really fast. And they hooked me up so I can e-mail my office and all that sort of stuff. And I was sitting there in the hotel room and I realized I could get the Internet. And this had triggered my curiosity, so I plugged in my computer and I plugged it into the Internet and I wrote the word “adult” and up came this page with all kinds of stuff on it. And so I pressed another button, and I mean I saw advertisements of stuff that I could not believe was there. Now, I didn’t buy any of that stuff! I didn’t look at it! Just what was there advertising it was incredibly vile and contempt.
I guess it’s sex in that sense of the word. It’s just sexual aberrations and sexual delights or whatever they consider it to be. But anyhow, it was there blatant, just obvious, there inviting you to come on in and partake of this. Boy, I turned that thing off and shut it down. I went down to the beach and I spent my time in prayer and in the Word. Came back to the hotel room, and that stuff began to trouble my mind. Some of those scenes came back. Some of those words came across my mind. Throughout the afternoon, it would pop up occasionally. By late afternoon, I had resolved that I had enough of that, so I went out and bought me a bottle of grape juice and some crackers, unsalted plain crackers. I couldn’t get kosher, so I got the best I could. Brought them into the hotel room. I showered, cleaned up, used my cologne front and back, put on my clean underwear, clean socks, shined my shoes, got all my clean clothes on just like I was going to Sunday service. Just like I was going to Sunday service. Got all cleaned up. Sat down at the desk in that hotel room, put that computer there, turned it on, and there it was. And as I turned it on, it suddenly hit me! I have studied on my BibleSoft program the Word of God and taught from the Scriptures that are there, Matthew Henry’s commentary that is there, all that goes into that—I studied the Word and then I realized with this Windows program I could have that here and I could have that pornography over here, just like in the human mind!
I poured grape juice in the glass. I had the cracker. And I had them both there on the table on a clean cloth. I looked at that computer with that screen that had the icons on it—Microsoft Word, PC Study Bible, all of the other things. And I looked at that screen, and I said, “God, in the name of Jesus, I want to settle this right now. I want to take communion and enter into a covenant with you that from this moment on nothing will ever come up on that screen that is immoral, illicit, ungodly, perverse—whatever it is—that that will never happen on this computer.” And I went to the Cross. I took it to Cross. Communion is going to the Cross. And I drank of the blood and I ate of the broken body, and I began to cry. And I sanctified myself for your sake, for the sake of those to whom we minster.
Jesus said in John 17, “I sanctify myself not for my sake, but for their sake.” They could probably look at it in privacy, but your consecration is what the ministry is built on, and when your consecration goes, the ministry goes. Anybody knows that. But I sanctified myself. I can’t sanctify that computer. I can’t change that. That’s just a piece of metal. That’s just something to hook into. I sanctified my spirit!
I went over to the television. Took communion in front of that television. Job said, “I made a covenant with God that I would never look with lust upon a woman.” And I made that covenant with God concerning that computer and concerning that television. Settled it once and for all.
Pattern: It’s the pattern for the sanctifying yourself from those things that are unclean, unruly, unholy, perverse, worldly—whatever it is. Communion isn’t something that is an addendum to a Sunday morning service once a month. Communion is something that you do as often as you need to take covenant with God. Communion is when you take it if your wife is sick and you take communion with her for her healing. Communion is something that you do when you want to make covenant with God to sanctify yourself unto whatever it is. Communion is something that you do in your office when you’re sanctifying your office and consecrating it to God. John Wesley used to take communion 4 or 5 times a day. You can take communion as often as you want to. There is no limit to it, but it has to have meaning and significance when you do it.
Now, here’s the point. For me to turn on that computer and pop up anything on that Internet, I would have to go across the blood and the broken body to get to it; I would have to trample underfoot the blood of Jesus to partake of it.
I was up in Grand Rapids, Michigan at Resurrection Life with Pastor Vander Klok. Friday night, I told that story just the way I’m telling it to you. And I said, “If you’re here tonight and you’re having situations in your life or if you’ve still got that thing and you’re battling with it, then get on your face before God and seek God and get cleansed of that.”
And then on the next day, Saturday, I said, “Now you need to seal that with communion,” and I taught them about taking communion.
Well, we had all day Saturday there, and Sunday morning we came to church and he had three church services. And he wanted me to preach all three of them, which I did. But in the middle between the second and the third services, a young man insisted on seeing me. When he came in, he was a tall, respectable-looking young man, full head of hair, just a fine, upstanding gentleman. And he came over and he got me to the side. Pastor was standing over here listening and watching. And he said, “Brother Cole, I want you to know something. Last night, my wife and I took communion kneeling at our bed and we sanctified ourselves to that bed. My wife and I went to our computer. Sanctified ourselves to it. We went to the television and sanctified ourselves to it. We got out our marriage license. We asked God to forgive us for what we had done before we got married, and we sanctified ourselves and separated us from that.” Tears started coming down his cheeks. And he said, “I want you to know that I feel so pure, so clean, such a man. My wife and I had the greatest communion. We were joined and bonded together. It’s just like we got married all over again because of what God did in our hearts and lives.”
You see, when you take God’s Word seriously and you live by God’s pattern, then you’ll become a role model to others, an example to others, where they in turn can have their lives changed through the pattern that you set. This Word of God is for you, and this Word of God speaks to you today. And this Word of God is telling you that if the pattern of your life is not pleasing to God, then break the old pattern and adopt a new pattern. Have the guts. Have the determination. Have the resolution. Have the courage. Be the man God wants you to be.
