Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood

I have found that it is vitally important for us to pass along a legacy of proper theology. I got married in September of last year and in dealing with life as a married Christian man I've found several areas where I fall so miserably short. I see examples of this where I have been trying to affirm my wife's self-image verbally, but in a few circumstances my actions have torn apart all that was built. And there are times when I am strong enough to lead my family and make the best decisions only to be crushed under the pressure of resolving a conflict, buckling down, and compromising my integrity. I'm a lion in the mirror and a mouse in the real world.

When I misunderstand the nature of God and my responsibilities toward Him, it is reflected in every area of my life. When driving down the highway of life, if my understanding of God's Word is impaired, I cannot "fix" problems with my driving until I fix the problems with my eyesight. The analogy applies to many areas of life -- from why a Christian has a problem sharing his/her faith, to why a woman has a hard time picking a good man -- there are many fitting examples.

Personally, I wasn't clearly taught much about being a man... so when I see problems with being a Godly husband, it would be really stupid of me to try to fix them without also dealing with what God says about being a man. I now have a Godly father-in-law as an example to follow and I hope to learn a lot from him. I pray that God will give me the grace to learn what was never passed down to me.

You can download a free PDF copy of the book "Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood" by John Piper and Wayne Grudem which has been helpful to me in dealing with this issue. All of the authors in this book are well-established scholars, and each chapter provides a book’s worth of insight. The entire book is available in this one Adobe Acrobat file that you may view on-line or download: http://www.cbmw.org/rbmw/rbmw.pdf