Show Thyself A Man # 2

Show Thyself A Man # 2

Settle the question in self-control by making timely decisions about what you are going to do about such important matters as temperance, morality and religion. Settle the question very early that your life shall be directed by principles and not by impulse. If you are not willing to deliberately take the risk of becoming a good-for-nothing sot, settle the question at once and finally that you will never take your first drink. Not to do this is to have about half decided that you will yield when the temptation comes. It means that you have concluded that you may yield, and so the probability is great that you will.

If you are not willing to take the risk of becoming a social outcast, decide as Joseph did long before he reached Potiphar's house that you will have a moral life.

To be a man means to be strong in purpose and self-control. If our manhood is buried under doubt, dig it out. There's a Gettysburg in every man's life which he has to fight. To be ready is half the secret of success.

Having oil or no oil in your lamp is the difference between light and darkness, between happiness and despair.

If you are not willing to run the risk of losing your soul take the only step that can make it safe by taking Christ into your heart and life at once. 

Decision determines what life is to become for every man in this world, and also decides it for eternity.

The man who lets the devil choose his company for him will soon do anything the devil wants him to do. Strive for self-control by forming good habits before bad ones fasten themselves upon you. A thread can be broken, but a rope will hang you. 

Be prudent by learning your own strength and weakness. Get the best training possible. Remember that knowledge is power. There is no excuse for ignorance in this day, when colleges are everywhere, and books seem to almost grow on trees.

The life of an uneducated man is like that of a mole living in the dark, while that of the man with culture is like the eagle, mounting above the clouds and soaring towards the sun.

Take the great men of the Bible and stand before them long enough to realize how great they were, and then ask yourself what there was in them that you ought to have in you, and then spend some time every day in considering the man who had in himself the great and manly qualities of them all in a superlative degree - the divine man - the God man - the man of Galilee.

Learn how to behold Christ's glory and so be changed into His likeness from glory to glory even as by the Spirit of the Lord. Let your soul go out to Him and be filled with Him, and you will soon begin to see that everything that is not like Him is unmanly and mean. Spend three months in studying His life on its man-ward side, and you will have a more exalted knowledge of what it means to be a man than you ever before possessed. A knowledge that will quicken you and inspire you to live for God and man as you never lived before.

Study the purpose of Christ and notice that He never swerved from the business for which He came into the world.

Study His prudence and courage and you will also find it true of His self control, faithfulness, charity, unselfishness, benevolence and sympathy.

Surely this man was the Son of God and the most glorious promise for us ever given that when He shall appear we shall be like Him. "Be thou strong, therefore, and show thyself a man."

~Billy Sunday~

(The End)