Category: Basic Training

I thought being part of the men’s group at our church would be easy. Man, was I in for a big surprise!  As I continue this series on the foundations for God Buddies, I’ve been thrown some real “curveballs” (a baseball analogy) in my passion to help men become better men  In retrospect though, many have helped me handle some very interesting and unexpected conversations. “So, I have this friend who…” Do you ever get suspicious when someone starts a conversation with the statement that he “has this friend who…”?  According to Urban Dictionary, an “I have this friend” story is a story where someone asks for advice about a problem that’s really about them, but they’re too embarrassed to say so. It’s similar to “I know this guy” stories where one person thinks up something funny, cool, gross, weird, or sexy, but essentially untrue, and tries to pass it

In this current series about the foundations for my God Buddy concept, one of the surprises of my journey was realizing I had spiritual gifts and abilities I did not expect. At first, I wondered where those came from and why they appeared when they did.  But then, I learned that God gives us all these gifts, we just need to recognize and use them.   Let me first explain the difference between spiritual gifts and natural abilities.  Spiritual Gift or Natural Talent? According to this article titled How to Identify and Effectively Use Your Spiritual Gifts, a spiritual gift is a God-given ability, distributed to individual Christians by the Holy Spirit that allows him/or her to work through their lives to help the church execute its mission on earth. The article describes natural talents as the physical abilities to do special things such as musical ability, carpentry, mechanical aptitude, and

In this current series of posts, I’ve described some important aspects of my growth as a man of God and their foundations for my God Buddy concept.  It was not until I understood who I was — and Whose I was, did this growth really begin for me though. For most men, the answer to the question, “Who am I?” really begins when we know “Whose am I? “. Let’s have a little vocabulary lesson. The Difference between “Who’s” and “Whose?” According to Dictionary.com, “Whose” is the possessive form of the pronoun who, while who’s is a contraction of the words who is or who has. More simply: Who owns vs who has. Also, capitalizing the first letter is considered “reverential capitalization”, which is the practice of capitalizing religious words, particularly pronouns, that refers to a deity or divine being. For Christians, it means “of God” or “of Jesus Christ”. Identifying Who We Are As Men Today, we