Calling Men Out of the Cave

In the time of Saul, the people of God were in a small minority in a context of spiritual decline, yet Jonathan, who had an abusive father, courageously called six hundred men who were hiding in caves onto the battlefield. The battle shifted for God’s people because of one man’s outstanding courage. Through the onslaught of secularism, humanism, and related ideologies, the church is viewed by the culture to be irrelevant-, a bit like these men hiding in caves because of the odds that are against them. Is this because men have been under some kind of enchantment? Under a spell from the enemy, who is inherently intangible and has caused the decline of Western culture from a biblical worldview to individualism, whose central idea now is that society can be composed of individuals without a central values system and heritage holding them together? To destroy a nation, the enemy has tried to dismantle families and, thus, masculinity and femininity. Therefore, a historical father absence is ultimately a spiritual battle and must be seen as such. Jesus lived in a little platoon of twelve men, trained, invested in, and released them; therefore we have a proven model to follow, why then have men been in serious decline from the church? Mentors and spiritual fathers who know their calling are needed to produce men who will reproduce disciples who in turn will also be mentors and spiritual fathers with courage and vision to restore the broken foundations. The foundations have been progressively dismantled, but men are called to be the foundation by knowing that as followers of Jesus Christ, we are the beloved of God, and this can be a catalyst to finding and living our calling to live in His larger story together.