Identity: How did God make the man?

Like most men, I'm a product of my environment and influences. Even growing up in an awesome and heavily influenced Christian home, I wasn't taught how God made ME as a man. Luckily, I did have a Dad who modeled this for me with his actions and pointed me to God and His word. However, it is in knowing your making that allows you to know your role in the world. Knowing your role, allows you to see the world as you should. Seeing the world as you should, prevents you from being led astray by the enemy's tactics. Because our God is not one of confusion, He wants men to know their place in His world.

God's making and original assignment for you as a man was simple yet profound. He knew your assignment was perfect in the garden and it is still perfect you today. The problem we encounter is we let the world shape our identity as men, not God's word. God cannot and doesn't give you bad assignments and His assigned identity to you will allow you to flourish as a man. We look in Genesis to our original assignment as men:

"The Lord God placed the man in the Garden of Eden to tend (work) and watch over (protect) it"
Genesis 2:15

After God breathed life into the man but before he created the man's helper (Eve) God gives man two separate but very important assignments; work and protect. As men these were our first assignments. My sentiment isn't that culture and society has attacked the "work" aspect of God's assignment, but make no mistake that the enemy has launched a full fledged attack on your identity as a protector. Without careening into a the whole "chivalry is dead" mantra, there is little question that at large men no longer see themselves as society's protectors. We pass on it or pass it on and think things like, "Oh, that's the police's job" or even worse we have been culturally programmed to be takers and even sometime predators in this arena, completely antithetical to God's assignment as protector.

When we as men return to our identity as a protector it solves a host of issues and sins we as men typically struggle with. In an ever increasing sex saturated culture that is thrown in our faces daily, our identity as a protector reaches deep within us to overcome the sin of lust. When a man realizes that their identity is to first protect the woman, he begins to fulfill God's original assignment and the sin of lust loses it's power. Through this renewing of our mind we understand we have a higher calling as protector than to pursue a woman in a lustful way. Truly, when we step back and look at the beautiful order or God, women as a whole have a deep desire to feel secure and protected. God made no mistake in making providing this protection one of our primary assignments. When you reprogram your mind as a man and see your worldly role as a protector you sync with the Creator's original intention for you as a man and are walking in His will. And if you've been a Christian for any period of time, there's no better place than walking in God's will.

So here's the crux of the problem, culture, society, the world, whatever label you want to use, is trying to strip men of their identity of being a protector. The good news is it doesn't take much effort for a Christian man to return to the truth that he is society's protector. It is in his original DNA from God. I encourage you today, see yourself as a protector in God's world. It will change how you see the world in an amazing way and realign you with God's original intention for your manhood.