We Will Not Hide: Biblical Manhood

We Will Not Hide

Biblical Manhood

by

Ron Kronz

Copyright © 2012 by Ron Kronz

ISBN: 978-0-615-57120-1

Smashwords Edition

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Ron Kronz on facebook

www.thepraisemovement.com

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Foreword - by Charl Van Wyk

Chapter 1: Getting Started

Chapter 2: The Restlessness of Men

Chapter 3: The Failure of Facades

Chapter 4: The Freedom of Confession

Chapter 5: The Victory of Mercy

Chapter 6: Men Rely On God

Chapter 7: Men Are Not Passive

Chapter 8: Men Lead Their Wives

Chapter 9: We Will Not Hide

Chapter 10: Men Pay The Cost

Chapter 11: The Joy of the God-Centered Man

Chapter 12: Abundance

Testimonies:

Sonny N.

Dave W.

Anthony S.

Richard B.

Acknowledgements

From my youth until now, older men have reached out to me for the cause of Christ. Men like L.E. Humrich, William Alford, Lightsey Wallace, and Ron Bossom, have poured their lives into me and I am deeply indebted to them all. Furthermore, I would be remiss if I did not thank Dave Willis for his encouragement, labor, and friendship, not to mention his editing skills on this project.

This book, however, is dedicated most prominently to my wife, Cyndie Kronz - a woman who gets it about the 31st Proverb.

Foreword

I spoke at a home meeting in Arizona, USA, about ministering in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a war torn country in Central Africa.

Straight after the meeting a young man came up to me and said, Do you know that in the U.S. if you are a Christian man, people expect you to be a wuss?

Being an African, I had no idea what a wuss was but I made it my business to find out. After a couple of misspellings I discovered what a wuss was—an effeminate man.

In many cultures in Africa, when young men undergo their initiation into the tribe and by extension, manhood, the clan leaders discourage these men from going to church. Church, they’re told, exists only for women and children.

In some churches men are encouraged to be nice, compliant, sweet, pacifistic and effeminate.

Further, in Africa and America, we’re accustomed to hearing words in church that appeal to women; words like fellowship, intimacy, relationships and sharing.

Not long after learning what a wuss was, I was invited via Facebook to attend a meeting of the Men's Praise Movement at a church that my family and I made our spiritual home while visiting the United States. Off I went to find out what this was about.

What a surprise to find a group of men of all ages, cultures and very different educational backgrounds. Some had not completed their schooling and others had doctorates. Some were tattooed. Others had achieved high-ranking military backgrounds. Others were loggers, or tree fellers, as we call them. Why on Earth would men—who are so different—ever meet together? Regularly? And with such an obvious sense of unified purpose?

The answer crystallized when Ron Kronz stood up to speak. Ron speaks and writes the language of men.

These men had come together to face the awe-inspiring challenge presented to everyone—yet very uniquely to men— in God’s Word. As they prayed and pored over the Bible, these men revealed themselves as open, real and transparent. And Ron set the standard among them by exhibiting a strength and humility available only by living a life obedient to Christ Jesus.

‘We Will Not Hide’ is a book for men by a man who has messed up…big time. But that is not the end of the story; he also made right…big time.

This book is about the adventure of following Jesus Christ wholeheartedly; it is about risking our very lives for His Kingdom.

You want to be a godly leader? This book will give you your game plan.

You want to be successful? Give up all your petty life’s ambitions—this book points you to Jesus Christ—follow Him.

If you venture to read this book—and it is not for the faint-hearted—you’ll be challenged. If you start implementing what you learn, life will become dangerous; you will endure persecution.

Yes, and all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution.

2 Timothy 3:12

But if you desire to lead the life your Creator ordained you for, join the growing team of Christian men who will not settle for the safety and fleeting contentment of second best, but men who long to live on the edge. Men who crave victory and will not compromise their faith.

But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

1 Corinthians 15:57

It is going to be tough. You’ll need guts, strength and faith, but you will also experience life in abundance.

I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.

John 10:10

Charl van Wyk

www.charlvanwyk.info

Chapter 1: Getting Started

I left my wife, my three-year-old daughter Rebecca, and my five-year-old daughter Jordan over fifteen years ago. Besides being a selfish, prideful fool, I was also a professing Christian. I left because I was scared to death about what I might miss out on in life. I was young and in great shape. I was making good money for the first time in my life, and I didn't want to be stuck with what God had given me.

I was deceived. Well and good does the Bible say, The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it? I was proud. I thought I deserved better than what God had given me. Again, God's Word says, A man's pride will bring him low. I was foolish. The Bible also says, The way of a fool is right in his own eyes.

After dining on an all-you-can-eat buffet of my own deception, pride, and folly, I came, at least in part, to my senses. It took just over a year, to be specific. I did not have one good day apart from my wife. Not one! But I persisted in my rebellion. The fact that I stayed away from my family for so long is evidence of how stubborn and hard-hearted I was. That I never got to live it up in the way I had hoped is evidence of God's great grace toward me. It didn't feel like grace at the time though. Like the prodigal son, I became disappointed with my sin life, which had done little to live up to my fantasies. So eventually I limped home to my gracious family and resumed my place.

The problem is that I didn't resume my responsibilities as husband and father. Because of my failures, I felt disqualified to be any kind of a spiritual leader to my wife and young daughters. Instead, I took on the role of my wife's oldest son: trying to mind my manners, deferring to my wife on spiritual matters, figuratively holding her purse while she guided the family in areas pertaining to God. And why not? She was the good one, not me. I believed I was doing a favor for my family and God by getting out of the way of God things, leaving them to my more qualified wife. At least that's what I told myself.

Here's the thing: That was my idea, not God's. Being demure, complicit, and passive might be the stigma of the day when defining what it means to be a Christian man. It might even be a good accessory to the church uniform. But it is not, I repeat, not the armor of God.

As I said earlier, I had been given over to deception, pride, and folly. Even though I had returned to my family, I was still stuck in those traits. I had simply changed seats on the Titanic. I was now engaged in a more polite form of rebellion. This played well on the surface, but it was open rebellion nevertheless. I was still operating under the premise that I knew better than God how to manage my life. God hadn't told me to let my wife handle the spiritual leadership of my family. God didn't tell me to perpetually flagellate myself. That was my idea.

The fact is, God called me to be His servant-leader. My rejection of His call was, in fact, nothing short of a continued usurpation of His authority and power. In my behavior, I was still telling God how things should go. Is there a more graphic example of deception, pride, and folly? It was really just a sophisticated, more socially acceptable form of arrogance. But it was still arrogance. It also bore the same spiritual fruit: failure.

The change in me has been gradual, but tangible. With God's Word and by His blessed, indwelling Holy Spirit, the Lord is showing me that He has never changed His plans for my life. The Bible is full of passages citing God's enduring and unchangeable plans to bring good to His people. Here are a few:

If [any] of you are driven out to the farthest [parts] under heaven, from there the LORD your God will gather you, and from there He will bring you.

This passage has affected me deeply. It comes at the end of the covenant blessings and curses that are found in the book of Deuteronomy. In this context, the Lord tells His people that if they keep His covenant, blessings will come to them. He also says that if His people break His covenant, curses will come to them.

Because I am more familiar with my unfaithfulness than with my faithfulness, this part of Deuteronomy had never encouraged me. For this reason, Deuteronomy 30:4 has been music to my ears. In the King James Version of the Bible, the phrase ends with the words from thence will the LORD thy God gather thee, and from thence will he fetch thee. The word fetch has the flavor of the Lord retrieving an inanimate helpless object. That's how I felt. Sound familiar?

Here's another powerful verse. For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.

After all I had done, I thought the Lord must have had angry, malevolent thoughts toward me. Here again, more of my ideas. The truth, according to the Bible, is that He determines to bring peace to His people, even His wayward ones. Let's be clear about this: The way of the transgressor is hard. The Lord is not handing out licenses to sin. The point is that the Lord's plans for good to His people are not based on the shaky ground of their own faithfulness.

In Isaiah 50:1, God says to his people, Where is the certificate of your mother's divorce, whom I have put away? Or which of My creditors is it to whom I have sold you? For your iniquities you have sold yourselves, and for your transgressions your mother has been put away. Why, when I came, was there no man? Why, when I called, was there none to answer? Is My hand shortened at all that it cannot redeem?

In Psalm 8:3-4 we read, When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You have ordained, what is man that You are mindful of him, and the son of man that You visit him? The heavens are the work of His fingers. His fingers. Is it possible or even imaginable that we are out of the reach of His redeeming hand? Not a chance.

Hosea 14:4 adds more to this truth. It says, I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely, for My anger has turned away from him.

I will love them freely. Why freely? God's love has to be free if it is to be experienced at all. That's because you and I are spiritually bankrupt. We have nothing to offer God toward our salvation except our sin. For this reason, the Lord Jesus Christ pays the price of our redemption. He pays it all, charging it to His own account. It is free to us, but it is not free to Him. The truth remains that He has paid the full price for our redemption. For this reason His anger is turned away from those who have trusted Him entirely apart from their own merit.

These passages are all written to or about rebellious people. Let me break it down: the whole Bible is written to rebellious people. That's the only kind of people there are.

The crucial factor in all this is God's word, specifically how I bring the Bible into my life as well as into the life of my family.

Nearly ten years ago, my wife asked me if I thought it would be a good idea to have family devotions. What was I going to say, No, I think that's a terrible waste of our time and a dreadful way to raise our children? Of course, I had to admit that family devotions were a good idea. But good ideas came and went in my life. I didn't readily respond to my wife. My failure to go forward right away was no more than a stall tactic. In my thoughts, I