Men On Fire By Stephen MansfieldSample

Stephen Mansfield: Men on Fire Devotional Day 4

“The Fire of Friendship”

Scripture reading: Proverbs 27:9-17

You have likely read the same headlines I have, headlines that report the surveys that tell the tale. Most men in the Western world today cannot name a best friend. 

The average man not only cannot name a best friend but also cannot name anyone he would call if he was out of town and his son was put in jail. Who could he trust with such a thing? The average man doesn’t know. 

He also doesn’t know who he would call to help his wife at three in the morning if the dog has run away or a child is in crisis or the pipes have broken and the house is flooding. Who would you trust to go to your house in the middle of the night when your wife is in her pajamas and she’s panicked and needs comforting? Most men have no such friends. Do you?

We are made for more. We are made to have men in our lives who inspire us with their spirit and their coaching and their belief in us and their fun and their drive. We are made to be close to men who make us better merely by the thought of them, merely because we remember the covenants we’ve made and the challenges we’ve issued and the expectations they’ve lovingly laid on our lives. We are meant to laugh and hurt and yearn and strive and—yes!—achieve because we have a noble band of brothers.

“As iron sharpens iron,” says Proverbs, “so one person sharpens another.” And it’s true: We are better together. We need each other to thrive. We must do life with a band of brothers, or we will fail to be what we are meant to be. These are truths we must restore to the culture of men in our time. The fire of manly friendship must burn brilliantly in our souls.

Now for the good news. We can build manly friendships. This isn’t a matter of chance or being born with the right personality or having a talent that draws people or being blessed with wealth. There are skills you can master to begin having heroic men in your life. These are part of the manly lore we should have received from our fathers. Most of us didn’t. Still, we can reclaim what we need, build wisely in our time, and pass these skills on to the generations that follow us.

We can change the dreadful statistics of our age. We can turn the deadly trends. We can be men transformed by manly friendships.

Pray to find a friend. Pray to be a friend. Pray to build better friendships. Pray to model manly friendship.