Be Strong at Home
My brothers, we are living in a crazy time where Christian men need to be leading our families and communities by pointing to the hope that we have in an all-sovereign God. Here’s the deal, because of the fact that Governor Roy Cooper banned meetings of over 100, plus our desire to take this threat seriously and act prudently in light of it, we have canceled our Be Strong men’s conference. This is not the end of the world. However, we want to take this time to address that even though we will not be having a Be Strong Conference here, this is still the right time to renew our commitment to what it means to be godly men.
First, look at the most obvious aspect of this. You are now going to be home this weekend. And not only that but you are going to be at home with your family. I don’t know about y’all but in light of the current measures taken to slow the spread of this thing our family is being forced into a different rhythm of life in our house. For instance, we have 3 boys that were going to be playing rec baseball on 2 different teams. This means that we now have the time that would have been taken up by 4 practices and 2-4 games a week open to spend with our family. This is huge! What are you going to do with the added time with your family? This applies to all of us. Sports have been postponed, kids are at home instead of school, and most churches/youth groups have limited their meeting times, what are you going to do with this?
Some people have freaked out and have no clue what to do because they aren’t used to having their kids in their house with them for so much time. This isn’t a bad thing. This is a grace from God.
It’s funny because after every Be Strong Conference men typically have a rekindled desire to be more faithful as men, husbands, and daddies, and more often than not, they are confronted with how much time they have wasted and how little time they have left. We are in a very special moment (that may never come again) where we have been given an unbelievable gift of time with our family. We cannot let this time go by!
Our prayer for y’all is that this crisis will help you reevaluate the direction your home is heading and the manner in which you are leading. How are you going to spend this additional time? Suppose this lasts for a month (or longer), how do you want it to be characterized when you look back on it? Do you want this to be a time defined by the amount of YouTube and Netflix that you binged as a family, or by how you simplified your lives and set new habits of family worship and discipleship? Let’s use this time to strengthen our families.
And, you know what? This could last for longer than a month. We need to be prepared for this to get worse before it gets better. But at the end of the day, we have our hope in Jesus Christ! This is the hope that we need to be instilling in our family, neighborhood, vocation, church, and community. This isn’t a time for panic, but an opportunity for the Gospel. And the first place we need to be making this impact is in our own homes. So we may not be having a Be Strong Conference at SWO this weekend, but it’s the perfect time to be strong at home.
