This is the second entry for those looking to disciple and train their sons (or grandsons) who are still in the house and growing in their faith in Jesus. Use these Man Code entries as an opportunity to discuss deeper spiritual issues with your son! (Previous Man Code entries can be found here.)

“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge,
    but fools despise wisdom and instruction.” Proverbs 1:7

If you want to figure something out, it makes a ton of sense to look at the instruction manual. Now son, if you don’t know it already, you’ll figure out soon enough that guys have a tendency to want to try and figure out everything by themselves. They don’t like to look at the instructions! For simple things, instructions aren’t necessarily needed. If you buy a new baseball glove and it comes with instructions on how to use that glove, I’m pretty sure you can figure it out how a glove works. If you get a new video game and it comes with instructions on what buttons do certain things, you can probably figure it out on your own in two seconds.

But some things are too complicated to try without instructions. If you buy a huge Lego kit that will let you build something ginormous like a giant castle or the Millennium Falcon, but it comes with 1000 separate pieces you need to put together in a certain order, good luck trying to do that on your own! Or if it’s your first time in high school algebra or calculus and you try to solve end-of-the year complex math problems on your own the first day of class without sitting through all the lessons and working through your math textbook from the beginning, let me know how that works out for you.

As much as I would love it if the process of becoming a godly man were something simple like breaking in a new baseball glove or figuring out a new video game, growing into a true man is much more complicated than that. That’s why there are so many guys that miss it. That’s why so many adult males are incredibly poor examples of what it means to be a godly man. They tried to figure it out on their own without following the instructions.

God is our ultimate example of what it means to become a godly man because He made us. We are created in His image (Genesis 1:27). And He left us an incredible set of instructions: the Bible. But it’s up to us to follow those instructions. When Solomon, who wrote the book of Proverbs to his own son, said that the “fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge,” he wasn’t saying that we have to be scared of God. He’s saying that if we want to grow into who God created us to be, it starts by admitting we can’t do it on our own. We need to look at the instructions. We need God. If you try to do life on your own apart from God, you’ll never become the godly man you were designed to become. But if you start with God and look to Him first, then you’re on the right path.

QUESTION: Have you ever tried to put something complicated or difficult together without the instructions? How did that work out? Do you think you can become a godly man on your own without God and without the instructions of the Bible?