A Husband Is A Laborer
Before the fall of mankind, God put the man to work in the Garden and ordained him to work and labor. God is not idle. Jesus said My Father is working and I am working (John 5:27). Our God works and He created us to work.
“Then the LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it.”
Genesis 2:15
A statistic I recently read said that in the 1950s in the United States, 1 in 50 men aged 25-54 did not want to work. Today, that statistic is 1 in 9. That equates to over 7 million men in the United States today who have no interest in working. They are physically able but rely on government welfare or somebody else to provide for them. They are not men but grown-up boys. Boys are provided for by their mothers. Men provide for themselves. Grown-up or mature men provide for themselves and their families, and contribute to community.
Working for his family first, not the world
Many men compulsively find their identity in their work in the world. They work overtime and long days. They refuse to take time off from work. They come home from work totally spent and unavailable to their wives and children. And to add insult to injury, they angrily attempt to convince their wives that the reason they work so much is to provide for them and the family.
If a man’s wife and children are not benefitting from a man’s work aside from the physical material things money can buy, then he is not providing for his family. Providing includes providing for physical an dmaterial needs. But more importantly, providing for the family’s spiritual, emotional, developmental, and relational needs as well.
Producer, not a dreamer
Other men spend all of their time and energy dreaming of what they are “going to do.” Whether it’s playing the lottery in hopes of hitting it big. Or “chasing the money” by jumping from one job to the next. Or convincing their wives to take risks that have more to do with their little-boy dreams than it does the well-being of their family. They sit and dream up ideas that won’t work or won’t have any productive outcome. Then they retaliate with anger when asked about why they aren’t providing more fully for their family. This type of men are often people who had no father figure in their lives to bring discipline and were over-mothered under-masculinized.
Encourager, not an enabler
Parents often tell their children, “You can be anything you want.” This is a lie. You cannot be anything you want. You cannot become an astronaut just because you think it’s a greata idea. Most children will not grow up to be celebrity athletes or presidents. We need to stop lying to our children and start building their character and work ethic so that they can become a mature version of who God made them to be, not a dreamy version of who their idealistic dreams convince them they will one day be. No matter what a man does for work, he should not not strain his family or abandon his role as a laborer and provider. It is not pleasing to God and the Bible says it makes you worse than an unbeliever.
A man’s work is necessary for a healthy society
“In all labor, there is profit. But idle chatter leads only to poverty.”
Proverbs 14:23
There is no profit in just dreaming, constantly surfing the internet, or sitting for hours playing video games. There has become a pandemic with younger men in America who were not taught by a father the value of work, how to work, and their responsibility to work. Many then become consumers rather than the producers men were created to be.
God makes all things new
At Life Training, we have worked closely with men of all ages to help them move beyond the voids left in their life by an absent or unavailable father or the woundedness caused by an overly-present mother. God maks all things new!