Myths of Manhood #1 - To be a man is to keep your mouth shut

Therefore, confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another so that you may be healed The effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much. - James 5:16

Well, thanks to M3 for... manlyifying this blog...

So, I've been reading through Daniel. In chapter 2, Daniel has the impossible task of interpreting the King's dream AND first knowing what exactly the dream was without the King telling him. The first thing Daniel does when he gets home from finding this out: he tells his friends and they Pray for him that God would reveal the mystery.

Something I've definitely been guilty of in the past is keeping my mouth shut during Prayer times. I've been learning that I should be sharing my struggles and asking others to pray for me. It really grinds my gears when Prayer requests are being shared, and someone says, "aww, you don’t need to pray for me, my problems aren’t that important" or "I don’t want to be selfish". God is shown to be really really great when we ask others to Pray for us, because 1) we are obeying Him (James 5:16) and 2) we are showing that we are completely dependent on Him.

TV and movies have tricked us into thinking that it is more masculine or better to be independent than to admit that we need other people. God has designed us to be interdependent – as His Children we need to share the hard times and share the good times with our brothers and sisters.

So reject our culture’s view of manhood! Share your struggles, your feelings, the things you think you can just work on by yourself!

Just so that I’m "practicing what I preach", I’d like to ask that you pray for me about these two difficult things:

1) Pray that I’d trust God for next year, as I’m going to be leaving school with a tonne of debt, and need to trust Him that He’s gonna provide all my needs according to His riches and Glory in Christ Jesus. Its really a big barrier in terms of thinking where I’m gonna go next year (whether it be ministry or seminary, both are not very conducive to paying off my student loans, haha)

2) Pray that I’d have wisdom and grace as I’m leading Campus for Christ at Carleton. I wanna be a man who is known for being compassionate and for being a good listener. Dealing with people (who have feelings and stuff) is a lot harder than reading Renaissance literature (which I do for school), so please ask God to be refining me into that kind of a man.

That is all. And please, let me know if you need prayer.
Ps. This is not part of a series of entries on myths of manhood.