Decide You Will Be a Pacesetter. A pacesetter is the guy who is willing to step out from the pack and take responsibility to lead. I'm not really talking about being leaders in the public square so much as taking the lead in our families — making a commitment to be there for our wives and children instead of being at the office or somewhere else when they need us.
Too many men have let their wives assume the spiritual leadership of their homes, but that's not God's plan. I often tell a group of men, "Some of you need to go home and say to your wife and children, 'I'm sorry. I have not been the spiritual leader of this family, but by God's grace and the power of His Holy Spirit, from this day forward I'm going to start leading this family spiritually.'"
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Values are caught by children more than they are taught. Kids can read us like books, and they can tell from the atmosphere of your home what is important to you. That's why I hope your home is filled with the fragrance of Christ as your life is being poured out for Him.
Decide You Will Be a Prayer Warrior. I could bang the drum here, but there's not a lot that needs to be said. Is prayer an integral, indispensable part of your daily routine? It's safe to say that you will never rise higher spiritually than the level of your prayers.
The Bible says, "Far be it from me that I should sin against the LORD in ceasing to pray for you" (1 Samuel 12:23). If you're too busy to pray, you're too busy! Will your wife and children remember you as a man of prayer?
Decide You Will Be a Peacemaker. "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God," Jesus said in Matthew 5:9. A man of God is a reconciler instead of a fight-starter. Peace begins at home and then radiates out through the church into the community.
We need men who are willing to help mend broken lives, whether in prison ministries, across town, or in their own neighborhoods. Of course, the greatest reconciliation takes place when we introduce people to Jesus Christ. The only way many of the people in our world will ever find out that they can have peace with God through Jesus Christ is if we tell them.
You Can Make Moral Decisions That Reflect Spiritual Integrity
There is one very critical area of a man's personal decision making and integrity that I haven't mentioned yet. This is the area of our moral conduct in relation to sexual purity, in light of the sexual temptation and sin that are all around us. Let me outline some pathways to purity that I believe will help take you toward faithfulness and away from moral failure.
The time is long past to be silent about the plague of sexual temptation and the rate at which we are losing Christian men to failure in this area. We are being bombarded from every side with the filth of a sex-saturated culture. And with the use of Internet pornography reaching epidemic proportions among men in this country, we have to be in each other's faces, as it were, asking the tough questions and challenging our brothers to stay true to their vows and true to God's Word.