Have I got what it takes? Every boy on his journey to become a man searches for the answer to this question. It is a question that comes from his heart. The boy will look to his own father for that answer. Men affirm each other different than women. A man will not tell you your hair looks good or the shirt you wear looks good on you. Men affirm indirectly by way of accomplishment. 'That was a great shot' 'Great drive down the fairway' 'Great year for business' and so on. There are moments a boy will do something that his father capitalizes on in answering the question 'do I have what it takes?' Until a man knows he is a man he will forever be trying to be one and at the same time shrinking from anything that is one. A father, a man or the company of men is essential for any boy to become a man.

What is your name? Biblical fathers always gave their sons a name. Adam receives his name from God. Abraham names Isaac. Although their mother names Isaac's sons Jacob and Esau grave their father's blessing. One hundred years later Jacob blesses his sons.

Such is the power of a man giving a name to his son, blessing him, and bestowing masculinity on him. Just before the brutal attack on Christ in the desert by Satan God bestowed him

In other words God the Father was saying to his son 'you have what it takes!' A man has to actively intervene. Rachel gave birth to Benjamin and named him Ben-Oni which means 'son of my sorrow' but Jacob intervened and renamed him Benjamin meaning 'son of my right hand.' It was a critical move by the father to intervene and it always is. There is nothing wrong with a pet name a mother gives her son but he cannot journey from boyhood to manhood carrying that name. Mothers need to let go at some point. Few are willing and few do it well. Some mothers indirectly ask their sons to replace an absent husband but femininity cannot bestow masculinity. A boy needs to be rescued by his father or another man. Kevin Costner played the lead character in the movie 'A perfect world.' He kidnaps a young boy as a hostage. But what looks like ruin is actually redemption for the boy. But they form a strong connection. The boy has no pants so Costner gets him a pair. The boy will not change in front of him. Is it because he does not want him to see his pecker? The boy says it is puny. Costner asks who told him that? So he intervenes and the boy bares himself. Costner tells the boy it is a good size for his age. The boy feels like a man. Boys like to fight with their father. When dad is hurt the boy will stop waiting for him to get angry shaking his antlers at him. Dad does not react but laughs holding his wound and the boys delight in the bucks taking down the old bull. The question is being answered 'have I got what it takes?'

The powerful connection between the father and his son is the reason why a father can wound his sons in a way no one else could. The wound is like a shotgun blast at close range in the chest. Boys who become men with this wound rarely recover from it. It is not always the obvious wound of an assault but a passive wound. The unrecognized wounds are those that go unhealed. Many fathers are wound by their silence and lack of intervention. The question is 'do I have what it takes' and the silence replies 'I don't know…you will have to find out yourself.' Most men carry this wound in the heart. No matter how good your dad was he is still a son of Adam. The wound carries a strong message that shapes a boy into manhood. How many men have you met who are living out a false image of who they really are? Men refuse to admit they have this need because it will lead them to brokenness. They overcompensate for their wound by anger and violence or they hide it by being passive. They are known as the nicest man in town and hate themselves for it. The church tries to produce men like the persona of Dr. Spock from Star Trek who are full of logic without any human emotion. Men find themselves paralyzed and unable to move or unable to stop moving.

Every man needs to know his name. He needs to know he has what it takes. The 'knowing' is not logical like Dr. Spock that can pass through the cerebral cortex like most men know God. It has to be a 'knowing' because you have entered in and experienced it. The movie Gladiator is set in the second century. Maximus is the general loved by Emperor Marcus Aurelius. Marcus has a son called Commodus who kills his own father for not giving him succession. Maximus is sentenced to death and his wife and son are killed. Maximus escapes but is sold as a gladiator. He becomes the people's champion in the Coliseum. Commodus comes into the arena and wants to know his name. Taking off his helmet: 'My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius; commander of the armies of the north, general of the Felix Legions, loyal servant to the true emperor Marcus Arilius, father to a murdered son, husband to a murdered wife, and I will have my vengeance, in this life or the next.' It builds like a wave swelling in size and strength until it crashed on Commodus. In other words, 'I know I have what it takes.' Where does a man go to give an answer like this? You have to be initiated into a journey filled with trails that test you and keep asking you 'have you got what it takes?' The church believes it initiates men but it protects him from the trial and tests. It sanitizes him to be good. For five years General Robert Lee fought against General Grant. He faced terrible trials with his men. He was about to surrender to General Grant but his men grabbed the reigns of his horse pleading with him not to surrender begging him even though they were beaten. He had given these men something they never had before - a father giving them an identity that answered the question 'do you have what it takes?'

No matter what father you have had God is ultimately every man's father. God alone can give you a name, the blessing and bestow masculinity. God initiates Abram on a journey from the land of the Chaldeans and then called him Abraham. God initiates Jacob through Mesopotamia and learns things his mother could never teach him. When he gets back in town he is called Israel. Your earthly father can only take you so far but God takes you into the unknown. Saul was led into Arabia for three years but came back as Paul. On that journey you will have to pass through the wound of your heart. David was a man's man but confessed

The initiation of your journey begins by walking through the wound of your heart. It appears like God wants to slay us at the outset - and he does.

He is not speaking about the physical life but the heart. He is saying that if you continue to make plans to live out a false persona through the wounds you have received you will never find who you really are. In order to take you through that wound God hits it. He takes away all you have leaned on. In the movie The Natural Robert Redford plays an ace baseball player who is wrongfully arrested. Late in life he is hired by the New York Knights who were nothing. He was so good he got the team into the national league. At the bottom of the 9th a man is on the first and another on the third. If he strikes the ball hard enough and gets a home run his team will win. He had been hitting a wooden baseball bat he made years ago from a tree hit by lightning. On the bat was his identity 'wonder boy' carved into the wood. The first ball was a foul. The second he hit along the first base line. He ran like the wind but it was a foul ball. He went back to the plate and found his bat shattered. What had given him his name, blessing and masculinity was in pieces. He it another bat and the team won. But for a long pause his thought his life was over. In the most critical moment of your life God will let it all come crashing down on you. An investment may fail, you health fails, and your wife walks out on you. Will you stay ion the game? Have you got what it takes? Real redemption begins for a man when he has nothing left to lean on. It is a dangerous moment when Satan tells you God does not care because you are not worth it.

You cannot venture out with God with all the things you rely on. Either you leave them behind or God will take them from you.

At this point a man feels vulnerable and will cling to his comforts. In every man is a clinging to his wife. Men turn to a woman for a sense of masculinity. But stop looking to her to validate you. If you have been passive afraid to rock the boat start rocking it. Stand up to her and get her mad at you. If you are angry and violent stop abusing her and release her as the object of your anger. She is not the planet you orbit around. A man needs a bigger orbit that a woman. He needs a mission or a purpose. He needs to know his name and the answer to the question 'do I have what it takes?' When he knows his name he is fit for a woman. He has something to invite her into. In a certain African tribe you cannot marry unless you have killed a lion. But a man will pursue a woman to drink of her beauty and be affirmed he is a man. But the pursuit is to offer her something that her femininity does not have. So a man will not commit because he is unable to commit. This is unfair to any woman. The journey of a man will always take him away from anything that is woman so he can come back to her with the question answered 'I have what it takes and you did not give it me but God my Father gave it to me.' He is not getting his strength from her but he is offering it to her. Adam drank deeply from the source of love in unbroken communion captivated by beauty and fully intoxicated by it. It was not Eve but God. When sin entered the heart something shifted in his heart. Eve took the place of God.

Adam's sin was different and far more serious. There was a moment when Eve had sinned and Adam had not. But in that moment he had a choice: I cannot live without father God or I cannot live without her. Adam chose Eve over God.

The most powerful obsession of a man is his sex drive. It has been said a man thinks about it every six seconds. Look at the world of poetry, art, music and movies. Men come into the world with the deepest desire for God without God and find it in sex and women. The ecstasy of a man is now in the daughters of Eve instead of Father God because the nearest resemblance to beauty, tenderness, mystery and alluring is a woman. Nothing else comes close to it. That is why the old English wedding vows contain the words 'with my body I thee worship.' If this is the thirst of your heart and you regularly drink from that fountain why is it that you remain thirsty? You are drinking from the wrong well. You must choose God over your woman.

Conclusion

" Father God will give you your name

" Father God will bless you

" Father God will bestow you with masculinity

" Father God will tell you the answer to the question: 'Do I have what it takes?'

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