Becoming A Man - Part 3

Transcription

[fiddle music]

Announcer:  So your parents messed you up. Make a man of yourself.

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Michael Pearl:  So if you have a daddy who didn't train you, you're faced with a dilemma. You can either take it as it's been given to you, and the girls will look at you and say, "I don't want him. He's just a playboy." Or, you can decide to make a man out of yourself. The same goes with fathers who, you really never became a man yourself, you never face responsibility. You can make a man out of yourself if your father failed to make one out of you. You say, "How do I do that?" Stop procrastinating, stop blaming, stop excusing yourself. Get down and do the hard, the nitty-gritty, and the tough. Do it today.

You say, "I don't know how." I remember an Amish fellow that had about a third grade education, couldn't hardly read at all. He'd broken wild mustangs, he'd built barns and houses, run pipes for springs, and repaired old motors, just done everything that needed to be done, but he'd never been in education. He decided he wanted to go to Bible college. I discouraged him from it.

This fellow was a confident, aggressive fellow, but he was getting totally out of his element. It's like somebody who can't hold a tune said they're going to be a concert singer. You just say to them, "Maybe you ought to look at something else in life than concert singing." This fellow says he's going to go to Bible college and be studious and learn some things.

I said, "You don't want to do that, probably. That's a different world from what you're used to." I said, "You have to study long hours, you have to pass tests, you have to read a lot." I'll never forget what he said to me. He looked at me and he said, "Look, I've broken mustangs, I've repaired disks, I've build barns, I've never tried anything that I couldn't do it, eventually." He said, "I can do this." I said, "Well, okay."

He went to Bible college, took his wife, his kids, and the first semester he studied until midnight or one every single night, every day, throughout the weekend, and he made Ds. Some of you homeschoolers don't know what a D is, but that's pretty low, just barely above being kicked out into the yard. He made Ds, but he hung in there, he survived it. The next semester, that's the next half of the year, he made mostly Cs. And the third semester, he was making Bs and an occasional A. He did just what he said he was going to do. He succeeded in college.

Do you know why he did that? It's not because he was gifted and highly educated and prepared for it. The only preparation he had was in his heart. His heart said, "If it needs to be done, I can do it." There's nothing, parents, you can give your children more valuable to them and precious to them than the confidence, "If it needs to be done, I can do it. So what, I've never done it? So what, you've never done it? So what, it's never been done? It needs to be done, so I'll do it." That's the kind of attitude that makes someone an entrepreneur, that makes them successful where others fail.

To put it short, it's the kind of attitude that makes people rich. It's the kind of attitude that puts them at the top of their field, or any field that they choose to go into. Not everyone has that degree of confidence. That confidence was built out of many little successes, many challenges, many frustrations that would have defeated him, but he went on, and he endured, and he won.

If nothing more than sharpening a lawnmower blade that didn't want to come off the lawnmower because the bolt was rusty and the threads were stripped, and his sockets wouldn't work anymore. So he goes out and he gets a file, and for an hour he files the bolt until he turns a 3/4s into an 11/16ths. Then he puts an 11/16ths socket on it, he soaks it with diesel fuel for an hour, and he takes that thing off.

He didn't say, "The threads are stripped; you can't take it off." He changed it from a 3/4s to 11/16ths, and he took it off. When he got ready to sharpen it, he didn't say, "This old grinding rock is broken," he fixed it. Then he sharpened the lawnmower blade and then he put it back on. When Daddy got home, the grass was cut. Daddy said, "It sure looks nice," Son said, "Yeah, I had to sharpen the blade." "Why, I tried to get that blade off, and it was stripped." "Well, it was, but I fixed it."

That kind of experience, 100, 200, 300 times, in the course of one's youth, builds manhood. It makes a man. It doesn't mean that the man has to become a diesel mechanic to be a real man in the end. He may become a doctor, but I'd a lot rather have a doctor doing heart surgery on me that had turned a 3/4-inch nut into an 11/16ths and made it work, than someone who said, "It can't be done; it's broken."

You understand that? When somebody gets into my brain or my body and starts cutting around, I want somebody who made it work in spite of everything, who knows it can be done, who never says "quit." I want a man operating on me, not a sissy. You understand the difference? I think men are built through challenges, through contests. Not contests with each other, necessarily, but contests with difficulty, contests with hardship, contests with trial.

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Announcer: We hope this has blessed you today, wherever you are. As always, remember to check out our special deals on books, CDs and more on our website.