As a young teen, I remember looking around at guys in our culture and feeling discouraged. I wanted to encourage the guys I knew in godliness but didn’t have a clue how to go about it.
Older girls didn’t seem to know how to inspire guys any more than I did. I remember observing a group of older teens eating lunch together. In the middle of the conversation, one of the guys made a snark comment then leaned back in his chair, swung his feet up onto the table, and crossed his arms for effect.
I watched one of the girls turn to him. “Could you please take your feet off the table, I’m eating.” He responded that he lived in a free country and could do what he wanted.
The girl stood up, marched over, and pulled his chair out from under him, throwing him onto the floor.
She succeeded to extract a laugh from everyone around the table but failed to install gentlemanliness into her victim. He simply picked his chair up and flopped his feet back onto their platform.
God does have a far greater vision for masculinity than what most modern men live up to – the image of Jesus Christ – and He desires to use girls to inspire this Christ-like manliness. But this girl was going about inspiring it in the wrong way.
Unfortunately, I’ve also fallen prey to making similar mistakes.
Just as God has a far greater vision for masculinity than we typically see, He also has a far greater vision for how femininity can inspire that Christ-likeness in His men.
Here are some ways we as women can inspire men to rise to the heights of Christ-like masculinity.
1. Inspire
We can get so discouraged with the state of modern men that we forget the state of modern women isn’t any better. Just as girls complain they can’t find godly men, young men complain that they can’t find godly women. We shouldn’t expect our guy friends to rise to Christ-like masculinity if we aren’t willing to rise to Christ-like femininity.
If we complain and criticize men, while continuing to conform our own lives to the world’s version of femininity, we are living in what Jesus called hypocrisy.
“And why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me remove the speck from your eye’; and look, a plank is in your own eye? Hypocrite! First remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.” (Matthew 7:3-5)
This changed my relationship with guys. When I started getting serious about becoming a woman who loved the Lord, I realized how prideful and immature I was.
Before you try to change men, allow the Lord to change you and conform you to His image.
When God started getting ahold of my life, I was deeply convicted about gossip.
As the Lord convicted me, I began walking away from a group if they started gossiping or spoke up in the person’s defense.
One day a guy friend asked me about this. He had noticed that I didn’t engage in gossip but that I always stood up for the person being talked about negatively and He wanted to know why I did this. I had no idea anyone even noticed when I walked away. But this guy did.
It might be tempting to complain and try to tell guys how they should act, but honestly, actions often do speak louder than words. Pursue an intimate, real relationship with Jesus and allow Christ to shape you into a godly woman. Then trust the Lord to use your life as an example that inspires the guys around you.
2. Pray
Prayer is dependence upon God to do the work. When we pray, we acknowledge that we can’t do anything apart from God.
When we try to influence and inspire men towards godliness without wrestling in prayer for them first, we say without actions that it’s up to us to change guys.
Girls do have incredible influence over men – God created us to help shape them into Christlikeness. But ultimately men cannot be changed by women.
Scripture tells us that “it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure.” (Philippians 2:13) It’s not up to us to change the men in our lives. It’s up to God to do that.
Will you trust Him to do it?
When we truly believe that only God’s grace and power can change a man’s desires and actions, we will fall on our knees and ask God to do this work before we ever attempt to change men on our own.
Here are a few practical suggestions for how to pray for the guys in your life.
Pray For Yourself
Okay, I’m cheating on this one a little bit. But your relationship with Jesus needs to be authentic before you can start asking Him to do anything with the guys.
Pray for an intimate relationship with Christ. Pray that your life would challenge the guys around you to pursue Jesus.
Pray for your Dad
If you only pray for one man, pray for your Dad.
Your relationship with your Dad might be terrible right now – maybe it even feels impossible to pray for him. But even if he’s messed up both his life and yours, God loves him and desires to enable him to rise up to his God-given responsibility of leading your home, providing for you, protecting you and loving you and your family.
Your Dad needs you to believe that even though he’s messed up, even though he’s failed you, God can still forgive him and still wants to use him to lead and love his family.
If your relationship with your Dad is terrible, pray that God would give you grace to forgive him. You don’t have to feel like forgiving him in order to ask God for grace. God can enable you to forgive, and He can enable your Dad to rise up and be a Christ-like man.
Pray for your parent’s relationship. Pray for your Dad’s job, his co-workers, his boss, his witness at work. Pray that he would love the word of God and that he would learn to pray. Ask God to protect him from discouragement and doubt. Pray that he would love his family well.
Pray for your brother(s)
Brothers live in the room down the hall so you can’t fake it with them. They know your worst and your best.
Because they see your every-day life, your example is incredibly powerful.
Pray that your brother would become your friend. Pray for him to do well at school. Pray for godly friends who will be a good influence in his life. Pray for His relationship with Christ. Pray that he would learn what it means to be a godly man.
Pray for your guy friends
And don’t just pray that they will ask you out, or that they would grow up and stop acting like jerks. Your guy friends have real needs. Find out what those needs are and pray for them.
Pray for their exams at school. Pray for their family. Pray for their relationship with Christ.
3. Encourage
We girls are experts at noticing (and making sure everyone else notices) when a guy does something wrong. But what about when your brother helps clean up the entire kitchen without complaining? Do you take 10 seconds to thank him?
Or when your Dad puts on his boots and goes out into the blizzard to shovel the foot of snow off your driveway. Do you tell him how grateful you are?
Or when your guy friend opens a door for you. Do you say thank you?
Guys not only need our encouragement but they notice it. My brother once commented, after holding a door open for a few girls and then, my sister and I, that me and my sister were the only ones who said thank you.
If we don’t take the time to encourage guys in these small things, why would they rise to anything higher?
4. Leave
When guys are acting like jerks, it’s far more effective to just leave the conversation or table or party than to complain or criticize. Remember – guys are more often changed by our conduct than our words.
Don’t stay and listen to crude jokes, or cheer on the burping contests. Be willing to politely leave.
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These 4 tips won’t turn your guy friends into little princes overnight. But they could change you.
My prayer is that you won’t grow impatient with slow progress. But may you seek the Lord with your whole heart and find Him faithful to change your life, and then use your life to make a difference in the lives of the men around you.
- Which of these tips did you find the most helpful?
- Are you discouraged with the state of modern young men?
- How do we girls fall short of godly femininity?
- What is one way God might be asking you to grow or surrender in order to become an inspiration to the men around you?