Marriage Devotional

‘Dear friends, let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. Anyone who loves is a child of God and knows God. ‘ 1 John 4:7(NLT)



Love is what every man longs for. A man wants to be seen, wanted, and invited, he wants to belong. Every man deeply desires to offer his strength, to be courageous, and to matter. Love is what every masculine heart longs both to receive and to give; it is what a man was made for, and it is the standard by which every man hopes to abide.


Love is how men (and women for that matter) bear God’s image.


Life goes wrong for a man when he is harshly judged and his hopes of being loved are not met, or worse, are crushed.


The main ingredients of love are validation, acceptance, worth, belonging, and significance.


The lengths a man will go to in order to obtain these precious ingredients vary both gloriously and dangerously. Love factors into both our greatest triumphs and our worst tragedies. Love will settle a heart and even set it free, but love distorted can and will just as easily arrest and imprison a man. Our greatest wounds of the heart come from the “perversions” of love: jealousy, betrayal, unfaithfulness, and hatred.


The enemy of our Life, of our Belovedness, used to enjoy love himself. Satan knows that love is the greatest thing and he knows the power of unconditional love to set hearts free. He is therefore hell-bent on twisting love into something it’s not, using all his wiles and every means at his disposal to turn life’s wounding moments to his advantage. Satan opportunistically uses those moments to plant his lies in our hearts about love; God’s, others’, and our own in order to construct a false image that we wear and operate from as if it were true. This false image keeps us from receiving freely and giving real love freely, the way we were created to.


Every man has a false self, a tailor-made creature constructed through the wounding of his heart.


Referred to as “the flesh” in the Bible, this impostor, this traitor, arises out of a man’s strategies to make life work. It creates inner programs to avoid pain or obtain pleasure; his methods of self-protection, self-promotion, and self-provision—all of these are the man’s elaborate, false-self construction attempting to arrange for love for himself. The enemy is delighted to assist, knowing that the false self (flesh) keeps a man from experiencing True Love and Real Life. That’s got to stop. In the fight to reclaim our whole heart we must stop seeking out secondary sources of validation and worth.


In your Time alone with God, ask Him:

Father, what do you see in me that isn’t of you?

Jesus, show me what my false self looks like, how it acts out, defends, promotes?

Holy Spirit, show me how I’ve turned from You for the validation and worth only You can provide.

from The Heart Of A Warrior by Michael Thompson

‘Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. Point out anything in me that offends you, and lead me along the path of everlasting life.’ Psalms 139:23-24(NLT)



Because there were battles in our past that we didn’t know how to fight, and no one was there to step in and fight for us, the losses both small and great have had a cumulative effect.


But we don’t go back in our stories to stay there, stuck in some moment of our personal history. We go back in order to see it, understand what happened, exchange it, and receive healing for brokenness and then move forward.


It’s critical to find out what is in the way of receiving love and then offering love because most men are stuck; they carry the past into the present as pieces of a wounded and unsettled heart.


Paul Young wrote in his book The Shack,


“Pain has a way of clipping our wings and keeping us from being able to fly . . . and if [it is] left unresolved for very long, you can almost forget that you were ever created to fly in the first place.”


What is it that a man reaches for to cope and find comfort? Maybe the better question is, what reaches for a man when he is hurting, angry, or overwhelmed?

In order to be free, a man must take inventory of the “packages” that have accumulated in the secrecy of his heart.

What are they?

How do the lies they contain shape so much of how a man thinks and what he does?

The question is never whether there are such packages; the question is only: how many are there and what are their results?

Wounding has made broken pieces of heart the universal experience in every life story. All those wounding moments and broken pieces get carried forward by a boy who is trying his best to become a man and it won’t work.

Take some time to grab a journal and walk with Jesus back into your personal history, into your pain. Hold Jesus’s hand as you search out the wounding packages with Him.

In your Time alone with God, ask Him:

Father, when did I receive the deepest wounds in my heart?

Holy Spirit, what messages (true or untrue) do they contain?

Jesus, I know that right here and now I can exchange them for healing through You. Show me how.

from The Heart Of A Warrior by Michael Thompson

‘Direct your children onto the right path, and when they are older, they will not leave it.’ Proverbs 22:6(NLT)



Every man has had authority figures in his life, and much of what a man perceives about God and projects onto God was shaped by those authority figures. At the top of every man’s “authority list” is his earthly father.


How your dad handled your heart has shaped you and contributed significantly to how you perceive God.


Starting from varying degrees of inaccuracy, men must journey individually with God to discover both who they are and who they aren’t and just as importantly…a man must discover both who the Father is and who He isn’t.

For one thing, He isn’t our earthly father. Like us, our fathers were wounded men with wounded hearts. They lived in the same story we live in (the great Love Story set in the midst of a Fierce Battle).

I often hear men say, “Dad did the best he could.” That can be either an excuse or compassion. It all depends on how well the son knows his father’s story. Most thirty to fifty-year-old men don’t know their father’s story and haven’t earned the right to say their dad did his best. What a man discovers from learning his father’s story will very often change his heart toward his father. Misinterpretation and excuses can be replaced with understanding and compassion.


Besides our dads, many other authority figures have had access to our hearts along the masculine journey. Some had a positive impact, but there were others who should have provided for us and protected us—but didn’t. Tough coaches who punished us with extra wind sprints, challenging teachers who enjoyed pointing out when we answered wrong, preachers yelling at us, older siblings embarrassing us, mothers “surviving” us, so-called friends lost in their own small stories betraying us: all of these reflect a reality I continually stress with a maxim I hope you’ll memorize: wounded hearts wound hearts.


If a man lives with an undercurrent of mistrust in the Father in his deep masculine heart, then becoming the Beloved Son will be unattainable, walking with the Father will be impossible, and fighting for the Kingdom will not go well.


This is where many men’s ministries fall woefully short of their mark. Their default is to start with training men what to do (or not to do) and how to live. In other words, they focus on men’s behavior rather than on redeeming and reworking the foundation of who men are and who God is. If they do address the “who you are,” it is usually with a list of biblical truths to memorize or paragraphs of character traits to which we should aspire.


Not all of this is wrong, but it is ill-timed, and therefore not helpful. There is a time for such an education, but learning about space does not make one an astronaut, reading about the ocean does not make one a sailor, and memorizing tips and techniques on behavior will not help a man be holy. It puts the proverbial cart before the horse.


We’ve got to set the horse back out in front, beginning with what the heart of God is really like. Our greatest obstacle to becoming Beloved Sons may well be the lies we’ve believed about our heavenly Father and the belief that he is anything other than good.

In your Time alone with God, ask Him:

Jesus, where did I get my information about my Heavenly Father?

Holy Spirit, what have I believed about God that is directly tied to my relationship with my earthly father?

Father God, what if that information was wrong? What if they were actually lies tactfully played to keep me from the one who loves me the most.

from The Heart Of A Warrior by Michael Thompson

‘and the Holy Spirit, in bodily form, descended on him like a dove. And a voice from heaven said, “You are my dearly loved Son, and you bring me great joy. ”’ Luke 3:22(NLT)



Understanding is a precious thing…

If someone comes up to me and shoves me down, my initial reaction might be to get up and give him a left hook. But if he then explains that there was a snake behind the log I was about to step over, a quick shift takes place. That person turns from bully to hero in a nanosecond.

Unfortunately, wounding moments won’t be healed or relieved simply by understanding alone, but understanding is a huge start.

Early in our story, the enemy of our Life gets a jump on the fight for our hearts. Before we even know we are in a fight, darkness is inflicting injury… wounding men at their core as boys. The enemy takes ground in our young heart and uses it against us, both in the moment and also in the future. Growing up, some of us had it far worse than others.

With our hearts weighted down, enduring and making the best of things often becomes our plan. Even worse than carrying the pack of lies is getting our strength from its contents. Being fueled by our wounds and their messages is a recipe for disaster in a man’s life; one our enemy loves to cook up and serve up again and again.

The Father God invites a man, his image-bearer, to partner with him, walk with him, trust him, depend on him, and align with him for more. First on the agenda is redeeming the man’s past, which is also where the early days of training begin.

God is guiding each man toward a great comeback.

God directs the steps. Christ has set the table and much of the work has already been accomplished. But we are to play our part. We have a contribution to make, a corresponding choice, an exercise of our will. What God desires to do first in a man’s life is to get out of the way everything that is in the way of receiving his love then he will initiate and validate a man by pouring his love into him. I’m not talking about salvation here… this is the normal day-to-day invitation of God, “Will you let me love you?”

Doing so, receiving love, settles the man’s heart and, in the process, invites him to partner with God in deconstructing the explosive work of the enemy and a man’s false self impostor. Oh yes, every man contends with an imposter…at least we hope he contends. Many men are so far integrated with their false self, they can’t see true from false…therefore a man needs understanding, then the deep work can begin.

Getting a better understanding of our past sets us up for redemption and our next great step forward: moving into the critical healing and training we all need as Beloved Sons. Once we see the lies we have lived under, we can invite Jesus to treat them. These wounded places foster false guilt, shame, and hatred toward ourselves, others, and ultimately, God. Again, these wounding moments had lessons, we learned something from them and what we learned wasn’t good.

Jesus wants to help us unlearn.

In your Time alone with God, ask Him:

God, what wounding moments, and the false declarations that rise from them, stand in the way of my freedom? Of my becoming Your Beloved Son?

Holy Spirit, what heavy burdens might I be carrying in my heart? What wounding moments and wounding messages can You reveal to me that it’s high time I stopped toting around?

from The Heart Of A Warrior by Michael Thompson

‘A good person produces good things from the treasury of a good heart, and an evil person produces evil things from the treasury of an evil heart. What you say flows from what is in your heart.’ Luke 6:45(NLT)

Men are exhausted from being told,

“If you would just apply yourself, you would be better. But you really won’t get better because you are what you are—a sinner.”

This paradox, delivered so often to men in the church, tells men they can’t be trusted but need to try harder anyway.

Religious leaders who tell born-again men they are simply “sinners and a mess” and who then get mad at those men when they sin and make a mess—hmmm. How is that helpful?

Until the healing and training of men becomes the central mission of the church and not just one of the many ministries it offers, men aren’t going to find what they need within its walls.

Programs and service often land on a man like chores: he’s glad to do them (and needs to do them), but he won’t get Life from them. When sin plays on a man’s heart with guilt and shame, he will serve in the church out of a sense of obligation rather than freedom.

The gospel is about way more than just being forgiven for sin. Wonderful though that is, if we stop there, then we’re vastly short-selling the hugeness, the surpassing glory, of what God has accomplished through Jesus…

The gospel is about restoration, a future, and a hope.

Much of who a man becomes and what he settles for has been “learned” over time and through the shaping experiences and conclusions he makes during his life.

Can you imagine the sum of all our conclusions, all the beliefs we hold in our hearts, being accurate? Some of them, yes…but all? No way. We all harbor inaccuracies, lies about ourselves, others, and God, which we have learned to hold on to and all too often hold us. These lies arise from wounding moments, they then become ways in themselves, and our wounded ways infect us and in turn affect others.

It is therefore of paramount importance that we experience healing and treatment so that something glorious and good can replace the pain, guilt, and shame. Just as wounded hearts wound other hearts, so a whole heart can help other hearts become whole as well. The damage is reversed and the wound is redeemed. What was intended for bad, God makes good, so now what is passed down comes from the good stored up in the good and noble man’s heart. That is everyman in Christ’s TRUE IDENTITY.

We need to receive from God the good things we didn’t get and give to him the bad things we did get.

We need to experience the reality of being Beloved Sons; then we’ll be able to take our rightful place in the story God is telling and the part he has created for each man to play.

We bear the image of the Beloved Son and in turn are and are becoming Beloved Sons. God wants his image-bearers back so he can heal them, train them, equip them, and then turn them loose into a battle where many are waiting for the sons of God to enter the fight for freedom.

In your Time alone with God, ask Him:

Father God, what is in the way of me experiencing the reality of being a Beloved Son?

Jesus, what wounds; hurtful moments where shame, guilt and fear were the packages delivered to my heart, are still unresolved in my heart?

from The Heart Of A Warrior by Michael Thompson

‘You should know this, Timothy, that in the last days there will be very difficult times. For people will love only themselves and their money. They will be boastful and proud, scoffing at God, disobedient to their parents, and ungrateful. They will consider nothing sacred. They will be unloving and unforgiving; they will slander others and have no self-control. They will be cruel and hate what is good. They will betray their friends, be reckless, be puffed up with pride, and love pleasure rather than God. They will act religious, but they will reject the power that could make them godly. Stay away from people like that!’ 2 Timothy 3:1-5(NLT)



In his book, Fathered by God, John Eldredge writes…

“…most men and most boys have no real father able to guide them through the jungles of the masculine journey, and they are—most of us are—unfinished and unfathered men.”

“Unfinished” and “unfathered” are two core ingredients of disorientation.

One reason I can often recognize another disoriented heart is because I lived in that condition for so many years. It doesn’t necessarily mean we had bad fathers. But it may very well mean that our fathers were themselves unfinished and unfathered men.

One sign of disorientation is a man who settles for being a servant of the kingdom rather than a Warrior for it. Service is not a bad thing but it is definitely not a great thing. Men don’t dream of growing up to be a servant. They do dream of becoming a man that matters, contributes, provides and protects. Being a son who serves is far greater than being a servant who isn’t a son. Service that originates from the wrong source, as it so often does, is in itself enough to anesthetize your soul. Duty-bound serving will take its toll on a man until life is either boring or irrelevant.

You can be a servant and not a Warrior. However, it is impossible to be a Warrior and not be a servant.

A man must learn the way of Life, which is the narrow road, and he must know the voice of the only One who can truly teach him how to be a Warrior. There is a language, an understanding, a path, and an experience that leads to a practice. That practice is a way of Life that every man must learn if he is going to be an oriented man.

One significant question each man must answer…

Can I trust the heart of my Teacher . . . is my Teacher good?

No matter how young or old you are, how inexperienced or experienced, there is One who wants to intervene in your life and take you on this quest for good. There is One who wants the significant role of teaching, loving, initiating, validating, and turning you loose into the world to be dangerous for good. There aren’t many men in training, collaborating with God, partnering in a glorious alliance of hearts. Look around you.

Loss of heart is everywhere. Loss of Life is extensive.

The situation is far worse than we thought.

But the Life that is available to you—the abundant Life hidden in Christ—is far better than you can possibly imagine. And it’s available to all who seek it out.

Two key ingredients of disorientation are being unfinished and/or unfathered.

In your Time alone with God, ask Him:

Father God, which one (unfinished or unfathered) has most affected my life story and journey with You?

Jesus, is there anything in the way of me believing that I can fully trust you as my Teacher?

from The Heart Of A Warrior by Michael Thompson

‘And the seeds that fell on the good soil represent honest, good-hearted people who hear God’s word, cling to it, and patiently produce a huge harvest.’ Luke 8:15(NLT)

‘Then Jesus said, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.”’ Matthew 11:28-30(NLT)

‘Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life.’ Proverbs 4:23(NLT)

From all that has happened to us in our lifetime, all we have encountered and experienced, we have drawn conclusions about life and how to make it work. We form our conclusions in order to protect and provide for ourselves. Like bricklayers constructing a house, we build our belief system brick by brick from our stockpile of conclusions. We consult our experiences to determine how the world operates, who we are in it, how to avoid pain, when to promote ourselves, and more.

All of these moments, and all the conclusions we draw from them, are stored in a precious place called the heart.

A man’s heart is engaged with his belief system regardless of his condition. Whether alive in Christ or spiritually dead, the heart is in constant danger of being compromised and wounded.

No wonder two kingdoms, Light and Dark, are at war over such a beautiful and vital piece of real estate. Is it any wonder that men’s hearts are in serious need of renovation? In our core, our center, are stored the attitudes, beliefs, and conclusions shaped by our experiences. These need God’s attention, because we don’t get by without being hurt, missed, or wounded in this Larger Story and at this central core of places.

It is with good reason that the Scriptures tell us,

“Guard your heart above all else, for it is the source of life.” -Proverbs 4:23 HCSB

What every man has left unguarded for much of his life needs his and God’s attention. There are things growing there and wandering about that have gone unattended far too long.

There is a remedy for the false-self life from which we all suffer. There is another kind of life, another way of life, and it is almost too good to be true. Almost.

It is the life of a son of God, a Beloved Son, one who knows how to fight and knows how to rest, knows how to be loved and, in time, learns how to love.

The invitation for a man to see the things within himself that need caring for, and then brings those things to God for treatment and healing, is just another great day of training in the kingdom.

It was Francis of Assisi who said,

“Above all the grace and the gifts that Christ gives to his beloved is that of overcoming self.”

Overcoming the false self, to be exact—the outer layers of a man, both the good and the messed-up and sinful, that he mistakes for his deepest identity.

Things began to change in my life when I began to observe my false self. They continued to change when I let my true self, my core identity in Christ, take over my false self. Things needed to change.

Seeing what had to be overcome was a huge step toward actually overcoming it!

Some things need to be unlearned.

One of the first steps in our training is to circle back to what has already taken place in our story. What we learned along the way and why we have become the way we are requires our focused attention if we are to become truly free. Early in training, regular visits with God to explore one’s personal history are standard practice for men to shed the false self and to become true men.

You can start right now. Take a moment, grab some paper or sit behind a computer, and in your time alone with God, ask Him:

Father, who delivered the messages and materials that formed the beliefs of my heart?

Jesus, what happened to me that has brought on a loss of heart?

Holy Spirit, in my life’s journey, who inflicted hurt, guilt, fear, or shame? When? Where?

Find answers with God to these questions and you will find your false-self, the thing the enemy of your heart controls and the thing that opposes your life with God.

from The Heart Of A Warrior by Michael Thompson

‘For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord . “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope. ‘ Jeremiah 29:11(NLT)

‘And a voice from heaven said, “This is my dearly loved Son, who brings me great joy.”’ Matthew 3:17(NLT)



Possibly our greatest challenge is getting on the same page regarding the problem plaguing men. Men are casualties of an ancient and relentless masculine identity crisis. They suffer from a lostness that regenerates itself generation after generation.

I have a hope for men, a vision that fuels me…

I hope to one day see the hearts of men so foundationally settled, so well-trained, so well-equipped, and so well-engaged that when evil dares raise its head, Beloved Sons/Warrior men will know what to do, and will do it well.

In order for this to happen, a man needs to recover his true heart—the good heart filled with the life of Christ and stamped with his character that the Father gives his sons at rebirth. And he needs to experience that he is indeed the Beloved Son of a good Father. Then, and only then, can that man be shown and trained up into his Warrior Heart.

A Beloved Son is one who experiences the unconditional love of his Father in a way that deeply impacts him and leaves him with:

Nothing to Hide,

Nothing to Prove,

Nothing to Fear.

A Warrior is a Beloved Son with a settled heart who is then trained and equipped to engage in the life-and-death battles that are continually going on in him and all around him.

Being a Warrior involves more than force. It goes deeper: there is a deftness to it, an intuitiveness, and a gracefulness.

Warriorsare dangerous characters in any story and they can be lured into roles and causes that run counter to what a Warrior is made and trained to be. We see it every day in the headlines: men taking shortcuts, making compromises, stepping across blurry lines, hiding or striving. It is killing us. This confusion has resulted in what I call disorientation and is a forecast of what will continue unless an ancient way is recovered—because disoriented men produce more disoriented men, and the legacy of failure will pass from one generation to the next.

I hope to persuade men to remove whatever things block them from receiving the love God offers them: the love of a Father for his Beloved Sons. Then, with their ability to receive the Father’s love recovered, I hope to instill in men an awareness (over multiple encounters) of the ongoing training required to see disoriented men become oriented.

What does it mean to be oriented? An “oriented man” grounds his life and actions on three things: his identity, his environment, and his mission. He knows:

Who he is. In Christ, he is a Beloved Son of the Father.

Where he is. An oriented man has “eyes to see and ears to hear” what is going on around him. He is alert to the spiritual forces at work behind physical circumstances.

The Good that God is up to in his Life. An oriented man seeks to partner with his Father’s redemptive purposes. He looks for the good God is doing in and through his life, and he views his circumstances and relationships with an awakened and engaged heart.

Over time, the oriented way of life leads to a more settled heart—a deeper stability that comes from ongoing experience. A settled heart (a man who has nothing to hide, prove, or fear) doesn’t come overnight. Through deep renovation of the heart, you and I can become true men.

Make no mistake: training in the oriented life isn’t easy but it is good and it is always in progress.

In your time alone with God, ask Him:

Father God, what is in the way of me seeing myself as your beloved son?

Jesus, in which areas of my life do I need orientation? What is causing my disorientation?

from The Heart Of A Warrior by Michael Thompson