Brandishing Boys Into Men

1. Mature in thinking.
1 Corinthians 14:20 - Brothers, do not be children in your thinking. Be infants in evil, but in your thinking be mature.

2. Being examples
1 Timothy 4:12 - Let no one despise you for your youth, but set the believers an example in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity.

Titus 2:7,8a - Show yourself in all respects to be a model of good works, and in your teaching show integrity, dignity, and sound speech that cannot be condemned...

3. Disciplined
Hebrews 12:7,8 - It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? If you are left without discipline, then you are illegitimate children and not sons.

4. Flees and pursues
1 Timothy 6:11 - But as for you, O man of God, flee these [ref 3-10] things. Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness.

1 Corinthians 6:18 - Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body.

1 Peter 3:11 - let him turn away from evil and do good; let him seek peace and pursue it.

5. Understands requirements
Micah 6:8 - He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.

1 King 2:2-4 - I am about to go the way of all the earth. Be strong, and show yourself a man, and keep the charge of the Lord your God, walking in his ways and keeping his statutes, his commandments, his rules, and his testimonies, as it is written in the Law of Moses, that you may prosper in all that you do and wherever you turn, that the Lord may establish his word that he spoke concerning me, saying, ‘If your sons pay close attention to their way, to walk before me in faithfulness with all their heart and with all their soul, you shall not lack a man on the throne of Israel.’

6. Does everything in love
1 Corinthians 16:13, 14 - Be watchful, stand firm in faith, act like men, be strong. Let all that you do be done in love.

7. Delights in the Word
Psalm 1:2 - ... his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night.

2 Timothy 2:15 - Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of of truth.

8. Trusts God
Proverbs 3:5 - Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.

Proverbs 16:9 - The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his step.

Colossians 2:6,7 - Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.

9. Knows what to give up
1 Corinthians 13:11 - When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.

Ephesians 4:22-24 - to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.

10. Humble
James 1:9 - Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger.

Ephesians 4:2 - ... with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love

11. Suffers well
Romans 5:3,4 - ... We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope

James 1:2-4 - Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.

Romans 8:18 - For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.

12. Self-controlled
Proverbs 25:28 - A man without self-control is like a city broken into and left without walls.

Titus 1:8 - but hospitable, a lover of good, self-controlled, upright, holy, and disciplined

1 Corinthians 9:25 - Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wealth, but we an imperishable.

13. Sacrifices
Hebrews 13:16 - Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.

John 15:12-14 - This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you.

14. Worships
Romans 12:1 - I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.

Philippians 1:27a - Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ...

Joshua 24:15b - ... But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.

Luke 4:8 - You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve.

Hebrews 12:28 - Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe

15. Understands Jesus is the hero of the story, not him
Revelation 5:2-5 - And I saw a mighty angel proclaiming with a loud voice, "Who is worthy to open the scoll and break its seals?" And no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll or to look into it, and I began to weep loudly because no one was found worthy to open the scroll or to look into it. And one of the elders said to me, "Weep no more; behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals."

Hebrews 10:12-14 - But when Christ had offered fro all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet. For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.

Revelation 22:9 - ... he said to me, "You must not do that! I am a fellow servant with you and your brothers the prophets, and with those who keep the words of this book. Worship God."