Discovering Six Qualities that make a Male a Man
• Be a man not a boy.
• Love is for men, love is not for boys.
• Woman, if you want your love to work – love a man. Leave the boys.
PEEP THROUGH INTO the Heartbreak Café window and you will find inside are many boys and very few men. These boys are heartbreak agents. They are otherwise called players. However, inside the Heartbreak Café you will still find a few men…
These men are the faithful lambs waiting to have their hearts broken for no cause. The faithful men have loved truly yet at the wrong place; and in the following few days, they are tearfully going to find it out. Of course, the best we can do is donate some tissue rolls.
Yes many heartbreakers are simply immature men; they are childish boys living in grown man’s skins. Many women don’t realize this, so they blame themselves for why it never worked.
Many boys too, don’t realize that their immaturity is the problem – so they blame their women for why it never worked. The main symptom of childishness is blaming others for our own mistakes.
There are three myths about manhood.
Three (3) Common Myths of Manhood
Myth (i) To be a male is to be a man (Big Lie)
The crown and the blue blood don’t make a prince. Similarly, genitals don’t complete you as a man.
Manhood is more than hanging two golf balls and a projecting stick between the legs. Manhood is more than a deep voice, chest and moustache. Manhood is about
- Character
- Virtue
- Understanding and
- Wisdom.
Manhood means strength of mind, heart and body.
Myth (ii) Manhood is an age (Big Lie)
Normally when a boy turns eighteen or twenty one (21), they are given rights to leave home. This liberty comes along with a flattering appraisal
“You are a man now Johnny!”
That’s a lie and here is why…
Babies mess up their pampers….
We all must have noticed how those appraised “men” have gone about messing up their lives. Even renting expensive houses, driving Porsche cars, yet never could settle down. They were always on the road.
All they left behind were blood trails and countless tear-filled women because breaking their hearts (and hymens) is all they ever did throughout the course of their lives.
This because they were told manhood is turning eighteen; having a twenty-first birthday celebration; leaving home or owning a car.
Sadly, it takes years for many people to realize that manhood is more about responsibility than cutting birthday cakes. Manhood is a stage of responsibility – not an age of chronology.
Can you handle responsibility? Without blaming others for individual mistakes? If yes, then you are (or he is) a man and no more a boy.
The last myth about manhood is…
Myth (iii) Boys are men. (Big Lie, Again)
It’s easy to notice the boys among us. They have no idea how to build marriages, and worst of all they don’t even understand why it is necessary to build them.
Boys look like men but they don’t behave that way. They are still too weak to dig deep and find the true meaning of love. They are two playful to keep a marriage or home standing. Yet they go about proposing and honestly hoping it is going to work. It is childishness to expect the result without exerting the effort.
There is a myth that boys are men. But boys are not men. Boys will become men one day if they eat the right food and take proper exercises.
By food I don’t mean MacDonald’s and Kentucky. I mean soul food. Something that strengthens and builds the muscles inside.
What the men desperately needs today is soul food. They need life knowledge and life principles that will turn them into better problem solvers, more daring and self-sacrificial beings, more considerate, God-oriented and faithful people.
Our men today need some experience more real and yet stranger than the fantasies of blockbuster thrillers and science fiction movies.
If you have got a little boy whom you call son, don’t always take him to the movies where he will only enjoy himself. Drag him to an orphanage closest to you; make him see how it is not by his own wisdom to have a parent or guardian alive…
After that take him for a prison visit – make him see it is only in the movies that people rob, kill, transport drugs and get away with it – in real life you get busted!
(On this task if it is a teenage girl, take her to the hospital labour ward; let her hear the screaming and agonizing women – then explain to her it is only in the soaps and movies that people sleep together and not fall pregnant! Contraception and condomising doesn’t make sex safe, it is only a good loving marriage relationship that makes sex safe).
Back to the boy, after the prison visit, sit down with him at the park, hold your mobile phones, I-pads or Android Tablets and start Googling photos of global celebrity AIDS sufferers, and those who have died of sexually transmitted (venereal) diseases.
Some Well Known AIDS Sufferers
1. Kongulu Mobutu (1970 – 1998) – son of the former Democratic Republic of Congo president Mobutu Sese Seko, was an AIDS sufferer.
2. Nushawn Williams (born 1976) – An American who knowingly infected thirteen women with HIV and was imprisoned for being a reckless endangering specie.
3. Carl Leone (born 1976) – slept with different women fifteen times without informing them he was HIV positive.
4. Richard Hunt (1951 – 1992) – who played the role of Scooter in The Muppet Show, was HIV positive.
5. Zombo (1979 – 2008) – South African singer in the Kwaito genre.
6. Magic Johnson (born 1959) – American Basketball player who was named twelve times to be the NBA All Star team member.
7. John Sex (1956 – 1989) – singer and performance artist, Mr Sex died of AIDS.
8. Christine Magglore (1957 – 2008) – She was a South African AIDS Denialist, she refused all measures to avoid transmitting AIDS to her children, her three year old daughter died in 2005.
Don’t lie to him. Tell him most of them could have avoided the deadly disease, but they lost themselves in fornication and abused advice…
(Even if you are among those people who are to blame, tell him the truth! To be a man, he needs to know the truth. He doesn’t have to repeat your mistakes. Repeating your mistakes makes you a bad parent.)
After the life chat take him to a poor Old People’s Home. Ask him what he thinks he would have achieved by that age – and tell him all those people indirectly chose the current condition they are in by the compromises that they made, the pride and stubbornness they might have wielded, or the fear that they might have chosen to obey even when faith was commanding them to take a different success story.
Then take him to the cemetery. Show him the cemetery is the richest place. Many unused talents, gifts and unique aptitudes lie at the cemetery – never been discovered, never been used. They were suppressed in the souls of the fearful – those who had every reason to fear the unknown rather than believe in the hope of tomorrow.
That tour is what is called soul food. It is nutritional enough to turn many boys into men!!!
“Exercise” then means standing up for something as a man. I also mean finding a trade and developing skills in that trade.
In my transition from boy to man, I still was not good at gardening, but at least with electricity appliances you could rely on me.
Socially, I had administratively served in more than five non-profit organizations by age twenty-one. I had read thousands of books by that age. I had preached hundreds of sermons. I had started and failed to finish more than six books (I am grateful for my failures just as well as my successes).
My first book was published at twenty one, it was an anthology of poetry (that took four years to write) The Lonely Man’s Song… O yes, they were quietly lonely teen years. J
The point is: boys become men only through exercise; through exerting energies into solving life’s problems.
We don’t turn men in order to solve problems; we solve problems in order to turn men.
The bottom line for manhood is: Exert yourself somewhere!
Six Qualities that make a Male a Man
I usually run men’s seminars and workshops and there are these six main areas that I see very critical for men to master.
1. Purpose
A baby lives to fulfil pleasures.
A boy lives to fulfil obligations.
A man lives to fulfil purpose.
Pleasure Obligations Purpose. These are the three main transitions in life.
Your purpose is answered in the following questions.
- What are you living for?
- On your funeral what life story would you want to live behind?
- What one thing would you do if you had the chance to change the world?
If you are still having trouble answering these three questions, then be honest with yourself, it is most likely you are still living a boy’s life.
Babies live to fulfil pleasures…
Right now, six month old Tino is sitting on the floor across my desk as I am writing this paragraph…
He gets me thinking…
A little baby can wet pampers anywhere and anytime. Whether it is here in the home office, in the subway, in the market place, during a wedding celebration or funeral service. Babies do as they feel.
Look around and you will find many heartbreak culprits are men who live and do as they feel; they are men who never grew up. They remained babies in old men’s skins. If they feel like sex, they just have it with any woman. (And they want it tonight, no wedding process, no properness and no commitment).
If they feel like going out with someone, they just do – even if they already committed to someone else. If they feel like walking away from the relationship they just do, they don’t mind the consequences. If they don’t feel like being Dads they prescribe an abortion or simply disappear into thin air! Boys in old man’s skins!
Like suckling babies they live for pleasure. From the outside they look grown up yet inside they are still immature self-centred babies. They still have to choose to grow up.
Boys live to fulfil obligations…
Steven and Mandy’s Story
When they realized their marriage had climbed on the rocks Steven and Mandy went to their Pastor for marriage counselling.
Mandy had a complaint.
“Steven doesn’t need me or at least I can say I don’t feel needed. For all the nine years we have been together, he always consults his mother first! As if…as if I am not there…!”
Straight away the pastor recognized the thorn in the flesh. Steven was still a boy.
He had no confidence to think for himself; therefore he lived doing as he was told. Such a Maternal Dependency Syndrome (call it MADS) is the cause of strain in many love relationships today. It makes the other feel inadequate and unnecessary.
Over-dependency on parents is the most common elbow shot on the ribs that drives away our partners bit by bit. Stop hanging on your mother’s skirt, learn to stand on your own, consequently your love and life will work without risking your mother a heart attack thinking about you.
Good boys make everything look and go well – from mowing the loan to repairing the desktop computer – but only when they are sent around…
In fact, they may perform very well at school because they “have to… otherwise… mum/dad will get mad.” That is what boyhood is mostly about – boyhood is doing “as you are told.”
Men live to fulfil purpose…
Doing as you are told is good, but that is not what makes a man. A man will do even what he is not told to do – because he finds a genuine purpose for doing it. If Abraham Lincoln had listened to what he was told, the federation would have divided and there would not be United States of America today.
If William Wilberforce, Nelson Mandela, Ghandi and Kwame Nkrumah had done as they were told then Black Slave Trade would never have ended, Africa would still be under colonisation and apartheid would still be in regime.
The world is a better place because of the people who chose to be purpose-driven rather than people-driven.
Sometimes a man has got to do what a man has got to do, even if everyone is showing him a different thing.
Men who do as they are told are good people; but if they never outgrow “being told” they turn into “people pleasers.” They live life serving other people’s visions and plans but jeopardizing their own purpose.
Manhood is deciding who you are born to be and taking personal responsibility for getting yourself there. Manhood is about embracing those dreams that you always carried from childhood, and telling yourself in the mirror everyday “I am living for it.”
To a man, life is not about what people say. Boys are people driven, but men are purpose driven.
Advice to women: Don’t just hang out with confused men. Don’t even allow such a man near you. Men without purpose are men without direction. The only direction they can notice is the way between your legs. Don’t pity them – ask them with your eyes and ears wide open,
“So what are your life plans???”
If it takes him more than a minute to begin answering that question then he doesn’t know what he is talking about. Either he is now making it up or reciting a friend’s dream.
A man’s real dream is closer to his lips than his best friends’ names. That is if he is serious with his dreams.
When he is through with the first question ask him what he is up to in order to make those dreams come true. Again, if he cannot give you at least two things that he is doing to get himself there; he is lying, he doesn’t have a dream at all.
A real dream moves a man…
If “praying about it” is the only answer he can give you; he is lying, he is not praying at all. Prayer always carries power to do. If he was really praying, he would be now up to something. There are many lazy lying Christians who are ever praying and never working.
The prayer-room is the greatest source of power, by prayer Moses built a nation, Abraham conquered nations… don’t lie to us in the name of prayer. If you were really praying you would be up to something with your life right now.
Bottom line: a man is someone who has discovered his purpose.
2. Principles
A man builds his life upon immovable bedrock principles.
Principles are fundamental truths upon which life is built. Life has got its own laws that we have to obey in order to succeed. For example you can never be great unless you apply the principle of diligence, and you can never keep the greatness unless you maintain principles of integrity. Principled living is about embracing those “rules” that you cannot bend or ignore if you want to make it in life.
A man makes decisions out of principles not out of emotions. Emotions are like the weather; hot today, cold tomorrow, cloud and drizzly the day after and when you think it’s high time sunshine should come you might unfairly find yourself standing in the snow, that is why we should never rely on them.
Emotions are temporary but principles are eternal…
A puzzling paradox of life is that if you love what you don’t feel for, you will grow to feel for what you have loved. Many times in life you will find you have got to do what you have to do despite how you feel.
Think with your mind not with your feelings. Make decisions out of principles not out of emotions. Emotional men cannot love for long because even the strongest emotions are short-lived.
Only principled men can love for better or for worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and health till death parts; because to these men love is not about fulfilling feelings of lust but fulfilling principles of commitment.
In the beginning of times, Adam was taught the laws [principles] of the garden very well. He knew what to eat and not eat in order to keep alive. It was only when he violated those principles that Adam lost his life. The greatest man who has ever lived, Jesus himself, said he had come to fulfil the “law [principles].”
Boys are those who have not yet discovered the laws of life; they still need to be taught. Principles sustain life.
- The law [principle] of faithfulness sustains the life of a marriage
- The law of faith sustains a progressive Christian life
- The law [principle] of gravity sustains all motion, and even planets stay in their orbits by obeying it.
It takes growing up to understand that life is sustained by laws.
Motivational speakers call them “principles,” God calls them His “Laws” but it is one and the same thing. It just depends from which perspective you have decided to view life, man’s perspective or God’s perspective.
I have chosen a God perspective for my life, but in this chapter I used man’s choice of words so that all may understand.
To women: the problem with loving an unprincipled man is that it is the faithful one who will get hurt. Boys will not be faithful, they don’t find the reason to be; they don’t understand enough to take any relationship seriously.
Even in life boys end up as failures. Leave them; they must first undergo their Seasons of Singleness where they will discover their purpose and principles.
Leave boys alone; don’t love them because they are still too young for love. If you love them then you are abusing them.
Don’t give them your heart no matter how tempted you feel. The best thing boys know to do with your heart is to break it.
To boys love is like a game of rugby/American-football, your heart is the oval ball – and what really excites them is not holding it in the hands, but throwing it around, picking it up again, then kicking it away.
Love is not meant to hurt. Don’t be deceived.
There are many men out there who have chosen to take life seriously – love only those and never be apologetic about it.
To men: You can have big dreams, but without principles your dreams will not take you anywhere for long. Your talent may take you to the top, but it is your integrity [principled living] that keeps you there.
The secret to success that God gave to Joshua was meditating on the Bible – the laws [principles] of life.
This book of the law shall not depart out of your mouth; but you shall meditate on it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then you shall make your way prosperous, and then you shall have good success.
JOSHUA 1:8
Where principles are obeyed, success is inevitable.
3. Personal Relationship with God
If you cannot love the perfect then don’t think you can love the imperfect. If you cannot love God who has never sinned, how can you love a person who makes mistakes day by day?
Marriage is a lifetime commitment to an imperfect partner. No-one deserves to be loved, and love is not something to be deserved. We love people because God has loved us even before we had loved him.
God did not wait for us to become perfect.
But God commended his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
ROMANS 5:8
We love because God commands us to love. Along the path of life, we will discover that people who have lost God will also lose love and faithfulness to their partners. It is impossible to love without God.
…I command you, that ye love one another.
JOHN 15:17
Husbands love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it;
EPHESIANS 5: 25
Godless men are loveless men.
Three (3) Characteristics of Men Who Refuse to Honour God are
i. Pride – too proud to obey God.
It is clear that in many other areas of life, such men cannot say “I am sorry.”
ii. Doesn’t want to take life seriously
Living for God is a commitment. Immature men fear all forms of commitment. In the same way they fail to commit to God they also cannot commit to a love relationship (whether it is marriage or family) without cheating.
iii. Still want to live a sinful life
They are running away from the truth. They think they know better than God. Such men are impossible to correct or control.
A man should be as mature in spirit and soul just as in body.
Now lets at the fourth quality that separates men from boys…
