True character is revealed not by what a man does when people are watching but by what he does when nobody is around.
This study we are about to embark on is based on the Point Man study by Steve Farrar that has been one of the speakers on many Promise Keepers conventions around the country over the last couple of decades.
Point Man – Week #1
This study is about how to become an effective leader in your home. In America, we are all worried about different species going away and being extinct but we need to be worried about more important things as the leadership of a man in a home. In America,
That has been also a smearing and disillusionment of the masculine male role by magazines, media, movies, and society in general that we guys do not know how to act or what is expected of us. We will talk about that too.
There is a man by the name of Dr. James Dobson that has a ministry called Focus on the Family (
http://www.family.org/ ) and he had a major impact on my life as I saw several of his videos including the “The Strong Willed Child”. This video really helped with our oldest son as he fit that description exactly and helped us know how to deal with him.
In 1980, Dr. James Dobson put it this way:
“The Western World stands at a great crossroads in it history. It is my opinion that our very survival as a people will depend upon the presence or absence of masculine leadership in millions of homes….I believe, with everything with me, that husbands hold the keys to the preservation of the family.”
Why Point Man? Because you are the leader that the Patrol Leader has chosen to lead your seven men in the rain forest of Vietnam. You are carefully looking around and being careful of every step you take because the lives of your men are your responsibility.
You know the enemy is near, just a few yards away. You are continuously looking for booby trapped wires on the ground while scanning the trees for snipers.
Suddenly you are ambushed and the gunfire is deafening and bullets are flying all around you. As you hit the deck, you try to make it to your radio man to report your position on the enemy. Your adrenaline is pumping and you get tunnel vision. As soon as you are finished on the radio and turn around you take a bullet to the leg and it has exploded your bone. Thousand of thoughts flood your mind like am I going to die here in this horrible place? Where are those shots coming from? What orders do I give my men, so we can survive this?
Now change things a little. You are still in the same rain forest in Vietnam, but now you are leading your family. You are looking ahead for the enemy and booby traps but you also look behind you to see your wife, daughter, son, and making sure they don’t step on any booby traps. Your adrenaline is in overdrive and you would die for your family. The survival of your family is up to you.
Leading a family through the chaos of American culture is like leading a small patrol through enemy-occupied territory.
Some statistics:
1. One out of two marriages end in divorce
2. The median age for divorce is thirty-four for men and thirty for women
3. In 1960, one out of every ten households was maintained by a woman with no husband present; in 1986, one out of every six households was maintained by a woman with no husband present.
4. Tonight, enough teenagers to fill the Rose Bowl, Cotton Bowl, Sugar Bowl, Orange Bowl, Fiesta Bowl and the average Super Bowl will practice prostitution to support drug addition.
5. One million teenage girls will get pregnant out of wedlock this year.
6. Five hundred thousand of those girls will abort their babies.
7. Of all the fourteen-year-old girls alive today, 40 percent will become pregnant by their 19th birthday.
8. Sixty percent of all church-involved teenagers are sexually active.
9. Sixty-six percent of American high school senior