Welcome to the Daily Blade. The Word of God is described as the sword of the Spirit, the primary spiritual weapon in the Christians' armor against the forces of evil. Your hosts are Joby Martin and Kyle Thompson, and they stand ready to equip men for the fight. Let's sharpen up.

All right, welcome to day two this week of the Daily Blade, where we are unpacking what the Shema is and how we can evaluate our life in it. Again, the Shema is this: hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. All right, so let's start with heart. Are you loving God with all of your heart? And the way that you evaluate this is what do your relationships look like? And if you ask me, how in the world do you go from heart to relationships? It's because in Luke 252, the one verse about Jesus, as he is living out the Shema in his life, he grew in favor with man. So one of the ways that we love God with our one and only life is in our relationships. In fact, 1 Corinthians 16, 14, hopefully you know this by now. You know, 1 Corinthians 16, 13 is the verse that says we're supposed to stand firm and act like men. And then 14 matters, right on the heels of what it means to be a man, it says, Let all that you do be done in love. So the greatest commandment can be summed up this way: love God and love people. So evaluate your relationships. How's it going? Does it need improvement? Specifically, men, are you loving your wife like Christ loved the church? I mean, be honest. Are you looking on how you can serve her or are you primarily looking to be served? I mean, the Bible says that we are to love her like Christ loved the church. And the way Jesus loved us is he initiated love. He pursued us. Even when it wasn't wasn't his fault, that doesn't matter. He takes responsibility for everything in the relationship. Later, Peter, when he's writing to the church, he says, husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way. Literally, that means, husbands, you are to live with your wife as unto knowledge. And listen, dude, I get it. Every single day you spin that wheel and you're just come, you're just thinking, come on, happy, give me happy, and you don't know what's going to wake up. I get it. But you realize that you are to become a student of your wife and learn to meet her wants and needs like you've learned to meet your own wants and needs. So, question Are you loving your wife like Christ loved the church? How about your relationship with your kids? Are you loving your kids? I mean, be honest, are you seeking approval or are you trying to raise a disciple? I would highly encourage you that you need to parent towards relationship. And what I mean is this when your kids are real little, some of you got little kids, great, you are in control of everything. One day, when they get old and move out of your house, you will be in control of nothing. And the way that the Bible teaches us to parent our children is to love them, not exasperate them, to raise disciples, to make disciples, and that we should be on this continuum of planned emancipation. And I would highly encourage you to parent towards relationship. And so begrudging submission is appropriate sometimes when they're really little. As they get older, you got to give them a little latitude because when they are out of your house, they'll still be your children and you want to have the primary influence in their life that only comes through relationships. Let me ask you: are there areas in your parenting that you need to do better? Do you need to apologize? Have you been praying over your children? Are you loving the Lord your God in the way that you're loving and parenting your kids? Third category. Tell me about your friends. I mean, do you have your four MAC carriers yet? If not, now's the time. And let me ask you this: if you do have your MAC carriers, when is the last time you were actually vulnerable with them? When is the last time that you honored God by not trying to pretend like everything was okay, not trying to pretend like, dude, I got this because brother, you ain't got this? When was the last time you actually confessed sin, not just shared a struggle? It aggravates me now. Christians don't sin anymore. They just struggle. No, bro, that's called a sin. When is the last time you confessed temptation, confessed sin with someone? If you're not doing these things, if you don't have these kind of relationships, get them. If you don't know where to find them, get in a church. And then when you begin these relationships, when you deputize these four men in your life to be your Mac carriers, be the kind of friend that loves them enough and loves the Lord enough that you, like James can tell us to do, that we would confess our sins to one another that we may be healed. Hey, shocker, you know who's really good at this? Kyle. That's right. Big, tough, brown belt ginger Kyle. I know he acts all tough on the podcast all the time, but in reality, one of the things that he'll do, even though I'm not one of his Mac carriers, I'm more of like a mentor relationship, is that oftentimes he will shoot me a text and say, bro, here's a particular thing that I am struggling with. I need help. I need prayer. I need you in my corner. Do you have these kind of friends? You see, Jesus, in the high priestly prayer in John 17, he says that the world will know us, not by the bumper stickers on our car, not by the church that we attend, but the world will know us by the way we love one another. How are your relationships? Are you loving God as God being glorified in all of your relationships?

Thank you for listening to today's episode. Before you go, if you want to help equip other men for the fight, share this podcast around and leave us a five star rating and review. Stay sharp.