To the Women of Circuit Riders
Whether you are 6 months into CR or 12 years into this journey, you inspire us, the men. We hear the cry of Deborah, and like Barak we are ready to respond. Your voice has echoed and long has the sound reverberated in my heart. I have stayed up late nights and woken early beating incessantly to craft a message as powerful as the message of Brave Love, which would turn the tide of masculinity in our day.
Masculinity…. For some and maybe many of you that word brings a foul smell or a screeching sound to your ears. Reminding you of your absent or distant father, or the boys (and I use that word boy specifically), that used you for their own emotional and physical pleasure. While leaving you shattered with more than just a bad taste in your mouth. Whether this representation of the masculine stayed distant from you or came close to take advantage of you it has grieved the Lord, and he has arisen to scatter his enemies.
Before any man becomes your representation of the masculine, I beg for you to look back to first century Israel and find true masculinity in the man who spent the first thirty years of His life unknown to the world in His father’s carpentry shop. I beg you see him flip over the money tables to see his passion and zeal. I dare you to look as he calls the prostitute in Luke 7 out of the shackles of her sin and the taunt of the pharisees chatter, see there, the fearlessness of this most masculine man. Look long and hard at his company that often times had the poor woman and the rich woman following close behind. See in the garden those drops of blood beaming from his brow, that shouts out, I am not passive about you in any way! See his yoke which is easy and tranquil, and take His burden that is lighter than a feather. And most of all see that first one, that the sovereign Lord after His resurrection called to come to Him first, Mary a woman who had 7 demons leave her. This man, he is masculinity unrivaled.
We live in the day of the extreme feminist and the Andrew Tate phenomenon. Both, are a sad and dark cause of the crisis of masculinity. We, the men of Circuit Riders, choose a different path. The road less travelled. We choose the way of our King and Master. We choose to love our wives as Christ loved the church. We choose servant leadership. We choose responsibility. We choose passion, life, and zeal. We choose the way of the warrior and the way of the poet. And we refuse the temptations of lust, passivity, fear, exploitation, anger, and confusion. Women we have heard the alarm, and we respond to the call for war!
If you responded, women, to the call from Christy’s sick bed. Those most profound words, “Where are the women?” Well then, is it not echoed, “Where are the men?’” He we are, here we are, HERE WE ARE, ladies! Although we are only beginning, we are those Gideon’s, David’s, and Jeremiah’s of the 21st century, and we intend to make it known to the globe.
Our commitment to you, oh women of God, is to take a stand against the tide of culture and against all odds embrace manhood and embody the masculinity of Jesus and all the other men of scripture that carried his manliness! David Gilmore wrote this, "Manhood is the defeat of childhood narcissism." Women, we intend to win the battle both in ourselves and in the culture!
