Manly Dominion by Mark Chanski

Author:Mark Chanski
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Manly Dominion
ISBN: 1879737558
Publisher: Calvary Press
Published: 2009-09-22T00:00:00+00:00

1 Works of Thomas Brooks, Vol.2 (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1861-67; reprinted, 1980), pp.183-84

2 Charles Haddon Spurgeon, The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Vol.21 (Pasadena, TX: Pilgrim Publications, 1920),p.437

3 Collected Writings of John Murray, Vol.1, “The Guidance of the Holy Spirit” (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1976), pp.187-188

4 Passion and Purity, pp.139-140

Chapter 16

Manly Dominion in Spiritual Living: Personal Devotions

A couple of years ago, my wife decided that we’d have a vegetable garden. Norm, our neighborhood gardening expert, showed up one Saturday with his rototiller, ready to dig in. When he saw the size of the parcel we’d staked out, he scratched his head and asked Dianne if she was sure she wanted such a big plot. Full of spring enthusiasm, my wife gave Norm the green light, and before long all the rows were planted. Now all we had to do was wait for the bumper crop!

But it didn’t work that way. Dianne encountered that summer The Law of the Wilderness. The wilderness aggressively resists man’s attempts to subdue it. She discovered that his orderly rows were almost immediately assaulted by strangling legions of thorns and thistles and weeds of every imaginable variety. Dianne, assisted valiantly by our second son, Calvin, was engaged in a serious battle. If she neglected the garden for two or three days, she was faced with hordes of barbarian intruders. Upon returning from a late July to early August vacation, the plot had been almost irreparably ransacked. Her garden had become a forest of weeds. A bumper crop it wasn’t.

This is the way it is with keeping the heart. If we don’t exercise the manly dominion principles of subduing and ruling, our hearts will succumb to the Law of the Wilderness. They’ll be strangled by the cares and concerns of the world (Mk. 4:19). They’ll be overrun by the aggressive and noxious weeds of the flesh (Gal. 5:17). They’ll be ransacked by the Devil who loves to sow choking tares in with the wheat (Mt. 13:24-26).

Solomon wisely commissions us to take up the chronic task of keeping our hearts:

Proverbs 4:23 Watch over your heart with all diligence, For from it flow the springs of life.

Solomon enlists here the imagery of an ancient well. In ancient Palestine, survival depended on access to water. The hot and dry climate required that enterprising methods be used to get it. Men would dig deep shafts or cisterns to tap the subterranean waters that sustained life to their families, flocks, and crops. A man’s well was the source of life for his entire estate. If the well dries up, famine follows.

Solomon is saying that a man’s heart is the wellspring for his entire life; its health, its relationships, its endeavors. The Lord, through His Spirit, makes flow the subterranean waters (a river of living waters, John 7:37-38). The man, through his religious exercises, accesses the bucketfuls of refreshing fluid.

Solomon says, “watch over” or “guard” your heart. Ancient wells weren’t like our modern faucets that need no maintenance, and gush at the turning of a knob.

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