The Forge

Read this the way you would enter a fight: alert, engaged, ready to move.

For the next thirty days you are going to do hard, honest work: naming the strongholds that have held you, learning to resist the temptations that have beaten you, and being rebuilt into a man of real character. It will cost you comfort. That is the point. Nothing worth keeping was ever won cheaply, and the man you want to become is on the other side of the man you are willing to stop being.

The work is arranged in four movements. First you will wake up and learn the nature of the battle. Then you will break the specific strongholds one by one. Then you will build the daily disciplines that let you resist temptation for the long haul. Finally you will be formed into a man of character, so that what you tore down is replaced by something that lasts.

Each day gives you the same weapons. A verse to anchor you. A short reflection to be read slowly, not skimmed. A Battle Plan of concrete actions, because truth you do not act on changes nothing. A prayer to pray in your own voice. And one line to carry with you into the hours ahead.

How to use it: do one day each morning, in that order, unhurried. Read the verse twice. Read the reflection like it was written to you, because it was. Actually do the Battle Plan; do not just nod at it. Pray the prayer, then keep praying in your own words. And when you fall, and you will, do not quit. Confess it, rise the same day, and keep going. Falling is not failure. Staying down is.

All Scripture here is from the King James Version. The fight is old, the enemy is real, and the God who calls you is stronger than anything holding you. Begin.