Sometimes in life we need to face up to the reality of what is happening in our current situations and admit to some hard truths. Once we admit these hard truths to ourselves we can start to share and if appropriate seek help and support from our brothers in Christ.
Let me give you an example of what I mean. As I look through my diary at the month of November I realise that I have filled it to the brim with meetings and speaking engagements. It is so full that there is not one weekend that I am home with my family breaking all the pre set rules my wife and I put in place. For those that know me you will realise how much I value time with my wife and daughter, family time is very important to me.
The question is why have I allowed this happen? The main reason is because I couldn’t say no! However when I dig into that a little deeper and be really honest I realise that when I admit it, I’m broken. I am emotionally broken.
What I mean by that is I struggle with insecurity. I have for as long as I can remember. Am I good enough? Am I liked enough? Am I valuable enough?
What happens when you struggle with insecurity, you actually become a classic people pleaser. You want to please people because when you please people, when you say yes to them, they validate you and all of a sudden you feel a little bit more secure about yourself.
Because of my brokenness, because of my emotional insecurity, what happens in the DNA of who I am…I like to save the day. I like to be the hero. I like to be wanted. I just don’t like to admit it, to me or to you.
Here’s what happens. When I admit my brokenness what I do is I find it deep within who I am. Then I bring it out into the open and it’s okay. Stephen McGuire struggles with insecurity. Here it is.
Now it’s out in the open I can align it to what I value and choose to either make my decision based on my values or my brokenness. This makes decision making a lot easier. As opposed to saying yes to everything I begin to think, the only reason I’m saying yes to that is because I’m broken. But this is what I really value so I can make the correct decision to support what I really value.
When I look at my life… When I say, ‘I’m stressed, I’m out of control, and I’m overwhelmed’ When I pause and my wife and I talk about it, it always points back to there were too many unneeded yeses. I said yes to too many things. So you’ve got to slow down and dig deep to find out why you’re saying yes.
When we look at Jesus and his time on earth we realise that he didn’t say yes to everything. He didn’t heal everyone. He walked through communities and left needs there. It’s okay to say no, especially if you are saying yes for all the wrong reasons as I was.
Now that I am brave enough to admit the reasons behind my too many yeses it’s much easier to deal with the issue and not allow it to happen again. I can share with brothers and they can not only pray but also keep me accountable in the future.
So I finish with two questions, what hard truth do you need to face up to and share? And what do you need to say no to?
It’s okay to say no.
Image credit: Photo by Henry Burrows / CC BY 2.0

One of the things that I love about any testimony, no matter how amazing or how much of a visible transformation there is, are the guys who are often in the background, never giving up. They knew that what the person really needed was Jesus and they stuck at it, often for years without seeing any results.
It’s easy to want to give up. Sometimes I don’t feel like doing the unselfish thing. I want to just lie on the couch and watch TV. I don’t want to do one more thing today. I don’t want to handle another problem. But just because I don’t feel like it doesn’t mean I shouldn’t do it.
Sometimes I don’t feel like praying or reading my Bible. But I do it. I’ve found that if the only time I pray is when I feel like it, the devil makes sure I never feel like it. If the only time I read my Bible is when I feel like it, the devil makes sure I never feel like it. Maturity is when you live your life by your commitments, not by your feelings.
Often the difference between successful people and unsuccessful people is that successful people are willing to do what unsuccessful people don’t feel like doing. They develop habits. They stay committed. You don’t get to the Olympics because you feel like it. You get to the Olympics through hours and hours of training that you didn’t feel like doing. You don’t get to become a master musician without hours and hours of rehearsal that you probably didn’t feel like doing all the time.
In the same way, you don’t become a godly man by simply doing what you feel like doing. Godly men choose to develop the habits that produce godliness in their lives. It’s not any easier than working out or dieting or rehearsing or anything else that may be good for you but you don’t feel like doing.
But the big question is how do we develop this kind of persistence? I believe the key is to not to look at your problem or the challenge but at God. One of the greatest examples in the Bible of persistence and not giving up can be seen in the life of Moses.
Moses was chosen by God to lead the Israelites out of Egypt into the Promised Land, a job he didn’t really want in the first place. 10 times he had to ask Pharaoh to let his people go before he finally agreed, only for him to change his mind and send his army after them.
I don’t know about you but I think would be tempted to give up after 4 or 5 attempts!
Then of course God parts the Red Sea and allows them to finally escape and reach the desert. For 40 years, he led a group of crying, squabbling, complaining babies around the desert while they questioned his leadership the entire time. Yet he never gave up.
And let’s not forget that this adventure started when Moses was 80 years old!
I love what Hebrews 11:27 says about Moses, “It was faith that made Moses leave Egypt without being afraid of the king’s anger. As though he saw the invisible God, he refused to turn back”. Moses “saw the invisible God.” He kept his eyes fixed firmly on God and stuck to the task that God entrusted in him.
So I want to encourage you to think of the guys in your life who need to know Jesus and start praying for them. Seek opportunities to share the Gospel with them and most importantly never, ever give up. Who knows what God will do with that life!
Image credit: Photo by Quinn Dombrowski / CC BY 2.0

We have all heard the apparently encouraging phrases that we are supposed to live by when life kicks us hard, you know the ones I mean.
“If you get knocked down seven times, get up eight times.”
“What defines us is how well we rise again after falling.”
“Turn a setback into a comeback!”
And of course who could forget the famous song from Chumbawamba, ‘Tubthumping’, that reached the dizzy heights of number 2 in the UK singles chart.
“I get knocked down. But I get up again. You’re never going to keep me down”
None of us goes through life without getting knocked down at some point, whether it be redundancy, money or health issues, family troubles or much more simpler things like planning events for guys and no one turns up. No matter what it is that kicks right in the gut and sends us to our knees the above inspirational quotes or even the rousing Chumbawamba song don’t really help you get back up, at worst they can push you further down.
Following Jesus isn’t a calling to an easy life, or one without troubles. It hits our wallets, our time and our commitments. We’re going to stand out and at times be ridiculed for what we believe.
Jesus warned us in John 16:33 that we would have trouble in this life and in Matthew 16:24-26 he commanded us to take up our cross daily and follow him. So it’s clear that troubles and knockdowns are ahead of us.
When I am knocked don by any situation, big or small, there is only one place I turn and that’s God’s Word. The Bible is full of inspiration and promises from God that help me get back to my feet. Whether it be stories about great men and women of faith rising up again after a fall or declarations straight from God himself, they are much better than any inspirational quotes or rousing songs for giving me the confidence to stand once again and have another go for Jesus.
The confines of this blog don’t allow me to share all of God’s promises in His Word but let me finish by sharing just one that has been a source of inspiration and encouragement to me in times when I have been down but not out.
Blessed is the one who perseveres under trial because, having stood the test, that person will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who love him. James 1:12
You see the enemy wants to shake your faith but God wants to stir it up.
Image Credit: Laura Lefurgey-Smith

I am constantly being asked “How can I tell the guys at work about Jesus?” I am asked this question so often that you would be forgiven for thinking that it should have been the first blog in this series of blogs and not the last. It wasn’t a mistake that I have done them in this order and that this is indeed the last one in the series.
Let me explain, as Christian men we would love to see our mates at work give us the opportunity to share the Gospel with them but let’s be real and honest about this and think about it from our colleagues point of view.
If you are known as the guy who is always moaning about your work, never having a smile on your face and constantly having a go about the boss behind his back. Then the chances are your colleagues won’t really see you as being different and that Jesus does have a positive effect on your life.
But, if you’re the guy who is always happy and positive at work no matter what the job is or the circumstances because you know that your real boss is God and your work is an act of worship then people will notice the difference and ask why.
If you are known as the guy at work with no integrity who never does what he promises to do, who is known to “borrow” a few things from work and never return them, then the chances are your colleagues won’t really see you as being different and that Jesus does have a positive effect on your life.
But, if you’re the guy who is always tries to do the right thing and is much more interested in your character than your career then people will notice the difference and ask why.
If you are known as the guy at work who doesn’t treat colleagues very well and never really shows anyone any love or compassion, then the chances are your colleagues won’t really see you as being different and that Jesus does have a positive effect on your life.
But, if you’re the guy who treats everyone at work, even the people you don’t get on with or like very much with love, respect and compassion then people will notice the difference and ask why.
If you are known as the guy at work who is always chatting up the girls, flirting or having an affair with a colleague, then the chances are your colleagues won’t really see you as being different and that Jesus does have a positive effect on your life.
But, if you’re the guy who honours his wife and does everything in his power to protect the sanctity of your marriage then people will notice the difference and ask why.
You see if we are to earn the privilege to talk the talk about Jesus we first have to walk the walk. We have to demonstrate that Jesus has impacted and changed our lives for the better, like only He can.
I am in no way suggesting that we need to be living perfect lives because as we all know that’s impossible and is the reason we need God’s amazing grace. However as we strive to become more like Jesus and show our colleagues a different way to live then the opportunities to share our faith will become much more abundant.
Image Credit: Alejandro Escamilla 

I was shocked to learn that over 65% of marital affairs begin in the workplace and I began to pray about why this might be. Suddenly the answers hit me like a brick.
Firstly, we spend the majority of the week at work away from our partner and if your house is anything like ours you can sometimes feel like ships passing in the night. Secondly, we often work closely with females at work, which inevitably leads to a personal relationship developing. Next the excitement that you once had in your marriage, the longing looks, the thrill, the excitement that you used to have at the beginning of the relationship with your wife starts to happen with your colleague. Then finally we have the secret meetings for sex, the danger and thrill that this gives.
Sounds great doesn’t it! But is it really?
Can we live with the guilt and shame that will burn deep within our conscience as we embark on this affair?
Let’s not kid ourselves here, our wife will find us out eventually!
Do we want to destroy all that we have worked or even fought for?
It’s not only our family that we are potentially destroying but also the other person’s.
If we do eventually separate from our wife and begin a serious relationship with our new partner, how long until that relationship becomes stale and the excitement seemingly disappears, the longing looks stop and the initial thrill is gone? We are then back with the same superficial problems in the relationship that we had with our wife. What then… another office romance??
I am not naive enough to think that this is a problem that only married guys face, many of my single Christian friends struggle in this area too. Society’s constant obsessions with sex are around us everyday, the opportunities are boundless but we are called to be counter cultural and abstain from sex before marriage and my friends tell me that this is much easier said than done! So what advice to single guys- pray! This may sound like a simple Christian response to any situation but we can never underestimate the power of prayer. Secondly, find a battle buddy, someone you can meet regularly to pray with and most importantly share your struggles and successes with whilst at the same time keeping each other accountable.
There is so much that I could write on this issue but the space constraints of this blog don’t allow for it. However, if you are struggling in your marriage and the thought of an affair keeps coming back and the temptation grows, I would like to share with you more practical steps to help you overcome this:
Pray regularly with and for your wife
I can’t underemphasise the importance of praying with and for your wife. Too often prayer is our last resort out of a problem when it should be our number one priority. Praying with your wife develops a special intimacy and problems in your marriage are often dealt with before they have time to take root.
Keep open communication with your wife.
Make sure to have couple time and dates regularly. Time with your wife alone every day can be a time for reconnecting and recharging your emotional batteries and intimacy.
Keep commitment to your marriage.
Keeping your marriage strong needs investment and commitment. It is like taking care of your own lawn. You need to water and trim your lawn to make it healthy and don’t linger by the fence because it is greener on the other side.
Keep your marriage in mind and a high priority.
Control your thoughts and keep your thoughts on a professional level. Your thoughts may not become an action; however, thinking about intimacy with your colleagues or physical attraction may increase chances of acting on those thoughts when there is an opportunity.
Establish clear boundaries for work.
If your colleagues know more about your personal thoughts than your spouse and when there’s more companionship and intellectual sharing and understanding at work than in the marriage, that’s a warning sign.
Image Credit: Alejandro Escamilla 

One of the most challenging aspects of any workplace can often be the people we work beside, the people we have to spend the majority of our week with. Often we are thrust together with people who we would normally not choose to spend a few hours with, never mind a whole day! How we treat, interact and respect them speaks volumes about our spiritual maturity.
We are instructed to Do everything with love 1 Corinthians 16:14. “Do everything” — that means in the office, in the workshop, in the shop, in the car, on a sales trip — whatever, whenever!
Even when our colleagues are grumpy and rude, even when they don’t like you, even when they make fun of you, even when they put you down for being a Christian, you must still be a friend to them, and treat them as you would like to be treated.
As Christians our main goal is to become more like Jesus, more like God. We could argue that the number one reason God put you on this earth is to learn how to love. God is love, and he wants you to be like Him. It’s easy to love people you like — the people you find it easy to get along with. So if God’s going to teach you real love, its important to realize that he’s going to put you around unlovely people.
In my experience, it’s not really that hard to love the unlovely. A kind word, a friendly smile, a pat on the back, a genuine compliment, a word of encouragement and a listening ear, are all relatively easy to give yet we often underestimate the power of such simple acts.
There have been numerous times when the unlovely person started to open up and become lovely, often revealing the heartache, family struggles, fears or insecurities that have caused the unloving qualities to surface. So often people’s lives change when somebody takes time to pay attention to them. There is not a person on this planet that isn’t starving for attention. But a caring person is hard to find. The Apostle Paul said, “I have no one else like Timothy, who genuinely cares about your welfare” (Philippians 2:20). I would love to sit down and learn from Timothy!
People need affirmation, attention, and affection. Learn to care about the people you work with and show them God’s love.
Be humble and gentle. Be patient with each other, making allowance for each other’s faults because of your love. Ephesians 4:2
Image Credit: Alejandro Escamilla 

As we saw in the previous blog, one of the big challenges we face in the workplace is trying to maintain our integrity in all that we do, say and think. From my experience the temptations are all around us in the workplace and quite often we don’t even realise it.
Issues or areas that damage our integrity at work can include the following: How do we treat other co-workers, especially those we manage? Do we treat them the way we would like to be treated? Are we open and honest in all that we do? Do we take few things from the workplace, even something as trivial as some paper? Do our actions always match up to our words? Do we always do what we say we will do? Do we lust after the young girl in the office, joking about her looks with fellow male colleagues? Do we judge anyone female who visits our workplace first and foremost by her looks?
The list could go on and on and if we are all honest, we all fall down at least one of those points I have raised on numerous occasions. Another big challenge I found is that as Christians we are often expected by non-Christians to have higher levels of integrity than those around us. When, not if, we slip up the judgemental comments come flying in thick and fast.
So what can we do to maintain our integrity not only in the workplace, but also in all areas of life? From my experience no self-help book or the latest motivational speaker could do it, the only resource you need is the Word of God A.K.A The Bible. Once your start reading, understanding and applying the Bible to your life then your character starts to develop and with that character development comes integrity.
God is much more interested in your character than he is in your career. But God does use your work and your workplace to develop your character. Your workplace is in some ways a life course in character development.
Do you have a boss who drives you crazy or puts you under pressure to lie? Think about this, God can use a boss who tests your patience, and he can use a workplace that you’re unhappy in to develop and grow your character. He plants seeds of love, joy, peace, and patience in your heart, and then he fertilizes those seeds while you work.
You may be at work and wonder, “How come this is going on? Why is this such a difficult place to work? Why do these people not like me? Why can’t I be happier at my workplace?” You’re really just asking the same question that Solomon asked: What’s there to show for a lifetime of work, a lifetime of working your fingers to the bone? Ecclesiastes 1:3 (The Message)
The answer to Solomon’s and many of our questions regarding the workplace is character. You’re not going to take your career with you to Heaven, but you are going to take your character. And while you are here on Earth, God is developing your character and testing your faithfulness. Will you be faithful to do the right thing, even when you don’t feel like doing the right thing?
Stephen McGuire
Image Credit: Alejandro Escamilla 

One of the big challenges that I faced in the workplace, especially within a sales environment, would be the pressure put on by my boss to lie, or exaggerate the truth a little, just do or say anything to get the sale especially if there were a few zeros on the end of the selling price. At times I found this a real struggle and it would have been easy to simply do as I was asked and damage my integrity in the process. We will think about integrity in the next blog but today I really want to think about who our real boss is?
You see the Bible tells us that the boss at work is not really your boss, your boss is Jesus.
Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving. Colossians 3:23-24
Many people I talk with have a real dislike for their job and I often hear statements like “it pays the bills”, “it will do until I can find something better” or “I get no job satisfaction”. When we constantly think about these things our attitude towards work can really suffer and become very negative.
However when we flip it around and realise that no matter where you work or who you work for, your real boss is Jesus then our whole attitude towards our work can change. It is much easier to be enthusiastic about our job when we know that we are doing it for God. By understanding the truth that anything we do from sweeping the floor to running a multinational company can be an act of worship, we can change our whole mind-set and approach our job with a fresh enthusiasm and a positive attitude.
When we change our thinking and attitudes towards our work it won’t be long before the “here’s the grumpy Christian coming” comments change to “here’s the guy that is always happy and positive at work”. This change can have a huge impact on our evangelism in the work place.
It doesn’t matter if you’re vacuuming the carpet, repairing a car, serving in the military, or managing an office, any job can become an act of worship if you do it enthusiastically for God, 1 Corinthians 10:31 tells us “So whatever you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.”
Image Credit: Alejandro Escamilla 

The workplace; a place where we spend most of our week, a place where as Christian men we can influence our co-workers, suppliers and customers with the Gospel. Or is it? Are we really showing God’s love in our attitudes, work ethics and conversations? Do we struggle to live by our Christian values when the boss asks us to lie to a customer or a co-worker upsets us?
Work in Britain is getting tougher with record levels of stress, anxiety and low morale. However research reveals that most Christians in the workplace get little or no support from their church communities.
Over the course of this blog series we will be looking at various aspects of the workplace and how we as Christian men can actively live out our faith at work because importantly, being a Christian means living in the real world and not hiding away.
So what is my experience of living out my faith in the workplace? Before joining CVM full time I worked for the same company for 19 years, starting as an apprentice in the workshops and finishing in the sales department selling multi-million pound cranes and access equipment to the oil and gas industry.
For the first 7 years of my career I wasn’t a Christian and I was a typical Jack the lad at the time. The rave scene was massive and I loved everything about it, the music, drugs and alcohol. I was always up for the night out; the ones you couldn’t remember were apparently the best. I didn’t treat girls as they deserved to be treated, they became conquests rather than people. You get the idea…..
When I gave my life to Jesus and I got to know Him more, I knew I had to change the way I thought, spoke and acted. My conscience became much sharper and I started becoming more aware of how my thoughts, words and actions impacted on others. I would read the Bible and be challenged by passage like Colossians 3.
Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. Because of these, the wrath of God is coming. You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived. But now you must also rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator. Colossians 3:5-10
I knew I had to change, I had to be different, and I had to be prepared to share my faith. But, this was much easier said than done and I came across numerous barriers and problems.
For the first few months I had a real difficulty in work colleagues understanding the change and there was always the constant pressure to slip back into my old ways. This often forced me to isolate myself at first and perhaps stay away from nights out etc, however I quickly realised that I wouldn’t be able to influence others or share my faith by doing that.
Over this series of blogs we will examine some of these challenges and hopefully share some practical ways in which we can overcome them.
Image Credit: Alejandro Escamilla

On a recent trip to the Shetland Isles, I had to take a 14-hour overnight ferry journey from Aberdeen to Lerwick. The weather had been so bad the night before the boat arrived 9 hours late into Aberdeen and the forecast was equally as bad for my trip north. Maybe I should have heeded the warning sign at the check in desk that read “Please be aware that bad weather is forecast for tonight’s crossing, it is at your discretion whether you travel or not.” Hardly a reassuring start to my trip!
Within minutes of the ferry leaving Aberdeen harbour the waves hit the boat. I was not prepared for the amount of billowing and rolling in the waves and by the crashing and banging coming from the galley, neither were they! After quickly finishing my dinner, I decided to head for the refuge of my cabin and hopefully some sleep. As I lay in bunk with my eyes closed, it felt as though I was on roller coaster and I still had over 11 hours to go, HELP!!
As I was lying there I was reminded of the story in Matthew 8 when Jesus calms the storms with the power of his words.
Then he got into the boat and his disciples followed him. Suddenly a furious storm came up on the lake, so that the waves swept over the boat. But Jesus was sleeping. The disciples went and woke him, saying, “Lord, save us! We’re going to drown!” He replied, “You of little faith, why are you so afraid?” Then he got up and rebuked the winds and the waves, and it was completely calm.
The men were amazed and asked, “What kind of man is this? Even the winds and the waves obey him!” Matthew 8:23-27
As I was thinking about this story, I was in awe and wonder at the power of Jesus, he was able to calm the storm with only a few words! Part of me was praying that he would do it again right there and then!
All of us go through storms in life; loss of a loved one, financial pressure, redundancies and many other difficult situations. I don’t know what storm you are facing right now in your life, but what I know for certain is this:
No sin is so great that it hasn’t already been dealt with at Calvary!
No situation is so bad that God can’t turn around and use for his glory!
No life is so messed up and beyond hope that Jesus can’t transform into something amazing!
So whatever storms you may be facing today, trust in Jesus and His ability to calm the storm with only a few words.
Image Credit: Duncan Moloney