Stephen Mansfield > Quotes

“a man cannot fulfill his purpose if he is living for applause, approval, and affirmation in this world. It simply will not come—not enough, certainly, to answer the needs of his soul.”
― Stephen Mansfield, Mansfield's Book of Manly Men: An Utterly Invigorating Guide to Being Your Most Masculine Self

“If a man lives for the glory of God, he stops looking for affirmation from other human beings after every good deed, a pat on the head every time he does his duty. Instead, he throws himself into his role unselfishly. He contents himself with knowing he is fulfilling his purpose in this world and pleasing the God who made him.”
― Stephen Mansfield, Mansfield's Book of Manly Men: An Utterly Invigorating Guide to Being Your Most Masculine Self

“Life has meaning only in the struggle, Victory or defeat is in the hand of God, So let us celebrate the struggle.”
― Stephen Mansfield, Healing Your Church Hurt: What To Do When You Still Love God But Have Been Wounded by His People

“Every human soul is different. We are all shaped by both experience and design, by callings and the way our gifts mold our inner lives. Every soul has a bent, a drift, a way it wants to go. And when hard times come and the inner person writhes in torment, the soul reaches for what it thinks is anesthesia, for something to medicate the pain.”
― Stephen Mansfield, Healing Your Church Hurt: What To Do When You Still Love God But Have Been Wounded by His People

“Here is where it leads us. And let me make this clear: there is nothing that happened in that wounding experience with that church that is worth what is happening to you now.”
― Stephen Mansfield, Healing Your Church Hurt: What To Do When You Still Love God But Have Been Wounded by His People

“The Kurds know—and never for a moment forget—what most people in the world have never understood. The nation of Iraq is not a centuries-old country with natural boundaries and an organically blended population. Instead, Iraq is a structure of artificial boundaries and unnaturally combined tribes and religions conceived by Europeans just after World War”
― Stephen Mansfield, The Miracle of the Kurds: A Remarkable Story of Hope Reborn In Northern Iraq

“Honorable men don’t settle for lives of regret.”
― Stephen Mansfield, Mansfield's Book of Manly Men: An Utterly Invigorating Guide to Being Your Most Masculine Self

“G. K. Chesterton: “The most extraordinary thing in the world is an ordinary man and an ordinary woman and their ordinary children.” And”
― Stephen Mansfield, The Search for God and Guinness: A Biography of the Beer that Changed the World

“John Wesley drank wine, was something of an ale expert, and often made sure that his Methodist preachers were paid in one of the vital currencies of the day—rum. His brother, Charles Wesley, was known for the fine port, Madeira, and sherry he often served in his home;”
― Stephen Mansfield, The Search for God and Guinness: A Biography of the Beer that Changed the World

“Beer, well respected and rightly consumed, can be a gift of God. It is one of his mysteries, which it was his delight to conceal and the glory of kings to search out. And men enjoy it to mark their days and celebrate their moments and stand with their brothers in the face of what life brings.”
― Stephen Mansfield, The Search for God and Guinness: A Biography of the Beer that Changed the World

“In our love for our church and our holy regard for those who lead us in the things of God, we forget the nature of humanity. We are not surprised by the evil pressing in from without, but we are blind to the potential for wickedness that slumbers in our own souls. We forget that humans are a combination of greatness and grief, of righteous might and disgusting sin. In our sentimentality about our church and those we love in it, we forget to stand guard against the natural failings of humanity. We turn off our deflector shields and cast aside our filters and begin to ignore the signals our inner radar may be sending.”
― Stephen Mansfield

“Your horrific time of trouble offered you truths about yourself, windows into your own soul, and maps to the terrain of your inner life. Wise people learn to gather this intelligence to help them conquer themselves and then to live in loftier ways.”
― Stephen Mansfield, Healing Your Church Hurt: What To Do When You Still Love God But Have Been Wounded by His People

“This is a good moment to remember one of Mansfield’s Manly Maxims: “Manly men tend their fields.” It means that we take care of the lives and property entrusted to us. It means that we take responsibility for everything in the “field assigned to us.” We cannot do this without knowledge. We cannot do it if we are ignorant of our times, blind to the trends shaping our lives, and oblivious to the basic knowledge that allows us to do what we are called to do as men. We must know enough about law, health, science, economics, politics, and technology to fulfill our roles. We should also know enough about our faith to stand our ground in a secular age, resist heresies, and teach our families. We also shouldn’t be without the benefits of literature and poetry, of good novels and stirring stories, all of which make us more relevant and more effective. We need all of this, and no one is going to force it upon us. Nor will we acquire what we need from a degree program or a study group alone, as valuable as these can be. The truth is that men who aspire to be genuine men and serve well have no choice: they must devote themselves to an aggressive program of self-education. They have to read books, stay current with websites and periodicals, consult experts, and put themselves in a position to know. It isn’t as hard as it sounds, particularly in our Internet age. Much of what a man needs to know can land in his iPad while he is sleeping, but he has to know enough to value this power in the first place. To ignore this duty can mean disaster. How many men have lost jobs because they did not see massive trends on the horizon? How many men have failed to stay intellectually sharp and so gave up ground in their professions to others with more active minds? How many have lost money through uninformed investments or have not taken opportunities in expanding fields or have missed promotions because they had not bothered to learn about new technologies or what changes social media, for example, would bring to their jobs? I do not want to be negative. Learning is a joy. Reading is one of the great pleasures of life. A man ought to invest in knowledge because it is part of living in this world fully engaged and glorifying God. Yet our times also make it essential. The amount of knowledge in the world is increasing. Technology is transforming our lives. New trends can rise like floodwaters and sweep devastation into our homes. Men committed to tending their fields learn, study, research, dig out facts, and test theories. They know how to safeguard their families. They serve well because they serve as informed men.”
― Stephen Mansfield, Mansfield's Book of Manly Men: An Utterly Invigorating Guide to Being Your Most Masculine Self

“Do not suppose that abuses are eliminated by destroying the object which is abused,” he once wrote. “Men can go wrong with wine and women. Shall we then prohibit and abolish women?”
― Stephen Mansfield, The Search for God and Guinness: A Biography of the Beer that Changed the World

“As you forgive, you are allowing God to clean up the mess and start making your life right again. The demonic taunts are coming to an end. Peace is returning. Perhaps relationships are even being restored, and your faith is rising.”
― Stephen Mansfield, Healing Your Church Hurt: What To Do When You Still Love God But Have Been Wounded by His People

“IF— If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too; If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies, Or being hated, don’t give way to hating, And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise: If you can dream—and not make dreams your master; If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim; If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same; If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools: If you can make one heap of all your winnings And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, And lose, and start again at your beginnings And never breathe a word about your loss; If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew To serve your turn long after they are gone, And so hold on when there is nothing in you Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!” If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch, If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you, If all men count with you, but none too much; If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run, Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it, And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son! —”
― Stephen Mansfield, Mansfield's Book of Manly Men: An Utterly Invigorating Guide to Being Your Most Masculine Self

“Being a man is a privilege, not an entitlement. It is a surrender of our priority. It is a laying down of our lives, not physically but inwardly—our preferences, our pleasures, sometimes even our dreams. Our version of Witold Pilecki’s medals comes in the lives we offer to God, lives we have bled and sweated and prayed and given ourselves for. This is what it means to be a man.”
― Stephen Mansfield, Mansfield's Book of Manly Men: An Utterly Invigorating Guide to Being Your Most Masculine Self

“David knew what it was to be a man. As he lay dying, he called his son Solomon to his bedside and gave him final instructions: “I am about to go the way of all the earth. So be strong and show yourself a man.” These are the last recorded words of one of the greatest kings to ever live. Of all he might have said to his son with his final breath, he chose to instruct him to be a man. They are words we should never forget.”
― Stephen Mansfield, Mansfield's Book of Manly Men: An Utterly Invigorating Guide to Being Your Most Masculine Self

“It is testimony to the importance of beer in their story that the brewery was the first permanent building the Pilgrims constructed.”
― Stephen Mansfield, The Search for God and Guinness: A Biography of the Beer that Changed the World

“Ultimately, though, you only know who a man is and what he believes by what he does. Not by what he sits around talking about.”
― Stephen Mansfield, Mansfield's Book of Manly Men: An Utterly Invigorating Guide to Being Your Most Masculine Self

“What are you reading, watching, memorizing, and applying that will make you an exceptional man?”
― Stephen Mansfield, Mansfield's Book of Manly Men: An Utterly Invigorating Guide to Being Your Most Masculine Self

“The confirmation of history is that we are not called despite our wounding and betrayal; we are wounded and betrayed because we are called. And God yearns to make your pain redemptive in your life.”
― Stephen Mansfield, Healing Your Church Hurt: What To Do When You Still Love God But Have Been Wounded by His People

“Depend upon it, behind all great achievement there lies great toil: nothing that is worth doing is done easily.”
― Lieutenant General Stephen Mansfield, Mansfield's Book of Manly Men: An Utterly Invigorating Guide to Being Your Most Masculine Self

“find it interesting, given the controversies over alcohol that would eventually erupt in the history of the Christian church, that the arrival of Christianity in the world and its eventual sway over the empire did not diminish the Roman love of beer. For the early Christians, drunkenness was the sin—as their apostles had repeatedly taught—and not the consumption of alcohol. After all, their Lord had miraculously created wine at a wedding feast, the fledgling church drank wine at its sacred meals, and Christian leaders even instructed their disciples to take wine as a cure for ailments. Clearly, beer and wine used in moderation were welcomed by the early Christians and were taken as a matter of course. It was excess and drunkenness and the immorality that came from both that the Christians opposed.”
― Stephen Mansfield, The Search for God and Guinness: A Biography of the Beer that Changed the World

“Facing the reality of that painful season when it felt as though you were in a sandstorm with no skin is the key to becoming whole now.”
― Stephen Mansfield, Healing Your Church Hurt: What To Do When You Still Love God But Have Been Wounded by His People

“The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.”
― Stephen Mansfield, Mansfield's Book of Manly Men: An Utterly Invigorating Guide to Being Your Most Masculine Self

“A second legacy from Nancy might seem more a curse than a gift, but it may have helped to give us the Lincoln our nation reveres. She would pass on to him her own struggle with depression, with that enveloping darkness that lurks, for some, ever at the soul’s door. This would merge with a Lincoln family heritage of mental illness to become a force in Abraham that he fought to subdue all his days. It would leave him scarred, and it would even deform parts of his personality, but by striving to master it and by remembering what he had experienced in those hours of suffocating gloom, he emerged a man of greater wisdom, wit, and humanity.”
― Stephen Mansfield, Lincoln's Battle with God: A President's Struggle with Faith and What It Meant for America

“Second, a man is meant to carry such responsibility that he will descend into exhaustion and resentment if he does not have the inner resources that come from living in connection with God. This is much the same for women, but that is the subject for another book by another author. The issue for men is, as much as they might try, they cannot do what they are assigned to do without strength and energy beyond their own.”
― Stephen Mansfield, Mansfield's Book of Manly Men: An Utterly Invigorating Guide to Being Your Most Masculine Self

“Every Christian has a capacity for the most magnificent Christlikeness. Yet, every Christian also has the potential to commit the most disgusting and horrible acts of the flesh.”
― Stephen Mansfield, Healing Your Church Hurt: What To Do When You Still Love God But Have Been Wounded by His People

“I keep it simple. I can’t live up to God’s standards without God’s resources. I become the man I am made to be by living to the glory of God.”
― Stephen Mansfield, Mansfield's Book of Manly Men: An Utterly Invigorating Guide to Being Your Most Masculine Self