Break Down the Walls
Rudyard Kipling's "If, for boys" deprived me of my greatest joys.
I've been discouraged, greatly pained, striving after unattained
high ideals of great perfection, falling short in each direction.
Ego, envy, pride, and lust, were all I had that I could trust
to make me feel much the man; a self-sufficient master plan
making use of what avails to stand above the other males.
Hid down deep what isn't pretty: inferior, with much self-pity.
Just maintain the masquerade, and someday soon you'll have it made.
Insecure, and quite self-centered until the Holy Spirit entered
from my heart into my mind, purifying what He'd find:
"Stacking up" against my brothers, and kept away from loving others,
antagonistic competition, healed by the Great Physician.
Since Jesus Christ my Lord befriended, manliness as God intended
is more than possibility: The perfect Man now lives in me!
My Lord and Savior set me free to be the man He'd have me be.
Each brother has his place to stand amid the others, linking hands.
The Lord makes each of us more strong as we gladly help along.
The strength of men whom God unites, whose battles all their Master
fights,
is that loving duty calls, to lift my brother as he falls,
knowing that in Jesus' name, for me will always do the same,
and likewise in his winning ways, because of him, give God the praise.
I came here at first with a hunger and thirst
with thousands of men I didn't know from Adam,
whose struggles with sin, I've certainly had 'em.
As many leave town, with walls tumbling down,
through the Father's eyes, I see as He pleases:
Thousands of men I don't know from Jesus.