Official Blog For Author Fred Stoeker

          I bought your books first for my boys, but then God turned around and used them to heal my marriage. The book Hero is what got us all going at first. Since then, I’ve had my sons reading so many of your books this winter that they start running whenever they see me coming towards them with a book. Your message has me asking my husband and sons tough questions regularly, too. They need to know that they are accountable to the women in their lives.  
           These books have made an incredible impact on my husband and me, as God used your words to change my husband and then, in turn, change our marriage. But since God has worked in our lives, my heart has become heavy. What is driving this is the ugly world that is destroying my generation, my son’s generation and the next one, and the lack of support men give each other to stand up against all this.
           Personally, I want to stand up in front of men everywhere and ask them the tough questions. I want to say the secret words and make them visible. I want to challenge them to get accountability partners, and once they have them, to make sure that accountability is real and honest, built upon friendship, trust and tough love. Accountability partners should allow no gray areas and provide no excuses to make life easier for their brothers in Christ. They shouldn’t just ask how you are doing in this area and then quickly move on, especially when there is a sense that something is wrong. I know men and women are totally different in this area, and men have to work harder to make this happen. After all, women come together as accountability partners and it can take less than ten minutes for discussions to get personal and, most likely, weepy. Guys, on the other hand, take ten minutes discuss their entire life in a nutshell and then quickly move on to lunch.
           But you don’t need to have emotional break downs to have true accountability. What you do need is honesty, trust and toughness. Toughness should be right up a man’s alley. Why can’t men use that in the area of accountability? Why can’t they stand up and say, “I am a man of God, I will stand and be strong. As a warrior I will stand alongside my accountability partner as a teammate, and we will fight and win this battle, together.” That’s tough and that’s manly, without a trace of teary, emotional outburst. When you’re out on the battle field in war, you encourage each other and you get tough and you strive to never leave your wounded comrade behind. Where is that in the relationships between Christian men today? I want to scream this from the rooftops.
           I know I’m a woman, and it would be weird for me to stand up and talk to men like this in church, I suppose, but I’ve seen the devastation in my personal life and I want this to change for everyone. I want my husband, my sons and the next generation to be fearless in the face of it all, and to stand up and make a change in our culture. I want women to see something different in my husband and my sons and to see a Godly respect for them. Where do I go from here? What do I do with all this passion? I don’t know yet, but God has told me that I must first spend more time in prayer about this than in thought or teaching. So pray I will.