Ask ten men what it means to be a “real man,” and you’ll get ten different answers. Some will talk about toughness—being strong, independent, and never backing down. Others will point to leadership—providing, protecting, staying in control. Even in the church, we tend to adopt the same ideals with a spiritual spin: men are told to lead, serve, give, attend, and, for heaven’s sake, don’t screw up...
Every man is keeping score, whether he admits it or not. Some tally numbers in the bank account, square footage in the house, or the horsepower under the hood. Others measure it by job titles, social media followers, or how quickly people return their calls. From the time we’re young, the world hands us a scoreboard and says, “Here’s how you know you’re winning.” I was a card-carrying member of...
The lies men pick up along the way seem to stick. Some lies were spoken outright—by a father who said you’d never measure up, by a coach who told you toughness means you’re a real man, or by a boss who managed by intimidation. Other lies are quieter, picked up from culture, comparison, or even church traditions that twisted God’s truth. Unfortunately, these lies don’t stay in our heads;...
What’s often missing in the conversation about “becoming who you were meant to be” is the how. The world tells men to reinvent themselves. The church frequently tells men to behave themselves. Jesus tells men to deny themselves—so they can finally become themselves. We spend years trying to harness the willpower, self-discipline, and the true grit we think necessary to be who God wants us to be...
Today, we live in a world where influence is measured by what people say, what they wear, where they vacation and dine, and what they drive. There ws a time when the influencers were people who actually accomplished good. People like Martin Luther King, Jr. who was key in birthing the non-violent civil right movement, Nelson Mandela, an anti-apartheid revolutionary, who served as the first black...
Opening Thought Excuse my heresy for knocking bacon. Unfortunately, there are churches who have adopted what they consider a working formula to attract men—promise men anything including bacon, toss in a Bible verse, maybe a few dad jokes, and call it men’s ministry; using the tried and true idiom, “If you feed them, they will come.” Hey, we’re not knocking breakfast. Men love bacon...
We don’t like to admit it, but sometimes God doesn’t come through the way we hoped He would. You prayed. You believed. You fasted, you hoped, you did everything you knew to do—and still nothing changed. The promotion fell through. The illness lingered. The marriage didn’t heal. The relationship wasn’t restored. In those moments, you start to believe God let you down. He is omnipotent. He could...
When we urgently need an answer, silence is the last thing we want to hear. Silence can be unsettling, even painful. We see the answer as so obvious; God just has to make the move. It’s the end of the month, and the mortgage is due. Or a family member or friend is very ill, and God needs to give the doctors the wisdom and ability to intercede. Maybe you’ve been there—praying late at night...
Does your faith only grow when God says “yes?” When the promotion comes through, when the family member or friend recovers from their illness, even when we avoid the consequences of a bad decision, we celebrate and proclaim His goodness. But what happens when our prayers seem to go unanswered, when God’s timeline isn’t ours, or His response is “no”? That’s when our faith gets tested. Many...
Today’s world is addicting us to speed—overnight deliveries, instant streaming, instant answers. Anything that makes us wait is totally unacceptable. In Real Faith Isn’t Based on Results, we touched on how impatient we’ve become, but let’s lean in a little closer. If a package doesn’t show up the next day, or if the Wi-Fi lags for thirty seconds, it feels like the end of the world...