men for others

A man is at his best when he is living for others.

Jefferson Bethke

In humility, consider others more important than yourselves.

Philippians 2:3

The Jesuits have a mantra for their Order. 

Men for others.

I love this. 
We need more men to live for others in our world today. 
Living for others is at the heart of what it means to be a godly man.
I have tried to reflect this in the definition of masculinity we use at Forming Men.

Masculinity is "The joyful pursuit of sacrificial responsibility."

Here are 3 reflections this week to stir your heart to be a man for others.

(1)  TRIUMPH

Rome was a culture built on honor. 
There was no greater honor for a Roman General than that of getting a Triumph Parade. As one author notes, 

A Triumph provided a victorious general an unmatched forum for self-promotion as well as an opportunity to gain popularity with the Roman mob. At the end of a week-long celebration in which the spoils of war were displayed and divided among the People, the general mounted a gilded chariot, his face painted red with vermilion in imitation of Mars, the god of war, a crown of oak leaves on his head. As he rode down the Via Sacra—the city’s central avenue—thronged with citizens shouting his praise, a lone slave stood behind him in the chariot repeating, 

"You are a man. You are no god. You serve Rome."

We all need this voice behind us. 

Any success or influence we get is not to point to ourselves but to Him.
He is the one who leads us in triumphant procession.
True victory is not over others but over the ego and the flesh.

You are a man. You are no god. You serve Christ.

(2)  PERSPECTIVE 

The world we live in today distorts our sense of perspective.

You don’t need to be famous to have reality distorted for you; the algorithms do that. The level of customization we experience greatly warps our perception and creates the illusion that we are the central figure in the life of the world.

David Foster Wallace, concerned about this very phenomenon, writes, 

Everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe, the realest, most vivid and important person in existence. We rarely think about this sort of natural, basic self-centeredness, because it’s so socially repulsive, but it’s pretty much the same for all of us, deep down. It is our default setting, hardwired into our boards at birth. Think about it: There is no experience you’ve had that you were not at the absolute center of. The world as you experience it is there in front of you, or behind you, to the left or right of you, on your TV, or your monitor, or whatever. Other people’s thoughts and feelings have to be communicated to you somehow, but your own are immediate, urgent, real.

Maybe that’s what’s fueling our sense of narcissism in the world today. Everything in my online world is customized around my preferences. I listen to my favorite music, install my favorite apps, follow my favorite people, and watch my favorite news. Slowly but surely our attention is discipled with ourselves at the center.

Jesus IS at the center of the world, yet He chose to look at life through the lens of others. 

His heart went out to others.
His attention was drawn to others.
Jesus died for others.

In a narcissistic world, the most radical and rebellious thing you can do is learn to live and love others. 

(3)  ONE-WORD SERMON

The best sermons are the ones you remember. Here is a story of one of the best. 

It was Christmas Eve, 1910. General William Booth, the founder of The Salvation Army was an invalid and near the end of his life—it was impossible for him to attend the Army’s annual convention. Someone near the General suggested that Booth send a telegram to be read at the opening of the convention to the many Salvation Army soldiers in attendance as an encouragement for their many hours of labor serving others throughout the holidays and the cold winter months. Booth agreed.

Funds were limited and telegrams charged by the word, so to ensure as much money as possible would still go to help the needy, General Booth decided to send a one-word message. He searched his mind and reviewed his years of ministry, seeking the one word that would summarize his life, the mission of the Army and encourage the soldiers to continue on.

When the thousands of delegates met, the moderator announced that Booth could not be present due to his failing health. Gloom and pessimism swept across the convention floor until the moderator announced that Booth had sent a telegram to be read at the start of the first session. He opened the message and read just one word:

"Others!"

Signed, General Booth.

Consumer Christianity is a cancer in the body of Christ. It consumes the resources designed for mission and ultimately kills itself. We need this one-word sermon in our world today. 

May we be men for others.

JESUS: A MAN FOR OTHERS

Jesus was the only messiah in history without a messiah complex.

He loved, served, sacrificed, bled, and died for others, and He did this with joy. Luke 17:7-10 reminds us that we are called to do the same.

So, you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, 
‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.’"

We have only done our duty.

The duty of love.
The duty of sacrifice.
The joyous duty of joining Jesus in becoming a man for others.

I’ll be fighting my own ego alongside you this week and asking God to make me a man for others.

See you at the cross.

Cheers.

Jon.

find the few

Religion has accepted the monstrous heresy that noise, size, activity and bluster make a man dear to God.

A. W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God

I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you

Jesus

I have met many people over the course of my life, but few that have deeply changed me.

One of those who did is a man named Jeff Spencer.  

When I first met Jeff, he was working for the Australian Government, and I was working at a butcher shop. I was a new believer, drenched with zeal, but lacking direction and skills in my faith. 

Jeff offered to help me learn how to walk with Jesus, and I’ve been on that road for 30 years now because he did.

Jeff was a man of the few.

He taught at our youth group, and led from the front, but his heart wasn’t in the many; it was in the few. Jeff believed in going deep and that disciples could not be mass-produced. That meant that discipleship and ministry would require time, depth, sacrifice, and attention. These are the gifts he gave me.

Jeff started coming over to my house in the very early mornings to help me go deep with God. He taught me how to study the Bible, share my faith, fight sin, memorize scripture, and pour into others. 

I am who I am today in my forties because of the faithfulness of a man when I was a teenager.

Many have preached to me; few poured into me. I am grateful for Jeff including me as one of his few.

The older I get, and the longer I serve Jesus, the more those early lessons of discipleship rise up in my heart.

I want to be a man of the few.
_________________________________

We live in a world of influencers; those whose opinions and preferences shape who we are. However, this is often only on the surface level. Influence is easy, but imparting the heart of Jesus from one life to another is hard. 

I don’t want to be an influencer; I want to be a discipler. I want to be a man who helps shape other men for the future that God has for them. Like Jeff, I want to find the few. 

This is a decision every man must make. Will we be men who appease the crowds, or men who go deep with a few?

Robert Coleman clarifies this choice well. 

"We must decide where we want our ministry to count, in the momentary applause of popular recognition or in the reproduction of our lives in a few chosen people who will carry on our work after we have gone."

Jesus preached to the crowds, but He poured into the core.
Find the few.
Jesus had a ministry of deliverance, but His mission was discipleship.
Find the few.
Jesus revealed Himself to His generation, but reserved His heart for the remnant.
Find the few. 

When Jesus rose from the dead, He didn’t go to Rome, confront the high priest, or appear to the world at large. Jesus went and found the few.

The few who would be loyal unto death.
The few who would embody His heart.
The few who would take His message to the end of the earth.

The truth is, only a handful of men in this world will be given large platforms and popular recognition. Trying to be one of those is a waste of time. 

But every man can make a difference in the life of a few. 

You don’t need a bunch of followers, money, success, or recognition to shape the future. Just find a few people willing to go all in and give yourself to them. 

The next men’s movement is not going to be about the masses and the media. It’s going to be about depth and discipleship. 

God is raising up spiritual fathers who will find the few.

You don't need a whole men's ministry; you just need a couple of men.
You don't need to host an event; you can just create space at your table.
You don’t need to get attention; you need to give attention to the few the Lord will give you.

We have all been moved by the St. Crispin’s Day speech given by King Henry V to his troops before the Battle of Agincourt on St. Crispin’s Day...

From this day to the ending of the world,

But we in it shall be remember’d.

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;

For he today that sheds his blood with me

Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,

This day shall gentle his condition:

And gentlemen in England now a-bed

Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,

And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks

That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.

A band of brothers isn’t built on the masses. It isn’t built on cultural banter.
It’s built with a few men who will bleed together, go deep together, fight for each other’s hearts, and be faithful for the long haul.

Who are your chosen few?
Who is Jesus giving you to love, serve, and develop?
It’s time to build that band of brothers.

May God give you the grace to be a man of the few.
May your fruit show up on other people’s trees; the fruit of love, belief, and hope for the generation to come.

Here to find the few.

Cheers.

Jon.

P.S.- If you want to build your brotherhood but don’t know where to start, why not grab a copy of Fighting Shadows with a couple of other men and start going deep.You have a few more days to take advantage of the buy one, get one free offer. Check it out HERE, and let’s start finding the few.

the danger of dry eyes

During the days of Jesus’ life on earth, He offered up prayers and petitions with fervent cries and tears to the one who could save Him from death, and He was heard because of His reverent submission.

Hebrews 5:7

I am writing this email from an airport in Scotland. 

I am traveling home from The Hebrides Revival Conference in Stornoway, Scotland.

God came down in power.

It’s hard to put into words the sense of reverence and awe we experienced there. To be honest, we didn’t know how to handle or sustain the potency of the presence of God we encountered on Saturday and Sunday night. We touched something, but couldn’t hold it.

It was a glorious overwhelming.

I can understand how Blaise Pascal famously wrote in his own testimony…

"Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy."

One of the highlights of my time was being prayed over by one of the men from the 1949-52 revival in his native Gaelic tongue. His heart has been basking in the wonder of Jesus' presence for over 70 years, and as he prayed, tears flowed down my cheeks.

When he finished praying, he looked up and said to me, 

"Ah, the tears; I know God is at work when the tears come."

We need more tears on the cheeks of this generation.
___________________________________

Jesus wept on three occasions.

He wept at the death of Lazarus, a friend that He loved.
He wept over Jerusalem, the city that rejected Him.
He wept in the garden, tears mingled with blood at the cost of the cross (Heb 5:7).

A man who weeps for the world is a gift to the world. 

If God is at work when the tears come, I am asking for more tears.

Christine Valters Paintner notes, 

"In the Eastern Orthodox tradition, the sacrament of confession is sometimes called the "Mystery of the Second Baptism." The ones who truly confess are baptized again in their own tears, symbolizing the in-breaking of truth and freedom."

We need to be baptized again; baptized in our own tears.

Tears of repentance.
Tears of joy.
Tears of heartache.
Tears of love.

We know about the baptism in water, a declaration of our salvation.
We know about the baptism of the Holy Spirit, our source for power.
But so few know about the baptism of tears.

I am praying God breaks your heart this week.

I am praying that He opens your heart to His heart.

I am asking that you weep for the spiritual death all around you and the rejection of the gospel by this generation. I’m asking that you would be willing to weep at what it will cost you as a disciple to do something about it.

Isaac of Nineveh, one of the desert fathers, wrote,

He who is aware of his sins is greater than one who can raise the dead.

Whoever can weep over himself for one hour is greater than the one who is able to teach the whole world; whoever recognizes the depth of his own frailty is greater than the one who sees visions of angels. 

Our generation doesn’t need men with more content. It needs men with more tears.

May God have mercy on our dry eyes, and may rivers of tears flow again.

Hope to see you at the altar.

Cheers.

Jon.

judgment, mercy, and the men we need

"Human history is the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy."

C.S. Lewis

"Every great movement of God can be traced to a kneeling figure."

D.L Moody

Whenever you talk about the judgment of God, it makes people nervous.

There is a legitimate cause for this.

So often, the least loving people show up at the worst times, interjecting a theology of judgment in the midst of heartache and pain.

Who can forget the talk about God's judgment on America after 9/11?
Who can forget the cries of judgment on New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina for the "sins of Mardi Gras?"
Who can forget the explanation of COVID-19 as a judgment on a godless world?

I have a robust theology of judgment. 
I believe God can, does, and will judge sin. 
I just think it looks different than we think it should. 

Jesus said we should take the log out of our own eyes before we judge others.
Paul asked, "What job is it of mine to judge the world?"
Peter said, "Judgment must begin in the house of God."

The judgment of God rarely comes how we expect.

One of the clearest examples of this is found in Isaiah 3. Read these verses closely, and you see the explicit, systematic judgment of God on his people. Don’t just skim this; sit with it. It's revelatory. Rather than cataclysmic weather events or wasting disease, it’s a judgment of withdrawal.

(1) See now, the Lord, the LORD Almighty, is about to take from Jerusalem and Judah both supply and support: all supplies of food and all supplies of water,

(2) the hero and the warrior, the judge and the prophet, the diviner and the elder,

(3) the captain of fifty and the man of rank, the counselor, skilled craftsman, and clever enchanter.

(4) "I will make mere youths their officials; children will rule over them."

(5) People will oppress each other— man against man, neighbor against neighbor. The young will rise up against the old, the nobody against the honored.

(6) A man will seize one of his brothers in his father’s house, and say, "You have a cloak, you be our leader; take charge of this heap of ruins!"

When a society moves away from God and puts its trust in the wrong things, God will judge that society. He does this by stripping away those with the capacity to lead.

The judgment of God is the removal of the help of God.

God takes support and supply; His response and His resources. 
God takes the hero, the warrior; those who can fight.
He takes the prophet and judge; those who can discern. 
He takes the men of capacity and the captains of rank.
He takes the counselor; those with wisdom.
He takes the craftsmen; those who can build.
God removes those who can help.

Then something shocking happens.

Children rule over society.
The nobody over the honorable.
Oppression and opposition. 

And what’s the result?

Children ruling over the rubble and remains of a broken world.
_____________________________________

When I think about the secular culture we live in today, I see the judgment of God everywhere I look.

We have a crisis of leadership; so few worth following.
We have a crisis of character; so few with integrity, 
We have a crisis of capacity; so few with ability.
We have a crisis of discernment; so few with wisdom.

We live in a world where the fools think they are wise, we have deconstructed everything, and the narcissists are fighting over rubble. We are installing the subjective feelings of children as the highest form of wisdom in the land.

I doubt the secular culture knew that when it sought to remove God from society, it would remove the source of its strength, capacity, leadership, and favor.

This is a grim and heartbreaking analysis. But I have seen another pattern over the years, both in God’s Word and His work in the world.

Whenever God is getting ready for revival and renewal, He will restore godly men.

He will bring back the hero and warrior; those who know how to fight.
He will bring back the prophet and the judge; those who can discern.
He will increase men’s capacity, and captains will emerge.
Counselors will appear and craftsmen will arrive. 
Watchmen will appear on the wall.

Could the rumblings amongst the men of this generation be the foreshock of a great restoration He is bringing through a move of God among men?
_____________________________________

Those of you who know me know I have three real passions in ministry:

(1)  Renewing secular culture through the gospel
(2)  Working to raise up men
(3)  Prayer and revival

People often wonder how these things fit together in life, and at times, I have as well.

About a year or so ago, a friend of mine, Darren Rouanzoin, came and preached at our church. Between services, we went down to Fulton Street, where the Businessman’s Revival began in 1857.

While we were there, he gave me a prophetic word that pulled the pieces of my life together in a powerful moment. He said something to this effect,

"The reason I think you have a heart for men is because of what happened in this city. The great move of God in 1857 wasn’t a pastor’s revival or a church planting revival; it was a businessmen’s revival. I think God is pulling these themes of your life together. Raising up men to pray for revival and then moving them out to renew the culture is at the heart of the history of this city. I think God wants to do it again."

Praying men. Revived men. Renewing men.

This is not just something stirring in me; I see rumblings everywhere.

While preaching around the US and talking about Fighting Shadows, I was marked by the hunger and stirring for more in the hearts of men today.

Men want more than managing decline.
More than lukewarm faith.
More than passive participation. 
More than sin management.
More than a distant and disappointed God. 

Here was the most hopeful picture of the trip. It was taken during ministry time at The Well Church in Salt Lake City.

God's stirring the heart of the next generation, the current generation, and previous generations like never before.

I see…

Teenage guys meeting before school to pray for their friends.
Retired men meeting at diners to pray for their communities.
Dads getting up early to pray for their families.
A new generation of men emerging in the marketplace who want more than money, status, and success.

I obviously believe God wants to use women in all this, and I believe Mary of Bethany was the best disciple Jesus had.

Yet, I am seeing a cloud on the horizon, and it’s the size of a man's fist.

I am resolved to be a part of a godly restoration in our time.

A time when Jesus is worshipped.
A time when leaders can be trusted.
A time when men fight for what matters.
A time when wisdom is honored.
A time when favor is restored.

God removes men in judgment and restores them in revival.

Take heart, men; God may be moving you into place right now.

You don’t have to fight for influence in the ruins of our culture. God is calling you as a remnant of rebuilders.

Yes, it’s a time of judgment, but it is also a time when mercy may triumph over it.

Praying men. Revived men. Renewing men.

I’m here for that.

Keep pressing in; the cloud is on the horizon.

Cheers.

Jon.

the only 3 options we have as men

Help, LORD, for the godly man ceases!

For the faithful disappear from among the sons of men.
Psalm 12:1

“We make men without chests and expect from them virtue and enterprise.
We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.”
-C.S. Lewis

To be honest, I never expected to have a ministry dedicated to discipling men.

I was about to launch a cultural apologetics ministry when I had a dinner with Pete Greig, and that changed my life.

I had just finished The Primal Path with my son Nathan and returned from hiking the Camino de Santiago across Spain. He asked me what I planned to do with all I had learned.

“Plan to do? I have no real plans, mate,” I replied.

“What you did for your son wasn’t just for him,” Pete said. “I think it was for a generation of Fathers and Sons. You have to do something with it.”

And just like that, the Primal Path went from a file on my computer to something I launched into the world.

But I kept hearing the same feedback from dads as they took their sons through it.

“No one taught me any of this.”

“I feel like I need someone to do this with me before I do this with my son.”

“Do you have a Primal Path thing for men?”

That’s where a vision to serve men was born.

We need to serve men because there is an often-overlooked crisis among men today.

At a recent Kinsman event, I had the honor of participating on a panel with Richard Reeves, author of Of Boys and Men. As he discussed the reality of how men are doing in the world, I struggled to hold back tears.

Here are a few of the stats he shared from his book:

• 5% of men under thirty say they don’t have a single close friend. It was 3% in 1990. Two-thirds of them say that no one knows them very well.

• The suicide rate of men in their twenties just overtook the rate of men in their fifties. It's now the highest of any demographic in the US

• The US loses 40,000 men a year to suicide. That’s about the same number of women we lose each year to breast cancer (a horrible disease)

• The suicide rate of men is four times higher than women. It has risen by a third in young men just since 2010

• 23% of boys in K-12 age have been diagnosed with a developmental disability

• Men today who don’t have a college degree earn less than most men did in the 1970’s

• 40% of children are born outside of marriage. That’s a quadrupling since the 70’s

While he was sharing this, I wondered where men can actually get together in our modern world to talk about the issues they are facing in their hearts.

The workplace is inappropriate, the church is often indifferent, and the home is a place where men often don’t want to burden their families.

That brings me to today…

When it comes to the issues men are facing, we really have three options.

(1)  Pretend nothing is wrong

(2)  Do nothing

(3)  Try to help

And for the last few years, that’s what Jefferson Bethke and I have tried to do.

To help.

We have had the honor of a lifetime of walking alongside men who deal with shame, heartache, insecurity, and sin. It's been amazing to watch them find freedom, dignity, community, and a vision of God's love.

After processing the things we have learned along the way, it felt like another moment much like the one I had with Pete Greig. It felt like the stuff we had worked on needed to leave the hard drives and make it into the hearts of men. 

So, sitting around a fire in Vermont two years ago at a retreat we were hosting, we felt called to write a book.

But we didn’t want to write a book for the sake of writing a book. We wanted to write a book that would help men.

A book that would name the things they are wrestling with and don’t often have a space to share. A book that would shine the light of truth into the darkness of lies that so many of us believe. A book that would get men talking about the deep stuff in their hearts and move them beyond sports and banter to the stuff that keeps them up at night.

After a couple of years and a lot of work, that book comes out today.

Here is our dream…

We want to normalize men being vulnerable and open about the wars they fight within.

The war with loneliness.

The war with futility.

The war with lust.

The war with ambition.

The war with apathy.

The war with despair.

The war with shame.

We are asking God for a movement of men who break out of passivity, apathy, and the feeling that nothing can change into the grace and life that Jesus offers—a life of meaning, love, significance, and joy—a life that leads them out of the darkness and into the light.

Jesus promised, "Whoever follows me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life.”

We want to help a generation of men become what God has called them to become.

Men like Jesus.

We would be honored if you would help us.

Maybe you need a fresh vision of hope for change in your own life.

Maybe you know someone who could use a biblical vision of how to be a man amid the cultural chaos.

Maybe you want to grab a group of men and process things together.

We would be honored to play a role in your journey of freedom and formation.

You can pick up a copy of our book today, and I would be grateful if you would help get the word out to men who need it (and the women who love them).

You can grab a copy here at Amazon.

Listen here on Spotify.

Grab an audio version here on Audible.

Get a copy here at Barnes and Noble.

Or here at Christianbook.com.

I hope you know how grateful I am for all of you who take the time to read this each week, and I hope I can continue to be helpful.

It’s a joy to do this with you.

Cheers.

Jon.

the number one question men are asking around the country...

 My wife married a man; I saw no reason why she should inherit a baby.

Steinbeck

The student, when fully trained, will be like the master.

Jesus

Over the last few weeks, I have been speaking to men around the US with some of the themes from our new book Fighting Shadows.

It's been a real privilege and a very rare opportunity to get a fresh perspective on the state of men’s hearts around the nation. From seeing teenagers weep at the altar, asking God to help them rise above the anxiety and addictions of their generation, to older men starting to dream that God is not done with them yet, it’s been an honor and a gift.

We need more men in the world who think, act, and love like Jesus. It's deeply encouraging to see how God is calling and forming them in heart-stirring ways. 

One of the highlights of these times has been the formal Q&A sessions and the informal conversations in the lobbies while milling around afterward. The late-night hangs have also been legendary. 

You can learn a lot about what is on the hearts of men by the questions they ask. Here are a sample of some of the most interesting ones:

"Does God see a Christian transgender man as a son of God or daughter of God?"

"Why do we have to talk about men and women? Why can’t we just talk about Jesus?"

"Is there even such a thing as biblical masculinity, or is that just a term evangelicals use to maintain male control in the church?"

*Quick note: how would you answer these questions? :)

However, one underlying theme is below the surface of all these questions.

How can I actually become a godly man?

There is a lot to wrestle with here. How much of Jewish and Greco-Roman culture and customs should we leave or carry over into the modern world? How much validity should Christians give to modern sociology and gender theory? What constitutes a timeless biblical command for men verses a culturally conditioned stereotype for them?

There is a lot of back and forth and different perspectives on all these issues. Some are helpful and a needed discussion for sure, but this isn’t the main thing really driving men’s hearts. 

It seems that men need more than perspective on what makes a man; they need permission to become one.

They need someone to tell them that it's actually okay to become the man God is calling them to be deep in their hearts. All the controversy seems to have robbed men of confidence and convictions about how to live and function well in the world.

They don’t want to be Andrew Tate. They don’t want to be apathetic.

So, what can we do? Here is my basic response:

Be the man God is calling you to be. Put your effort into formation, not opinion.

You don’t need permission from the culture to pursue Jesus, and you don’t need an online doctrinal statement to be devoted to Christ. Formation comes in the radical pursuit of a godly life, not endless speculation and debate about meta-masculine theory. 

I think of that quote by Marcus Aurelius all the time. It hangs on the wall just outside my office. 

"Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one."

So, to repeat what I have written before, if you are relying on the culture to try to understand what a man is, you will be deeply confused. Modern society is so at war with itself that it can’t even decide on a definition of a man, let alone form them in a healthy way. 

So much time is spent on debate, defense, argumentation, legislation, and commentary, yet so little of it is helpful. It seems that the casualties of our culture war are men themselves. 

The truth is this: how you live is what you believe; everything else is just talk. 

If your opinion is stronger than your character, close your mouth and let your character catch up to your rhetoric. Talk is cheap; growth is costly. Debating an article is easy; defeating your own self-destructing patterns is a war.  

Are you wasting time arguing with others when you should be working on yourself?

If you have a vision of what a good man should be…be one.
If you have a vision of what a good Dad should be…be one.
If you have a vision of what a good friend should be…be one.
If you have a vision of what a loving husband should be…be one.
If you have a vision of what a hardworking man should be…be one.

Silence the arguments of our culture with your life. 

Be the dad your kids need from you. The most important thing is not what the culture says about fathers but about the kind of father you are. The most important thing is not what the culture says a normal family is; it’s that you love, serve, and sacrifice to make your family what God has called it to be.

Be the healthy male figure in your world.
Be the servant leader in your community.
Be the safe man women can trust without fear of coercion.
Be gentle in a world of aggression.
Be kind in a world of cruelty.
Be wise in a world of fools.
Be just in a world of tyrants.
Be disciplined in a culture of excess.
Be faithful in a world of compromise.
Be loving in a world of hate.
Be hopeful in a time of despair.
Be proactive in a world of passivity.

How you live is what you believe; everything else is just talk. Your life is your argument about manhood. Work on that. 

Jesus didn’t spend much time arguing about what a messiah was; He just loved, sacrificed, taught, confronted, and saved the world. He didn’t debate, He did. He was one.

The answer to the deep question men are asking is "yes."

You have permission to pursue becoming a godly man.

Get after it with humility, love, and grace.

With you in the radical pursuit.

Cheers.

Jon.

building a brotherhood

 "The making of friends, who are real friends, is the best token we have of a man’s success in life."

Edward Everett Hale

Men are lonely today. 

You probably feel this, too.

The earlier days of easy connections are over for most guys. Our college friends moved away, the guys at work are busy with their own stuff, and men at church are living their own lives. You can be left without a community of men to be challenged and encouraged by.

Men are not meant to do life alone.
A man will not thrive on shallow connections.
Men were made for a brotherhood.

Proverbs 17:17 says, “A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for a time of adversity.”

Yet, how do you go about finding brothers born for adversity?

Society will not hand you a community of friends.
Churches will try but not always succeed in connecting you to a crew of men.
The truth is, if you want a brotherhood, you will have to build one.

This is definitely easier said than done. 

So, how can you go about building a brotherhood?

Here are some key steps to empower you to identify, create, build, and scale a lifegiving community of men. This will not be easy, but it will be worth it.

PRAY
One of the secrets of a godly man’s life is that he channels his frustrations to God in prayer. God wants to hear what’s in our hearts. King David poured out his frustration, joy, and needs before God with total abandon. You should, too. Pray God’s Word back to Him.

“Lord, You said it was our love that defines us as Your disciples. Help me form a community of brotherhood to learn to love well.”

“Lord, You said You place the lonely in families. I am asking You would stir the hearts of the men around me to build a family of faith.”

“Lord, stir the hearts of the men around me to see You and want to become mature disciples. Create an ache for a brotherhood around me.”

Committing things to God in prayer will lay a foundation of confidence and expectation and give you biblical hope, not wishful thinking that things will change.

TAKE INITIATIVE
You have three real choices about your loneliness.

(1)  Do nothing and be lonely
(2)  Complain that nothing exists
(3)  Build it

Take the third option. Resolve in your heart that you will build the community of men you want to be a part of. This is 50% of the battle, and when you step out, you will find something amazing. Other men have been waiting for something like this. Men long to be in spaces created for them, spaces where they can open up without judgment and deal with the stuff going on in their hearts. Make the decision and start planning.

CLARIFY THE VISION
Men need purpose. The group will fizzle out or fail to launch if the reason behind it isn’t clear. Men are busy; they need a reason to prioritize something. So, cast a vision for why the group needs to exist. It can’t be “we are lonely.” It needs to be bigger than that. Here are a few examples:

-We will fight our own apathy and reach our full redemptive potential as men.
-Belong, build, burn, become.
-We are going to pursue the fullness of what Jesus offers.

-Fighting for a full inheritance.

You get the idea, but it needs to be about calling men to reach their full redemptive potential and fight the things holding them back.

FIND THE HUNGRY
Begin to look around at some of the guys you know and see who is looking for change. You can drop hints, ask outright, or grab a few guys you know are keen. It's better for things to start small and potent than big and watered down. Don’t worry about how many show up, just focus on delivering on the mission and providing community. Word will spread over time.

MAKE IT PRACTICAL
The sporadic will be doomed from the start. A man needs something to prioritize for it to happen. Pick a time, place, and frequency for how you get together.

One thought to consider is how this will impact the families (if they have them) of the men in the group. What’s the best time a man can be fully present without worrying about his wife getting angry he isn’t around or slacking in his other responsibilities?

GO DEEP
John Eldridge talks about the three layers of the human heart. 

The Shallows, The Midlands, and The Depths.

THE SHALLOWS
This is banter. It's weather talk, sports talk, blog talk, and book talk. It's not wrong, it's just shallow. Men are most comfortable in the shallows, but transformation rarely happens there.

THE MIDLANDS
These are the problems and issues of our lives. A son is struggling in school. Your daughter is getting bullied and left out by a group of girls. Work is stressful. This stuff is meaningful but reactive. Its problem-focused, not vision pursuing.

THE DEPTHS
This is the deep stuff of the heart. This is where wounds, disappointment, frustration, dreams, and fears live. These are the deep motivations behind our actions that control and drive us.

GET TO THE DEPTHS at all costs. This is where true transformation happens.
This is where a man gets healed and empowered. This is where the river of life is unblocked and renewed.

KEEP IT SIMPLE
Complexity is the enemy of execution. Focus on the functional, not the fancy. It would be amazing to rent a private cigar bar and have a pour-over coffee station catered for each meeting, but you don’t need that.

You can meet at 6 a.m. in a man’s garage with some fold-out chairs, at 8 p.m. around a firepit in a backyard, or pack out some Chick-fil-A booths and make it work.

Make the format simple. Pick a framework and work it. Here are a couple of samples: 

DID YOU BLESS YOUR REALM THIS WEEK?
Family
Work
Church
Community

12 CORE WORDS
WORK and KEEP (how you are doing at work/job)
LORD and KINGDOM (honor and loyalty to Jesus)
NOURISH and CHERISH (how you are treating your wife)
TRAIN and INSTRUCT (how you are doing raising your kids)
ENEMY and NEIGHBOR (how you are practically loving others)
GLORIFY and ENJOY (how you are living from joy)

CORE
Confession (sin)
Others (who are you loving towards Jesus?)
Reading (what are you getting out of the Word?)
Encouragement (where are you taking steps towards your God-given calling?)

READ A BOOK AND PROCESS TOGETHER
The 7 shadows in Fighting Shadows by Jefferson and me are an excellent place to start because they touch on core themes that most guys wrestle with.

SHOW UP FOR EACH OTHER
You are trying to build a brotherhood—a group of guys who will burn, bleed, and build with you. You need to make yourself vulnerable and accessible to these men over time. You also need to help each other in real life. Think of it more like a sponsor in AA than a Bible study relationship. 

Help each other's families.
Help each other move.
Help each other financially.
Help raise your kids together.
Do stuff in the real world that makes a difference. 

CELEBRATE PROGRESS
Men's stuff can be awkward. It can take time for men to open up, or conversely, men emotionally vomit because of how much pent-up stuff they have. Keep moving forward and celebrate what God is doing in your midst. Expect turbulence, buckle up, and fly on.

DO THE OCCASIONAL UNREASONABLE AND EPIC STUFF
Do stuff. Big stuff. Potent stuff. Historic stuff. Once in a while, go full send.
Chip in and renovate a single mother's home. Create a scholarship fund and send fifty kids to summer camp courtesy of your group. Pay for a whole gospel to be translated to an unreached people group. Buy tablets for a struggling school. 
Just get beyond yourself. Find the biggest problems in your community and start chipping away at them. 

Be men for others.

You never know how a small, committed group of men can impact the world. 

TAKE HEART
All around the world, we are seeing a movement of men leaving the shadows and heading into the light. These men are taking the initiative to build a brotherhood and become all Jesus has called them to be.

You are not alone in this venture. Jesus promised “to be with us always.” The Father is for you, and the Spirit within you.

You may have a ton of questions or objections, but I don’t want to hear them. 
Risk, experiment, and figure it out. To quote Marcus Aurelius,

'Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.'

Be a man who builds a brotherhood for the good of the world. 

Pray.
Take initiative.
Clarify the vision.
Find the hungry.
Make it practical.
Go deep.
Keep it simple.
Show up for each other.
Celebrate progress.
Do the occasional unreasonable and epic stuff.

Go.

Cheers.

Jon.

how to build an inner fortress

"Acquire a peaceful spirit, and thousands around you will find salvation."

St. Seraphim of Sarov

We live in a fearful and anxious age. 

Most men don’t talk about it much, but most of us feel it in our hearts.

Fear speaks to all the immediate issues and concerns in front of us; anxiety to the coming challenges that haunt our future. 

And it does not seem like things are going to get easier. 

The rise of war, political elections on the horizon, inflation, AI and our own dehumanization, changing job markets, and rising despair. If we are not careful, our hearts can be overwhelmed with the cares of this age.

The great comfort and promise of our faith, though, is that we do not need peaceful external circumstances to have a peaceful spirit. We are not subject to cultural conditions that dictate our spiritual position.

We have been granted an inner well to draw from in a cultural desert and an inner life to sustain us while those around us wither. The promise is not just that we will have inner peace but that we will have Christ Himself within us, the hope of glory.

But learning to look within, while others are drawn outward, is something the soul has to learn. A man will have to master many things in his life, but none more important than discipling his attention. 

If we look outward with the world, all we will see is crisis and dismay.
If we look outward with the world, we will be caught in the anxious present.
If we look outward, our hearts will be weighed down with the cares of this life.

DISCIPLED BY DAVID
In Psalm 27, King David’s outer life is in chaos. 

Over the course of his life, David faced betrayal from his family, opposition from Saul, and threats from the enemy. Yet, David had learned the most important lesson of all: how to build an inner fortress no one else can touch. Psalm 27 is the key. Read these words slowly. 

Though an army besiege me, my heart will not fear;

though war break out against me, even then I will be confident.
One thing have I asked of the LORD, that will I seek after:
that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life,
to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to inquire in his temple.

Many of us feel besieged these days.

Besieged by political correctness.
Besieged by secular ideologies.
Besieged by financial pressure.
Besieged by relational stress. 

Inwardly, though, we can thrive despite this all. David knew the key.

Dwell. Gaze. Inquire.

DWELL
…that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life

All of us have a choice as to where we locate our hearts. We set a base that we move in and out from. Sometimes, we are tossed to and fro by the issues pressing in on us, or we drift along with the cultural tides and events that happen to us. David set his mind to be rooted and grounded in his relationship with God.

We are called to make our hearts His temple and our lives His home.

GAZE
…to gaze on the beauty of the LORD 

Mary Oliver said, “Attention is the beginning of devotion.”

The goal is to learn to live a sacramental life. Sacramental means to keep the sacred (sacra) in mind (mental).

In The Pursuit of God, A.W. Tozer has a chapter called “The Gaze of the Soul.”
He talks about the wonder and possibility of living life on two levels: the outer level of human activity and the inner level of communion with God. He writes,

“A new set of eyes (so to speak) will develop within us enabling us to be looking at God while our outward eyes are seeing the scenes of this passing world.”

He talks about the liberating power of an inner gaze like this. 

Looking is of the heart and can be done successfully by any man standing up or kneeling down or lying in his last agony a thousand miles from any church. Since believing is looking it can be done any time. No season is superior to another season for this sweetest of all acts. God never made salvation depend upon new moons nor holy days or sabbaths. A man is not nearer to Christ on Easter Sunday than he is, say, on Saturday, August 3, or Monday, October 4. As long as Christ sits on the mediatorial throne every day is a good day and all days are days of salvation.

INQUIRE
…and to inquire in his temple.

God offers to give us wisdom when we ask. We don’t just worship in His presence; we gain wisdom in His presence.

He gives us insights into complex decisions.
Breakthrough when we need provision.
Warns us when we are in danger.
Power to make us stronger.

When we look inward, we see the finished work of Christ.
When we look inward, we see the spirit of adoption.
When we look inward, we see the Father's lavish love.

Look inward, friends.

Dwell. Gaze. Inquire. 

BUILDING THE INNER FORTRESS
To lead in the world today, you will need a secret source of peace—one that does not depend on the comfort or certainties of the world. This is what God offers you with His love. Ask God for grace to build a fortress within. Create space in your day to turn your heart to Him. And may what St Seraphim said be true of you—that your peaceful spirit will lead this anxious generation to our God of peace. 

Here is some fuel for an inner life of peace.
_________________________________

In Today’s Newsletter

• Verses to memorize on peace

• Quotes to ponder

• My favorite books on peace

• Music for instant calm

• A couple of poems about peace

• Movies to cultivate peace

__________________________________

VERSES

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.
John 14:27

You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast, because they trust in you. 
Isaiah 26:3 

Now may the Lord of peace himself give you peace at all times and in every way. The Lord be with all of you.
2 Thessalonians 3:16

“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”
John 16:33

Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.
Philippians 4:9

In peace I will lie down and sleep, for you alone, LORD, make me dwell in safety.
Psalms 4:8 
___________________________________

QUOTES

“We enter into solitude first of all to meet our Lord and to be with Him and Him alone. Only in the context of grace can we face our sin; only in the place of healing do we dare to show our wounds; only with a single-minded attention to Christ can we give up our clinging fears and face our own true nature. Solitude is a place where Christ remodels us in his own image and frees us from the victimizing compulsions of the world.”
Henri Nouwen

"I have never known more than fifteen minutes of anxiety or fear. Whenever I feel fearful emotions overtaking me, I just close my eyes and thank God that He is still on the throne reigning over everything, and I take comfort in His control over the affairs of my life."
John Wesley

"God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing."
C. S. Lewis

“I could hear an inner voice saying to me, ‘Martin Luther, stand up for truth. Stand up for justice. Stand up for righteousness.’”
(The quiet voice of peace at the kitchen table that enables Dr King to contend for change in the Civil Rights Movement)

"While you are proclaiming peace with your lips, be careful to have it even more fully in your heart."
Francis of Assisi
____________________________________

BOOKS

Holy Noticing by Charles Stone
This book has some amazing research in it, but more than that, it helps you learn to pay attention to what God is doing around you. A way to find peace in the presence, filled with great processing tools.

Many today think mindfulness is dangerous, unchristian, or associated with Eastern religions—and often it is! But Dr. Charles Stone reveals that the art of holy noticing—purposefully paying attention to God as he works in us, our relationships, and our world—is a spiritual discipline Christians have practiced for millennia. Holy Noticing explores the historically Christian and biblical roots of this lifestyle, as well as Dr. Stone’s BREATHe model, which teaches you to be more engaged with Christ in the everyday moments that too often slip right by us.

The Attentive Life by Leighton Ford

I read this book during Covid, and it was an incredible gift. I love the vision of walking with God over the course of a day.

Your attention, please. That's what God wants, Leighton Ford discovered. It's the path to becoming like Christ. Distractions, fear and busyness were keeping Ford from seeing God's work in and around him. He was missing God. So he began a journey of longing and looking for God. And it started with paying attention. In these pages, he invites you to journey with him. Using the rich monastic tradition of praying the hours, Ford will walk with you, helping you pay attention to God's work in you and around you throughout each day and in different seasons of your life. If you're busy, distracted, rushing through each day, you might be feeling disconnected from God, unable to see how he's working. You might be missing him. But the way toward him starts with a pause and a prayer―with intention and attention―and becomes a way of life, awake and alive to the peaceful, powerful presence of God.
_____________________________________

MUSIC

These albums will bring a sense of instant calm. I have these albums on for study, contemplation, and prayer walking around the city.

Calm, Vol. 4 by Somnoscape
Just the right amount of instrumentation in here.
Premonition is beautiful.

Liminal by Be Still The Earth
Atmospheric soundscapes. But done right.
Disappearing, Then Taking Shape is a gem.

Moon Balloon by Be Still The Earth
Atmospheric soundscapes. But done right again.
A Blanket of Stars is magic.

Sleep Scenes Volume 3-Eventide by Dear Gravity
Like William Augusto, but better.
Vagary is gold.
_____________________________________

POEMS

The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Mountains by Adam Zagajewski

When night draws near
the mountains are clear and pure 
—like a philosophy student 
before exams. 

Clouds escort the dark sun 
to the shaded avenue’s end 
and slowly take their leave, 
but no one cries.

Look, look greedily, 
when dusk approaches, 
look insatiably, 
look without fear.
_____________________________________

MOVIES

Perfect Days
This movie haunted me. There is no other way to say it. It’s a slow burn without a bang ending. However, it had a profound lingering effect on me. It made me want to slow down, live in the grace and peace of daily blessings, and cultivate gratitude. 

It’s a story about a middle-aged man who cleans toilets in Tokyo but finds contentment in the small blessings of everyday life. Hard to describe, but it hits deep.

Past Lives
This is a movie about having to fight for peace in the midst of all the “what ifs” and “what could have been” in life. It deals with the tension of the immigrant experience and what it means to find love and home. Thought-provoking.

Cheers.

Jon.

becoming an interruptible man

"Believing that life interruptions — divine interruptions — are a privilege not only causes us to handle them differently but to await them eagerly."

Priscilla Shirer

"You know, my whole life I have been complaining that my work was constantly interrupted, until I discovered that my interruptions were my work."

Henri Nouwen (commenting on what an older mentor said to him)

One of the great tragedies of modern life is the violent pace at which we are required to live. Almost every man I meet is scheduled to the hilt, with calendars in which every nook and cranny is filled with tasks. Our hours are like the stones of the wailing wall; even the tiniest crack is filled with prayers for more productivity.

As a result, we are constantly looking for ways to maximize our work and achieve balance, but this rarely works. We time block, deep work, sabbath, dumb phone, and prioritize ourselves to death, but in spite of all of the effort, it rarely seems to work. 

One of the great tragedies of this pressure is that it can create a sense of self-importance about our time. Our time is seen as a special possession, and only those we deem truly laudable can access this sacred commodity. It also creates a sense of power. We use our time as a way of controlling others. We block out those we deem unworthy and let through those who can advance our cause. 

All of this makes us weary and distorts our spiritual perspective. We use time as power, not a gift for others.

The psychologist Dacher Keltner studied the relationship between empathy and power and made a fascinating discovery. Empathy, equality, and generosity, the things that helped people accumulate power, began to fade out in the lives of those who became powerful. Our sense of self-importance can get inflated, and we unconsciously think of ourselves and our time as more valuable than others. We rate people on a value hierarchy and then grant them access accordingly.

How different from the ministry of Jesus. 

Jesus had more responsibility than you or I ever will. He was the literal savior of the world. Yet, Jesus was an interruptible man. The great tragedy of our time is not that we aren’t godly enough to be Jesus' disciples; we are just too busy.

Marcia Lebhar notes this about how Jesus used time:

"If you had slept in the same house or field with Jesus, awakened with Him, eaten with Him and helped Him, what would you have observed? One thing we always think of is that Jesus gave Himself almost entirely to what we would consider interruptions. Most of the teaching, healing and wonders we see in his life were responsive...seemingly unplanned. He trusted that what the Father allowed to cross his path was exactly that...from the Father. Jesus always seemed willing for things to get messy."

It has been pointed out that almost fifty percent of the miracles in the ministry of Jesus were interruptions, and many of the most compelling encounters with Christ were unplanned.

• The paralytic lowered through the roof was an interruption.

• Jairus’ daughter's healing was interrupted by an unclean woman’s issue of blood. (This is an interruption interrupting an interruption)

• The children brought to Jesus for blessing were an interruption.

• The Syrophoenician woman’s request for her daughter was an interruption.

• Zacchaeus in the tree was an interruption.

• The lepers being healed were an interruption.

• The sinful woman washing Jesus’ feet at Simon the Pharisee's house was an interruption.

If the disciples had been in charge of Jesus' ministry, many of the things we love about Him would never have happened.

Jesus would never have blessed the children.
Jesus would never have met the woman at the well.
Jesus would never have gone to the cross.

Thanks be to God that Jesus was an interruptible man. Because the truth is, the kingdom of heaven is interruptible by its very nature.

It’s grace interrupting shame.
Mercy interrupting judgment.
Love interrupting hate. 

I don’t want to be so scheduled, planned, and productive that I don’t have room for the divine interruptions that God wants to bring into my life. If we are not careful, there is a very real chance that we will. 

Missing out on kingdom moments doesn’t happen because of the big sins or scandals in our lives. It just gets choked out by the ordinary things. Those who missed the feast in Luke 14 were those dealing with normal things. New land, a new marriage, some oxen. 

I wonder where we are missing the kingdom all around us because there is no room in the soil of our lives.

C.S. Lewis reminds us, "The great thing, if one can, is to stop regarding all the unpleasant things as interruptions of one's 'own,' or 'real' life. The truth is of course that what one calls the interruptions are precisely one's real life -- the life God is sending one day by day."

I have gotten so many things wrong in my parenting over the years. I’ve sometimes been harsh, driven, and distracted. However, in talking with my assistant, Danielle, she shared an interesting observation.

"The one thing I remember about how you raised your kids was that you always stopped and let your kids interrupt you. It didn’t matter what you were doing or what you were working on; if your kids came over, you stopped, gave them your attention, and made them feel seen."

This is not something I observed in myself, but it’s something I want to grow in.

I want to be an interruptible man.

Bonhoeffer, whose life was interrupted time and time again, wrote,

"We must be ready to allow ourselves to be interrupted by God, who will thwart our plans and frustrate our ways time and again, even daily, by sending people across our path with their demands and requests. We can, then, pass them by, preoccupied with our important daily tasks, just as the priest - perhaps reading the Bible - passed by the man who had fallen among robbers. When we do that, we pass by the visible sign of the Cross raised in our lives to show us that God’s way, and not our own, is what counts."

Why not reframe interruptions as divine interventions this week?

God intervening to bring you His love.

God intervening so you can give love.

God intervening so you can intervene in the life of others.

May God give you grace to be an interruptible man.

I’m asking for it, too.

Cheers.

Jon.

how to bring dead things back to life

This past Friday I attended an event for Artists and Creatives in New York City called Inkwell, hosted by Ekstasis Magazine. I was invited to read an essay about the church engaging culture, alongside a remarkably talented group of painters, poets, essayists, and thinkers. This night was a gift. People packed into the parlor of a brownstone in the Upper West Side, eager with hope that the arts could play a role in renewing our decaying world.

The person I most anticipated hearing from was Makoto Fujimura. Mako is one of the most recognized and celebrated artists of our time. I have long admired him for his vision of the arts and have savored my way through his books and writing. I loved his collaboration on the gospels and was expectant for what he would share. 

Mako’s family comes from Japan, and after the devastating Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami in 2011 that left thousands dead, he wanted to see if there was any way that he could offer support to the victims of the earthquake and tsunami. One of the great challenges was the fallout from the Fukushima nuclear disaster. Because of the failure of the electrical grid, radioactive contaminants led into the surrounding areas.

One commentator noted, 

The nuclear fallout from the tsunami forced nearly 80,000 people to evacuate their homes, not knowing if or when they may return. The 30 miles surrounding the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant has been left contaminated and relatively barren. Even more disturbing, reports of radioactive rice, beef, vegetables, milk, seafood, and even tea have been found more than 60 miles away from the site, outside the mandatory evacuation zone.

The soil was poisoned, life was threatened, and generations of kids would grow up in the shadow of a nuclear disaster. 

How do you even begin to care for the soil of a nuclear disaster, so that it can produce crops again? What can you do in the face of such loss?
Mako noticed something strange when he toured the area. Thousands of sunflower plants? Why were they there, in a disaster zone? Who planted them, and why?

A few months after the catastrophe, Koyu Abe, the leading monk at the nearby Buddhist temple of Joenji, told Reuters:

We plant sunflowers, field mustard, amaranthus and cockscomb, which are all believed to absorb radiation. So far we have grown at least 200,000 flowers ... and distributed many more seeds. At least 8 million sunflowers blooming in Fukushima originated from here.

Mako pointed out that Phytoremediation is the process where plants are utilized to remove contaminants from the environment. The flowers extract the Radioactive Isotopes from the soil and into itself, and can be cut without the need to dig up the roots of the plants. The seeds of the flowers remove the toxicity in the soil.

This, he pointed out, is a parable of what we can do in the brokenness of our own cultural soil today. There seems so little that we can do in the face of all the devastation around us. Who has the power to reverse our great secular decline? What can be done to stem the tide of sexual exploitation and commodification? How can we address the anxiety and depression so rampant in this generation?

Maybe the answer is small loving acts of sacrifice, taking into ourselves the sinful pollution of our cultural soil and creating space for goodness, truth, and beauty to grow in its place. 

This was in fact the way God acted in Christ. Christ came into the world and absorbed the sin and violence of the world into himself. He turned the other cheek, breaking the cycle of retaliation, absorbed our sin into himself, leaving his righteousness as a gift in its place, and tore down the walls of division creating a new humanity to model this same life in their common practice. 

And Jesus’ vision was that we would live a life like his. His vision was that a new community of his followers heal the toxic soil of our world, planting their presence in the fallout of sin, extracting violence and leaving peace, extracting division and leaving unity, extracting despair and leaving hope.

Mako closed with a call to plant ourselves, our art, and our love into the toxic places of this world, places where the cultural soil is most in need of renewal. The kinds of places Christ seemed strangely drawn to, with his vision of sacrificial love before our eyes.   

As I left the Inkwell Gathering and made my way home, I reflected on the invitation he laid out before us.

Where are the contaminated parts of my life? 

How can I sow patience in my marriage where I have polluted it with anger?
How can I sow presence with my kids where I have ignored them with distraction?
How can I sow joy where I have been busy and burdened?

Things may not change quickly; real damage takes real time to repair. 
But with faithfulness, grace, and resolve, barren things may come back to life.

Though it may seem futile that a few flowers can heal a nuclear fallout, it’s true. There has been remarkable restoration at Chernobyl through this exact process.

As followers of Jesus, we have a choice about how we live today.
We can cordon off areas of our lives and world, afraid of the fallout and toxicity we encounter. Or we can plant things there that absorb the brokenness and allow new things to grow.

I want to be a man like that. 

Join me in heading to the broken places to sow seeds of a kingdom of love.

I’ll see you in the field.

Cheers.

Jon.

becoming a man of defiant joy

On Friday, November 13, 2015, a series of coordinated attacks by radical Islamist terrorists struck Paris, France. The first one was during an international soccer match, the second one targeted civilians at cafes and restaurants, and the third one opened fire on concertgoers in the Bataclan theater.

130 people were killed, 416 were injured, (almost 100 critically) and it was the deadliest attack in the European Union since 2004.

Fear, grief, anger, and horror filled the city. 

Having pastored in New York City for almost 20 years and having felt the aftermath of 9/11 and several terrorist attacks since, I know first-hand the shock that can hit the heart. My kids were in a subway station when a terrorist let off a bomb. I’ll never forget the sound of hundreds of sirens and watching my kids rushing down 44th Street back to St Kilda’s coffee shop where we had just prayed together. Safe, but shaken.

U2 was scheduled to perform in Paris shortly after these attacks. Many were worried that their concert could be another target for terrorism. Others were still in mourning and concerned this would create a venue for a copycat attack.

U2 met as a band to discuss their response. Should they cancel their shows in solidarity with the victims? Should they shrink back in fear? Should they wait for time to heal the still-bleeding wounds of the city?

As much as their hearts were troubled, they realized that to cancel their show would be to give in to terror. It would be to acquiesce to the intended fear. They wanted to fight instead. But how? What would their weapon be? What could they do amidst so much suffering and grief? They decided to perform. The weapon would be defiant joy. Bono went on to say:

"Paris is a very romantic city, and you know, the essence of romance is defiance. And defiant joy, we think, is the mark of our band, and of rock-and-roll. They’re a death cult. We’re a life cult."

Defiant joy as a weapon against despair. Defiant joy as a weapon against terror. Defiant joy because normal joy is nowhere to be found. So U2 took to the stage, raised their voices in hope, and gave names to the streets still filled with tears. 

And this link is what that sounded like.

The first minute is worth your time and a lesson in leadership all on its own. 

In the world today, there is so much to grieve over. So much sin, so much brokenness, so much injustice and hate. We are called to war against this as we can. But maybe we need to add a weapon to our arsenal. The weapon of defiant joy.

I want to be a man of defiant joy.

One who raises my fist to fight, but not with flesh and blood.

I want to fight cynicism with wonder.

Apathy with passion.

Despair with joy.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said to "Scatter joy!" 

Here is some fuel to help you scatter joy this week.

Scatter it on your marriage.

Scatter it on your kids

Scatter it in your church.

Scatter it in your city.

And scatter in hope.

Psalms 126:6 promises us:

Those who go out weeping, carrying seed to sow,

will return with songs of joy, carrying sheaves with them.

____________________________________________

(Also as hard as it may seem for older folks, many in Gen Z don’t know who U2 is, and have never really heard a song. If this is your introduction to them, you’re welcome.)

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In Today’s Newsletter

• Verses to memorize on joy

• Quotes to ponder

• My favorite books on joy

• A joyful man who makes beautiful music

• A couple of poems about finding joy in the daily grind

• Controversial joy

• Joy among men

___________________________________________

VERSES WORTH MEMORIZING

Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy

1 Peter 1:8

^ I pray this happens with more depth in your heart this week.

"Just so, I tell you, there is joy before the angels of God over one sinner who repents."

Luke 15:10

^ The angels aren’t stoic fellas; you shouldn’t be either. 

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Romans 15:13

^ Pray this over your kids and spouse this week.

I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.

John 15:11

^ Complete joy, this is what Jesus offers. Refuse to settle for anything less.

Nehemiah said, "Go and enjoy choice food and sweet drinks, and send some to those who have nothing prepared. This day is holy to our Lord. Do not grieve, for the joy of the LORD is your strength."

Nehemiah 8:10

^ Choice food, sweet drinks. Maybe the most godly thing you can do this week is go out for a nice dinner, get dessert, and be grateful for the goodness of God in your life. 

The sound of rejoicing in Jerusalem could be heard far away.

Nehemiah 12:43

^ What sound can be heard coming out of your house?

QUOTES TO PONDER

"There is not one blade of grass, there is no color in this world that is not intended to make us rejoice."

John Calvin

"Among the tales of sorrow and of ruin that came down to us from the darkness of those days there are yet some in which amid weeping there is joy and under the shadow of death light that endures. And of these histories most fair still in the ears of the Elves is the tale of Beren and Lúthien."

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion  

"Joy is the infallible sign of the presence of God."

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

BEST BOOKS ON JOY

Path of Life: Finding the Joy You've Always Longed For by Rick Howe

My all-time favorite book on this topic of joy is this one by Rick Howe.

I have read and reread this and have gotten something fresh each time.

In a day when many see Christian faith as a set of obscure doctrines and rigid rules, Path of Life focuses on the God whose radiant joy eclipses all else, whose beauty steals our breath, and whose goodness beckons us into a life-changing, life-enriching relationship that will never end. Path of Life seeks to lead people into the Scriptures, and to introduce them to a growing band of Christians who see following Jesus as a path and portal to flourishing in life.

Strangely Bright by Joe Rigney

A short, thoughtful little read on whether or not, or how much, we can get joy out of created things in this world. A good, quick, sabbath read. Here is a summary. 

Everything in creation declares his glory. Made things make his invisible attributes visible. All of God’s gifts are invitations—they display who he is and invite us to know him and delight in him. They are the beams; he is the sun. They are the streams; he is the fountain. So our calling is simple: to enjoy God in everything and everything in God, knowing that he is greater and more satisfying than any and all of his gifts.

MUSIC

TITUS HAUG

I met Titus on the Wilderness Trip to the Grand Canyon with my daughter. Titus was one of the photographers on the trip. But it turns out he was more than that.

A speaker of fluent Japanese, husband to a light-hearted woman, surfer, artist, and lover of San Diego, I have been really enjoying his music.

You can check him out here.

My favorite songs:

Good Day is the soundtrack for playing with your kids.

Hiding Place. Reflection vibes. 

Slow Down. The Sound Track of John Mark Comer's life

POEM ON JOY

ORDINARY LIFE. BY BARBARA CROOKER

I love this vision of finding joy in the ordinary stuff of life. 

Nothing dramatic, just presence and gratitude. This kind of joy is all around us if we just slow down and see.

This was a day when nothing happened,

the children went off to school

without a murmur, remembering

their books, lunches, gloves.

All morning, the baby and I built block stacks

in the squares of light on the floor.

And lunch blended into naptime,

I cleaned out kitchen cupboards,

one of those jobs that never gets done,

then sat in a circle of sunlight

and drank ginger tea,

watched the birds at the feeder

jostle over lunch's little scraps.

A pheasant strutted from the hedgerow,

preened and flashed his jeweled head.

Now a chicken roasts in the pan,

and the children return,

the murmur of their stories dappling the air.

I peel carrots and potatoes without paring my thumb.

We listen together for your wheels on the drive.

Grace before bread.

And at the table, actual conversation,

no bickering or pokes.

And then, the drift into homework.

The baby goes to his cars, drives them

along the sofa's ridges and hills.

Leaning by the counter, we steal a long slow kiss,

tasting of coffee and cream.

The chicken's diminished to skin & skeleton,

the moon to a comma, a sliver of white,

but this has been a day of grace

in the dead of winter,

the hard cold knuckle of the year,

a day that unwrapped itself

like an unexpected gift,

and the stars turn on,

order themselves

into the winter night.

HAPPINESS. BY RAMOND CARVER 

Another poem about finding the joy in daily life. 

I have this framed on the wall at my summer cabin.

So early it's still almost dark out.

I'm near the window with coffee,

and the usual early morning stuff

that passes for thought.

When I see the boy and his friend

walking up the road

to deliver the newspaper.

They wear caps and sweaters,

and one boy has a bag over his shoulder.

They are so happy

they aren't saying anything, these boys.

I think if they could, they would take

each other's arm.

It's early in the morning,

and they are doing this thing together.

They come on, slowly.

The sky is taking on light,

though the moon still hangs pale over the water.

Such beauty that for a minute

death and ambition, even love,

doesn't enter into this.

Happiness. It comes on

unexpectedly. And goes beyond, really,

any early morning talk about it.

CONTROVERSIAL JOY 

Click here.

And here.

JOYFUL MEN

I have a new book coming out next month. It’s a vision of helping men fight despair, loneliness, shame, lust, ambition, futility and apathy. It’s meant to help men fight for joy.

If you wanted to bring me some joy, you could preorder it and spread the word. 

I would be truly grateful.

You can do that here.

Or here.

Here's to fighting with and for joy.

With defiance.

Cheers.

Jon. 

becoming a light-hearted man in a heavy-hearted world

Becoming like Jesus is as much as about having a relaxed and joyful heart as it is about believing and doing the right thing, as much about proper energy as about proper truth.

Ronald Rolheiser

These things I have spoken to you so that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full.

Jesus

It’s 9.30 a.m. and I am sitting in a valley overlooking the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon.

I am gathered around a campfire with a group of dads and daughters who have ridden in from Utah on a Wilderness trip. Call it a grown-up version of the Dangerous Kids Club.

It’s the last day of a four-day ride during which we have laughed together, feasted like kings, camped on the edge of the Grand Canyon, been struck by the beauty of creation, and slept on the hard earth with deflated air mattresses. We’ve been covered in mud, stuck in the snow, and driven down roads barely worthy of that name. 

Now, we are in the final session before we head home. Back to our phones, back to business, back to the world that slowly erodes our hearts with stress. 

The dads and daughters circle up in an effort to understand the vision behind the trip and the reason we have invested the time, travel, and expenses to be here. Building a bond of love between us. One by one, we go around the group and answer two simple questions. 

What do you like about your Dad?
What do you like about your daughter?

Now, you have to assume that this is going to be a weep fest. It definitely is. 

Hardly any of the dads could keep it together when their daughters said what they loved about them. Some couldn’t even get the words out through the tears. So often, we go through life wondering if we are truly loved. It hits with violent force when it’s finally spoken out loud.

As moving as this time was, I began to notice a pattern emerge as we moved around the circle. This pattern is not surprising, but one that is so often buried in the midst of our broken and busy world. It was what the daughters said about their dads.

There were the things you would expect in a moment like this. 

"You care for me." "You love me."  "You make me feel safe."

Simple words, but healing balm for a dad’s heart.

But here is what really began to stand out. Two things that came up over and over again.

"You play with me."
"You have a sense of adventure."

Adventure and play. These were what the girls were most grateful for.

In all the talks I have heard for men, these rarely make the list.

We talk about being honest men.
We talk about taking responsibility.
We talk about integrity.
We talk about initiative.

But adventure and play? We rarely talk about that.

I think that’s because adventure and play seem like luxuries for us. They seem almost irresponsible for serious men like us. Men who have to keep commitments, men who have to provide, men who have to grind things out so the lights stay on. 

If we are not careful, though, all this commitment and responsibility drip into our hearts until they begin to harden. 

We have weary hearts.
We have cynical hearts.
We have heavy hearts.

…and there is a danger in this.

Heavy-hearted men will drag their kids into their own stress.
Heavy-hearted men will be too busy for adventure. 
Heavy-hearted men will watch while the kids play by themselves.

Stuart Brown says, "When we stop playing, we start dying."

Adventure and play may turn out to be necessities and not luxuries after all. 

Ronald Rolheiser notes with piercing insight, "In Western culture, the joyous shouting of children often irritates us because it interferes with our depression. That is why we have invented a term, hyperactivity, so that we can, in good conscience, sedate the spontaneous joy in many of our children."

I don’t want to sedate joy; I want to cultivate it.

The disciples struggled with this, too. They pushed the children away who came to Jesus for blessing, but Jesus rebuked them, scooped the little ones into His lap, and blessed them. The children found out that Jesus was a light-hearted man. 

As I listened to these daughters share about their dads, a quiet resolve began to rise within me.

I want to be a light-hearted man. 
A man who can laugh and play. 
A man with a glint of adventure in his eye.
A man with a joyful heart.

I have to cultivate this because it goes against my instincts.

I am a serious man, an intense man, a critical man. 
I am a man with a burden, a vocation, and a call. 
This often means that I am an unavailable man, a busy man, a distracted man. 

But I am resolved to become a light-hearted man.

___________________

With some nervousness, it was my daughter's turn to share.

What would she say about me, watching me as her dad for these 21 years?
What would she love about her father standing before her?

Her answer brought me to tears.

"I love your sense of joy and wonder."
"I love your gratitude for life."

As we drove back home, racing a storm all the way to Utah, my daughter beside me, I prayed for more grace to follow Jesus well. I prayed that I would follow Him more closely and that I would know in increasing measure that His yoke is easy and His burden is light.

Here’s to becoming light-hearted men in a heavy-hearted world.

Men of adventure and play.

Thanks for reading.

Cheers.

Jon.

what to do when you want to quit

 Hey folks,

I have struggled to finish well my whole life.
My ability to start is exceptional, but my ability to finish is mediocre.

With so many men today falling along the wayside, I thought I would highlight the importance of perseverance. 

Howard Hendricks of Dallas Theological Seminary wrote, "Of the 2,930 individuals mentioned in the Bible, we only know significant details of 100. Of those 100, only about one-third finished well. Of the two-thirds that did not finish well, most failed in the second half of their lives."

Here is some fuel to be the 30 percent that finish well. 


In Today’s Newsletter...

• Verses to read slowly and meditate on

• Quotes to keep you fighting

• 3 obscure book recommendations

• A paradigm better than a rule of life

• The 2 best albums to celebrate the Spring season

• The man who discipled a nation by plodding

• A poem on learning how to pray

• A non-profit to keep pastors in the game

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SCRIPTURE (read these slowly) 

See to it that you complete the ministry you have received in the Lord.

Colossians 4:17

Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you.

Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.

1 Corinthians 15:58

We want each of you to show this same diligence to the very end, so that what you hope for may be fully realized. We do not want you to become lazy, but to imitate those who through faith and patience inherit what has been promised.

Hebrews 6:11-12

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

I have a sermon on this, which you can check out here.

_________________________________

QUOTES

“Just as a bird who abandons the eggs she was sitting on prevents them from hatching, so the monk or nun grows cold and their faith dies, when they go from one place to another.”

Amma Syncletica

Old men ought to be explorers

Here or there does not matter.

We must be still and still moving.

T. S. Eliot

A brother spent nine years, tempted to leave the cenobium (religious community). Every day he got his things ready to leave, and when evening came, he would say to himself: “Tomorrow, I go away.” In the morning, he again thought to himself: “Let us strive again to hold out today because of the Lord.” And when he had spent nine years in that way, God relieved him of that temptation.

One more day, folks, just fight one more day.
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BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS

Island of the World: A Novel by Michael D. O’Brien
Top 3 most beautiful and heart-wrenching books I have ever read. About as long as Lord of the Rings, so brace yourself. Here is the overview:

Island of the World is the story of a child born in 1933 into the turbulent world of the Balkans and tracing his life into the third millennium. The central character is Josip Lasta, the son of an impoverished school teacher in a remote village high in the mountains of the Bosnian interior…

In the life of the central character, the author demonstrates that this will demand suffering and sacrifice, heroism, and even holiness. When he is twelve years old, his entire world is destroyed, and so begins a lifelong Odyssey to find again the faith which the blows of evil have shattered. The plot takes the reader through Josip's youth, his young manhood, life under the Communist regime, hope and loss and unexpected blessings, the growth of his creative powers as a poet, and the ultimate test of his life. Ultimately this novel is about the crucifixion of a soul and resurrection.

Chasing Shackleton: Re-creating the World's Greatest Journey of Survival by Tim Jarvis
I assume most of you have read Endurance, the story of Ernest Shackleton’s epic journey, but have you ever wished you could recreate it today and see if you could handle it? Well, here you go. Here is the overview:

In early 1914, British explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton and his team sailed for Antarctica, attempting to be the first to reach the South Pole. Instead of glory, Shackleton and his crew found themselves in an epic struggle for survival: a three-year odyssey on the ice and oceans of the Antarctic that endures as one of the world’s most famous tales of adventure, endurance, and leadership ever recorded.

In the winter of 2013, celebrated explorer Tim Jarvis, a veteran of multiple polar expeditions, set out to recreate Sir Ernest Shackleton’s treacherous voyage over sea and mountain, outfitted solely with authentic equipment—clothing, boots, food, and tools—from Shackleton’s time, a feat that has never been successfully accomplished.

Perseverance: Fifteen Reflections on Christian Ministry at the Halfway Point by Jon Thompson
I had coffee with Jon a few weeks back. He is a godly man with a vision for pastors to finish well. I just started this, but I am loving it so far.
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PARADIGM (20-MILE MARCH)

I don’t like the language of a rule of life. My personality bristles against it, and it's often reduced to a kind of religious paradigm to fuel project self. It often lacks the missional component needed in our world today.

I love the 20-mile march instead. Discipled progress in pursuit of mission. You can read about why a 20-mile march enables you to endure the hardest seasons and how to build your own version of it below.

• Great 4-minute video on it here.

• Here is a long, deep article on the idea.

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MUSIC

Yesterday was the first day of Spring for 2024. Here is some magical music to celebrate the new season. 

It Might As Well Be Spring by Ike Quebec
This is one of the most beautiful jazz albums ever recorded. Head to the park for a picnic and bring this along. The title track and “Willow Weep For Me” are sublime. 

Sense of Spring – EP by Ludovico Einaudi
Ludovico has composed some of the most transcendent music ever recorded. “Adieux” is the standout track here. This is music for reflection and contemplation. Spring magic.
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THE POWER OF PLODDING

William Carey (1761-1834) is known as the father of modern missions.

He grew up poor in England. 
He worked as a cobbler and made a map of the world from leather straps. He would pray for the nations while he worked.
By the time he was 21, Carey had mastered Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Italian. He
was working on Dutch and French in case God opened a door for him.
It took him 5 months to sail to India.
His son died.
His wife was debilitated by mental health issues. 
He moved to India and worked for 7 years without seeing a convert.
He translated the gospel into 40 languages.

Yet...

On March 12, 1812, much of his work burned to the ground in a tragic fire.

In the fire, Carey lost the labor of years, including all his “Kararnese New Testament, two whole large Old Testament books in Sanskrit; many pages of his Bengali Dictionary; all his Telegru Grammar, and much of his Punjabi; a year’s work of Marshman [his missionary colleague] and himself on the Ramayana; and every vestige of his well-advanced Dictionary of Sanskrit and its Indian Cognates (the magnum opus of his linguistic life). . . . Also lost were 1400 reams of English paper, and much more of their own; 4,400 lbs of English type, and many fonts of English-cast Hebrew, Greek, Persian, Arabic and Tamil; not less than 104 fonts of Nagari, Telugu, Bengali, Burmese, Marathi, Punjabi, Oriya, Tamil, Chinese and Kashmiri (all of these created and cast by them). In addition the fire took all the building, books, printing materials and tools.”

The next Sunday, he preached a sermon with two points from Psalm 46:10—”Be still, and know that I am God.” 

The sermon had two points:

1. God’s right to dispose of us as He pleases.

2. Man’s duty to acquiesce in His will.

So, he simply kept going and didn’t quit. 

William Carey's perseverance literally helped disciple a nation.

He was a botanist, industrialist, economist, media pioneer, medical worker, astronomer, librarian, conservationist, and crusader for women’s rights. He was a missionary, linguist, Bible translator, and lover of the people of India. 

He labored to bring hope to India and never returned to England in the 41 years until his death. 

When asked what he would want said about him, he replied, 

“I can plod. I can persevere in any definite pursuit. To this, I owe everything.”

Plod on, folks. That is enough.
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POEM

It doesn’t have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch
a few words together and don’t try
to make them elaborate, this isn’t
a contest but the doorway
into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak

-an excerpt from Thirst: Poems by Mary Oliver

I love this simple vision of gathering a few moments of attention, then gathering a few words together, and then growing in prayer. Pray, and don’t give up fellas.  

Thanks for reading.

Cheers.

Jon.

In addition, I wanted to let you know that along with my best mate Darren Whitehead, I run a non-profit to help pastors keep going in ministry and finish well. It's called Hold Fast, and you can find more details here. High-end, free events with zero upsell, simply to bless and refresh folks so they don’t give up. 

the most controversial thing I did as a dad

Hey folks. 

I wanted to take a moment to thank everyone who responded to my last email. I tried to reply to as many as I could personally, and I really appreciated the feedback.

The most significant feedback received was that the preference is for a combination of long and short emails. So, stay tuned; I will mix them up moving forward.

Now, let's move on to this week’s email about the most controversial thing I did as a dad when raising my kids.

"The biggest big business in America is not steel, automobiles, or television. It is the manufacture, refinement, and distribution of anxiety."

Eric Sevareid, in 1964

"Only be strong and very courageous…"

Joshua 1:7

When I was younger, I started a gang.
To join it, you had to lick a 9-volt battery as a part of the initiation.
This gang was for my kids, called the "The Dangerous Kids Club."

I got the idea from this book called 50 Dangerous Things (You Should Let Your Children Do), and I launched out with my wife’s blessing.

We live in a world where kids are constantly taught to be fearful. 
This is the most anxious generation yet, and it doesn’t seem things will change soon. Our culture seems powerless to stop it. In some ways, it seems there is even an investment in keeping us anxious.

In The Comfort Crisis, Michael Easter notes the mainstreaming of anxiety for a generation of kids.

Scientists at New York University identify 1990 as the beginning of helicopter parenting. The researchers say that’s when many parents stopped allowing their children to go outside unsupervised until they were as old as 16 due to unfounded, media-driven fears of kidnapping. We’ve now deteriorated from helicopter parenting to snowplow parenting. These parents violently force any and all obstacles out of their child’s path. Preventing kids from exploring their edges is largely thought to be the cause of the abnormally high and growing rates of anxiety and depression in young people. A study found that anxiety and depression rates in college students rose roughly 80 percent in the generation just after helicopter parenting began.

Helicopters and snowplows. Seeds of anxiety with such good intent. 

I have written before about the three most research-backed things that make a good father: 

1. Emotional safety and affection

2. Shielding kids from unnecessary stress and anxiety

3. A healthy relationship with your spouse 

The first and third ones are obvious, but that middle one is often overlooked. In our desire to shield our kids from anxiety, we have overcompensated and facilitated it in their lives.

Which is why the Dangerous Kids Club was such a hit with my kids.

It changed the way I parented. So much of what I previously did was based on caution and fear. My default answer to my kids was "no." The number one phrase I said at playgrounds was "be careful."

Now, if you know me, you know my commitment to safe and appropriate boundaries.
You know my vision and commitment to creating an environment of emotional safety for my kids growing up.

However, I was worried that the cultural anxiety was unnecessarily becoming their anxiety. It was being projected on them, not coming from them.

I wanted to raise resilient kids, full-hearted kids, and compassionate kids. All of which require bravery. 

I wanted to help them fear God and not much else.
I wanted to move them into their calling and confidence.
I wanted them to hear yes more than no.

So, the Dangerous Kids Club was born.

We would do an activity each week that pushed them to face their fear and lean into courage. Nothing crazy, but enough to help them see they were more capable than they knew. These micro adventures began to change our family culture. 

When my son was at the park and asked me to watch him on the swing, instead of saying, "Be careful," I would ask, "How high can you go?"

When my daughter rode her scooter down Broadway, I would yell, "Faster, faster" instead of, "Slow down." 

They started to get the sense that this was God's world, that He was with them, 
and they were going to be ok.

Over time, they came to need it. 

In some ways being raised in Manhattan was its own version of a Dangerous Kids Club. They had to learn to take the subway on their own at the age of 10. They had to learn to navigate complex social situations with strangers in the streets. They had to learn to own their faith in a secular city. 

Over time, the Dangerous Kids Club became our family culture. Risk became the 4th pillar of our family values. 
__________________________________

The truth is that we can’t shield our kids from reality, but we can prepare them for it.

My son did a gap year that pushed him to his limits and gave him a heart for the nations, serving in Nepal, Guatemala, South Africa, Turkey, and Hawaii. 

My daughter moved to Tennessee, which, for New Yorkers, can feel like a foreign country, too!

When I discipled my daughter through her version of the Primal Path, we would start each morning with a Bible verse and a quote.

The verse was Proverbs 31:25, which says, "She is clothed with strength and dignity; she can laugh at the days to come."

And this gem from Frederick Buechner, "Here is the world, beautiful and terrible things will happen, don’t be afraid."

I did not know then, but I can see so clearly now that the Dangerous Kids Club was really for me. I had to confront my own fears of failure as a dad. I had to face my fear of control, reputation, and insecurities. I needed to say "yes" to the danger of entrusting them into God's hands, surrendering outcomes, and launching them into the world through love.

It hasn’t been easy, and at times, anxiety rises in my own heart, but I am learning to laugh at the days to come, even in the face of the beautiful, terrible things.

Make this a week to say "yes" to your kids.

A week where they learn they do not have to be afraid.

Thanks for reading.

Cheers 

Jon.

getting the second half right

Hey folks,

Jon here. I hope you are all well. I am at a Forming Men retreat in Texas, and currently sick, but rather than sending nothing, I thought I would resend one of my most commented-on emails of all time. This email list has grown considerably since I sent this, so if you are new I hope it stirs you. If it’s a reread, I hope it hits home all over again.

Cheers.

Jon. 

"Success has little to teach us during the second half of life. It continues to feel good, but now it is often more an obstacle to maturity than a positive stimulus toward it."

Ronald Rolheiser

Last summer I did a deep dive into midlife psychology. 
I was dropping my daughter off at college and on the verge of becoming an empty nester. I was going through a passage of life as dramatic as any as I had faced in a decade.

I was looking for guides who had navigated this complex territory and could walk me through the valley of these middle years. A guide to help me traverse the middle passage. Somewhere on 95 South, in the hills of Virginia, I heard an explanation from a psychologist names James Hollis that stunned me. It was around the concept of the first and second adulthood. Hollis is a Jungian analyst, and one of Rohr and Rolheisers secret sources. His framing of the midlife transition hit me like a straight right.

THE FIRST ADULTHOOD: HEROIC THINKING

In our later teens and earlier twenties, we live with a kind of heroic thinking. We are confident and determined to get life right, make a difference, be successful. Fresh out of college and becoming aware of how life actually works we resolve to work hard, find love, build a beautiful life.

We are also aware of the failures of the previous generation and those who raised us. We cannot understand how they made the mistakes they did, gave into the temptations of sex, money, power, over consumption, and the ideologies of their day. We resolve in our hearts to do better than they did, to do the work of righting their wrongs--living with integrity, navigating with wisdom, refusing to compromise. We resolve not to make the same mistakes they did, and are sure we never will.

This kind of heroic thinking is necessary to move the world forward. The energy and effort of people in their twenties is a true gift, with a kind of idealism the world needs for the stubborn forces of history to yield to the concerns of the emerging generation.

Heroic thinking thrusts people through their twenties and thirties. 

Accomplishment, recognition, measurable progress, making the world a better place. Determination, energy, vision, ambition. These are in large supply.

But somewhere in our late thirties we become aware of one glaring oversight. As much as the world needs to change, we become aware that we need to change. The problems aren’t just "out there" in the systems and structures, we realize they are in us, that brokenness stems from the soul and the spirit. As Tolstoy said, "Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself."

Coming to terms with this slow realization can cause a descent into disillusionment. Upon forced reflection we see the things we condemned in others we have justified in ourselves. That which we swore to never do becomes what we have done. In shock we realize we have compromised in the same ways as the previous generation. Without our permission, we are forced into a confrontation with ourselves. In this confrontation, heroics are futile.

THE SECOND ADULTHOOD, MEANING AND WONDER

The beginning of the second adulthood is about ruthless honesty with ourselves and deep introspection. We need to come to terms with who we actually are, not who we wish we could be. We have to acknowledge our weakness, break our addiction to the immediate and spectacular, and cultivate a new kind of life. We have to learn to tend to the things we have neglected and dismissed in our pursuit of mission, impact, and change.

But what makes this so hard is that we are facing things in ourselves we don’t know how to confront. We find that though we may be experts in impact, we can be infants in insight. We are forced to confront that which has been buried in the soil of our ambition, the dark stuff of the soul that if not tended to will poison the public fruit of our lives.

But this is painful, and thus the beginning of the midlife crisis.

If we refuse to enter the second adulthood we will try and relive the first one. We will relapse into a frenetic energy that makes us think that more accomplishment, more success, more change, more recognition will fix the midlife malaise, but alas, we are simply delaying the inevitable.

That’s why people divorce their spouse for a younger person, one who is more enamored by the success of our heroic effort and less aware of our inner brokenness. 
Those more impressed by what we have, and what we have achieved than who we are inside. Those drawn to our success, but not our souls.

Believing we can push off this confrontation with ourselves, a kind of midlife wanderlust and nostalgia for our adolescence kicks in, a drive to reclaim a nostalgic past, or grasp that which we fear we may never have.

But to choose to relive the first adulthood, and fail to enter the second one is to commit to immaturity.

There is a kind of glorious freedom in acknowledging our weaknesses and limitations as we age. A joy in not having to be everywhere, do everything, fix everyone, show up as the expert, solve all the problems. There is a new confidence and humility that emerges through a sober assessment about what we are good at, what we are called to, and what actually fills the heart.

This is a shift to meaning. Viktor Frankl wrote about the concept of Logotherapy, the role meaning plays in healing our souls. In the second adulthood we shift from accomplishment to meaning. Frankl says at this moment "we stop asking what we want from life, and start asking what life wants from us." At this point Jesus words sound truer than ever. We know it is useless to gain the world but lose our soul. We are slowly learning that there is nothing worth exchanging for the soul.

Then a shift to wonder. Wonder is different than amazement, different that the sensational, different than excitement. It’s about rediscovering the glory that’s been overlooked due to our accomplishment bias. Rabbi Lawrence Kushner wrote, "The 'burning bush' was not a miracle. It was a test. God wanted to find out whether or not Moses could pay attention to something for more than a few minutes. When Moses did, God spoke. The trick is to pay attention to what is going on around you long enough to behold the miracle without falling asleep. There is another world, right here within this one, whenever we pay attention."

Wonder is about depth, notice, simplicity, and joy. Its learning to delight in the ordinary miracles happening all around us waiting for us to behold.

LEANING IN

I feel the gravity and cultural pressure to try and relive the first adulthood a second time. There can be a fear in a personality like mine of squandering ambition, not making enough of an impact, of wasting the rare gift of energy. But I am choosing to put away childish things for a second time. To enter the second adulthood with a mellowed intensity, to look more closely, slow down, bring my whole self, wounds and gifts, and learn to walk at a sacred pace.

I can tell you God is teaching me to pay a different kind of attention. And behold, the bush is burning in places I never noticed, and I’m in the middle of a war to fight off the sleep.

YOUR JOURNEY

If you are in your first adulthood, fueled by longing, dreams urgency and vision, enjoy this season as it is. Live fully to the hilt. It’s your desire for change and holy discontent that brings the reformation we desperately need. It’s your insistence that things can be better that confronts much of the brokenness in our world. Stay humble, but feed your frustration and fuel your passion. Reformative energy is a gift to us all.

Maybe you are in entering this middle passage, you are trying to make sense of your changing ambition, narrowing vision, and growing frustration. Stay the course. Lean into what God is doing in you, not just through you. There will be fruit from this pruning, painful though it may be.

Perhaps you are well into your second adulthood. A sage in the making, a guide for those behind. We need you. We need mentors who can help us age with hope, deepen without fear, and leave a godly legacy for the generations to come.

May God give you grace in whatever season you are in to pass the test, behold the burning bush, and take off your shoes in the holy place that is your life.

Cheers.

Jon

Also, folks, some exciting news. Jefferson and I have been working hard to launch our brand new Forming Men Podcast. We hope to make this a place where we can discuss and process the cultural moment we are in as men. The podcast is available anywhere you listen (Spotify, Apple Podcasts, etc.). You can also watch the full episodes on YouTube here.

a man like you in a time like this

"It seems to me that I have greater peace and am close to God when I am not ‘trying to be a contemplative,’ or trying to be anything special, but simply orienting my life fully and completely towards what seems to be required of a man like me at a time like this."

Thomas Merton

"He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you

but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?"

Micah 6:8 

We are all trying to figure out what kind of men we are meant to be in the world today.

In the past, many identity issues for men were resolved when a man went to work. For the most part, his job and a couple of hobbies went on to define him. A small collection of brand choices let you know who he was. You could tell a man by the place he worked, the team he supported, what he drank at a BBQ, and his favorite band. You knew his faith by the denomination he was a part of and the translation he read. Of course, there were insecurities and longings below the surface, but most men didn’t fixate on them, delay responsibilities, and orient their lives on a quest for self-expression. They accepted their lot, did their jobs, and tried to find joy in the smaller moments of life. 

These days, most men struggle with who they are meant to be for most of their lives. Identity is performative, fluid, weaponized, and criticized. Our careers change, profiles and resumes matter, and as time creeps on we can have a gnawing sense that we haven’t amounted to the kind of man we are meant to be. We are still trying to be something special, something to live up to.

For many men today, they are ever achieving but never becoming. 

This can cause us to hustle and chase trends to fit in and fill the void. We can follow one leader, or teaching, or idea to another because we have a sense that this is who we are meant to be.

Why are you trying to be?

I think that’s why so many men feel exhausted. Living up to some cultural standard or ideal either inside the church or outside in the world creates performance, pride, shame, and fatigue. Most of the anxiety, sadness, and frustration I see in the hearts of men today comes from failing to become the thing they are meant to be.

That’s why I love Merton’s insight so much. 

It seems to me that I have greater peace and am close to God when I am not "trying to be a contemplative," or trying to be anything special, but simply orienting my life fully and completely towards what seems to be required of a man like me at a time like this.

The truth is we never find God’s peace and presence by trying to "be someone" or be "something." We get it by simply doing what is required of us in the moments we have.

You don’t become a servant leader by going on a mega quest of humility. You get it by listening to people, being inconvenienced, and sacrificing your time and energy when people need it from you.  

You don’t become godly by going to a ministry school, seminary, or international trip. You become godly by walking with God in the everyday stuff of life. By being kind to your annoying coworker, patient with your wife when she forgets things, and joyful when your kids are driving you crazy. You get it in the early morning quiet and fight for devotional time when the schedules seem maxed out.

And you get it by doing what life asks of you. 

Facing cancer or illness with strength and dignity. 

Walking with a friend through depression and anxiety or wrestling with your own.

Dealing with family tensions and generational cycles so that you extend blessing and not dysfunction to those around you. 

Viktor Frankly wrestled deeply with this when he was in the Nazi death camps. 

Stripped of his vocation, preferences, identity, and work, he learned a deeper truth.

A man is not defined by what he wants from life, but by how he responds to what life wants from him.

In Man’s Search for Meaning, he wrote:

It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life—daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.

Stop trying to be someone, and start being present to those around you. 

What is being asked of you?

Who needs something from you?

What challenges are yours and yours alone to handle?

What is needed from you here, now, today?

That’s where the peace is. That’s where the true sense of dignity and accomplishment and meaning are found. Not in becoming something, but becoming someone, a man like Jesus who fully oriented himself to what was asked of him in his time. 

What haunting lines.

"Orienting my life fully and completely towards what seems to be required of a man like me at a time like this."

May God give you grace this week to reorient your life away from the quest of project-self and into a life of love. May he show you what’s required of a man like you in the times you find yourself in.

God has entrusted these troubled, anxious, divided, and contentious times to men like you.

Let’s meet them with presence and love.

Thanks for reading,

Cheers

Jon.

pardon or parole

"My deepest awareness of myself is that I am deeply loved by Jesus Christ and I have done nothing to earn it or deserve it."
Brennan Manning

"it is by grace you have been saved, through faith —and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast"
Ephesians 2:8-9

Many men struggle to accept their full forgiveness in Christ. Grace is such a humbling concept that it’s hard to get it into the marrow of our spiritual bones. It can be hard to enjoy the gift. This is never more true than when we struggle with sin after we come to faith.

It’s hard to believe that God’s grace is truly free. Hard to believe we don’t have to pay him back. Hard to believe that we stay in the kingdom by grace and not by works. Hard to believe his grace is for us.

So many men are stuck in the rehearsed speech of the prodigal son and still feel awkward at the table of grace.

"Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son."

Many men are still trying to pay the father back for their years of rebellion and sin. Many men are still trying to be worthy. Many see themselves as servants, not sons. 

In a recent prayer meeting, Sam Gibson said a one-liner that has haunted me all week.

"Thank you, God, that we are pardoned and not paroled."

He was referencing the invitation God gives in Isaiah 55. 

"Let them turn to the LORD, and he will have mercy on them, and to our God, for he will freely pardon."

Full pardon. Free pardon. What a concept.

I think a lot of men feel like they are on parole in the kingdom of God. They have to be good or they will be sentenced back to shame and sin and condemnation. They have to stay out of trouble long enough to show they have truly changed; they have to stay within close proximity to morality to prove they are fit to live in a kingdom of love. 

Men like this will live from half their hearts. They will never be free. Free to love, free to risk, free to give themselves away. 

Richard Lovelace reminds us that, "Christians who are no longer sure that God loves and accepts them in Jesus, apart from their present spiritual achievements, are subconsciously radically insecure persons."

Just as your salvation was secured by grace, your sanctification is powered by grace. Your security is in him. You don’t have to earn your way to him. You don’t have to pay God back. You don’t have to live with shame in the servants’ quarters of your father’s house.

I want to remind you today of the beauty and power of the gospel. I want to remind you of what has been accomplished for you. I want to remind you of who you truly are.

Jesus has made a full atonement for your sin; not cosigned a loan that you pay back.

Christ died to bring you to God, not give you the chance to earn your way home.

Jesus became sin so we can become righteousness, not "give us a chance to change." 

Prayer is not checking in with your parole officer to tell him how good you have been this week.

Prayer is not proof that you are staying out of trouble. 

Prayer is not a reminder of what you have to do.

Prayer is where we go to get grace, not earn it.

Hebrews 4:16 reminds us,

"Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need."

You are united with Christ.

Your pardon is full and free because of what he has done.

Grace is better than you think.

Go to him for more. 

You are not on parole; you are pardoned.

You can live from a free heart and enjoy your forgiveness.

You have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous one. He has made the full atonement for your sin.

Brothers, the fattened calf is ready; there is a place at the table with your name on it.

I don’t know about you, but I am having seconds.

I am going to enjoy celebrating in the Father’s house.

You are not on parole; you are forgiven and loved.

It’s time to feast.

Thanks for reading.

Cheers.

Jon.

the best way to fight is to avoid the war

 "Lead us not into temptation." 

Jesus

"The greatest victory isn't found in overcoming your opponent through strength, cleverness, or force of will. It's in avoiding the battle altogether."

Sun Tzu

This week I want to help you avoid temptation so you don’t even have to wrestle with it.

This is important because so much of the shame men feel in their lives comes from giving in to temptation. It makes sense then that so much has been written about men and temptation.

• "Know when you are susceptible! (BHALT. Bored, hungry, angry, lonely, tired)"

• "Claim promises! James 4:7 - Resist the devil, and he will flee from you."

• "Quote the Bible and talk back to the Devil. Jesus did. (Matthew 4)"

James Clear’s stuff on "Identity resistance" is strong, and James 1:14-15 tells us the process of temptation: Desire, Decision, Disobedience, Death.

Much good has been written on these ideas, but I want to address something that happens before these moments. Before we are caught up fighting the integrity war. I want to talk about recognizing and resisting temptation before it even happens. 

When I was a new believer, I wrestled deeply to kill sin. I was working in a butcher shop that was not a native environment for a holy life. I would come into work and the other guys would pin up porn in front of my workspace at the start of my day. It was a daily battle. During a catch-up with one of my mentors to process how to deal with the thoughts that kept creeping into my head, he dropped a Martin Luther quote I have reflected on for over 30 years:

"You cannot keep birds from flying over your head, but you can keep them from building a nest in your hair."

So much of what we are talking about with temptation is getting nests out of our hair. That is essential to understand, but I am trying to get upstream on that. I’m working on not letting the bird land in the first place. But that is easier said than done. Jesus told us not to pray for strength in temptation (though we should); he prayed that we wouldn’t even go down its path. Is it possible to deal with temptation before it begins?

This had me thinking about metacognitive therapy and intrusive thoughts. The way we see temptation is as much a key as how we fight it. Temptation seems to sneak in and intrude on us without our permission. It just arrives and demands a response. So I was thinking about some ways to frame these thoughts so I don’t even start the conversation with temptation. While reading "If Only," I came across these frames for resisting tempting thoughts before you engage them. I hope they stir some fresh ways of thinking so that you don’t have to fight the integrity battle because you refuse to engage in the first place.

Here are a few ways to fight the battle by avoiding it.

THE SPAM CALL

Most of us receive at least a few spam calls a week. Somehow we make it onto someone’s list and they come at us. I had a guy call several times a week asking me to contribute to a police department somewhere upstate. I answered once when I didn’t recognize the number, listened to his spiel, and never answered again. I put on some iPhone focus settings and downloaded an app that makes it impossible for someone to leave a voicemail on my phone. 

I try and view temptation like that. My internal processing goes something like this when I see a temptation coming at me: "Oh, I know who this is. This is going to be some tempting thing trying to sucker me into giving my integrity away. Ignore." 

It's important that you ignore temptation, and not just politely decline. True story - once in my early twenties I politely declined my way into a magazine subscription for my favorite magazines that lasted 3 years from a random phone call. 

Straight to voice mail. No engagement. 

THE SCAM EMAIL

I have had several friends get scammed by email. Phishing techniques are getting more and more credible, but some of them are obvious. 

Remember the Nigerian Prince email Scam? The kind man trying to sneak 53 million dollars out of his country who would cut you in on a third of it if he could run it through your account. If you would just send your numbers over…

These days you don’t open emails like that because you know it’s a scam. You just delete it and don’t give it another thought. We need to learn to see temptation that way. When thoughts like these come into your head:

"Why don’t you try and get back at her; revenge is worth it."

"You deserve this."

"God will understand and forgive; he’s kind like that."

"It's just this one time."

"You can start again tomorrow."

Don’t open. Delete. This is all just the same lie designed to lure you into sin.

Recognize. Renounce. Move on.

THE WRONG TRAIN

When I first moved to New York City in 2005, I didn’t know how the subways worked. There were no apps back then, and I didn’t know the difference between the 1, 2, or 3 trains. They were all red-colored, and I thought they would take me on the "red" line. I will never forget the first time I got lost. I was trying to get to the Upper West Side where we lived and thought any of the red trains would take me there. I needed the 1 train but jumped on the 2 train. But at some point, the 2 train turned into the express train and took me 30 blocks away from where I was headed. I got a free tour of Harlem that day. (Double Dutch Espresso is strong)

Paying careful attention to the train you want to get on is important. Paying attention to where your thoughts will take you is even more so. For example,

Imagine yourself standing on the platform of a busy train station in New York City, waiting for subway number 1, which will take you to your Air BNB. The number 2 and 3 trains come into the station, but you don’t get on them. Those are the rumination trains, but you are only getting on train 1. It’s not here yet, so let the other trains go by.

THE FIRST STEP ON THE PATH.

Psalm 1 talks about the importance of choosing the right path.

Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked

or stand in the way that sinners take

or sit in the company of mockers.

Walk. Stand. Sit.

This slow progression will kill you. It's better not to even get on the path.

If you are on the right road, you can avoid the wicked, the temptation of sinners, and the mockers who are more popular than ever.

Keep walking. It's not worth even taking a step on that path.

SETTING THE LORD BEFORE YOU

Psalms 16:7-9 is one of the most potent sections of scripture in the bible. It reads:

I will praise the LORD, who counsels me; even at night my heart instructs me.

I keep my eyes always on the LORD. With him at my right hand, I will not be shaken.

Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices; my body also will rest secure.

Council, instruction, stability, a glad heart, and rest. This is what comes when we welcome his presence. This is what happens when we resist temptation. 

Set the Lord before you; you will not be shaken.

I know temptation is lurking everywhere as a man these days. It comes out of nowhere, and it comes fast. It comes in a sweet voice, and it seems to make logical sense.

But my prayer for you is that you will increase in discernment this year.

That you will get upstream on temptation and get on with your life.

That the energy deployed in the struggle against the same old sins will be reallocated to love.

The best battles are the ones you never have to fight.

Avoid well brothers.

Thanks for reading.

Cheers.

Jon.

your attention is being held hostage; here’s how to get it back

“It is no coincidence that ours is a time afflicted by a widespread sense of attentional crisis, at least in the West - one captured by the phrase 'homo distractus,' a species of ever shorter attention span known for compulsively checking his devices."
Tim Wu

“In our interconnected society, perpetually online and bombarded with stimuli, digital technology has taken our focus hostage…”
Darren Whitehead

Last year I sensed my attention being stolen away in small increments. I actually felt my focus being taken hostage. When I got my weekly “screen time” updates on how much time I was looking at the small glowing screen, it simply amazed me.

We talk about tech all the time and the way it robs us of our passion and presence, but I noticed it this past year. I actually felt my attention span shrinking.  

• I couldn’t watch a documentary all the way through without taking a break.

• I couldn’t sit at dinner with my wife without picking my phone up to “just check a few things.”

• I’d be in the prayer room and get distracted by an alert, only to lift my eyes 10 minutes later and realize I was in a wormhole, unable to remember why I originally even looked at my phone. 

Have you felt small things like that? 

Small things that if left unattended may become big things. 

Small things that are slowly eroding how you show up in the world?

So with Lent coming up, I am doing something I have never done before. I am doing a digital fast. People have talked about this in the past. Lots of people “fast social media for Lent,” but I am hoping this will lead to something more permanent and transformative than that.

You see, this past year I fell in love with intermittent fasting. Somehow the thing I did for Lent made its way into my life. The practice became permanent. Not in a crazy way, but in a way that has stuck. 16/8 may not mean anything to you, but it has changed my intentionality and relationship with food. The Lent season became a lifestyle transformation, and I am hoping the same thing sticks with tech on this digital fast.

I got this idea from my mate Darren Whitehead, who took his whole church through a “Digital Fast.” He has a large church and somehow managed to get thousands of people to reorient their attention away from their devices and back on Jesus. It was a kind of move of God. Teenagers with dumb phones playing outside are a sign and wonder in the modern world. I was so intrigued by the sociological and spiritual dynamics; I knew this was what I was going to do for Lent this year.

(BTW He wrote a book about this experience that you can check out here. And he has a way for churches to do this as a communal experience if you are interested. Click here for more details.)

A digital fast can take many forms. Some go full send and don’t touch any tech. That approach isn’t going to work for me. But I am going to reduce and restrict my tech and media consumption in ways I never have before. And I am doing this because I am trying to make some shifts in my life.

MOVING FROM THE SHALLOWS TO THE DEPTHS

John Eldredge talks about the 3 layers of the heart. The shallows, the midlands, and the depths. My take on that is the shallows are about cultural chatter, the midlands personal struggles, and the depths are the things we are afraid to mention.

Devices keep us caught up in cultural chatter and trivia, which we often use to medicate the challenges of the midlands of our lives. But I want to get to the depths this year. I want to get below the surface of my life to what the Spirit may be whispering to me. And that is going to require space and boredom. 

We are terrified of being bored today, but it turns out boredom is a portal to the depths. 

According to Dr. Felicia Wu Song, boredom has many benefits. When we are bored, part of our brain awakens. This is the part of our brain that activates self-reflection, empathizes with others, and galvanizes creativity. Research has found when we remove boredom from our lives, there is certain brain activity that remains unstimulated. Self-reflection. Empathy and creativity.

Distraction is robbing us of our sense of self, empathy for others, and creative contribution from our hearts. I am doing a digital fast to get to the depths. 

I want to feel more deeply, listen to more life with more attention, and recover some of the creativity that has been crowded out with all the chatter. 

CONSUMER TO CREATOR

Tim Wu has pointed out, "When an online service is free, you're not the customer. You're the product."

I’m sick of being the product. I’m sick of customized ads getting more precise with every click and like I make.  

"One man, after receiving a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer, found himself followed everywhere with ‘insensitive and tasteless’ ads for funeral services.” 

What a moment of clarity of what is really happening in all of our lives. 

I’m sick of the illusion that consuming things is the same thing as caring about things. That watching something is the same thing as working for something.

I want to reset the consumption-to-creation ratio and create more space for what God has put in my heart and try and get out to bless the world. 

DISTANCE TO INTIMACY

Wu goes on to talk about how tech has changed the nature of our relationships. 

In 1956, two psychologists, Donald Horton and Richard Wohl, would conclude that television's representation of celebrities was carefully constructed to create an "illusion of intimacy" —to make viewers believe that they actually were developing a relationship with the famous people on TV. Certain techniques…  produced this effect: recourse to small talk, the use of first names, and close-ups, among others, acted to close the gap between the audience and the guests, engendering the sense in the viewer of being "part of a circle of friends."

The two coined the term “para-social interaction” to describe this "intimacy at a distance."

I don’t want a life of para-social interaction. I don’t want to know more about what brand athletes are wearing than the classes my daughter is taking. I don’t want to know where a celebrity likes to eat if I am too busy to take my wife out for a meal.

I want true social interaction. I want intimacy up close. I want to be a better husband and father by knowing the depths of my family’s hearts, not the details of strangers’ lives. 

A FASTED LIFESTYLE

Just like intermittent fasting stuck around after Lent last year, I’m hoping digital fasting will too. I’m hoping it will make me more conscious about tech consumption and help me reclaim my attention. As Mary Oliver notes, attention is the beginning of devotion.

Devotion to God.

Devotion to family.

Devotion to friends.

I hope you’ll join me on my digital fast.

Thanks for reading.

Here for the depths.

Cheers.

Jon.

how to fight well in 2024

"Then war broke out in heaven."

Revelation 12:7

"God has everyone and everything that's surrounding you surrounded."

Louie Giglio

"The nature of the enemy's warfare in your life is to cause you to become discouraged and to cast away your confidence. Not that you would necessarily discard your salvation, but you could give up your hope of God's deliverance. The enemy wants to numb you into a coping kind of Christianity that has given up hope of seeing God's resurrection power."

Bob Sorge

Happy New Year folks.

One of my major goals in 2024 is to learn to fight well. And I hope you will join me.

Most of you know I am a Charismatic by theological background.

I became a Christian in the AOG and have never been able to shake, dismiss, or deconstruct the power of God I encountered in my formative years.

Yet it’s tragic how much damage has been done to people and churches because of bad charismatic teaching on spiritual warfare.

Many narcissistic leaders call accountability "spiritual attack."

Challenging toxic cultures is labeled as "spiritual attack." 

Normal hardships are labeled as "spiritual attack."  

The tragedy of much of this is that it has made us cynical about genuine spiritual warfare.

Yet when you look at the way Satan is described in the bible, you can see his devastating impact on the lives of so many men today. Satan is still at war; he’s at war with you.

Satan is called the tempter.

He has had thousands of years to study the human condition and knows exactly what works. In Luke 4 he came when Jesus was weak and left for a "more opportune time."

Satan is called the accuser of the brethren.

When we do fall into temptation, he rubs our face in it, trying to get us to hide and wallow in a cycle of shame. 

Satan roams around looking to devour men.

When we are isolated and hiding, he piles it on and begins to devour our lives piece by piece. Vision goes, intimacy with God goes, integrity goes, relationships go, and then our lives feel irreparably broken.

Satan comes to steal, kill, and destroy.

He wants to take what’s yours, kill life where he can find it, and wreak havoc on the work God has done in you.

There is such a thing as legitimate, devastating, spiritual attack. 

JESUS CAME TO FIGHT

We have to learn to resist naïve spiritual passivity. I’ve written about this before (violent with the spirit and gentle with the person). Fighting was central and not incidental to the mission of Jesus. He wasn’t just a teacher walking around with a new take on the scriptures. He was in a war, and the stakes were high.  

1 John 3:8 says, "The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work." 

Jesus came to give life and Jesus came to destroy. Jesus came for a fight. 

BUT HOW?

Often this is the point where it gets weird quickly. People start making prophetic pronouncements about presidents. People start binding and loosing and making decrees.  

Or they map the demonic onto people and misdirect their spiritual energy. I have said before if you don’t believe in demons, you demonize people. If you don’t believe in spiritual war, you’ll give yourself to cultural war. 

Or we get so cynical about any of this stuff that we end up tolerating the things that kill us or take shrapnel along the way. 

So how do we respond? 

The best advice I’ve received on how to fight well is so simple yet so profound.

Spiritual warfare is living in the opposite spirit of the attack.

This is in so many ways Jesus’ approach to warfare.

Satan told Jesus to eat; he fasted.

Satan told Jesus to throw himself off the temple; Jesus washed feet.

Satan told Jesus he could have the world; Jesus chose the cross.

The Pharisees wanted purity; Jesus befriended sinners.

The Seduces wanted power; Jesus was a servant.

The Essenes wanted separation; Jesus shared his table.  

The Zealots offered violence; Jesus turned the other cheek.

When we are tempted, we should live in the opposite spirit of the attack. 

This is the way of Jesus and warfare.

If you feel lonely and isolated, don’t turn inward. Reach out to 3 or 4 people and check in. 

Feeling beat down? Text 5 people a word of encouragement immediately.

Feeling greedy? Go online and give to a ministry you care about right then.

Feeling angry. Do something kind to the next person you see.

Struggling with lust? Pray for the women in your church to flourish in their faith.

And do this with holy defiance.

Spiritual warfare is living in the opposite spirit of the attack.

Satan wants to destroy you by getting you to live in the opposite of your calling.

-Ravi Zacarias was an apologist who ended up discrediting the faith. 

-Driscoll yelled at men to take responsibility, and then he bailed on Mars Hill.

-Carl Lentz reached celebrities for Jesus, and he became famous for his sin.

I only mention this as a warning of the way the enemy works. 

He wants you to live the opposite of your call.

You need to live in the opposite spirit of his attack. 

THE FIGHT AHEAD

Matthew Perry was a man who knew about fighting his shadows. Behind the veneer of success, he wrestled with addiction, shame, and despair. Yet he was woken up to the importance of his war in a comment by Martin Sheen. In his memoir, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing, he writes, 

Martin Sheen turned to me and said, "Do you know what Saint Peter says to everyone who tries to get into heaven?" When I looked blankly, the man who was once president said, "Peter says, 'Don't you have any scars?' And when most would respond proudly, 'Well no, no I don't,' Peter says, 'Why not? Was there nothing worth fighting for?'"

There is so much worth fighting for this year.

Fight for intimacy with God. Fight for your marriage. Fight for your kids. Fight for your community. Fight for integrity. Fight despair.

1 Peter 5:8-9 says this:

Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith.

I pray that you will learn to fight in the way of Jesus this year. 

The way of love, courage, sacrifice, and joy.

And remember, you don’t just have the opposite spirit; you have the Holy Spirit.

The Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead, the Spirit that empowered Jesus’ ministry, the Spirit of truth.

Let’s walk in that Spirit, in 2024.

Here to fight alongside you.

Thanks for reading.

Cheers.

Jon. 

P.S. If you are looking for a book on Jesus’ way of warfare to start 2024, you can check out Beautiful Resistance. I cover how to fight exhaustion, apathy, fear, hate, cynicism, and more.