Discovering the Secret of a Man's Soul
John Eldredge
God wired men for battle, adventure, and beauty — a call to recover what modern life quietly suppresses.
Modern culture has domesticated masculinity — trading adventure, risk, and purpose for comfort and safety. Eldredge argues that masculine strength isn't toxic; it's essential when channeled toward love and service.
Everything Eldredge wants you to walk away with
These may be misplaced, forgotten, or misdirected, but they are there. Modern life suppresses all three in favor of safety and performance. Little boys yearn to know they are powerful and dangerous. Give it up — if you don't supply weapons, they'll make them.
Moses, Jacob, Elijah, John the Baptist, and Jesus all found God in the wild, not at the mall. Deep in a man's heart are fundamental questions that cannot be answered at the kitchen table. Fear keeps a man at home. The answers are out there.
Endless hours at a computer, meetings, memos, phone calls. The business world harnesses a man to the plow. But the soul refuses to be harnessed. It knows nothing of Day Timers and P&L statements.
He decides it's better not to try. The way a man's life unfolds drives his heart into remote regions of the soul. A man must know he is powerful, that he has what it takes. When he doesn't, he builds a false self — passive, performance-driven, or disconnected.
When boys play at war, they rehearse a bigger drama. Life needs a man to be fierce — and fiercely devoted. The wounds he takes will cause him to lose heart if all he's been trained to be is soft. Something fierce is needed in relationships too.
A man doesn't just need a battle; he needs someone to fight for. Every woman yearns to be fought for — to be more than noticed, to be wanted and pursued. But a woman doesn't want to be the adventure; she wants to be caught up in something greater.
How would telling people to be nice get a man crucified? God loves wildness. The Great Barrier Reef, jungles with tigers, deserts with rattlesnakes — would you call them 'nice'? Most of the earth is not safe, but it's good.
Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. But God gives it, again and again, until he is literally bleeding from it. His willingness to risk is astounding — far beyond what any of us would do in his position.
Take genuine risks in relationships. Pursue meaningful challenges. Stop living from the list of 'should' and 'ought to' that has left so many men tired and bored. Men need permission to be what they are — men made in God's image.
It's an invitation to rush the fields, to go West, to leap from the falls. If you are going to love a woman deeply and not pass on your confusion to your children, you simply must get your heart back.
These notes are inspired by direct excerpts and woven together into a readable guide you can follow from start to finish.
By John Eldredge
Men need permission—permission to be what they are, men made in God’s image. Not permission to follow a list of “should” and “ought to” that has left so many tired and bored, but permission to live from the heart. What men need is a deeper understanding of why they long for adventures, battles, and a Beauty—and why God made them just like that.
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly… who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who have never known neither victory nor defeat. — Teddy Roosevelt
Eve was created within the lush beauty of Eden’s garden, but Adam was created outside it, in the wilderness. Genesis makes this clear: man was born in the outback, from the untamed part of creation, and only afterward brought to Eden. Ever since, boys have never been at home indoors, and men have had an insatiable longing to explore.
The heroes of the biblical text confirm this pattern. Moses encounters the living God not at the mall but somewhere in the deserts of Sinai. Jacob has his wrestling match with God in a wadi east of the Jabbok. Elijah goes to the wild to recover his strength, as did John the Baptist and Jesus himself, who is led by the Spirit into the wilderness.
Deep in a man’s heart are fundamental questions that cannot be answered at the kitchen table: Who am I? What am I made of? What am I destined for? Fear keeps a man at home where things are neat and under his control, but the answers to his deepest questions are not found on television or in the refrigerator. On the burning desert sands Moses received his life’s mission. Under foreign stars Jacob received his real name.
The way a man’s life unfolds today tends to drive his heart into remote regions of the soul. Endless hours at a computer screen, meetings, memos, phone calls—the business world requires a man to be efficient and punctual. Corporate policies are designed to harness a man to the plow and make him produce. But the soul refuses to be harnessed; it knows nothing of Day Timers and deadlines. The soul longs for passion, for freedom, for life.
”So God created man in his own image… male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27). God doesn’t have a body, so the uniqueness can’t be physical. Gender must be at the level of the soul, in the deep and everlasting places within us. God doesn’t make generic people; he makes something very distinct—a man or a woman. There is a masculine heart and a feminine heart.
They may be misplaced, forgotten, or misdirected, but in the heart of every man is a desperate desire for a battle to fight, an adventure to live, and a beauty to rescue.
Capes and swords, camouflage, bandannas and six-shooters—these are the uniforms of boyhood. Little boys yearn to know they are powerful, dangerous, someone to be reckoned with. If you do not supply a boy with weapons, he will make them from whatever materials are at hand. Aggression is part of the masculine design; we are hardwired for it. If we believe man is made in the image of God, we would do well to remember that “the LORD is a warrior; the LORD is his name” (Exodus 15:3).
Little girls do not invent games where large numbers of people die or where bloodshed is a prerequisite for fun. Hockey was not a feminine creation, nor was boxing. A boy wants to attack something—and so does a man, even if it’s only a little white ball on a tee.
When boys play at war they are rehearsing their part in a much bigger drama. One day, you just might need that boy to defend you. The Union soldiers who charged the stone walls at Bloody Angle, the Allied troops at Normandy and Iwo Jima—what would they have done without this deep part of their heart? Life needs a man to be fierce and fiercely devoted. The wounds he takes throughout his life will cause him to lose heart if all he has been trained to be is soft—especially in the murky waters of relationships, where a man feels least prepared to advance.
The movies a man loves reveal what his heart longs for—Braveheart, Gladiator, Saving Private Ryan. Like it or not, there is something fierce in the heart of every man.
God can be described, to borrow Walter Brueggemann’s phrase, as “wild, dangerous, unfettered and free.” And the longing for adventure is not limited to great white hunters or college athletes. It is universal. Boys bring their sleds inside to ride down the stairs. They tie ropes to second-story windows and prepare to rappel down the side of the house. The recipe for fun is simple: add danger, stir in exploration, add a dash of destruction.
If a man has lost this desire, says he doesn’t want it, that’s only because he doesn’t know he has what it takes, believes he will fail the test, and so decides it’s better not to try.
There is nothing so inspiring to a man as a beautiful woman. She’ll make you want to charge the castle, slay the giant, leap across the parapets. Young men going off to war carry a photo of their sweetheart. Crews of WWII bombers gave their aircraft names like Me and My Gal or the Memphis Belle. It’s not just that a man needs a battle to fight; he needs someone to fight for.
Not every woman wants a battle to fight, but every woman yearns to be fought for. She wants to be more than noticed—she wants to be wanted, to be pursued. Every woman also wants an adventure to share. A woman doesn’t want to be the adventure; she wants to be caught up into something greater than herself.
A man must know he is powerful; he must know he has what it takes. A woman must know she is beautiful; she must know she is worth fighting for. God gave us eyes to see, ears to hear, wills to choose, and hearts to live. The way we handle the heart is everything.
It’s an invitation to rush the fields at Bannockburn, to go West, to leap from the falls and save the beauty. If you are going to know who you truly are as a man, find a life worth living, love a woman deeply and not pass on your confusion to your children, you simply must get your heart back. You must head up into the high country of the soul, into wild and uncharted regions, and track down that elusive prey.
Be honest—what is your image of Jesus as a man? Most of us picture a gentle guy with children around him, sort of like Mister Rogers with a beard. The only pictures many churches offer leave the impression he was the world’s nicest guy. Being told to be like him feels like being told to go limp and passive. But how would telling people to be nice to one another get a man crucified? What government would execute Mister Rogers or Captain Kangaroo?
Consider the scene from Braveheart: Wallace goes straight for the hearts of the fearful Scots, giving them an identity and a reason to fight. He reminds them that a life lived in fear is no life at all—that every last one of them will die someday. This is the kind of rallying that stirs a masculine heart.
Virtually every book of the Bible tells us about God’s warring activity. Would the Egyptians who kept Israel under the whip describe Yahweh as a Really Nice Guy? Plagues, pestilence, the death of every firstborn—that doesn’t seem very gentlemanly. And remember Samson: he killed a lion with his bare hands, pummeled thirty Philistines, and killed a thousand men with the jawbone of a donkey. Every one of those events happened when “the Spirit of the LORD came upon him” (Judges 15:14). The aim here is to rescue us from a very mistaken image of God—especially of Jesus—and therefore of men as his image bearers.
If you have any doubts about whether God loves wildness, spend a night in the woods alone. Take a walk in a thunderstorm. The Great Barrier Reef with its sharks, the jungles of India with their tigers, the deserts of the Southwest with their rattlesnakes—would you describe them as “nice” places? Most of the earth is not safe, but it’s good. After God made all this, he pronounced it good. It’s his way of letting us know he rather prefers adventure, danger, risk, the element of surprise. This whole creation is unapologetically wild, and God loves it that way.
God gave Adam and Eve a remarkable choice—he did not make them obey him. He took a staggering risk with staggering consequences. He let others into his story and lets their choices shape it profoundly. And when God needs to get a message out to the human race, what’s the plan? He starts with the most unlikely group: a couple of prostitutes, a few fishermen with no better than a second-grade education, a tax collector. Then he passes the ball to us.
The ultimate risk anyone ever takes is to love, for as C. S. Lewis says, “Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken.” But God does give his heart, again and again, until he is literally bleeding from it all. God’s willingness to risk is far beyond what any of us would do in his position.
As Francis Frangipane states, “Rescue is the constant pattern of God’s activity.” And God’s heart, from cover to cover of the Bible, cries, “Why won’t you choose Me?” God waits to be wanted. He didn’t have to make us, but he wanted to. Though his kingdom spans galaxies, God delights in being part of our lives. He often doesn’t answer prayer right away because he wants to talk to us—and sometimes that’s the only way to get us to stay and talk to him. His heart is for relationship, for shared adventure, to the core.
God’s design for boys is not “don’t”—don’t climb, don’t break anything, don’t be aggressive, noisy, messy, or risky. His design is a resounding yes. Be fierce, be wild, be passionate.
This is far too simple an outline. A man needs to be tender at times, and a woman will sometimes need to be fierce. But if a man is only tender, something is deeply wrong, and if a woman is only fierce, she is not what she was meant to be. As the Psalms declare: “One thing God has spoken, two things have I heard: that you, O God, are strong, and that you, O Lord, are loving” (Psalms 62:11–12).
He begins to die, that quits his desires. — George Herbert
The real life of the average man seems a universe away from the desires of his heart. There is no battle to fight, unless it’s traffic, meetings, hassles, and bills. So many men lose their husbands to the golf course or the TV each weekend. Why are so many men addicted to sports? It’s the biggest adventure many of them ever taste. Why do others lose themselves in their careers? Same reason. And it’s no coincidence that many men fall into an affair not for love, not even for sex, but—by their own admission—for adventure.
If a man does not find those things for which his heart is made, if he is never even invited to live for them from his deep heart, he will look for them in some other way. What makes pornography so addictive is that more than anything else in a lost man’s life, it makes him feel like a man without ever requiring a thing of him. The less a guy feels like a real man in the presence of a real woman, the more vulnerable he is to porn.
This is every man’s deepest fear: to be exposed, to be found out, to be discovered as an impostor, and not really a man. Why don’t men play the man? Why don’t they offer their strength to a world desperately in need of it? For two simple reasons: we doubt very much that we have any real strength to offer, and we’re pretty certain that if we did offer what we have it wouldn’t be enough.
Why does God create Adam? What is a man for? If you know what something is designed to do, you know its purpose in life. A retriever loves the water; a lion loves the hunt; a hawk loves to soar. Desire reveals design, and design reveals destiny. Adam and all his sons are given an incredible mission: rule and subdue, be fruitful and multiply. “Here is the entire earth, Adam. Explore it, cultivate it, care for it.”
Desire → Design → Destiny. The secret longing of your heart—whether it’s to build a boat and sail it, write a symphony and play it, plant a field and care for it—those are the things you were made to do. That’s what you’re here for. But it’s going to take risk and danger, and there’s the catch: are you willing to live with the level of risk God invites you to?
Why does a man long for a battle to fight? Because when we enter the story in Genesis, we step into a world at war. Somewhere before Eden, there was a rebellion: Lucifer, the prince of angels, rebelled against the Trinity, assisted by a third of the angelic army. They failed and were hurled from God’s presence, but they were not destroyed, and the battle is not over. God now has an enemy, and so do we. Man is not born into a sitcom; he is born into a world at war.
And why does Adam long for a beauty to rescue? Because there is Eve. He is going to need her, and she is going to need him. Adam’s first and greatest battle is just about to break out—a battle for Eve.
Men rarely praise each other directly the way women do. Instead, praise comes indirectly, through accomplishments: “Nice shot, Ted. You’ve got a wicked swing today.” For a boy, this validation matters enormously—and the primary source of it is his father.
If a father works outside the home, as most do, then his return in the evening becomes the biggest event of the boy’s day. The words a father uses carry immense weight. A mother might call her son “sweetheart,” but a father who calls him “tiger” points the boy in the direction he wants to head.
Many adult men resent their mothers but cannot say why. They simply know they do not want to be close to them; they rarely call. Somewhere, they sense that proximity to their mother endangers their masculine journey, as though they might be sucked back in. It is an irrational fear, but it reveals that both essential ingredients in the passage were missing: Mom did not let go, and Dad did not take him away.
When a wife asks, “How do I get my husband to come alive?”—the answer is, invite him to be dangerous.
Why is pornography the most addictive thing in the universe for men? Certainly there’s the fact that a man is visually wired, that images arouse men much more than they do women. But the deeper reason is that seductive beauty reaches down inside and touches a desperate hunger for validation as a man that you didn’t even know you had, touches it like nothing else most men have ever experienced. This is deeper than physical attraction. It is mythological. Every man remembers Eve; we are haunted by her. And somehow we believe that if we could find her, get her back, then we’d also recover our own lost masculinity.
So many men secretly fear their wives. She sees him as no one else does, knows what he’s made of. If he has given her the power to validate him as a man, then he has also given her the power to invalidate him too.
The endless search for a more beautiful woman reveals this deeper dynamic. Even marriage doesn’t settle it: a man may always wonder whether an even more beautiful woman is out there, and whether he could have won her. The hunger is not ultimately about the woman—it is about what a man believes she can tell him about himself.
Deep heart-knowledge of who you are comes only through a process of initiation. You have to know where you’ve come from; you have to have faced a series of trials that test you; you have to have taken a journey; and you have to have faced your enemy.
Psalm 139 makes it clear that we were personally, uniquely planned—knit together in our mother’s womb by God himself. He had someone in mind and that someone has a name. God created Adam for adventure, battle, and beauty; he created each of us for a unique place in his story and is committed to bringing us back to the original design. So God calls Abram out from Ur of the Chaldeas to a frontier he has never seen, and along the way Abram gets a new name—Abraham. God takes Jacob off into Mesopotamia to learn things he could not learn at his mother’s side; when he rides back, he has a limp and a new name as well.
Most of us ask, “God, why did you let this happen to me?” or “God, why won’t you just fix this?” But entering a journey of initiation requires a new set of questions:
• What are you trying to teach me here?
• What issues in my heart are you trying to raise through this?
• What is it you want me to see?
• What are you asking me to let go of?
God has been trying to initiate you for a long time. What stands in the way is how you’ve mishandled your wound and the life you’ve constructed as a result.
The only thing more tragic than the tragedy that happens to us is the way we handle it. In order to take a man into his wound so that he can heal it and begin the release of the true self, God will thwart the false self. He will take away all that you’ve leaned upon to bring you life. Satan then spies his opportunity and accuses God in your heart: See, God is angry with you. He’s disappointed in you. He’s not out for your best. The Enemy always tempts us back toward control, back to the false self. But as Hebrews reminds us, it is the son whom God disciplines—therefore do not lose heart.
If you’ve run to sports because you feel best about yourself there, it’s probably time to give it a rest and stay home with your family. If you never play any game with other men, it’s time to go to the gym and play some hoops. Face your fears head-on. Drop the fig leaf; come out from hiding. For how long? Longer than you want to—long enough to raise the deeper issues and let the wound surface.
Because so many men turned to the woman for their sense of masculinity, you must walk away from her as well. This does not mean leaving your wife. It means you stop looking to her to validate you, stop trying to make her come through for you, stop trying to get your answer from her. If you’ve been a passive man tiptoeing around your wife for years, it’s time to rock the boat.
A man needs a much bigger orbit than a woman. He needs a mission, a life purpose, and he needs to know his name. Only then is he fit for a woman, for only then does he have something to invite her into. A man does not go to a woman to get his strength; he goes to her to offer it.
But if this is the water you are truly thirsty for, then why do you remain thirsty after you’ve had a drink? It’s the wrong well. We must reverse Adam’s choice; we must choose God over Eve. We must take our ache to him. For only in God will we find the healing of our wound.
The deepest desire of our hearts is for union with God. God created us for union with himself—this is the original purpose of our lives. “Apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). He’s not berating us or mocking us. We are made to depend on God; nothing about us works right without that union.
The true essence of strength is passed to us from God through our union with him. King David—a man’s man, a warrior—describes his relationship to God this way: “I love you, O LORD, my strength” and “O my Strength, come quickly to help me.” Notice how personal and intimate this is, not clinical or distant.
There are no formulas with God. The way in which he heals our wound is a deeply personal process. He never does it the same way twice—he spits on one guy, makes mud for another, simply speaks to a third, touches a fourth, and casts out a demon from a fifth.
When the Bible says Christ came to “redeem mankind,” it offers far more than forgiveness. To simply forgive a broken man is like telling someone with a broken leg, “I won’t hold that against you—now finish the marathon.” That is cruel. There is much more to redemption.
The core of Christ’s mission is foretold in Isaiah 61: The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD has anointed him to preach good news to the poor, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for captives and release for prisoners. This is the central passage about Jesus in the entire Bible—the one he chooses to quote about himself in Luke 4 when he announces his arrival. Take him at his word: ask him to heal all the broken places within you and unite them into one whole and healed heart. Ask him to release you from all bondage and captivity.
To grit your teeth and steel yourself against the harshness of reality in order to survive is, by that very act, to be unable to let something be done for you and in you that is more wonderful still. The same steel that secures your life against being destroyed also secures it against being opened up and transformed.
Enemy-occupied territory—that is what this world is.
Every man is a warrior inside, but the choice to fight is his own. He must have a cause to which he is devoted even unto death, for this is written into the fabric of his being. Above all else, a warrior has a vision—a transcendence to his life, a cause greater than self-preservation. The root of the false self was this: we were seeking to save our life and we lost it. Christ calls a man beyond that: “whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it” (Mark 8:35). This isn’t just about being willing to die for Christ; it’s much more daily than that.
Whatever terrain you are called to—home, work, the arts, industry, world politics—you will always encounter three enemies: the world, the flesh, and the devil. They make up a sort of unholy trinity. Because they always conspire together, in any battle at least two are involved, but usually all three.
The sexual struggle, for example, shifts when a man sees it not primarily as sin but as a battle for his strength. He wants to be strong—desperately—and that desire can fuel his choice to resist. A man’s addictions are the result of his refusing his strength. The question to ask yourself, often, is: Where am I deriving my sense of strength and power from?
Has it ever crossed your mind that not every thought that crosses your mind comes from you? Satan caused the Chaldeans to steal Job’s herds. Satan kept a woman bent over for eighteen years. Satan moved Ananias and Sapphira to lie. But do we give him a passing thought when we encounter terrorism, a headache that keeps us from prayer, or a schism in ministry?
Without Christ, a man must fail miserably—or succeed even more miserably.
| Pattern | False Self | True Self |
|---|---|---|
| Source of strength | Control, image, validation from others | Union with God, received identity, practiced courage |
| Approach to risk | Avoids uncertainty, shrinks back | Embraces risk by faith and purpose |
| Relationship to women | Uses beauty for validation or escape | Offers strength, protection, and pursued love |
| Response to wounds | Hides, numbs, self-protects | Names pain, invites healing, walks with brothers |
Reality can be harsh, and you shut your eyes to it only at your peril—because if you do not face up to the enemy in all his dark power, the enemy will come up from behind some dark day and destroy you while you are facing the other way. You can’t fight a battle you don’t think exists. As C. S. Lewis has the old devil instruct his apprentice in The Screwtape Letters: “Our policy, for the moment, is to conceal ourselves.”
Scripture puts it plainly: “Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith” (1 Peter 5:8–9). Commit yourself to prayer every morning for two weeks and just watch what happens. Satan will throw a thought or temptation at you in hopes that you will swallow it. He knows your story, knows what works with you, and so the line is tailor-made to your situation.
The most dangerous man on earth is the man who has reckoned with his own death. All men die; few men ever really live. Courage means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die. A soldier surrounded by enemies must combine a strong desire for living with a strange carelessness about dying. He must seek his life in a spirit of furious indifference to it—desire life like water and yet drink death like wine.
Against the flesh—the traitor within—a warrior uses discipline. Most men have a hard time sustaining a devotional life because it has no vital connection to recovering and protecting their strength; it feels about as important as flossing. But if you saw your life as a great battle and knew you needed time with God for your very survival, you would do it.
Time with God each day is not about academic study or getting through a certain amount of Scripture. It’s about connecting with God. Use whatever helps—music, Scripture, a passage from a book, journaling, a run, silence and solitude at sunrise. The point is to do whatever brings you back to your heart and the heart of God. If you do not have God and have him deeply, you will turn to other lovers.
A man will devote long hours to his finances when he has a goal of early retirement; he’ll endure rigorous training when he aims to run a marathon. The ability to discipline himself is there, but dormant for many. When a warrior serves a True King—a transcendent cause—he does well, and his body becomes a hardworking servant required to endure all kinds of hardship.
The full armor of God is described in Ephesians 6: the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, feet fitted with the gospel of peace, the shield of faith to extinguish the flaming arrows of the evil one, the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit—the word of God. And pray in the Spirit on all occasions. Be alert and always keep on praying.
Don’t even think about going into battle alone. Don’t try to take the masculine journey without at least one man by your side. We don’t need accountability groups; we need fellow warriors—someone to fight alongside, someone to watch our back. It will never be a large group, but we don’t need a large group. We need a band of brothers willing to “shed their blood” with us.
The friendless condition of the average American male is a serious problem. Men find it hard to accept that they need the fellowship of other men. Yes, we need men to whom we can bare our souls—but it isn’t going to happen with a group of guys you don’t trust, who aren’t willing to go to battle with you. The most devoted groups of men are always those who have fought alongside one another—the men of your squadron, the guys in your foxhole.
Beauty is not only a terrible thing, it is also a mysterious thing. There God and the Devil strive for mastery, and the battleground is the heart of men. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky
So many couples wake one day to find they no longer love each other. Most passionate romances seem to end with evenings in front of the TV. Why do most of us get lost somewhere between “once upon a time” and “happily ever after”?
The deep cry of a little girl’s heart is Am I lovely? Every woman needs to know that she is exquisite and exotic and chosen. This is core to her identity, the way she bears the image of God. Will you pursue me? Do you delight in me? Will you fight for me? And a hesitant man is the last thing in the world a woman needs. She needs a lover and a warrior, not a Really Nice Guy.
Consider Joseph, the carpenter. Mary, his fiancée, turns up pregnant with an extraordinary story. The situation is scandalous. Joseph is hurt, confused, betrayed. He’s a good man—he will not have her stoned but will divorce her quietly. It takes an angel in a dream to convince him to follow through with the marriage. And this will cost him: shunned by business associates, stripped of his social standing, possibly losing his place in the synagogue. Does he withhold? No. He offers Mary his strength, stepping right between her and all of that mess, and takes it on the chin. He spends himself for her.
The masculine journey takes a man away from the woman so that he might return to her. He goes to find his strength; he returns to offer it. Pornography is what happens when a man insists on being energized by a woman—he uses her to get a feeling that he is a man.
Too many men choose a woman who will make them feel like a man but never really challenge them to be one. The book of Ruth is devoted to one question: How does a good woman help her man to play the man? The answer: she seduces him. She uses all she has as a woman to arouse him to be a man. She can emasculate him—or she can arouse, inspire, and energize him. The difference is everything.
Life is not a problem to be solved; it is an adventure to be lived. God rigged the world in such a way that it only works when you embrace risk as the theme of your life—which is to say, only when you live by faith. A man just won’t be happy until he’s got adventure in his work, in his love, and in his spiritual life.
God is intimately personal with us and he speaks in ways peculiar to our own quirky hearts—not just through the Bible, but through the whole of creation: sunsets and friends and films and music and wilderness and books. Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.
We are in constant danger of being not actors in the drama of our lives but reactors—drifting with whatever current happens to be running the strongest. Most men spend their energy trying to eliminate risk or squeeze it down to manageable size. If it works, if a man succeeds in securing his life against all risk, he’ll wind up in a cocoon of self-protection and wonder all the while why he’s suffocating. “What will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?” (Mark 8:36). You can lose your soul, by the way, long before you die.
God gave man an incredible charter to explore, build, conquer, and care for all creation—and he never revoked it. If you had permission to do what you really want to do, what would you do? Don’t ask how; that will cut your desire off at the knees. How is a faithless question—it means “unless I can see my way clearly I won’t believe it.” How is God’s department. He is asking you what. What is written in your heart? What makes you come alive? A man’s calling is written on his true heart, and he discovers it when he enters the frontier of his deep desires.
Mystery is essential to adventure—more than that, mystery is the heart of the universe and the God who made it. There are no formulas with God. Period. God is a Person, not a doctrine. He operates not like a system—not even a theological system—but with all the originality of a truly free and alive person.
Consider Joshua and the Battle of Jericho: the Israelites’ first military strike into the promised land, their D-Day. How does God start it? He has them march around the city blowing trumpets for a week, then shout. It works marvelously—and it never happens again. Gideon’s army is reduced from thirty-two thousand to three hundred, and their plan of attack is torches and water pots. It also works splendidly and also never happens again. Jesus heals the blind differently each time. As the saying goes, “Never make a principle out of your experience; let God be as original with other people as he is with you.”
A woman doesn’t want to be related to with formulas, and she certainly doesn’t want to be treated like a project that has answers. She doesn’t want to be solved; she wants to be known. The only way to live in this adventure—with all its danger, unpredictability, and immensely high stakes—is in an ongoing, intimate relationship with God.
Simple questions change hassles to adventures; the events of your life become opportunities for initiation: “What are you teaching me here, God? What are you asking me to do… or to let go of? What in my heart are you speaking to?”
We are free to change the stories by which we live. We are co-authors as well as characters. Few things are as encouraging as the realization that things can be different—and that you have a role in making them so.