The following is an excerpt from my new book “Be a Man the World Needs.” Available now on Amazon.
Order here: https://a.co/d/80U575e
Climb the Mountain
We were cutting a trail somewhere around 4,000 feet of elevation. Even at that height the air was thick with humidity as a tropical storm smothered the jungle like bush adorning the mountainside. The red clay stuck to our boots. Our gear grew heavier with every cascading drop. It was an adventure. Thankfully, we were on our way down the mountain.
What compelled a group of men to walk a mountain path through the jungle in the middle of the rain during hurricane season?
Men like adventure, but that wasn’t the real reason. We also like being invited to try difficult things. We like to test ourselves. Neither of those were the goal of our mountaintop trek.
So why did we go? Why were we climbing that particular mountain in that specific spot on that given day in June? Why? Because there was something on top of the mountain worth doing.
We didn’t go to see the sights even though we did see some remarkable things. The foliage of banana, plantain, and coffee trees dancing amidst a storm is pretty amazing. Below we glimpsed some of the geography and topography of the roads we had been traveling the previous days. They were laid out like lines on a map. It was a sight to behold. The sliver of blue breaking beyond the tropical front miles away peered like a promise of change through the sky. It was all incredible. It was all secondary. We had climbed the mountain to do something.
At the top of the mountain was a woman and her children. I couldn’t name any of them. I had never seen them before. I will never see them again except in the single solitary picture I took of their smiling faces after the work was done. The work is why we climbed the mountain.
What work?
My friends and I had climbed the mountain to make the lives of the lone family on the ridge of the mountain better. We had gone to do something very simple. We were building them a new cooking stove.
In a place where most houses are held together by mud and sticks, practically all the cooking happens around what most of us would describe as a camp fire. The physical implications on the health of the women and girls who tend these fires is disastrous over time. So we climbed a mountain to improve the quality of life for a woman and her family.
Why? Because that's what men were made for.
The World’s Need
There are two really dangerous ideas trying to claw their way to prominence in this world. They are the kind of ideas which always seem to resound across pop culture and the socially conscious. Both are dangerous nonsense.
The first is the notion we don’t really need men anymore. Except we all know that is nonsense.
The second dangerous idea is worse. It says that there aren’t any real men out there anymore. To put it bluntly—this is a lie puked straight from the pit of hell. There are millions of men out there. Men the world desperately needs. And there are millions of boys waiting for their turn at bat.
What the world doesn’t need is another clown beyond a keyboard putting down the real men who bust their butts everyday. They do it to keep our world from falling apart. To keep your world from falling apart. Real men don’t need the naysayers to twist the proverbial knife while he plays video games, eats his mom’s groceries, and enjoys free rent. What the world doesn’t need is more shaming of the elite echelon of actual men who show up everyday to make sure you have water to drink, roads to drive on, and groceries that show up at your local market.
What this world needs is men. Real men. A lot of them. I’m crazy enough to believe they are out there. They don’t need your permission. They don’t want your applause. They only want to do what they were put here to do.
This world needs men who live on purpose, for a purpose. Men who mean what they say, say what they mean, and aren’t afraid to call out the chumps who try to stay somewhere in the middle. The middle is where masculinity goes to die. You either man up or you bow down. You either step up or you stop altogether. I’ve met hundreds of men who are laying down their lives every day to get it right.
The Mission
The original mandate for men has not changed. God spoke to Adam in the Garden and said “be fruitful and multiply”. Not because the Garden was a paradise of manicured orchards waiting to be plucked, but because it was a frontier of opportunity.
Adam was to work. He was to strive. He was designed by God to build, grow, and give. It is the essence of the heart of every man. That’s what this book is fundamentally about. Getting back to the modus operandi of what it means to be a man.
You are the man the world needs. You are. Believe it. You may not be living like it yet, but you’ll get there. You have to. No one else can get there for you. It is 100% on you. There are no shortcuts. The easy road is a dead end. But life is hard. So pick your hard. Or it will run you over. Ready or not, here it comes.
You were designed to make things better. Your strength is sorely needed in this world. And that’s putting it lightly. God put something inside you. Allow it to mature into the divinely inspired masculinity available to you. Until you do, there will be something absent in your world.
If you don’t live up to what God wants for you, your family will never know what it’s like to have a real man in their life. Your daughters will date deadbeats damned to repeat the pattern. Your sons will age into weak boys with beards and bank accounts. And your wife will be lonely—living in a mission half fulfilled.
Believe this. There is an enemy that hates you. He hates everything you are. What are you?
You are the original blueprint for what God wanted in this world. You are a man. You weren’t a backup plan. You were the plan.
Yes, we are men the world needs. We all have the potential to be. But we also have the potential to miss the mark big time. Adam did. So do we. But we don’t have to live in it.
Your enemy would have you believe you aren’t good enough for what God wants in your life. Your enemy is on a mission too. His aim is to steal the blueprint for what God wants to build through your life. He wants to kill the dream God put inside the heart of every man. The bottom line is that your enemy wants to destroy you and everything you stand for. If you take a look at our world, it’s hard to say the enemy isn’t winning. The enemy won’t win. He can’t win.
What the world needs right now are men who will step into their place in the fight. Men who will dare to give what it takes, grow into their strength, and build a better world around them. I think you’re a man like that. Get ready for the fight of your life.
The Need
There’s a tremendous difference between what I need and what I want. Most days I want a sixteen ounce steak, loaded mashed potatoes, and a gallon of Dr. Pepper. I learned long ago that eating like that regularly doesn’t produce a version of myself I like very much. And, giving in to what I want doesn’t shape me into the kind of man the people around me need. What I really need is not what I think I want much of the time.
What I actually want is for the people I love the most to know they can rely on me for the long haul. My life goal is faithfulness. That is my dream. To breathe my last breath at a ripe old age knowing I was faithful to my wife, my children, my family and friends–and the people who depend on me.
This is not a book about what you want. This was written to be a book about what the world needs. The truth is–what the world needs is you! Our world needs men like you to stand up, step up, and man up. We have a role to play. One that is uniquely ours. No one else will do it because no one else can. It belongs to you.
Ironically, whether you’ve admitted it yet or not, what you actually need is to embrace how much the world needs you. When you do you will step into your place in the big picture. You’ll find the spot where your purpose and your God-given passion sync up. It’s the one-two-combination that knocks the enemy on his butt. Nothing rattles hell more than a son of God walking in his God-given purpose.
You’re not a punk. And you’re not a sissy. You are a champion of the kingdom of God. His beloved son. Your life carries inherent dignity, value, and purpose on a scale you may have never attempted to consider. Consider it.
The words in these pages aren’t meant to be another feckless shot at tearing down men. We are sick of the mud-slinging in our world. We’re all tired of the emotional eunuchs parading their image of imposed masculinity on our world. I’m not here to pile it on. I wrote this book because I believe it’s time to rally the charge. The only way to stem the tide of limp-hearted cowards telling you what kind of man you’re supposed to be is for you to live it so loud they can’t help but shy away.
We can’t get there by tip-toeing through the issues. We’re going to take them head on. What’s going to follow is a set of twelve principles. This is designed so you can tackle one per week, per month, or whatever rhythm works. Each entry is short on purpose. I went small on the word count because I’m hoping it will give you the space to go big on reflection. Take the time to think them through. Get around a fire with some dudes and talk them out. At the least, create a text group and challenge one another.
You’re a smart guy. So, what you’ll notice pretty fast is that some of the maxims presented in this book seem at odds with each other while others seem repetitive. That’s not by accident. Some of them will cause tension. That’s by design. Step into the tension. Embrace difficulty. The easy path is a dead end. Your people need life. When you walk the hard road you’re not being reckless—you’re being engaged. You’re being honest. You’re taking the world as it actually is and you’re taking it head on. You’re being a man the world needs. Bravo.