Over the last twenty years, I’ve had several great fathers in the faith. These men of God reached down to invest in me, and were far enough ahead of me that they could guide, challenge, and spur me on.

When I was a teenager, my Young Life leader Kevin Jamison helped me begin following Jesus and make the Christian faith my own. Bryan Lopina, who was a couple grades ahead of me, taught me, even then, how to invest in men younger than me. He also taught me that sexual sin was serious and would ruin me.

Then, when I was in my twenties, Tom Steller taught me how to read the Bible for myself, to see more than I’d seen before. Dieudonné Tamfu taught me to consecrate my time, my attention, my whole life more fully to Christ. Dan Holst taught me how to love a family, and then fold younger men into that family. Mike Meloch taught me how to know and pursue a wife and how to be a witness in the workplace.

And all along the way, my dad — my biological father and father in the faith — taught me how to work hard “as unto the Lord” (Colossians 3:23 ASV), how to love a woman like Christ loves the church, how to give generously to bless and support others, how to navigate difficult and tense situations with a calm and confident strength in God.

I’ve had wonderful fathers in Christ. Some of them have been in my life over decades; others for only a few years. Some have been much older than me (sometimes 30 or 40 years older); others have been just a few years ahead. Some came and found me; others I sought out myself. They’ve all, however, shaped and counseled and cheered me on in Christ. And they’ve each played different roles in fathering me. It really hasn’t been one man, but a village of good men.

Because I’ve tasted the fruit of such fatherhood, and because I see this kind of fathering again and again in Scripture, I want to encourage you to do what you can to find the spiritual fathers that you need.

God-Breathed Fathering

Where do we see these kinds of fathers in the Bible? Again, we could go to a number of texts, but I was drawn to the book of Proverbs, a whole book written by a father, for a son.

Hear, my son, your father’s instruction,     and forsake not your mother’s teaching,for they are a graceful garland for your head     and pendants for your neck.My son, if sinners entice you,     do not consent. (Proverbs 1:8–10)

Proverbs isn’t just a catalog of wise sayings. It’s a letter from a good dad to his boy. “My son . . . My son . . . My son . . .” — 23 times in 31 chapters. The book models the kind of fatherly counsel that young men need to navigate life. The book shows us (among other things):

How to make hard decisions (Proverbs 11:14; 12:15; 15:22),
What to eat and drink (and what not to eat or drink, or at least in moderation) (Proverbs 20:1; 23:20–21),
What kinds of friends to keep (and avoid) (Proverbs 27:10; 1:10; 13:20; 14:7),
The kind of woman to marry (and avoid) (Proverbs 18:22; 31:10; 5:3–5; 21:19),
How to love a wife and children (Proverbs 22:6; 31:11, 28–29),
How to make and spend money (Proverbs 30:7–9; 3:9–10; 14:21, 31),
When to speak up, and when to keep quiet (Proverbs 18:21; 12:13; 15:2),
How to become humble (Proverbs 3:5; 11:2).

Proverbs then, as a book, gives us a portrait of a good father. In it, Solomon applies wisdom to all the spheres of life, trying (in many practical, earthy details) to prepare his son to live well as a man of God.

So, you might think, Well, if this is the God-breathed counsel of a spiritual father, do I really need to find another father? Why not just memorize Proverbs? Well, that certainly wouldn’t hurt. Men who internalize and apply the 31 chapters of Proverbs would be in better shape than many. But we really need more than words (we all know this instinctively). Every young man needs men who can guide, teach, and train us. We need flesh-and-blood, life-on-life fathers.

Everyday Masculine Faithfulness

We see this kind of fathering all over the New Testament. For instance, why did Jesus spend most of his ministry on twelve men? He could have just hit the preaching circuit and wrote bestsellers, but he chose to focus his three short years of ministry on Peter, Andrew, James, John, Philip, Bartholomew, Thomas, Matthew, another James, Thaddaeus, Simon, and Judas. Think about that. Some vans hold more than twelve people, and yet that was his focus. Why?

Well, in part, because he knew his disciples needed more than a few great messages or books. For them to really get it, for them to live like God wanted them to live, they needed to see his life. They needed to see what masculine faithfulness looked like in real time — real situations, in a real place, among real people and challenges and temptations. They needed to see him when he was tired, when he was sick, when he was hungry, when he was distracted and interrupted. They needed to see him care for his family members, and talk to strangers, and make tough decisions in the moment. They needed to see him not get to everything he wanted to get done in a day. They needed to see him pray in secret.

And they needed to be seen by him. They needed to see his life, and they needed him to see theirs — up close and consistently. He knew these men well enough to correct and train them, to comfort and rebuke them — and specifically, not vaguely, like a good father.

Or look at the apostle Paul, and the many men he discipled from church to church, city to city — Timothy, Titus, Silas, Barnabas, Epaphroditus, Aquila, and more. Christianity gets passed from fathers to sons, who become fathers to more sons, who become fathers to more sons. That hasn’t changed because there’s two billion professing Christians in the world. God still says to spiritual fathers, “What you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also” (2 Timothy 2:2) — father to son, father to son, father to son. From some men to you, and then from you to other men.

First Steps Toward Fathers

Finding good fathers in Christ can be hard, so I want to end with some practical advice. If you know you need a spiritual dad, but don’t have one, what can you actually do? Do you just wait for an older, wiser man in the church to notice you and put his arm around you?

No, in my experience, the younger man will often need to identify and go after the older man. You’ll probably need to ask to be fathered. It’s not always this way (and it really shouldn’t be this way), but it’s often still this way. So, what can we do as younger men in need of fathers?

LOOK

First, identify the godly, older men around you. You can’t pursue a father in Christ if you can’t name him. Start studying the older men God has put around you. And what are you looking for in these men? You’re looking, first, for mature Christianity, someone who has followed Jesus faithfully for longer than you have.

As a guide, you could look at the elder qualifications of 1 Timothy 3:1–7 or Titus 1:6–9. These men don’t have to be pastors or elders or even deacons to be a spiritual father, but those two passages sketch out dimensions of Christian maturity — Is he a faithful husband? Is he sober-minded and self-controlled? Is he gentle? How does he handle his money? How does he handle the Bible? Apart from competency in public teaching, every other qualification is something God expects of all believers. They’re traits he expects of you. Men don’t have to be spiritual superheroes to be good spiritual fathers. They only need to be far enough ahead in wisdom and faithfulness to stretch you to grow and mature.

In addition to maturity, look for overlap. It’s not enough for them to be more mature than you and for you to see them briefly on Sunday mornings and at a midweek gathering. You need to have actual access to their life — and, ideally, somewhat consistent access. Meaningful discipleship doesn’t happen in one-off conversations here and there. It requires time and space, and it requires regularity.

You need to see faithful men when they’re not dressed up for church and serving up front. You want to see them when they’re in their Saturday clothes and on the couch, when they’re disagreeing with their wife and when they’re watching football. To be a true son, we need some meaningful overlap.

ASK

Once you’ve identified the mature men around you, then try to initiate intentional time together. Again, don’t wait for a father to come find you. Go and ask them for wisdom, for counsel, for time, for fathering. And then as you start meeting more regularly, look for ways to come alongside them and help them in the ordinary rhythms of their lives. This isn’t just for their sake (who couldn’t use another set of hands?), but it’s also for your sake. Again, you want to see them doing ordinary things — yard work, grocery store runs, home repair, making dinner, watching kids — because real Christlikeness is often clearest in ordinary things. So, join them in those everyday, easily overlooked rhythms. Make it as easy as possible for them to spend time with you.

LISTEN

Lastly, listen carefully. Ask lots of questions. It’s actually a way to honor older, wiser men. We can sometimes be afraid we’re going to look a certain way if we start asking dumb questions, but questions about how to follow Christ — even the smallest, most random ones — are never dumb. And truly godly men, men worth following and imitating, won’t think they’re dumb. They’re going to be encouraged by your questions, honored by your questions — and they’re going to encourage you to keep asking them.

So, brothers, identify mature men to imitate, men who can teach you, challenge you, encourage you, and shape you. Initiate regular time with them (make it easy for them to spend time with you). And then ask lots and lots of questions. Listen well to what they say and observe carefully how they live, and then imitate their faith.

Before romance became an ally for me, it was a terrorist, because it had become a god.

It was a subtle god, of course. But subtle gods — money, sports, career success, relationships — often wield more functional authority than the gods of organized religion. You may find more devotion in sports arenas, movie theaters, board meetings, and social media threads than in many pews. And the worshipers of those gods gather seven days a week. Through my teens and twenties, I read my Bible regularly and rarely missed church, but if you watched really closely, you might have assumed that marriage, not God, was the only pleasure great enough to fill my restless soul.

I dated too young, and too often, and took those relationships too far, emotionally and physically. Through those failures, I discovered just how desperately I needed forgiveness and redemption. And I learned that dating (and marriage, and sex, and family) would never satisfy all I desired. Because romance had become a god, I betrayed God — the one true and living God — to serve my golden calf. Relationship after relationship, I was burning down the gold he had given me to fashion something that might more immediately meet my longings.

By God’s grace, like Saul along the road to Damascus, romance was dramatically converted in my story from murderous terrorist to servant of Christ. So if you, like me, have bowed at the altars of romantic affection and intimacy, I hope to open your eyes to a greater Love (and a greater, more fulfilling vision for earthly love). I hope you’ll begin to see how romantic love is simultaneously at the core of what’s right and beautiful about this world (hence why dating and marriage can be so thrilling and satisfying), and yet also at the core of what can be so wrong (why the two can be so destructive and devastating).

Your Good Desires for Love

My desire for romantic love, even as a naive, impulsive teenager, wasn’t totally dysfunctional. I was experiencing something that God had created in me. After all, he himself says, “He who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the Lord” (Proverbs 18:22). That means he who wants a wife wants a good thing, and wants favor from God.

“Healthy and happy marriages find their health and happiness in that future marriage.”

We see the goodness of romance in the very first paragraphs of Scripture. Notice how the first six days of God’s masterpiece come to a climax: “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness . . .’” (Genesis 1:26). He’s lit the stage, hung the moon, carved the seashores, formed the mountains, planted the flowers, unleashed the birds, and uncaged the bears. Now he’ll put something of himself on that wild and wondrous stage — he’ll pick up handfuls of dust and mold the kind of creature his Son will one day be.

So God created man in his own image,in the image of God he created him . . .

But that’s not all he said. And that he says more gets to why I innately had such high, even unrealistic expectations of romance.

So God created man in his own image,in the image of God he created him;male and female he created them. (Genesis 1:26–27)

Not just male, but male and female. And a few verses later, they were no longer separately male and female, but one flesh. When God sculpted his image into creation, he didn’t just make a man — he made a man and a woman, together. He made a marriage. Marital love, at its best, tells the story the universe was made to tell, about the love within God himself (Father, Son, and Spirit), and the love of that Son for his bride, the church.

Our desires for romantic love (again, at their best, when they’re burning as God himself kindled them to burn) draw us into the love that formed the earth and every other planet, the Milky Way and every other galaxy. Marriage is a wondrous gift, given by a generous Father, to help lead his sons and daughters to their greatest possible joy.

Your Bad Desires for Love

It didn’t take long, though, for that one-flesh sculpture to crumble. The honeymoon was devastatingly short (at least in the story we’ve been given). Almost as soon as we find the two together, naked and blissfully unashamed, Satan slithers between them and turns them against each other.

When we read Genesis 1–2, we can hardly imagine what a relationship like that might be like, a love without fear or suspicion, without secrets or grudges, without sin or pain. Neither ever needing to say sorry. Then the serpent raided their home, overturned the marriage bed, and started a fire in the living room. It’s stunning, isn’t it, just how quickly sin turns this love story into a horror film.

Now, for the first time, they’re hiding (Genesis 3:8). They’re suddenly afraid of the God who had been their safety (verse 10). Within a few sentences, the husband’s pointing fingers (verse 12). They’re having their first fight as a couple (verse 15), the wife wrestling her groom for the steering wheel. They meet pain (verse 16), which shows up at their front door and never leaves. And their work grows hard, and not just hard, but frustrating and ineffective (verses 17–18). Worst of all, they’re evicted from Paradise, leaving them wandering without God (verses 23–24). His presence had been their address, their foundation, their first and only home. And when it comes time to have children, they give birth to anger, rivalry, and death (Genesis 4:1–8).

As soon as God was uprooted from the center of their union, and they from the safety of his garden, romance was no longer spiritually safe. Their nakedness was now a vulnerability. And two thousand years later, it’s really not any safer or easier out on the dating scene. Adam and Eve’s fall is a warning that, for as beautiful, even divine, as romance can be, it can also be dangerous, even deadly.

Rehearsing for the Real Thing

I wasn’t completely wrong about romance, even as a teenager. I was wrong because I expected from romance what I would find only in God, and then demanded that the true God deliver my god (and that he overnight it). And then I was surprised when I didn’t get what I wanted and ended up lonelier and more miserable than before.

Make no mistake, romance captures worship. Idolatry like mine explains why sexual sin runs rampant. It’s why the demonic empires of pornography make billions of dollars every year. It’s why we see so much divorce. It explains a lot of depression and suicide. Our desires for love, however, in their deepest, purest, most intense expressions, are desires for a Marriage beyond marriage. You won’t be freed from all the frustration, confusion, and heartbreak of romance worship until you see this.

One day, heaven will come to earth, Christ will return on the clouds, and we’ll have a wedding:

Let us rejoice and exult     and give him the glory,for the marriage of the Lamb has come,     and his Bride has made herself ready;it was granted her to clothe herself     with fine linen, bright and pure. (Revelation 19:7–8)

Then Jesus will sing the Groom’s anthem over us: “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” (Genesis 2:23). He came to pursue her, he died to redeem her, he rose to secure her, and he’s coming to bring her home. How will we remember these brief years of unwanted loneliness, or persistent conflict, even of paralyzing betrayal when we see the blazing fire in his eyes, when we hear the warm rumble in his voice, when we feel the passionate strength of his embrace?

Healthy and happy marriages find their health and happiness in that future marriage. They’re content because their contentment doesn’t rest finally in each other. They receive these years of matrimony, even decades together, as a blessed rehearsal for the real thing.

Romance of Orthodoxy

In this case, however, we don’t have to wait for the wedding to enjoy the pleasures of the romance. Through faith, Christ is already yours. Even though you are not yet the glorified you that you one day will be, you already have “every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places” in him (Ephesians 1:3). G.K. Chesterton famously writes,

This is the thrilling romance of Orthodoxy. People have fallen into a foolish habit of speaking of orthodoxy as something heavy, humdrum, and safe. There never was anything so perilous or so exciting as orthodoxy. (Orthodoxy, 143)

The apostle Paul, an unmarried man himself, had tasted that sweeter, fuller romance: “I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord” (Philippians 3:8). And if he had married, he still would have said the same. He knew no wife could have possibly made him happier than Jesus could (and so he actually may have made a good husband).

Your desires for love are, at root, good. They’re innate, inescapable desires for Christ. And yet sin distorts our desires for love and leads them astray (sometimes far astray). That means romance can be a friend or a god, an ally or an enemy. So don’t run from your holy desires, and don’t idolize them. Make your earthly loves (or potential earthly loves) serve your first and greater love for God.

One afternoon this summer, my 6-year-old came running through the house to find me. His eyes were wild with excitement. “Dad, you’ve got to come look — right now. Come look, come look, come look! Hurry, you’re going to miss it!”

We raced back to the living room, to the big window looking out over our backyard. From the day we moved in, that window has been our favorite room in the house. My son’s eyes searched one of the trees, searching and searching, and then he saw it again. “Dad, there! There! Do you see it? Do you see it?” And I did. Probably 25 feet up in one of our tallest trees was the backside of a big raccoon, comfortably perched out on one of the branches.

I mean, at first, we assumed it was a raccoon (too big to be a squirrel, too small to be a bear, too fat and furry to be a bird). We sat transfixed, watching that rear end — waiting for the animal to eat, or climb, or fall, or even just scratch an itch. Then it moved. Its tail swung down where we could see it, with its trademark black and gray stripes. “Dad, its tail! It is a raccoon!”

As I looked in my son’s eyes — and there was so much in those eyes — I saw a wisdom I once had and now sometimes struggle to remember. For that moment, he was my teacher, and I was his son.

Monotony or Creativity?

For the “mature” like me, raccoons are almost immediately a nuisance. They make homes under porches and climb down into chimneys. They tear away shingles and break holes in walls. When we see them, we reach for the phone to pay someone to come and remove them. Within a business day, if possible.

When my children see a raccoon, they see an entirely different creature. They’re not worried at all about the structural integrity of porches or the possibility of a four-legged home invasion. To them, animal control may as well be the KGB (just watch any animated movie with animal control workers). No, when they see a raccoon, it may as well be a triceratops. They don’t see problems; they see curiosities. They ask questions (lots of them): Where did he get his stripes? Why is he sleeping during the day? Does he have any friends? Can I pet him? We see trouble; they see beauty. We see monotony; they see creativity. We see a nuisance; they see a story.

Oh, how much we might learn from them, how much more we might see through their eyes. G.K. Chesterton writes,

Children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. (Orthodoxy, 81)

What 6-Year-Olds See

I recently felt my flabby imagination when our family went to pick KinderKrisp apples at a local orchard. Having tasted apples every week of their lives, it was our children’s first chance to actually grab one from a tree.

You could see their minds spinning, trying to connect the dots — they knew both apples and trees, but could not imagine them holding hands like this. They stared up in amazement as branches like the ones they’ve found in our front yard now reached out, wrapped in bright green cardigans, and nearly handed them the juicy red fruit. And, of course, they tasted better than any we ever bought from one of those bins at the store.

“God made a world even God could admire.”

To our shame, my wife and I weren’t connecting dots anymore. We were just trying to keep our kids from throwing apples at each other or bothering the innocent bystanders filling bags around us. So which of us saw the actual reality of the orchard? Who saw the apples as they really are — the 6-year-old or the 36-year-old? Chesterton weighs in,

When we are asked why eggs turn to birds or fruits fall in autumn, we must answer exactly as the fairy godmother would answer if Cinderella asked her why mice turned to horses or her clothes fell from her at twelve o’clock. We must answer that it is magic. . . . The only words that ever satisfied me as describing Nature are the terms used in the fairy books, “charm,” “spell,” “enchantment.” They express the arbitrariness of the fact and its mystery. A tree grows fruit because it is a magic tree. Water runs downhill because it is bewitched. The sun shines because it is bewitched. (71–72)

Our decades-long familiarity with this magic doesn’t make creation any less magical.

That we’ve watched God do his magic over and over and over again, doesn’t make it less miraculous. That we can begin to predict what will happen — birds from eggs, apples from trees, rainbows from storms — doesn’t suddenly render any of it “natural.” As much as modern science might have us think otherwise, nothing in all of creation is on autopilot. No, the Son of God “upholds the universe,” every apple of every kind in every orchard, “by the word of his power” (Hebrews 1:3) — even the ones in those store-bought bins.

God Has Not Grown Old

In this way, our cute, “naïve” children are our theology professors. Watch as Chesterton traces a typical boy’s imagination into heaven:

Grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. The repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical encore. (81–82)

Don’t believe him? Then let God tell you in his own words:

God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. And God saw that the light was good. . . . God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good. . . . And God saw that it was good. . . . And God saw that it was good. . . . And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. (Genesis 1:3–31)

God made a world even God could admire. And we only assume he eventually got bored with it all because we’re not him, because we don’t see this world like he does — because we assume he’s like us.

“Give yourself some space to be curious again, to ask the questions you haven’t asked in decades.”

If you understand what Chesterton’s saying, you can’t see a sunset the same. It’s even more stunning when you realize (as a pastor once showed me) that God not only paints a new sunset for us every 24 hours, but that as the world spins, he’s always painting sunsets. He never puts the brush down. Somewhere in the world, right now, he’s ushering the sun below the horizon again, conducting her slowly with his brush, mixing in oranges, purples, and blues.

And as he does, his heart soars over what he sees. Because when it comes to sunsets, God is more my son than he is me.

Remember That You Forget

This dulling dynamic in adults is rooted in a subtle but dangerous forgetfulness. Chesterton warns us that, in the end, all of this is really not about raccoons, apples, and sunsets:

We have all forgotten what we really are. All that we call common sense and rationality and practicality and positivism only means that for certain dead levels of our life we forget that we have forgotten. All that we call spirit and art and ecstasy only means that for one awful instant we remember that we forgot. (74)

Have you been lulled into forgetfulness? Have you even forgotten that you’ve forgotten? Have the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches and the desires for other things slowly choked out your ability for awe and wonder? Then find an orchard or a local park. Go outside at dusk. Take that walk you’ve wanted to take. Be on the lookout for the bunnies, squirrels, birds, and bugs you’ve trained yourself to ignore. Give yourself some space to be curious again, to ask the questions you haven’t asked in decades.

And if you happen to have one, take a 6-year-old with you.

As a senior in high school, I played an accountant in The Actor’s Nightmare. He wakes up on stage, in the middle of a play, only he doesn’t remember any of his lines, or how he got on stage, or when he ever read a script or attended a rehearsal, or even what play he’s in. Everyone around him knows who they are and who he is, but he’s lost, clueless, and letting everyone down — all with a big audience watching.

The play was inspired by the awful recurring dream so many actors have, being suddenly thrust on stage to perform a show they do not recognize, in a role they cannot name, with lines they cannot recite. The nightmare, however, might also be an accurate picture of how many young single men (even Christian single men) feel in their actual, wide-awake lives. Who am I supposed to be? What role am I meant to play? Who are the good guys and bad guys? Where am I supposed to stand and work and live? What story am I in? What wars am I trying to win?

Stumbling Through Singleness

When I see that accountant stumbling around the stage, putting his foot in his mouth, sweating profusely, I see something of my own single life — wrestling with where to go to school, shuffling through majors, meeting new friends, losing touch with old ones, then reconnecting with some, starting my first job, and then my second job, and then my third job, moving from apartment to apartment, then house to house and city to city, trying to find a wife and failing, and then trying again and failing, and then mustering the courage to try again. All while everyone seems to be watching me sweat and stumble.

So how do you think the accountant figured out who he was? He studied the other people on stage. The keys to knowing who he was supposed to be lay with the men and women who had been placed, very intentionally, around him. What if the same is true for living as a more faithful single man? What if some of us stumble, wander, and struggle more than we have to because we spend so much time looking in at ourselves and so little time looking out and around at others? For some of us, it’s like we woke up on stage, in the middle of a play, and yet never mustered the courage to get out of bed, much less play an actual role.

My burden in this article is to give Christian single men better perspective and greater courage in singleness. I want to convince you that you are not as single or alone as you think. Because I wasted some single years. Because I’ve watched other men do the same. Because you don’t have to. I want to help men like you play the man God made you to be.

Fundamental Questions for Men

What questions do you think drive and consume the average twentysomething man? What kinds of questions keep him up at night and spur his decisions?

Where do I work?
What is my role?
How much do I make?
What do I want to watch?
What did so-and-so say about so-and-so on Twitter?
Where do I want to eat?
Did my team win or lose?
How much can I afford to buy?

Many men spend most of their best strength and energy, day after day, year after year, on shallow questions like these. I want you to ask better questions, bigger questions that will demand more of you and draw more out of you. In the end, I want you to see yourself, through these questions, as less isolated and alone.

1. Who’s Over Me?

Before we look at the relationships around us on stage, we need to remember who wrote the script for us. Before a man can be the man he was made to be, he needs to know and love the one who made him to be. If we could trace all the dysfunctions and failures that plague men to one root issue, it would be our disregard of God.

Do you believe that about yourself? Do you see that the health of every other relationship in your life grows out of your relationship with Christ? We’ll never faithfully act out the part we have been given if we’re out of touch with the Author of the story.

The apostle Paul writes specifically against sexual sin in 1 Corinthians 6, but what he says helps us make sense of every other dysfunction in a man’s life:

Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body. (1 Corinthians 6:19–20)

As much as you may feel otherwise from day to day and week to week, you are not your own. You don’t get to do whatever you want, whenever you want — not if you’re in Christ. You belong to him twice over: he made you and he redeemed you. So glorify God in your body — consecrate your body, your time, your energy, your ambition more fully to him. Strive to cultivate, enjoy, and model an “undivided devotion to the Lord” (1 Corinthians 7:35).

2. Who’s Ahead of Me?

As a man, you will inevitably become like the men you admire, spend time with, and imitate. The calculus won’t always be easy, but discerning people will be able to trace aspects of who you are to the men who have had the most influence on you (for better or worse). Many young men fail to mature because they lack mature men to follow and learn from. They grow up and live without good fathers.

As I near forty, and have now discipled younger men for years, I believe no single earthly factor will determine a man’s maturity more than the man (or men) who father him. And yet too few men have good fathers in the faith. Maybe they have men they admire and imitate from afar, but they don’t have an older man who actually knows them well enough to affirm, confront, and encourage them specifically and personally. John Calvin and John Piper can be spiritual fathers for you (they are for me), but they can’t be your only fathers (or even your main ones).

Who can say of you what Paul says of the younger men in Corinth?

I do not write these things to make you ashamed, but to admonish you as my beloved children. For though you have countless guides in Christ, you do not have many fathers. For I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel. I urge you, then, be imitators of me. (1 Corinthians 4:14–16)

He can say, I’ve known you well enough to call you beloved children, and you’ve known me well enough to imitate my way of life. What older man knows you well enough to say that? What older man do you know well enough to imitate how he meets with God, how he loves his wife and children, how he serves the church, how he wins the lost? If you don’t yet have a father relationship like that, who could that man be? The best place to begin looking is in your local church, where the family of God — fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers — lives together and loves one another (Matthew 12:49–50).

In my experience, the younger man will often have to initiate relationships like these, so don’t wait for an older man to come put his arm around you. Identify the men worth imitating, and then go and ask them for wisdom, for counsel, for time, for fathering. Look for ways to come alongside them in the ordinary rhythms of their lives. Make it as easy as possible for them to spend time with you.

3. Who’s Beside Me?

After a good father, every man also needs good brothers. He needs friends. And not just any friends, but friends who consistently draw him toward God and draw God out of him. This is why men instinctively love the picture from Proverbs 27:17: “Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another.” Sharpen iron for what? He’s likely talking about sharpening an axe or a sword. Men sharpen one another for battle, and we’re all at war (Ephesians 6:12). Who helps you fight well?

These aren’t buddies you watch football with or play video games with online. They’re men whose faith makes your heart rise and run after Christ, who kneel down and pick you up when you stumble and fall, who rally you to live worthy of your calling and hold you accountable, who jump into the hard trenches of life and ministry with you. They’re not just men anymore, or even just friends; they’re brothers.

We’re looking for something deeper and stronger than biological brotherhood. Proverbs says of this rare kind of friend, “A man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother” (Proverbs 18:24). Do you have male friends like that? If not, who might become your company of iron? Again, start with your church. At first, it may not seem that you have a lot in common with those men, but if you share Christ, you have far more in common than you realize. Every friendship that’s risen to this level in my life started with meeting to open God’s word together. Most of them grew and matured through serving the church in some tangible way together.

4. Who’s Behind Me?

Few men have good fathers in the faith. I’m tempted to say even fewer have found and made sons in the faith. But every man of God should be a spiritual father to someone. This is what faithful Christianity is: “Make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:19–20). Who are those disciples for you? If nothing in our lives looks or sounds like Jesus’s Commission, then are we really living a Christian life? Can we really say we’re following Christ?

The apostle Paul had many sons in the faith, including a young man named Timothy. He says to Timothy, “What you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also” (2 Timothy 2:2). In other words, Timothy, as I have been a father to you in Christ, go and be a father to others. Take a younger, less mature man under your wing for a season, and patiently and diligently teach him the ropes of following Jesus. Draw him into your life and marriage and family and work, and then live so that you can say, “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ” (1 Corinthians 11:1). As you do, you’ll be surprised how much you grow and benefit from pouring your life into him (Philippians 4:1).

It really doesn’t matter how old you are or how long you have been a Christian. If you’re old enough to read this article, some younger man — in your church, in your neighborhood, at your job — looks up to you. How are you stewarding his eyes? How are you engaging his questions, desires, and failures? Again, don’t wait for him to ask you for help or counsel. Go and be a father.

5. Who’s Against Me?

Satan knows that the most solid single men are the men most loved by spiritual fathers, brothers, and sons. He’ll do whatever he can to make you feel alone, and then to make that loneliness feel like freedom. He’ll make danger feel safe. He’ll slowly lead you away from the kinds of relationships you need, and then distract you with meaningless anxieties and pleasures. Do you even know you live at war?

Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith. (1 Peter 5:8–9)

In your apartment, at your desk, beside your bed, on your computer, even over your Bible, you have an enemy. A fierce and intimidating enemy. If the Christian life feels hard — if relationships like the ones I’m describing above feel unrealistic or even impossible at times — it’s partly because someone is relentlessly attacking and undermining you. He’s not a metaphor. He’s a real spiritual being, and he hates you. He wants to devour you.

But if you are Christ’s man, the one who lives in you is stronger than the one who wars against you. And he’s not a metaphor or a fairytale, either. He’s the King of the universe, the Warrior who will judge the earth, and you are fighting on his side. So don’t ignore your enemy or underestimate him, but don’t back down either. Lean on the men you need — fathers, brothers, and sons — and follow Christ into battle.

If you lived in his neighborhood, it would be hard not to be at least a little jealous. He has everything any ordinary man on the street would want — a large property with a beautiful home, a successful business and lots of employees, every earthly comfort and luxury a man could want.

He was born into a wealthy family, and so has never really known need. He was rich before he could talk. And if the inheritance weren’t enough, the family business is still thriving. He’s achieved a level of prosperity many men sweat and grind their whole lives to have, but never taste. If you could see inside his garage, he’d probably have cars worth the price of a small house.

On top of all that, he married an amazing woman — wise, beautiful, delightful, rare. The more you’re around her, the more you want to be around her. She knows what to say (and what not to say). She leaves people wondering how any man snared a diamond like her. Their life is the kind of life millions would want to stream on Netflix. Many would see him from afar and assume he’s the picture of a blessed husband.

But when God looks at that same man, he calls him worthless.

Man Against God’s Heart

When we meet Nabal (the name literally means “fool,” which raises some real questions about his upbringing), David has landed in his fields while fleeing from King Saul. David and his men are hungry, and so the anointed leader bows to ask for food. Notice how humbly and respectfully he makes his request:

Peace be to you, and peace be to your house, and peace be to all that you have. I hear that you have shearers. Now your shepherds have been with us, and we did them no harm, and they missed nothing all the time they were in Carmel. Ask your young men, and they will tell you. Therefore let my young men find favor in your eyes, for we come on a feast day. Please give whatever you have at hand to your servants and to your son David. (1 Samuel 25:6–8)

Nabal’s men later confirm David’s story: “The men were very good to us, and we suffered no harm, and we did not miss anything when we were in the fields, as long as we went with them. They were a wall to us both by night and by day” (1 Samuel 25:15–16). Not only did David’s men not harm Nabal’s shepherds, but they actually shielded and blessed them. His own men think he should feed these guys.

In response, Nabal lives up to his name:

Who is David? Who is the son of Jesse? There are many servants these days who are breaking away from their masters. Shall I take my bread and my water and my meat that I have killed for my shearers and give it to men who come from I do not know where? (1 Samuel 25:10–11)

He knows exactly who David is. Why else would he call him “the son of Jesse” (a name Saul spitefully uses again and again, 1 Samuel 20:27, 30–31; 22:13)? While David kneels with empty hands, Nabal spits in his face and sends him away. And if it wasn’t for his remarkable wife, Abigail, it would have cost him his life right then and there (1 Samuel 25:13).

Five Marks of a Foolish Husband

What might Christian husbands learn from Nabal? We learn at least five ways to be a bad man and a foolish husband.

Strength Without Love

Nabal had the kind of strength that might impress and intimidate weaker men. He was a man of the field and worked with his hands, sheering sheep. He used his strength, however, in despicable ways. When Scripture introduces the couple, its writer says, “The woman was discerning and beautiful, but the man was harsh and badly behaved” (1 Samuel 25:3). That one word — harsh — sums up his failures as a man. He used his God-given strength to wound, rather than heal; to threaten, rather than protect. He relied on force to do what love should do. He was cruel.

His strength was not the problem. No, godly husbands are strong men — they must be to do what God calls them to do, bear what God calls them to bear, and confront what God calls them to confront. In Christ, men put off laziness, timidity, and fragility. We put on the armor of God to fight the battles of God in the strength of God. And as we exercise that strength, those in our homes and churches (unlike those closest to Nabal) are cared for and safe. Any discerning wife loves being led by a strong man who loves well.

Courage Without Wisdom

You can’t read a story like this and question Nabal’s nerve. When the Lord’s anointed, armed and dangerous, stood in his front yard and asked for food for his small army of soldiers, the man sends them away. “Who is David? Who is the son of Jesse?” He basically drew a flaming arrow and aimed it at a hungry warrior’s chest, spurning caution and inviting violence. He had the backbone to stand his ground, but he’d chosen the wrong place to stand. He planted his flag on foolishness, and risked everything for pride.

Again, courage was not his problem. Godly men are more willing than most to sacrifice themselves for the good of others. They wear promises like Isaiah 41:10, “Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.” And because God, not self, is the source and aim of their bravery, they don’t pick dumb fights (especially with their wives). They don’t endanger those they’re called to protect for the sake of their ego. They risk themselves wisely and in love. They know when to step in and stand their ground — for their families, for the church, for their God — and when to turn the other cheek.

Wealth Without Generosity

For all the evil Nabal could and did do, God still allowed him to prosper for a time. He had the kind of barns that could comfortably feed a small army. He wasn’t just rich. “The man was very rich,” God tells us. “He had three thousand sheep and a thousand goats” (1 Samuel 25:2). We’re meant to feel the weight of this man’s wealth — and just how badly he handles it. He could feed David and his men, with no significant loss, but he wouldn’t. He could have met a hundred needs, but he chose to spend what he had on what he wanted instead. He was selfish and stingy toward every appetite but his own.

Nabal had built the bigger barns. He embodied the fool’s anthem: “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry” (Luke 12:19). And what does God say to that man? “Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” (v. 20). To which Jesus adds, “So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God” (v. 21). And being rich toward God typically means being generous toward someone else. It means laying up treasure for others, meeting their needs at our (sometimes significant) expense. Godly husbands are givers, like our Father, not keepers or takers.

Success Without Gratitude

Nabal was running a booming company. His stock was rising. His board was well-pleased with the profits. By all accounts, this man’s career was a wild success. That is, by all accounts but one. God looked at all Nabal had achieved and earned, and he saw failure. He saw bankruptcy. He called the whole enterprise worthless. How many men, even in our churches, are killing it in the office and yet losing everywhere else? How many are esteemed by their colleagues and competitors and yet barely tolerated at home? How many of us have endless ambition outside our family and church, but little leftover to give where it matters most?

Godly men work hard, whatever work they do, as for their Lord and not for men (Colossians 3:23). Christian men do their work with unusual excellence — and unusual gratitude. Notice how Nabal talks: “Shall I take my bread and my water and my meat that I have killed for my shearers and give it to men who come from I do not know where?” God gave him everything, and got credit for nothing. And then, when God guarded his servants and sheep, he returned that kindness with evil (1 Samuel 25:21). Good husbands are relentlessly humble and grateful, even in the little gains and successes. And because they’re faithful in the little, God often gives them more (Luke 19:17, 24–26).

Hunger Without Self-Control

Lastly, Nabal was a man mastered by his cravings. The passions of his flesh waged war on his soul, and his soul all too quickly waved the white flag. When Abigail came to find him, “he was holding a feast in his house, like the feast of a king. And Nabal’s heart was merry within him, for he was very drunk” (1 Samuel 25:36). Even with men of war waiting outside, he reached for the bottle and poured himself another drink. When the people under his roof needed him to rise and play the man, he instead chose to enjoy some mindless, silly, numbing pleasures. He gratified himself and abandoned everyone else.

Before we despise him too quickly, don’t we sometimes do the same, even if in subtler ways? Do we too easily check out and desert our posts as husbands and fathers? What indulgence in our lives tends to numb our sense of spiritual and relational urgency and responsibility?

When the apostle Paul comes to older men in the church, he charges them, “Older men are to be sober-minded, dignified, self-controlled, sound in faith, in love, and in steadfastness” (Titus 2:2). When he comes to the younger men a few verses later, he says, simply, “Urge the younger men to be self-controlled” (Titus 2:6). Not joyless. Godly husbands are happy men, but not in cheap, easy, superficial ways.

Men mastered by grace are men who master themselves. We’re not, like many men, relying on football games, smoked meat, video games, or craft cocktails for relief and exhilaration. We’re thrilled to be the chosen sons of God, the blood-bought brothers of Christ, the future kings of the universe. And we enjoy every other earthly gift — food and drink, marriage and sex, football and Netflix — in moderation, to preserve the highest, fullest, strongest pleasure, namely God.

Worth of Worthy Men

Nabal, like a number of other husbands in Scripture, teaches husbands what not to be and do. His failures, however, lay out something of a constructive map for us. They teach us that men will be measured, in large part, by how we treat what (and whom) God has entrusted to us.

We’ll be measured by how we treat our stuff — our sheep and goats and monthly paychecks. Are we selfless and self-controlled, or selfish and indulgent? Do the time, money, and gifts we’ve been given consistently meet real needs around us? For men in the world, what they have is their god, and so they receive and spend it horribly. Those whose God is in heaven, though, don’t demand divinity of their prosperity, and so they hold their possessions loosely and give them away freely. They know that, in God, they have “a better possession and an abiding one” (Hebrews 10:34).

We’ll also be measured by how we treat the people in our lives — the wife beside us, the children behind us, the neighbors next to us, the church family around us, the people who look up to (and maybe even report to) us. Men don’t often die wishing they had put in a lot more hours at the office or made a harder run at that promotion. They very often die wishing they had prioritized the people who were waiting at home or sitting in the next pew. Strive, by the grace of God, to be your most fruitful where it matters most. Don’t be known first and foremost by how you work and what you have, but by how you love and what you give.

Ultimately, though, we’ll be measured by how we treat God’s anointed. Nabal sent the chosen king away hungry, and then added insult to that injury. Since then, God has sent a new and greater David. He’s sent his own Son into our world, into our city, even to our front door. So how will we receive him? And not just on Sunday mornings, but on Monday afternoons and Friday evenings too. Will we give him more attention than Nabal gave David that day? Will we run to him, prioritize him, praise him, and share him?

In the end, then, what separates good husbands from bad ones, the faithful from the unfaithful, is how we treat Jesus.

If you desire to serve as a pastor, you desire a noble task (1 Timothy 3:1) — literally, a good work. When God surveys the mountain range of your desire, he sees wisdom, beauty, and honor. The worldly may pity the pastor. They see anything but nobility. But not you. When you look at the real costs and inconveniences of ministry, you see glory and eternity and gain. Whether anyone ever paid you to pastor or not, you couldn’t be content to devote your short life any other way.

And yet, for some of you, you’re still not a pastor. As much as your desire to pastor may please God, it has not yet pleased him to open a door for you to actually pastor. The waiting can be as disorienting as longing to be married but struggling to find a date, or aching to have children while amassing pregnancy tests. If God loves this work, and if churches need this work, and if you want this work, why would God withhold it from you, sometimes for years?

Because God often does as much through our waiting as he does through our serving. Sometimes God makes us wait for doors to open in ministry because unwanted waiting is some of the best preparation for ministry. That means closed doors really can become spiritual gifts to those who will humbly kneel before them.

But what can we do while we wait? How do we keep ourselves from wasting the years before we enter formal ministry? How do we squeeze as much good as possible from a closed door? Over the last decade, I’ve learned at least seven practical lessons while waiting outside doors of my own.

1. Purify Your Ambition

One reason God withholds ministry from those aspiring to ministry is because the aspiration itself needs refining. That the task is noble does not necessarily mean that our desire has risen to such nobility. People seek out positions of leadership for all kinds of reasons (and sometimes, honorable motives are deeply mixed with dishonorable ones). We may want to glorify Christ and love his people, but deep down, we also want recognition, or influence, or power and authority. Our ambition needs purifying.

Sometimes this selfishness lies across the path to ministry like a fallen tree after a storm. We can’t always see our own selfishness, but God is kind to help us remove it. A season of waiting can be a season for better aspiring. In these times, it’s especially good to pray prayers like Psalm 139:23–24,

Search me, O God, and know my heart!     Try me and know my thoughts!And see if there be any grievous way in me,     and lead me in the way everlasting!

In his classic book, The Christian Ministry, Charles Bridges presses home three qualities of a godly desire to pastor. First, godly desire is a constraining desire, one that persists and intensifies over time. Waiting helps us test the strength and stamina of our desire. Second, godly desire is a considerate desire, meaning we have sufficiently counted the cost. Waiting gives us time to begin serving and to seek out the stories and counsel of those further along in ministry. Lastly, godly desire is an unselfish desire, meaning it’s not focused on self — praise, power, esteem — but on the glory of Christ and the good of his bride. Waiting proves and strengthens our readiness to deny ourselves, pick up our cross, and follow him.

2. Strengthen Your Character

The qualifications for eldership in 1 Timothy 3:1–7 and Titus 1:6–9 touch on various areas of a man’s life — how he speaks, how he drinks, how he spends his money, how he responds to conflict, what kind of husband and father he is — but they’re really all about who he is. The qualifications are searching for outer evidence of inner character — not perfect evidence, but real and persistent evidence.

So, God might be withholding ministry to give your character time and space to mature. Therefore, in your season of waiting, “be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election” (2 Peter 1:10).

Make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. (2 Peter 1:5–8)

This stage of pastoral preparation is not unlike premarital counseling. No couple can address every character flaw or potential area of conflict in three or four or five sessions with a counselor. It’s impossible. But that doesn’t mean premarital counseling is futile. Everything you can address (or at least begin to address) in premarital will have some good effect in marriage. The same is true in preparation for pastoral ministry.

So, which areas of your life and character could use more prayerful attention and consistent accountability? You cannot imagine all the future fruit your church might receive from your diligently sowing godliness now.

3. Pastor Your Home Better

When you read through the qualifications for eldership, which one feels the most daunting to you? Someone could certainly make an argument for “able to teach” (“I sweat even thinking about public speaking”), or “hospitable” (“Do you know what my house is like with small kids?”), or “well thought of by outsiders” (“You don’t know my neighbors”). I would argue for a different one though: “He must manage his own household well” (1 Timothy 3:4). In other words, we know how well a man will lead a church by how well he has led his home.

In most cases, this will be the qualification that requires the most forethought, sacrifice, and follow-through. If God has given you a wife and children, they are the first proving grounds for your qualification and preparation for church office. No man who fails here should be entrusted with the people of God. “For if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God’s church?” (1 Timothy 3:5).

And yet every man, even the most qualified, can stand to grow here. So, if God gives you a season without formal responsibility in the church, receive it as a golden opportunity to lead even better in the high and holy responsibilities you have at home. Initiate more time in the word of God. Lead your family in singing to him. Spend more time on your knees, with them and alone. Brainstorm how you might be more hospitable together and share the gospel with neighbors. Before you begin formal ministry, use the precious time and energy you have now to fortify the spiritual foundation of your home.

4. Refine Your Abilities

If God has given you gifts that others believe would be useful as a pastor, a season of waiting can be a great time to identify and nurture those gifts. You don’t have to wait until you’re preaching regularly to develop your ability to teach. You don’t have to have formal office hours for counseling to begin helping other believers through conflict and crisis. In fact, you don’t have to have a title to meet most of the needs in your church. How, then, might you use your gifts now to be a blessing to others?

Bobby Jamieson, in his excellent book for those aspiring to ministry, wisely counsels younger men, “Aim to be mistaken for an elder before you are appointed an elder” (The Path to Being a Pastor, 67). You cannot be a pastor until a church calls you to pastor, but you do not need to be a pastor to begin serving, teaching, leading, and loving like one. In fact, as Jamieson says, no man should be called to pastoral ministry who is not already doing some, if not much, of the work of pastors.

The apostle Paul urges his protégé Timothy, “Do not neglect the gift you have, which was given you by prophecy when the council of elders laid their hands on you. Practice these things, immerse yourself in them, so that all may see your progress” (1 Timothy 4:14–15). He returns to the same point in his second letter: “Fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands” (2 Timothy 1:6). So, if others have seen abilities of teaching and counsel in you, what could you do to fan the flame of those abilities? How might you immerse yourself in ministering the word? What opportunities has God given you now, however modest, to teach and meet needs in your church?

5. Count the Cost

Many men who aspire to pastoral ministry really aspire to the more fulfilling facets of ministry — studying God’s word, helping the congregation see what’s there, watching people become liberated from sin and reconciled to one another, winning souls to Christ. Fewer aspire to the costs. Some are almost completely ignorant of the costs. And there are serious, sometimes overwhelming costs to ministry.

Jesus says to the great crowds who seem so eager to follow him,

Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, “This man began to build and was not able to finish.” (Luke 14:27–30)

The warning applies all the more to pastors. Have you given yourself time to look beyond the appealing aspects of ministry to its darker, more discouraging sides? One way to count the cost in a season of waiting would be to spend regular time with a veteran pastor or two. Find a man willing to be vulnerable about how hard pastoring can be. Ask him to paint a wider, fuller picture of the warfare he faces than you can imagine on your own.

6. Discern the Right Door

God may have withheld some opportunities from you simply because he has a particular opportunity in mind for you. There are real spiritual dimensions to any ministry job search. Paul says to the church in Thessalonica, “We endeavored the more eagerly and with great desire to see you face to face, because we wanted to come to you . . . but Satan hindered us” (1 Thessalonians 2:17–18). Paul wanted to minister there, and that desire was a noble desire — and the church wanted him to come — and yet Satan hindered him. Ministry did not happen because evil was allowed to intervene (at least for a time). A door was closed, and God had a good reason for leaving it closed.

Elsewhere, Paul highlights other spiritual dynamics: “When I came to Troas to preach the gospel of Christ, even though a door was opened for me in the Lord, my spirit was not at rest because I did not find my brother Titus there. So I took leave of them and went on to Macedonia” (2 Corinthians 2:12–13). The door was open in Troas, and Paul wanted to be there, but he didn’t feel peace about staying there. He took Titus’s unexpected absence as a reason to leave for now and walk through a door in Macedonia instead. So, for various reasons, even some open doors may not be the right doors.

And some right doors may not immediately seem open. Look closely at how Paul talks about an opportunity he took in a different city: “I will stay in Ephesus until Pentecost, for a wide door for effective work has opened to me, and there are many adversaries” (1 Corinthians 16:8–9). He saw a wide-open door even though the enemies were many. While many might have interpreted intense opposition as a closed door, he saw the opposite. So, just because a particular ministry opportunity looks challenging, even very challenging, it still might be the right door.

All to say, a season of unwanted waiting may be necessary to make sure you land where God wants you. You may knock on closed door after closed door because you haven’t reached the door he has opened wide for you. So, pray with Paul that God may open to you the right “door for the word, to declare the mystery of Christ” (Colossians 4:3) — and that you’d recognize it when he does.

7. Care for Souls

Lastly, and most fundamentally, the call to pastor is a call to shepherd, to live and die for the good of the sheep. When Jesus, the Good Shepherd, restores and commissions Peter after his betrayal, he charges him three times (mercifully, once for each denial) in John 21:15–17,

“Feed my lambs.”

“Tend my sheep.”

“Feed my sheep.”

This is pastoral ministry in five words: “Feed and tend my sheep.” Sheep-work is rarely thrilling, glorious, or fragrant. It’s simple. It’s repetitive. It can be messy. It’s often thankless. But if these sheep belong to Jesus, and one day will be washed clean and made like him, there’s no more important work in the world. If God has called you to ministry, you see that filthy wool and those wandering feet, and your heart strangely rises with love and devotion. You want to give yourself to the word, so that one day you might help present them to Christ.

So, spend time with the sheep. Tend the sheep. Love the sheep. Embrace a season of waiting and serving in the church with a graduate-level degree in shepherding. Do what good pastors do, and begin to make yourself at home in the pasture.

As I get older, decisions in life don’t seem to get smaller and easier, but bigger, harder, and more frequent.

In the moment, we often think the hardest decision we’ll ever face is whichever one we have to make right now. If we look back in ten years, though, this whale of a decision may begin to look a little more like a dolphin or a penguin.

When I was in my early twenties, the most difficult decision I had made was whether to stay near home for college (with my friends) or wander outside the safety of southern Ohio. Tears were shed. By my mid-thirties, however, I had made a dozen decisions bigger than that one. Where will I live? Where will I go to church? What will I do for a living, and who will pay me to do that? Whom will I marry? When will we try to have kids? Will I stay in this job? What school will we send our kids to? How will we pay for that? And those are just the big decisions most people have to make at some point. You have question marks of your own.

This year brought some new whales into our family’s harbor, and so we’ve been in need of fresh wisdom and clarity. As we wrestled through these weighty decisions, I was reading The Chronicles of Narnia with my six-year-old. On one of our hikes through its forests, my son and I came to a crossroads (as one often does in Narnia). And it was one of those crossroads that unveils the magic of Lewis’s world.

While standing there beside a dwarf (Trumpkin) and looking out over a gorge separating the four Pevensie children from Prince Caspian’s army, I suddenly wasn’t looking at a dwarf anymore, or a gorge, or even a book. I was looking at my life, at the hard decisions I needed to make. I was looking at myself. It was as if Lewis himself had decided to stop over from mid-twentieth-century Oxford to help me choose between the paths before me.

A Godless Calculus

Where we were reading, King Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy are hiking with Trumpkin, trying to find the Great River. After arduous days, they’re questioning whether they’ve gone the wrong way when they suddenly come to a gorge. The chasm is too wide to cross, so they must either follow the gorge downstream, hoping it meets the river, or climb upstream, looking for a place to cross. Trumpkin’s convinced that the gorge must fall into the river somewhere below, and Peter quickly approves. “Come on, then. Down this side of the gorge” (Prince Caspian, 131). At that moment, though, young Lucy sees an old, majestic friend.

“Look! Look! Look!” cried Lucy.

“Where? What?” asked everyone.

“The Lion,” said Lucy. “Aslan himself. Didn’t you see?” Her face had changed completely and her eyes shone.

The other children, not able to see Aslan themselves, immediately suspect she’s seeing things. Lucy won’t back down, though. As they search and search and see nothing, they ask where exactly she saw the lion.

Right up there between those mountain ashes. No, this side of the gorge. And up, not down. Just the opposite of the way you want to go. And he wanted us to go where he was — up there. (132)

“Anyone who regularly reads the Bible, by the Spirit, sees the lion every day.”

As Lucy insists, the dwarf resists. “I know nothing about Aslan. But I do know that if we turn left and follow the gorge up, it might lead us all day before we found a place where we could cross it. Whereas if we turn right and go down, we’re bound to reach the Great River in about a couple of hours. And if there are any real lions about, we want to go away from them, not towards them” (133). He’s the voice of conventional wisdom. He can calculate only what he can see.

In this case, his small, narrow eyes win the day, so the company turns right and goes down.

Unconventional Wisdom

First, the way turns out to be not as “conventional” as it had seemed: “To keep along the edge of the gorge was not so easy as it had looked” (135). They fight through dense woods until they can’t anymore and have to back out and go around the trees. When they find the gorge again, the hike down is slower and more treacherous than they expected.

As they finally near the bottom, they take another turn like so many before, and suddenly the Great River stretches out before them. Their spirits surge, lifting their sore feet and tired legs. The children are busy talking again — and then the arrows come. The evil King Miraz had posted soldiers near the river, who chase the children, sending them back to where they started.

“I suppose we’ll have to go right up the gorge again now,” says Lucy (142).

When they get all the way back to the top, they stop and make camp for the night. The dwarf prepares a great meal for the crew, and they all fall into a deep sleep. In the middle of the night, Aslan wakes Lucy and tells her to wake the others. The older kids still don’t believe her, but with the hissing sound of arrows still ringing in their ears, they decide to follow anyway. As they walk together through the dark, the lion shows them a path down into the gorge they never would have noticed. And before morning comes, they have found King Caspian and the others.

Meeting God in the Forest

Now, what might Lucy’s childlike wisdom mean for our crossroads? When it comes to complicated and heavy decisions, do we just follow whatever inner impulse we have? No, that’s not how God — or Aslan — leads. Lucy wasn’t following some inner impulse. She really saw a lion, with fur and paws and teeth. She wasn’t following a hunch or intuition; this was reverence and obedience. He showed her the way to go, and expected her to go, even if the others couldn’t see what she saw yet.

What do we do, though, when we wrestle and pray and labor over a decision, and a lion hasn’t come yet? How might God come and stand on a path for us?

The most important thing to say is that anyone who regularly reads the Bible, by the Spirit, sees the lion every day. The word of God is the one inspired, infallible path he has given us for life. “His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises” (2 Peter 1:3–4). Google can’t provide answers like these. Artificial intelligence is a shadow of such wisdom. A hundred PhDs would only scratch the surface. We have no idea what we hold in the pages of this Book.

The Bible is not peripheral to your marriage and family decisions, your work decisions, your schedule decisions, your church and ministry decisions, your giving and saving decisions, your medical decisions. In his word, his Spirit, and his church, God really has given you everything you could conceivably need to make the daunting decision standing before you.

The Lion in Their Eyes

When it comes to your crossroads, don’t forget the church. Along with the word and his Spirit, God gives us other word-saturated, Spirit-filled, flesh-and-blood fountains of wisdom.

Lucy found the right path by listening to Aslan. Peter, Susan, and Edmund found the right path by listening to Lucy. She saw what they could not see yet, because Aslan had decided to reveal it to her first. How often does this happen with us? Our perspective and judgment are clouded by the weight of a decision, until the right friend comes. They’re not blinded by our fog, and so they’re able to see through it and guide us out. “Without counsel plans fail, but with many advisers they succeed” (Proverbs 15:22).

“God really has given you everything you could conceivably need to make the daunting decision standing before you.”

When we join a local church, as ordinary or simple as it may seem on the surface, we are being surgically woven into a whole new nervous system of wisdom. God has specifically gifted the people in our church — through his word, through their resources and experiences, through gifts of his Spirit — to meet real needs in our lives, including helping us make wise plans and life decisions. If you’re wrestling between two paths right now, who in your church might already know something about those paths? What might God show them to help guide you?

And what might he show you to help guide someone else? At times, you’ll need a Lucy. At other times, you’ll be a Lucy. God will give you unique, supernatural perspectives on decisions that your friends and family won’t be able to see at first. They’ll need the lion in your eyes.

Following After Trees

Lucy has one more lesson for us. When Aslan appears to her that second time (while the others are still sleeping), he leads her on a walk through the forest glade. As she follows the voice of the lion, she sees something unsettling among the trees. The trees themselves — those dark, towering, leafy pillars — seem to be moving. And not just moving, but dancing.

Why were they dancing, and why now? Not because Lucy and the others had finally chosen the right path, but because of the one roaming that path.

She went fearlessly in among the trees, dancing herself as she leaped this way and that to avoid being run into by these huge partners. But she was only half-interested in them. She wanted to get beyond them to something else; it was from beyond them that the dear voice had called. (146)

Moments later, she is face-to-face with him again. “Lucy rushed to him. She felt her heart would burst if she lost a moment. And the next thing she knew was that she was kissing him and putting her arms as far round his neck as she could and burying her face in the beautiful rich silkiness of his mane” (148).

I found this scene — a frail girl’s heart wrapped tight around the ferocious lion — to be as illuminating and stirring as any. Yes, the lion knew which way to go, but the trees say much more than that. He didn’t just know the way; he was the way. And he was the destination. The wise path, whether up the gorge, down the gorge, around the gorge, or over the gorge, was always going to be wherever his big paws were.

And so, perhaps the best question to ask when faced with another big life decision would be this: Where’s the lion now? He could show up on any number of paths, and it won’t always be easy to see him (and you might not be the first to see him). But in any given decision, we want to be able to wrap our arms around his neck and bury our faces in his fur.

At any given crossroads, we want the path with more of him.

Anyone who has led a Bible study for long has encountered one of those horribly awkward moments when some well-meaning person passionately points out something in a verse that simply isn’t there.

Years ago, I was leading a memorable small group discussion of Romans 9. John Piper once described these 33 verses as “a tiger going about devouring free-willers.” “He has mercy on whomever he wills,” the apostle Paul writes, “and he hardens whomever he wills.” The chapter is a captivating, sobering mountain range of the sovereignty of God and unconditional election. When we finished reading it out loud as a group, I opened the floor for initial responses, “So, what immediately sticks out to you from these verses?”

After a short pause, a sweet, well-meaning woman (who had just started coming to our church) dove headfirst into an uncomfortably long celebration of human free will. It started something like this: “I just love that God gives us the freedom to believe or not, that he doesn’t make the decision for us, that he leaves the choice up to us. I mean, it wouldn’t be right for him to choose some people and not others.” It was as if she had done a belly flop into what we just read. But it was more like twenty belly flops, because she just kept going and going. She wrapped up the wild splashing with a bow: “So, yeah, that’s what I saw.”

Everyone else in this particular circle knew enough to see she had missed the point entirely; they knew she was staring at apples and somehow seeing a longer, thinner yellow fruit with a peel. Unfortunately, all their fumbling twenty-something leader could manage to say in the moment was, “Well . . . those . . . are . . . some thoughts.”

What Does Meaning Even Mean?

The distance between that young woman’s “thoughts” and what Romans 9 actually says holds a critical lesson for ordinary Bible reading. Every book and verse in Scripture has a specific, original, and unchanging meaning. Behind every chapter we read is a real man with real convictions and real objectives, writing to a real audience with real needs and real problems, at a real time in history. And what it meant then, it still means now. Joe Rigney writes,

Whenever we talk about meaning, we are talking about persons. . . . If there is meaning, there must be a mean-er. Meaning exists only when someone has meant. (“Do Unto Authors”)

The Bible doesn’t say what we want it to say, or mean what we want it to mean; it says what it says, and it means what it means. Good reading, then, begins with recognizing and embracing that meaning, whatever it is. That means we don’t start our devotions by asking, “What does this mean for me?” We start with the harder question, “What does this mean?”

Many read the Bible searching for little sayings that inspire, a verse or even phrase to hold onto for the day, and in the process they end up missing what the authors are actually saying. In other words, they almost read the Bible. They open the pages and recognize words, phrases, and sentences, but they never actually get to the meaning. As a result, they often misinterpret (and misapply) what they read — and they miss the golden wisdom, warnings, and encouragements lying right in front of them.

Eight Questions for Better Reading

How do we grow in our ability to understand what authors really mean? What tools could we use to go deeper and see more in our Bible reading? I recently read Mortimer Adler’s classic, How to Read a Book, and while it’s not a distinctly Christian book, its principles offer some precious guidance for those whose God has written a Book.

Advances in technology have sadly left many of us infants in reading. Adler is a timeless beginner’s guide to reading better. As he trains students to read well, he lays out eight driving questions that help us uncover meaning. None of these relates to applying what we’re reading, but they’re valuable tools for understanding, and all good application begins with understanding. I’ll model how to work through each of his questions using one of the most familiar and beloved chapters in all the Bible: Psalm 23.

1. What kind of chapter am I reading?

In Adler’s words, “Classify the book according to kind and subject matter.” In terms of the Bible, am I reading a history or a letter or a poem or something else? Who wrote what I’m reading, and when did they write it? What was happening at that time in the Bible’s story? Did the author write before or after Jesus came? Not all books and chapters in Scripture are alike. They cover a wide range of centuries, geographies, genres, problems, and objectives.

Psalms, for instance, is a collection of songs that the people of God memorized and sang together in worship. They represent a wide range of experiences and express a wide range of emotions. As we read, we need to remember that these were written to lead the gathered people in worship. Also important to note is that they were written by a number of different authors, so we need to identify who wrote the one we’re reading (in Psalm 23, King David), and if we know anything about the circumstances of the psalm (for instance, we know that David had been a shepherd).

2. How might I summarize the chapter?

Again, in Adler’s words, “State what the whole book is about with the utmost brevity.” When it comes to Bible reading, can you summarize the overall point or theme of this chapter in a sentence or two? If someone asked you what you read this morning, how would you answer? How would you try and sum up the meaning for someone who has never read what you just read?

How might you try and summarize the six verses in Psalm 23? Your summary doesn’t need to be clever, unique, or poetic — it doesn’t need to be Instagram-worthy — it just needs to be true. I might summarize it like this: If God is your God, he will lead, protect, provide for, and satisfy you — even when it feels otherwise.

3. What big pieces do I see?

In this step, having summarized the big picture, we look for the big puzzle pieces in that picture. During this stage, think a puzzle for 3-year-olds, not one with a thousand pieces. We’re looking for a few bigger points in the author’s argument, and then trying to see how those big glaring pieces fit together.

When you look at the six verses of Psalm 23, do you see any big, distinct pieces that make up the psalm? In verses 1–4, David describes God as a shepherd, who leads his sheep into green pastures and beside still waters, who protects and comforts through danger. In verses 5–6, God’s not a shepherd anymore, but a dinner host, preparing a table for his people and welcoming them to stay in his house forever. So, how might those two big pieces fit together? They’re two complementary pictures of the goodness of God that both borrow imagery from ordinary, familiar aspects of life at that time.

4. What problem(s) does this solve?

As you read the chapter, what issue or dilemma is the author trying to address? What tension is he trying to resolve? What need is he trying to meet? The apostle Paul tells us, “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable . . . that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16–17). So, what makes these verses profitable? How, in particular, do they teach, reprove, correct, train, or encourage us?

What problem inspired David to write Psalm 23? What sends him searching for words and drives him to think about green pastures and full tables? Because he knows life doesn’t always feel like green pastures, or still waters, or full tables. He’s reminding himself (and all the others) that God draws near even when he feels far away, that he vigilantly protects us even when we feel fragile and vulnerable, that he opens wide his table even in the moments when we feel hungry and unfulfilled. In other words, the psalm unveils the reassuring light of God’s steadfast care for us in the disorienting darkness of our fears.

5. Can I explain the key words?

Are there words in this chapter that seem especially important to the author? Maybe he repeats a particular word, or maybe the word appears in an especially important verse, or maybe the word itself simply carries unusual weight or significance for the author. We often fail to understand the meaning of sentences and paragraphs because we’ve failed to come to terms with the author. We’re not hearing or using words the same way he does.

As you look for key words, are there any words you can’t define or explain? If so, then you cannot fully understand the meaning of this verse or passage. It’s easier than ever to look up a definition (even better, search the word in the Bible to see how this author, or others in Scripture, use it). Make sure you can first define all the words, and then try to identify the ones that seem most significant to the author in this particular chapter.

What words might that be in Psalm 23? If I had to pick one, it would be shepherd. And before you assume you know what that word meant for David, you might give it a second, longer look. Many of us today are extremely far removed from the harsher realities of shepherding. David wasn’t. Yes, he was well-acquainted with green pastures and still waters, but he also knew valleys dark and dangerous enough to be called death. He knew lions and bears and wolves. So, for him, the shepherd wasn’t merely a gentle, peaceful man petting sheep, but also nature’s great warrior. In other words, he saw strength and courage in the shepherd that we might miss today.

6. Which sentences seem most important?

Similar to the previous point, now try to identify the key sentences in this particular chapter. The most important sentences can appear at the beginning of a passage, or at the end, or somewhere in the middle. Where does the author’s burden or aim come into greatest focus? Which sentences help make sense of all the others?

In the case of Psalm 23, I submit the two most important lines in the poem are the first and the last:

“The Lord is my shepherd.”

“I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”

You can almost hear David saying, “If you only hear two things in these six verses, I want you to hear this: The Lord is my shepherd, and I will live in his house forever. Every other line is supporting those two lines, trying to help us understand those two promises and realities. God will protect and provide for me, and he will bring me home with him.”

7. How do the sentences build on one another?

Having identified the most important sentences, now try to discern how the rest of the chapter supports those sentences. Before, we worked with the bigger puzzle pieces. Now, we’re breaking them into smaller pieces and fitting them together. In this step, it’s particularly helpful to stop and study the words many of us overlook completely: for, and, but, if, unless, then, therefore, and so on. We might rush right by these connecting words, but they’re often giving us the answers. They’re telling us how the pieces fit together.

For instance, in Psalm 23, “I will fear no evil, for you are with me.” How can David live without fear even when he’s surrounded by fearful enemies and dangers? Because (for) he knows God is with him and stays with him, even in the valley. As another example, you can also see how the first several lines clearly build on the first verse: “The Lord is my shepherd.” David uses the next sentences to fill out the metaphor: “The Lord makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. . . . He restores. . . . He leads. . . . He comforts — like a shepherd.”

8. What questions do I still have?

Lastly, Adler encourages us to ask what problems the author didn’t solve. When it comes to merely human authors, they might not succeed in addressing the question or tension they set out to address (or they might create whole new problems in the process). The word of God, however, is perfect. “It shall not return to me empty,” God says, “but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it” (Isaiah 55:11). So, these words are never inadequate or problematic.

That doesn’t mean we won’t have questions. We’ll have lots of questions. For instance, in Psalm 23, it’s one thing to know that God is near even when he feels far, that he’ll protect us even when it seems like he won’t, but why does God allow us to walk in the valley at all? Why might he let us wander into brown pastures and raging waters? Why does he sometimes let us feel hungry and deprived and abandoned? Why do we ever need to feel need?

There are plenty of good answers to those questions (and they’re all in the Bible), but those weren’t the questions David was focused on in this particular psalm. Part of good reading, though, is learning to ask those questions and then patiently looking for answers (maybe over years). Fortunately, when it comes to this book, God can handle even our deepest, hardest ones. He’s never left without an answer.

How to Hear God

These aren’t the last questions we ask about a chapter or passage in the Bible — we need to press through and ask about what this means today, what God wants us to feel and do in the twenty-first century. But they should be the first kinds of questions we ask.

If we try to make the Bible meet our immediate needs or make sense of our day before trying to understand the Bible on its terms and in its day, then we’ll inevitably twist and distort what it says. We’ll try to make it say things it doesn’t. But if we’re willing to slow down and listen — to recognize its real meaning — then we’ll get to hear God speak, with authority and wisdom and love, into everything we need and face today.