I trust you are enjoying God’s grace as you prepare to remember Christ’s death and celebrate his resurrection this weekend.

Today’s Kindle deals include at least a couple of interesting titles.
Meat from the Sky and the Resurrection’s Plausibility
“In 1876, a Kentucky grandmother was making lye soap on her front porch. Suddenly, an odd series of thuds in the field beside her house interrupted the silence of her labors. She sent her grandson out to see what was happening. He claimed it was snowing, but the weather was too warm and clear for snow. So Mrs. Crouch stepped off the porch to see for herself. What the grandmother saw when she walked across the field still sounds unbelievable.” In a strange way, this leads to an argument for the plausibility of the resurrection.
One of the Most Overlooked Arguments for the Resurrection
Michael Kruger approaches the same topic from a different angle. “It is an often overlooked fact that provides the necessary context for the discussion. That fact is simply this: the earliest Christians came to believe, against all odds and against all expectations, that Jesus of Nazareth had been raised from the dead.”
Register Now For RMC22-Earlybird Discount Ends Apirl 30TH
June 29-30, 2022, with Kevin DeYoung, Alistair Begg & others. The Radius Missiology Conference is an ideal opportunity for pastors, missionary candidates, and church leaders to become better informed on the state of modern missions and learn how Radius can assist local churches in equipping their members to take the gospel where it has never been. (Sponsored Link)
Rowan Williams and Our Sentimental Age
“Today, as in the days of Plato, rhetoric is what moves the crowd. But as Plato knew, truth, not rhetoric, is the task of philosophy and philosophers. That is why the latter are so important. Sadly, many in today’s philosopher class—the intellectuals—seem to have forgotten Plato. They now find rhetoric more attractive than truth.” Carl Trueman considers a very recent example.
Who will speak up for the transgender kid?
Denny Burk: “Gender affirming care requires parents and medical professionals to follow the instincts of children who are confused about their gender. Rather than helping children to resolve their psychological distress in a way that affirms their bodies, gender affirming care requires destroying a child’s body. This ‘care’ can include blocking a child’s puberty, the infusion of opposite sex hormones, and sometimes destroying healthy reproductive organs through surgery.”
“One Another” Ministry for the Homebound
This is a helpful look at “one another” commands that can help us minister to the homebound.
The Prosperity Gospel Loves God’s Gifts, But Ignores God Himself
This is one of the markers of the prosperity gospel—it loves what God gives, but could do without God himself.
Flashback: Proudly Humble
Sometimes pride looks an awful lot like humility. There are times that our pride convinces us to put on a great show of what looks to all the world like humility so that we will be seen and acknowledged by others.

We have a Christian duty to encourage one another. Many a time a word of praise or thanks or appreciation or cheer has kept a man on his feet. Blessed is the man who speaks such a word. —William Barclay

Grace and peace to you today, my friends.

(Yesterday on the blog: 40 Random Pieces of Advice for the Christian Life)
Was Jesus Punctual?
I found this a very helpful cross-cultural look at punctuality. “The English phrase ‘don’t waste your time’ has an equivalent in Spanish: ‘no pierdas el tiempo’, which strictly translated means ‘don’t lose [the] time’. There is, nonetheless, a subtle difference between the English and the Spanish. Whereas a Westerner feels they can control time (by deciding whether to waste it or not), a Latin American feels they cannot control time (it gets lost).”
This is the Day
I think you’ll enjoy this new song from CityAlight. It’s another good one!
Ligonier Theological Study Guides
Ligonier Ministries has recently begun posting a series of theological study guides. Nick Batzig has rounded them up for us.
Seedlings Need The Weather
“When we asked a gardener friend, he told us that the absence of difficulty was not the solution to their problem. It was the problem. The trouble for our seedlings—the trouble that made them weak—was that they had no trouble. Without at least some exposure to the elements, they would never grow strong.” There’s a lesson to learn here.
Rethinking Pastoral Ministry Post-Covid
This article considers ministry post-COVID and how technology can or cannot take a new prominence.
A Lifetime of Preaching: A Conversation with Alistair Begg
This is a great little conversation with Alistair Begg as he recounts his decades of preaching the Word.
Flashback: Help! My Kids Are Looking at Porn!
Where the temptation will be to bludgeon your children with reasons they should not look at porn, your time will be spent far more effectively if you are able to slow down, ask lots of questions, and engage them in conversation.

In the darkest night of the soul, Christians have something to hold onto…Christ crucified. —D.A. Carson

Not every idea is worthy of an entire article. Hence, this one contain a long list of brief, random (and unsolicited) pieces of advice for living the Christian life, all of which I’ve gleaned from others over the course of the past 45 years. I hope there is something here that benefits you.

When offering counsel to others, always carefully distinguish between what the Bible says and what is simply your best attempt to apply wisdom to a particular situation. Get used to saying, “This is me, not the Bible.” There is a reason I have made this the first in a long list of pieces of advice.

Learn to appreciate the ways in which other people are different from you, not just the ways in which they are similar. Contrary to the way you tend to the think, the world would actually not be a better place if everyone was just a little bit more like you.

Learn to apologize. Learn to apologize first. Learn to apologize often. Learn that to apologize is a mark of strength of character, not weakness.

Remember that your children are sinners who are beset by the fierce enemies of the world, the flesh, and the devil. Be gentle with them and have pity for them. Don’t be yet another enemy to them.

Don’t let yourself slip into believing that growing older will magically confer you some gift of godliness. Who you are now—or who you are becoming now—is a pretty good predictor of who you will someday be. If you want to be godly then, you have to learn to be godly now. This is true of young men and women as they ponder marriage and parenting; this is true of middle-aged men and women as they ponder retirement and old age.

Understand that you don’t need to have an opinion about everyone and everything. In fact, it is a mark of maturity to deliberately not have opinions about things that don’t concern you and things you know nothing about.

Find a couple whose grown children you’d be proud to call your own. Ask that couple if you can spend some time with them to either ask them questions about parenting or to simply observe life in their home. This may prove more valuable than any book on parenting. (Make sure their children are old enough that the parents have proven they can do more than raise obedient toddlers or submissive tweens.)

Change churches as seldom as possible and only when necessary. Never change churches without seeking the counsel of the church you are considering leaving and the church you are considering joining. When you do leave, it is almost always best to leave in a quiet and dignified way that preserves the church’s unity.

You get no free pass from the sin of slander when it pertains to an enemy, a heretic, or a politician. Each of these people is made in the image of God and each of them deserves to be spoken of in a way that befits their humanity. Only ever speak of them what is demonstrably and provably true.

Try raising your hands in worship at least once. It’s okay to get used to the idea in private first. Perhaps you’ll find that a little bit of physical expression engages your heart in unexpected ways.

Don’t put your hope in a particular method or system of parenting. Put your hope in the gospel, then consistently teach it to your children and consistently model it for your children during the 18 or 20 years they are in your home. It is the gospel that is the power of God, not any method. But we are easily confused.

In any given situation, it’s always good to ask “What does the Bible tell me to do?” or “what does the Bible say about this?” A great follow-up question is “why am I not already doing it?”

When the church service ends, make it your goal to meet someone you don’t know or connect with someone you don’t know well before you spend time with friends. Make a beeline for anyone who is alone or who looks awkward.

Embrace the tension between knowing that you are called to steward the wealth God provides for you and the fact that life is insanely expensive. Budget your money, control your expenses, give generously to the church, set some aside for the future, and use some to occasionally treat yourself to something nice. But also get used to saying, “it’s only money” as you swipe your card when yet another big and unexpected expense has come along.

Spend lots of time considering how God relates to his children, then imitate that in your parenting. When asked who most influenced your parenting, “God” is a pretty good answer.

Read The Pilgrim’s Progress at least once. If you find you are struggling to read it, try listening to it instead. There is a reason that it is the best-selling fictional work of all-time. (I recommend the recording narrated by Nadia May.)

Think often about that well-worn definition of character: character is who you are when no one else is looking. Consider whether who you are when you are all alone is consistent with who you are when other Christians are present.

It is good and necessary to shelter your children from the world. It is also good and necessary to expose your children to the world while they are still under your care and you can help them interpret what they are seeing and experiencing. Do that with wisdom. Your task as a parent is to prepare your children to live and thrive in this world, not some other one.

Acknowledge that in most friendships one person will be the main pursuer and the main initiator. Don’t feel sorry for yourself if you are that person.

Listen carefully to believers who come from cultures other than your own. You may learn valuable critiques of your own culture with all its presuppositions and you may learn valuable insights from another.

Foster relationships between your children and other trustworthy adults. Confidently direct your children to those adults when they have questions or disagreements with you. Don’t be upset if your friends give them counsel that contradicts your own. It’s possible that you’re the one who’s wrong.

Be loyal—loyal to your family, loyal to your friends, loyal to your pastors, loyal to your church. Loyalty is a beautiful virtue; disloyalty is an ugly vice.

If you find that your children are rebellious, take the time to honestly assess if you are modeling rebellion or submission to the sources of authority in your own life—whether in government, workplace, church, or home. There’s no reason to expect submission in your children if all they see is rebellion in you.

Sing loud in church, especially if you are a man. Don’t be content with mumbling as if it’s somehow embarrassing to have a male voice.

Never disrespect your spouse, or speak disrespectfully to or about your spouse, in the presence of others. (Or outside of the presence of others, for that.) If you need counsel or advice about your spouse or marriage, speak to a friend in a way that respects your spouse’s dignity.

Imagine your children as some day being close friends. Relate to them today in such a way as to make that vision come true. This will look different when they are toddlers, teens, and young adults.

Open your home to other people often. Help foster a culture of hospitality within your local church by being the one who invites people over on a regular basis. The living room is one of the best contexts in the world for friendship, discipleship, and evangelism.

Be appropriately romantic and affectionate with your spouse in the presence of your children. It’s okay—good even—if they know the spark is still alive. It’s okay—good even—if they occasionally say “oh gross.” You can do that without ever crossing a line.

Embrace singleness rather than resenting it. Pursue joy and contentment knowing that the God who withholds no good thing from his children also dispenses to them no ultimately bad thing. This is his good and perfect plan for you and he means for you to embrace it, whether it is a temporary state or a permanent one, whether it is involuntary or chosen.

Find common interests with your spouse. Learn to enjoy what your spouse enjoys, even if it’s a sport you wouldn’t otherwise care for or an art form you aren’t naturally drawn to. (Do the same with your friends and children.)

It is good to read widely but also good to read deeply. Find at least one author whose writing particularly helps you and commit to reading as many of his or her books as possible.

Expect to be sinned against even by people who love you. Don’t over-react when it happens. You’ve probably sinned against them many times as well. Remember that is the glory of a man to overlook an offense and that love covers a multitude of sins.

Nobody wants to be part of a church that doesn’t pray, but also, (almost) nobody wants to attend the prayer meeting. Believe in the power of a praying church enough to attend and champion that meeting. Make prayer instrumental rather than supplemental to your church.

Don’t feel the need to finish a bad book, or a mediocre one, for that. There is no shame in tossing it aside and trying something else.

Pursue friendships with people who are different from you. The deepest compatibility is often not easily visible.

Make it your habit to find something positive in the sermon and tell the pastor how it benefitted you. He probably gets less encouragement than you think.

It’s almost never the wrong time to say, “Let’s pray.”

Believe in the big picture of family devotions even when it’s hard to believe in the day-by-day results. Trust that a time of reading the Bible and praying together, repeated on a near-daily basis, will leave a deep and positive impact in the family as a whole and in each of its members.

Don’t let the sun set on your anger. Bitterness grows in the dark and harms you more than it harms anyone else, so the proper time to stop it is before it starts.

Distinguish between what is mandated by God and what is simply a matter of wisdom or prudence. Much of what Christians advocate with such strong words falls under the latter category more than the former. The Bible says nothing about date nights, the Billy Graham Rule, sleep training, and so on. Don’t hold strongly to what the Bible holds loosely (or vice versa). And that includes pretty much everything I’ve included in this article…

The Lord bless you and keep you today.

There are a couple of Kindle deals today.
Potentially of greater interest are this week’s deals at Westminster Books, which include a new book by James Hamilton.
More Programs Train Complementarian Women to Teach Bible
This is an interesting and positive development. “Preparing a message of biblical exposition isn’t a task confined to one gender, even for complementarians. So more programs are training women to teach with their own versions of the preaching classes that have long been reserved for men.”
3 Ways Social Media Affects Pastors
“What are you doing with social media? And what is social media doing to you? As I have written about social media and its often-ignored effects on Christians and the greater culture, I have heard from many pastors and church leaders not only about how social media impacts their congregations, but also about how it impacts them and their ability to lead.”
More than Doing: Categories for Applying God’s Word
We all know we are supposed to do something when we read the Bible, but it’s not always obvious what that is. “How do we do Bible texts like those found in the book of Judges? How do we do narratives, historical accounts, chronologies, prophetic literature, or Old Testament laws written for the people of Israel? How do we apply God’s Word when there’s nothing in the passage for us to do?”
An Open Letter to Death
I appreciated Cindy Matson’s open letter to Death which begins this way: “I’m writing to you today with a simple message: Stop boasting. I realize that you have some reason for pride. You have had your way with nearly every human to ever live. (Do Enoch and Elijah keep you up at night?)”
Ukrainian Seminary Professor’s Plea—Please Don’t Tire of Praying
You will benefit from reading this article about a Ukrainian seminary professor. And you will serve the church in Ukraine well by heeding his call to prayer.
Resting in What Jesus Has Done
This is geared specifically to youth workers, but can apply to any of us. “Resting in what Jesus has done is both a posture and an identity. Our posture is our hands held in surrender to Christ and our identity is in Christ alone. Here are three important reminders that have helped me embrace this posture and discover my identity as a youth leader.”
Flashback: Rule #6: Redeem Your Time (8 Rules for Growing in Godliness)
Godliness requires training, and training takes time. So in an age in which we always carry convenient distractions in our pockets, our growth in godliness will require us to reject the trivial and redeem every minute.

Those are the strongest Christians that are the mightiest in prayer. —Nathaniel Vincent

The God of love and peace be with you on this fine day.

Today’s Kindle deals include some excellent titles from Crossway.
(Yesterday on the blog: When The Great Resignation Comes to Church)
The Christian Veneer of a Sacred Journey
“I’d suggest that one of the greatest risks to the Church in the modern west at moment is that we allow secular perspectives to be baptised and given the appearance of being Christian. The danger is profound because the veneer disguises what’s happening. The shifts in thinking are significant, but they look small because they’re disguised behind Christian language.”
Doug Logan on Experiencing and Responding to Racism
I’ve been enjoying this ongoing interview with Doug Logan, President of Grimké Seminary. (Part 1 is available here.)
Join Alistair Begg, Kevin DeYoung & Others @ RMC22 
*EARLYBIRD DISCOUNT ENDS APRIL 3OTH* June 29-30, 2022 @ Christ Covenant Church in Matthews, NC. RMC is for pastors, aspiring missionaries, and anyone interested in biblical missiology.
Why New India Needs the Ancient Gospel
I’m thrilled to see TGC support a new site for India. It includes articles like this one that explains how the “dream of a new India is emerging out of the old. This is now quite obvious to the citizens of this ancient nation and to much of the world outside. But new India is like a kaleidoscope of many new trends and developments—a young population that is building a vibrant nation, a powerful economic resurgence, and its new stature as an emerging global power. All these are coming together in different ways to shape a glorious dream.”
4 Keys to Preaching from a Manuscript
Jared Wilson offers a number of tips for preaching from a manuscript—a practice I tend to advocate as well.
What role does intercessory prayer play in the salvation of the nations?
What role do our prayers serve in the plan of God to redeem people from every tongue, tribe, and nation through Jesus Christ? From a Ligonier event, Derek Thomas, Stephen Nichols, and Michael Reeves discuss the place of prayer in global missions.
What about Marriage and Family in Heaven?
Randy Alcorn covers a few matters related to marriage and family in heaven.
Flashback: How to Encourage that Preacher
The faithful preacher is content to be forgotten so Jesus can be remembered. “I forgot all about you” may be one of the most encouraging things a preacher can hear.

All heaven is interested in the Cross of Christ, all hell terribly afraid of it, while men are the only beings who more or less ignore its meaning. —Oswald Chambers

We aren’t colleagues. We aren’t comrades. We aren’t neighbors. We are family. If we are to understand the nature of the relationship between believers, we don’t need to understand work, politics, or geography. We need to understand family.

The Bible displays this truth in any number of ways. Together we call God “Father,” and if he is Father, then we are sons and daughters. We call Christ our elder brother, making us his siblings as well as one another’s. Young men are told to relate to older men with all the respect of sons to fathers and to older women with all the love of sons to mothers. They are to treat younger women with all the purity of sisters and to relate to widows as if they are their very own mothers. We are to love one another with brotherly affection and to understand that whoever does the will of the Father is a brother, sister, mother.
We see it in another way as well—in the way pastors are to be evaluated for their suitability to the office. If the church is more like a family than a business or nation, then pastors are more like fathers than bosses or managers. There is a closer relationship between church and family than between church and corporation or church and country. This is why a pastor must be evaluated on the basis of his home life more than his work life or political life. A man may be a great boss or an electrifying politician, but if he is a poor father he has no business leading a local church, “for if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God’s church?”
What is true broadly across all of time and space is true more particularly in the context of the local church—especially if that local church makes membership truly meaningful. While Christians who lived centuries ago and Christians on the far side of the earth are brothers and sisters, there is a special way in which the family relationship is manifested and displayed in the local church. It is there in the context of living and worshipping together that we see mostly clearly how Christians relate as members of the same family.
If all of this is true, there is an interesting implication that is especially relevant in these days of turbulence. We read often in the news about “The Great Resignation.” Beginning in early 2021, great numbers of people began to resign their jobs, some looking for new work and some content to quit working altogether for a time. Economists are divided on the reasons for the trend, but whatever the case, they seem to flow from a discontentment deep enough to have impacted churches as well. Churches are seeing a Great Resignation of their own in which an unusual number of people have resigned their membership to move to another local church (or sometimes to settle in with a distant church’s livestream). Almost every church has some seats conspicuously absent, and remaining members who dearly miss the ones who have departed—people they loved, people they ministered alongside, people they rejoiced with and wept with. Almost every pastor has some fresh wounds, some fresh sorrows, as he has learned that yet another person, yet another family, has decided to move on—precious people he has counseled, preached to, prayed for, and attempted to serve with love.
In those situations when we consider whether it’s time to pull up roots and move to a new congregation, there is something we ought to deeply ponder: To leave a church is more like seceding from a family than resigning a job. It is more like removing yourself from a household than emigrating from a nation. It is not like working your way up the corporate ladder by moving between companies as much as it is like revoking your participation in one family to establish yourself in another.
In few places do we see our inner individualist more clearly displayed than in the ease and carelessness with which we bounce from church to church. In few places do we see our predilection for selfish decision-making with greater clarity than when we think so little of removing ourselves from one family in preference for another. While granting that there are many good and legitimate reasons to leave a church, I’d wager there are far more that are unnecessary, unwise, or unkind. And I’d wager that the most common reasons are the least legitimate of all.
With all that being the case, it seems that when we are in any doubt at all, we ought to stay put. When we are uncertain, we ought to stay the course. When it is not perfectly clear that we must leave or when we haven’t received wide affirmation that it’s wise to leave, we ought to set aside thoughts of finding a new family and instead joyfully recommit ourselves to loving the family we are already part of.

Good morning! Grace and peace to you.

(Yesterday on the blog: To Plumb Depths that Have No Bottom)
Does Romans 7 Describe a Christian?
I’m surprised it took almost 1800 episodes of Ask Pastor John to cover this one.
Freedom not to speak
Janie Cheaney recounts a well-known tale from Acts, then says “The hysteria of crowds hasn’t changed much. I’m reminded of the Ephesian dustup after every widely reported campus disruption, like the one at Yale Law School on March 10.”
My Journey with Jesus
It often does us good to read how others became Christians…
Does Evangelicalism Have a History?
Michael Reeves writes about the history of evangelicalism. And yes, it does have a history.
Is Easter Believable?
This article makes the argument that, indeed, it is.
A Call For “Enlightened Patriotism”
Kevin DeYoung looks to the past and says, “The dream was not a Christian takeover of government, but a nation founded on God-given freedom, shaped by Christian values, and filled with Christian teaching.”
Flashback: I Wish I Was Rich
Rather than spending your days dreaming about what you would do if you had more, spend your days working hard to make a living and then give with joyful generosity.

The sermon always sounds better to me on Sunday when I have had a shake of my minister’s hand during the week. —Theodore Cuyler

Today most of us will join with other Christians to worship our God together. As we do so, it is fitting that we consider just how much Christ loves his church. Dustin Benge does that well in this brief excerpt from The Loveliest Place.

To grasp Christ’s love for his church is to plumb depths that have no bottom, find a treasure with no bounds, and climb heights that have no peak. As believers, we never move past the love of Christ. We never tire of the love of Christ. A true believer is one who never gets over the profound words of the childhood song “Jesus loves me! This I know, for the Bible tells me so.”
All of our redemption and salvation flows freely from that never-ending fountain of divine love. And such boundless love can only rightly be understood by visiting a bloody cross and an empty tomb.
With an interleafed blank Bible before him to write down his endless meditations, Jonathan Edwards savored the love of Christ: “Everything that was contrived and done for the redemption and salvation of believers, and every benefit they have by it, is wholly and perfectly from the free, eternal, distinguishing love and infinite grace of Christ towards them.”
Everything we have as the church. Everything we are as the church. Everything we could ever hope to be as the church. Everything—wrapped up in the “free, eternal, distinguishing love and infinite grace of Christ.”
This infinite love is comprehensive and causes the bridegroom to rescue his bride from the depths of her sin and depravity by taking his lover’s place at the bar of holy judgment. Greater than spinning the worlds into existence is this selfless act of sacrifice that makes Jesus both a Savior and head of his church.

May God bless you as you worship and serve him this weekend.

Westminster Books has a sale on a new book by Dane Ortlund.
There are some new Kindle deals to look at today.
(Yesterday on the blog: What Kind of Men Does the Church Need?)
Laura to Jake and back again
This is a fascinating story that tells of one women’s transition and de-transition.
Painful Surprises and the Emmaus Road
This article is about those times when “something unexpected and unwelcome occurs, and you are stunned by the pain. The most painful surprises are the ones you never saw coming.”
How can I get out of my bad mood?
How do you get out of a bad mood? This article offers some direction.
One Step Deeper
“Whoever you are and wherever you are in your journey of studying the Bible, you can go one step deeper.” You can and should!
Serving from the Shadows
“We have all been conditioned by the celebrity culture in which we live to fall into the trap of believing that truly great Christian ministry should be placarded on a platform and subject to public accolade. This is one reason why so many have given their praises to celebrity pastors in America over the past fifty years. However, it is a yet more subtle evil in our hearts…”
A tale of two taxis
Here’s a reminder that there are opportunities to share the gospel if only we’ll take them.
Flashback: How Many People Go To Your Church?
I wonder, what would happen if we found better questions to ask and better ways to answer them. Instead of going to the easy question of, “How many people go to your church?” why don’t we ask things like this…

The race conversation often feels like talking to each other at the Tower of Babel. We may be trying to build together, but we’re frustrated and speaking past one another. —Isaac Adams

Masculinity has become complicated. At least, it has become difficult to be confident about what it means to be a man—to be a man as God has designed men to be. The culture has plenty to say about masculinity that is toxic, but far less to say about masculinity that is good and honoring. We hear more about women becoming men than men simply being men. And many wonder: What are men meant to be and what are men supposed to do?

Into the fray steps Brant Hansen with a wonderful new book titled The Men We Need: God’s Purpose for the Manly Man, the Avid Indoorsman, or Any Man Willing to Show Up. “This book is about a big vision for manhood,” he says. “We’ve lacked that vision, and all of us—men, women, and children—are hurting because of it. The vision is this: We men are at our best when we are ‘keepers of the garden.’ This means we are protectors and defenders and cultivators. We are at our best when we champion the weak and vulnerable. We are at our best when we use whatever strength we have to safeguard the innocent and provide a place for people to thrive. This is the job Adam was given: keeper of the garden.”
I need to say right away that this is not one of those books—those trite and cheesy books for men that focuses on a clichéd version of masculinity bound to a particular culture and a bygone century. Hansen isn’t advocating a form of masculinity that depends on swinging hammers, wrestling bears, or distributing swords. In fact, he says he’s not even capable of writing that book because “I don’t even hunt. I play the accordion. … I’m an avid indoorsman. I own puppets.”
The heart of masculinity, he says, is taking responsibility—responsibility for those things God has made men particularly responsible for. “God gave Adam the job of looking after the garden and the things within. He was to guard it, tend it, and help it flourish. He was responsible for it. I believe looking after our own ‘gardens’ remains our masculine purpose, and we all implicitly know it. Our culture is in chaos regarding what masculinity really is, so it’s dangerous to suggest there’s a distinct, wonderful thing called masculinity. … Masculinity is about taking responsibility.” Hence, true masculinity is not displayed in flexing muscles or fixing stuff or achieving sexual conquests. Rather, true masculinity is displayed in being humble, responsible, dedicated keepers of the gardens God has given us.
Once Hansen lays a foundation for masculinity, he leads readers through “Six Decisions that Will Set You Apart.” They are:

Forsake the fake and relish the real. His focus here is rejecting pornography and video games and other fake forms of virtuous longings. “The hurting world and our hurting communities need us to solve real-world problems, protect real-world people, and fight real-world injustice. Actually, let me rephrase that a bit. The hurting world and your hurting community need you to solve real-world problems, protect real-world people, and fight real-world injustice. Please don’t waste your God-given desire for adventure and accomplishment by being a fake hero fighting fake injustices in fake worlds.”
Protect the vulnerable. Here he says that “The people in your neighborhood, at your school, or at your workplace should be safer because you’re there. Even if they don’t know it.” This means men must be willing to protect others and must be steadfastly unwilling to become a threat to others.
Be ambitious about the right things. “You will struggle with feeling meaningless when you choose to invest your time and energy in meaningless things,” he says. Hence, we must use our God-given ambition to pursue causes that actually matter.
Make women and children feel safe, not threatened. Here he calls upon men to invest themselves in helping the people around them grow and thrive. “I’m trying to be this kind of man, a man who makes his wife feel secure and protected. I know my wife is every bit my equal. I know she’s highly intelligent and strong and creative and funny. I know she can survive with or without me. But it’s my goal to see her thrive and flourish. I believe in her so strongly, I’m excited about what she can yet become.”
Choose today who you will become tomorrow. Quite simply, who we will be tomorrow is a direct result of what we pay attention to today. For this reason we must take great care when it comes to those things that earn our attention.
Take responsibility for your own spiritual life. This final chapter is dedicated to forming a real, open, honest relationship with the Lord—a loyalty to the God who is so very loyal to us.

At a time when masculinity is viewed as a liability more than an asset, as something that is more likely to harm the world than help it, Brant Hansen describes and celebrates a form of masculinity that is good, pure, and true—a form of masculinity that will serve families, serve the church, and serve the world. He calls men to embrace it and display it in their lives. It turns out that in this time of confusion, The Men We Need is exactly the book we need.

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