“(For God) is our father all the time, for he is true; but until we respond with the truth of children, he cannot let all the father out to us; there is no place for the dove of his tenderness to alight. He is our father, but we are not his children. Because we are his children, we must become his sons and daughters. Nothing will satisfy him, or do for us, but that we be one with our father! What else could serve? How else should life ever be good? Because we are the sons of God, we must become ...
Jul 01, 2025•33 min
“How proud we often are of the victories in the war with nature, proud of the multitude of instruments we have succeeded in inventing, of the abundance of commodities we have been able to produce. Yet our victories have come to resemble defeats. In spite of our triumphs, we have fallen victims to the work of our hands; it is as if the forces we had conquered have conquered us.” — Abraham Joshua Heschel What does a soul do with power entrusted to him by the living God? What is its lasting legacy ...
Jun 17, 2025•1 hr 14 min
“What is hard about marriage is what is hard also about facing the Christian God: It is the strain of living continually in the light of a conscience other than our own, being under the intimate scrutiny of another pair of eyes.” — Mike Mason, The Mystery of Marriage What is the fruit of a decade given over to apprenticeship, to the slow work of excavation, and to the painful but promising transformation within the Kingdom of God? More precisely, what is the fruit born from the tender soil of ou...
Jun 03, 2025•1 hr 10 min
Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given to you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer. —Rainer Maria Rilke Friends, On our unique paths of initiation ...
May 20, 2025•44 min
“Questions are the tools of transformation. They disturb our certainty and awaken our longing.” — James K. A. Smith The power of questions is central to the path of an apprentice—especially the questions we don’t realize we are asking and the unconscious answers that shape our every moment. What questions have you recovered along the way of your initiation? And how are you allowing these questions to shape your apprenticeship as kings and queens in God’s Kingdom? In this episode, we seek to reco...
May 06, 2025•44 min
For the eyes of the Lord search throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him. -2 Chronicles 16:9 Friends, As our fellow apprentice Matthew McConaughey once observed—albeit in delightful colorful terms: "We all step in shit from time to time. We hit roadblocks, we get sick, we don’t get what we want. We cross thousands of ‘could have done better’s and ‘wish that wouldn’t have happened’s in life. Stepping in shit is inevitable, so let’s either see it as good luc...
Apr 15, 2025•58 min
Friends, Jean Giono, author of The Man Who Planted Trees, penned these breathtaking and invitational lines - words that draw us back to the path of Christ’s Kingdom Simplicity and Generous Love: “Creation seemed to come about in a sort of chain reaction. But the man who planted trees did not worry about it; he was determinedly pursuing his task in all its simplicity... For a human character to reveal truly exceptional qualities, one must have the good fortune to observe its performance over many...
Apr 09, 2025•41 min
Friends, Jean Giono, author of The Man Who Planted Trees, penned these breathtaking and invitational lines - words that draw us back to the path of Christ’s Kingdom Simplicity and Generous Love: “Creation seemed to come about in a sort of chain reaction. But the man who planted trees did not worry about it; he was determinedly pursuing his task in all its simplicity... For a human character to reveal truly exceptional qualities, one must have the good fortune to observe its performance over many...
Apr 09, 2025•41 min
"You shall consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you; each of you shall return to your property, and each of you shall return to your family." — Leviticus 25:10 Consider these provocative words by Walter Brueggeman from Sabbath as Resistance. “Sabbath is not only resistance; it is an alternative. Sabbath offers both the awareness and practice of the claim that we are on the receiving end of the gifts of God.... To ...
Mar 25, 2025•58 min
What I’m trying to do here is get you to relax, not be so preoccupied with getting so you can respond to God’s giving. People who don’t know God and the way he works fuss over these things, but you know both God and how he works. Steep yourself in God-reality, God-initiative, God-provisions. You’ll find all your everyday human concerns will be met. Don’t be afraid of missing out. You’re my dearest friends! The Father wants to give you the very kingdom itself. Luke 12:19-32 MSG Friends, Our initi...
Mar 11, 2025•40 min
Here is a simple, rule-of-thumb guide for behavior: Ask yourself what you want people to do for you, then grab the initiative and do it for them. Matthew 7:12 MSG Friends, Few questions come my way as consistently and sincerely as questions about the desire and dilemma of initiating children—particularly sons—into wholehearted maturity. And few aspects of my own initiation have received more of my attention. On behalf of the boys in our world—and the boy within every man (myself included)—I want...
Feb 26, 2025•47 min
In a word, what I’m saying is, Grow up. You’re kingdom subjects. Now live like it. Live out your God-created identity. Live generously and graciously toward others, the way God lives toward you. – Matthew 5:48 MSG The invitation of the Gospel is stark and unrelenting: Come and die in order to live. It is strange and compelling that Jesus, who healed so many, never once chose to heal his own disciples instantaneously. Instead, he continually beckoned them to the weightiest of challenges, probing ...
Feb 12, 2025•1 hr 5 min
"If you can’t be kind to yourself, you can’t change." – Sam Jolman Friends, I’d like to invite you to savor with me a breathtaking excerpt from Sam Jolman’s book as we plumb the depths of the intersection of God’s kindness and our sexual stories: We take the risk to call shame what it is: a damn liar. We turn the tables on shame and question it. That starts with getting curious about what provoked it. Maybe it’s lying to you. Maybe love is still available . . . and you can recover a sense of saf...
Jan 29, 2025•43 min
The Gospel is an invitation to be curious, rather than ashamed, about our sin. – Sam Jolman Friends, Decades ago, a wise man made an observation about the masculine journey that has stayed with me: “Finances are not about finances, and sex is not about sex.” It’s been over 10 years since I received this disruptive counsel, and my own and the experience of men I walk with have verified its truth again and again. Yet when it comes to the power and significance of sex and the path and process of li...
Jan 15, 2025•59 min
God’s preferred method of communication is through a still, small voice. – Dallas Willard Dear Friends, Who have I become, and who am I becoming? For over two decades, I’ve relentlessly asked these questions and found myself lovingly interrogated by Jesus and His Kingdom at every turn of my journey. Now, as I transition from one season to the next, I sense another pair of soul-searching questions rising from the depths: Who is God, really? Who will I allow Him to become in the decades ahead? Par...
Dec 31, 2024•47 min
"You should not be surprised when I say, 'You must be born again.'" – Jesus of Nazareth Dear Friends, Advent is upon us—a season not merely of waiting but of planting, where the seed of hope is buried deep in the soil of time. It is the prologue to Christmas when the Author Himself stepped onto the stage of His own story. But like all great stories, this one is layered. Beneath the glitter and sentiment of the season lies a truth so profound it shakes the foundations of our reality: that life sp...
Dec 17, 2024•33 min
I had always felt life first as a story—and if there is a story there is a storyteller. – G. K. Chesterton Friends, The human soul craves meaning, just as the body needs food and water. On our journey of masculine initiation, our souls long for the stories of others to illuminate our own. Stories are the language of the heart. They nourish us, bring meaning to our lives, and, most importantly, disrupt and inspire us to take heart once more, drawing us back to the ultimate Storyteller. Our storie...
Dec 04, 2024•1 hr 6 min
Love, as Paul and the New Testament present it, is not action— not even action with a special intention—but a source of action. – Dallas Willard Friends, Thousands of years ago, Saint Paul penned his breathtaking discourse on Love. It’s been misunderstood, watered down, and robbed of its beauty by overuse. Yet the life of God still pulses through, if we but let these old words visit us in a new way: Love never gives up. Love cares more for others than for self. Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t ...
Nov 19, 2024•41 min
Clothe yourself with compassion… – Saint Paul Friends, If we come from the Trinity and thus naturally return to the Trinity, I want to lovingly ask again...What is in the way of our homecoming? Perhaps better said, where do we find ourselves along the journey of home-going? As a community of mature men who desire what is good, true, and beautiful, we often find ourselves pouring ourselves out on behalf of others. We risk. We love. We serve. We sacrifice. We come through. We are warriors on behal...
Nov 05, 2024•44 min
...we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts... – Saint Paul Friends, Life is hard. Damn hard. And, brothers, with the convergence of the headlines, the violent speed of life, and the hyperindividualism of this hour, there is little hope that life will get easier. Haunting the masculine soul with uncertainty, pain, and...
Oct 22, 2024•51 min
Discipleship is the process of restoring secure attachment to God. – Morgan and Cherie Snyder Friends, In his thoroughly beautiful novel Jayber Crow, Wendell Berry writes, Now I have had most of the life I am going to have, and I can see what it has been. I can remember those early years when it seemed to me I was completely adrift, and times when…it seemed I had been wandering in the dark woods of error. But now it looks to me as though I was following a path that was laid out for me, unbroken,...
Oct 08, 2024•1 hr 1 min
If you don’t like the person you’re becoming, you still have time to change that. – Sam Eldredge Friends, It was Dallas Willard who wrote, “Spiritual transformation in Christ is the process of all of the essential parts of the human self being effectively organized around God, as they are restored and sustained by him. Its result is love of God with all of the heart, soul, mind, and strength, and of the neighbor as oneself.” In Part 2 of this conversation with Sam Eldredge, we continue to cover ...
Sep 24, 2024•35 min
The fundamental human experience is that of compassion. – The Hero's Journey Friends, A wise man once said that a warrior's true mark lies in his capacity to treat his own heart with compassion. Sam Eldredge is a brother and friend who is leading others to become true warriors and kings out of his unique recovery of the Gospel. He’s been quietly and faithfully working toward becoming an increasingly initiated man. As one mentor suggests, Sam is among a like-hearted few “steadily being initiated ...
Sep 10, 2024•49 min
It starts with God. – Proverbs 1:7 Friends, A wise man once told me, “More is better. Except when it’s not.” We can see this in our spiritual formation. The myth of more has co-opted even the ancient practices meant to root us in the Kingdom of God. More teaching. More study. More content. More events. More healing. More….of everything. Yet more is neither the point nor the prize. As our older brother Jesus winsomely announces, “God alone is good.” Jesus reminds us that there is treasure along t...
Aug 27, 2024•1 hr 7 min
The only tragedy greater than the deep fatherlessness our soul experiences is that we have come to accept that sense of fatherlessness as normal. Friends, It's been written that “when there are no kings, young warriors become brutal, magicians behave as charlatans, and lovers are soon addicts.” But what happens when there are no sages? It’s a question entangled in pain yet brimming with possibility. In our fast-paced, ever-changing, hyper-individualistic landscape, we find endless content: many ...
Aug 13, 2024•57 min
Above all else, trust in the slow work of God. Friends, Jesus modeled and taught a scandalous and inviting life of prayer. In the morning, long before dawn, he got up and left the house and went off to a lonely place to pray… (Mark 1:35) “Find a quiet, secluded place so you won’t be tempted to role-play before God. Just be there as simply and honestly as you can manage. The focus will shift from you to God, and you will begin to sense his grace.” (Matt. 6:5-15 MSG) The invitation of Jesus into t...
Jul 30, 2024•52 min
Pray without ceasing. – St. Paul Friends, It's been said, “Prayer is not about changing God, but being willing to let God change us.” What if cultivating a practice of prayer that teems with life and connection with God is much less about what we do and much more about who we become? Through a slow and steady practice of prayer, we are reformed into the kind of people who truly do pray without ceasing. Even more, over the decades of our apprenticeship, we become people whose very lives are an ac...
Jul 16, 2024•50 min
Prayer is never the first word; it is always the second word. God has the first word. – Eugene Peterson Friends, As we continue to explore the Daybreak Prayer , let us immerse ourselves in these God-initiated and God-sustained realities: Father, thank you that our story begins with you, and we will return to the restoration of all things. We choose to trust that you love us with the same love you have for Jesus. Therefore we will not give way to fear. We agree with who you are. We agree with wha...
Jul 02, 2024•1 hr 1 min
God is perfectly capable of saving the world he created. – Dallas Willard Friends, In the section of his Gospel known as the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew tells the story of Jesus drawing his apprentices away from the crowds and up a mountainside to teach them about the heart of our Father and the way of his gracious Kingdom. On the subject of prayer, Jesus says this: And when you come before God, don’t turn that into a theatrical production either….Here’s what I want you to do: Find a quiet, sec...
Jun 18, 2024•48 min
There is no power in hell Or any who can stand Before the power and the presence of the Great I Am. – Jared Anderson Friends, Jared Anderson penned these arresting words over a decade ago. His song has become a rallying cry and a lifeline to Reality for the friends of God. But behind the song is a story. And behind the story is a soul. Jared is a husband, father, risk-taker, and renowned soul-poet-musician. Serving in a megachurch during a time of heartrending fallout from failures of leadership...
Jun 04, 2024•36 min
