The Forge Men Podcast

The Forge

Forging stronger men through biblical truth, practical challenge, and real talk about the battles men face every day. theforgemen.substack.com

  1. 1d ago

    Now Do Something With It

    JOIN THE FORGE SUMMER CHALLENGE Before we get into it, we are announcing the launch of something new today. The Forge Summer Challenge! All the details at the end of the post so don’t cut out early. Eleven weeks ago we started this series with the premise that maturity doesn’t just happen. It has to be built. And it gets built across every area of a man’s life. That framework is represented graphically by the Maturity Wheel. Five interconnected areas that all matter. None of them exist in isolation. Here’s what we covered. We started with your Walk with God — how to actually engage with Scripture instead of just owning a Bible, why prayer feels awkward and what to do about it, and why obedience is where everything you’ve learned either becomes real or stays theoretical. We moved into Personal Health — the mental health conversation most men avoid, and the physical side that Paul summed up better than any gym motivational poster ever could: steward your body so you can say yes when God calls. We spent time in Relationships — what marriage is actually for, and what bitterness costs a man who refuses to forgive. We walked through Time and Priorities — the one resource you cannot get back, the drift that happens when urgency crowds out the important, and what a man’s calendar says about what he actually believes. We finished in Finances and Career — the mammon question Jesus asked that most men never sit with honestly, and the truth that work was never the punishment. The curse was the toil. The work was always the assignment. Check out our full archive HERE Eleven weeks. Five areas. A whole picture of what it looks like to be a man who is maturing in life, not just aging. And here’s the thing about all of that content. It means nothing if it stays in your head. THE FOOL AND THE WISE MAN Proverbs has a lot to say about fools. And before you picture someone foolish, you need to understand what Proverbs means by the word. The fool in Proverbs is not the guy who doesn’t know better. Proverbs 14:16 says the wise man is cautious and turns away from evil, but the fool is reckless and careless. Proverbs 26:11 gives us one of the most uncomfortable images in all of Scripture: a dog returning to its vomit. That is the man who knows what’s wrong, walks away from it, and goes right back. The fool in Proverbs is the man who has heard the truth. He may have even agreed with it. He may have felt something when he read it. But he walked away and nothing changed. James had the same man in mind when he wrote: “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.” He called it self-deception. Not ignorance. Not rebellion. Self-deception. The man who engages with truth and walks away unchanged has convinced himself that engagement is the same as transformation. It isn’t. The fool isn’t the man who never read any of this. The fool is the man who read all of it, nodded along, thought “that’s good stuff”, and then went back to living exactly the same way he was living before. That is the dog returning to its vomit. The mature man (the wise man Proverbs keeps pointing to) is the man who lets what he hears actually change him. He takes the next step even when it’s uncomfortable. He builds his life not just on knowing the right things, but on doing them. That is the whole point. HEAD. HEART. HANDS. There is a movement that has to happen for any of this to matter. Information hits the head. That’s where it lives. You take it in, you process it, you file it away. Interesting. Good to know. Conviction hits the heart. That’s the moment something cuts deep into our soul. When you’re reading about forgiveness and your stomach tightens because you know exactly who came to mind. When you come face to face with the reality of your own brokenness and sin. That is conviction. And conviction is good and necessary. But not even that automatically leads to change. The point of the last 11 weeks was not built to give you more information or even better conviction. It was meant to move you to action. Head. Heart. Hands. The man whose life actually changes is the man who takes what he knows, takes what he feels, and does something with it. One conversation he’d been avoiding. One appointment he finally makes. One honest look at a bank statement with his wife. One area of his life he stops managing and starts leading. That’s what separates the wise man from the fool. Not the acquisition of knowledge but the application of it. THE WHEEL IS NOT A FORMULA Before we close out this series, one more thing needs to be said. The Wheel is a map, not a formula. Every man reading this is in a different season. Different pressures. Different history. Different wounds and different strengths. The Wheel doesn’t produce a perfect life if you check every box correctly. That is not how any of this works. What it does is give you a framework for intentionality. It says: here are the areas that matter. Here are the places where neglect compounds and growth compounds. Here are the spokes, and when one of them is broken, the whole wheel wobbles. A man who is intentional in these areas builds something of significance. Not a perfect life but a consistent one. An impactful one. A life that looks like it was aimed at something worth aiming at. That is what wisdom produces. Again, wisdom is not the accumulation of information. It is the pattern of a man who hears truth and does something with it consistently across every area of his life. THE SUMMER CHALLENGE The Mature Man series is done. But you’re not done. Starting June 15th, we’re launching The Forge Summer Challenge. Eleven weeks. One simple concrete action per week. The kind that moves everything you’ve learned from your head all the way to your hands. It will be simple but not easy. Here’s how it works: * Starts Monday, June 15th * Every Monday a new challenge drops, free for everyone * Each challenge is simple, specific, and designed to actually change something in your life that week * One rule: don’t do it alone. Find your wingman (or several) and invite them in * Text him right now. Send him this post. Tell him you want to complete this challenge with him. For the men who want to go deeper, paid subscribers to The Forge and monthly supporters get access to the full cohort experience. That includes weekly challenge tools and resources, a private community chat where you can process, report back, and stay connected with other men doing the work, and a biweekly live Zoom call where we dig into the challenges together, ask hard questions, share wins, and pray for one another. If you’re already a paid subscriber, you will receive that info from me. If you want to join the Summer Challenge Cohort, it’s as easy as becoming a paid subscriber and you will be given that access. Become a paid subscriber here → SUBSCRIPTION OPTIONS Whether joining for free or the joining the cohort, we want you to let us know you are going to come along the journey. Click the link below to opt-in. JOIN THE SUMMER CHALLENGE Can’t wait to grow with you all this summer! Want more content like this? You can find all of our content and resources here: The Forge exists to provide deep brotherhood, essential tools, and focused coaching so that every man can run with clarity, live with intention, and fully become the man he was designed to be. That’s the mission behind everything we’re building here. We’re creating a place where men can grow, get sharpened, and take real steps toward becoming the man God called them to be. If this content hits home for you, share it with another man who needs it. And if you want to help support what we’re building so we can keep creating resources, coaching, and tools for men, you can do that below. Every share and every ounce of support helps move this mission forward. Thank you! Contact Gabe: gabe@theforgemen.co Get full access to The Forge at theforgemen.substack.com/subscribe

    9 min

  2. May 29

    The Relentless Weight of Work

    This week we are wrapping up the series we have been in called The Mature Man. We have worked through five interconnected areas of a man’s life. We have covered your Walk with God, Personal Health, Relationships, and Time and Priorities. Last week we hit finances and this week we close it out with a discussion about career, and why most men are settling for a fraction of what work was always meant to be. Ask most men why they work and you will get a version of the same answer. To pay the bills. To provide for my family. To build something for the future. None of that is wrong. Providing for your family is a mark of a man who takes his responsibilities seriously. But if provision is the only lens you are using to see your career, you are missing most of the picture. And that missing piece is costing you — not financially, but something deeper. It is costing you the very meaning of work. WORK WAS NEVER THE PUNISHMENT Here is something that gets misunderstood in the account in the book of Genesis. Work is not the curse. The curse is the toil. Before sin entered the world, before Adam and Eve ever touched the fruit, God placed Adam in the garden to tend it and keep it. There was work to be done. Real work. The kind that required effort, attention, and skill. And it was not a burden. It was the assignment of a man who had been given something worth stewarding. Genesis 2:15 says: The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. This is pre-fall. Pre-curse. Pre-toil. God designed work into the fabric of what it means to be human. Long before sin broke everything, a man’s purpose was already tied to his labor. That changes how we should think about our work. THE NATURE OF WORK Everything in this world tends toward chaos. That is just the nature of things. So I want to give you a simple definition of work… WORK: The act of doing what wants to be undone. Your lawn does not stay trimmed. Your budget does not balance itself. The project does not manage itself. The cargo does not route itself. The building does not stay standing forever without maintenance. The chaos of the world around us is always reasserting itself, and your job, whatever it is, is to push back against that entropy. To bring order where disorder wants to settle in. That is not a corporate metaphor. That is the literal nature of work. I think about this when I mow my lawn. There is something that happens when I am making those passes back and forth across the yard. What was overgrown and wild slowly becomes ordered. What was chaos starts to look like intention. And when I get to the last pass and step back and look at the freshly cut lawn and the manicured edges, there is something that rises up inside me. It is not just satisfaction that the task is complete. It is something that feels like beauty. A small foretaste of glory. I tamed something. I brought order to what was wild. And for a moment, standing in my driveway, I got a glimpse of something God wired into me before I ever understood what it was. THE CURSE IS REAL TOO Now here is where we have to be honest. Because of the fall, that beauty is always mixed with resistance. Genesis 3:17-19 makes it unmistakably clear: Cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return. Notice what God says here. The ground is cursed. Work is not. But now the ground fights back. The grass keeps growing. The project keeps slipping. The deal falls through. The machine breaks. The thing you just finished starts coming undone almost immediately. That relentless weight of things being undone that need to be done is not a bad boss or a failing economy. That is the condition of working in a fallen world. Unfortunately, you are not going to escape it. Not in this job or the next one. Not with a raise or a promotion or a better title. The toil is built into this age. It will follow you until you return to the dust or Jesus comes back. That is not fatalism. That is just the truth. Too many men either spend their lives depressed or chasing different circumstances, convinced the next job or the next season will finally feel easy. It will not. The toil is not the problem to be solved. It is the reality to be reframed. “SOUNDS LIKE SOMEONE’S GOT A CASE OF THE MONDAYS” Most men dread Monday. It typically starts on Sunday afternoon and you start to feel it. The weight of another workweek quickly approaching and stealing your peace. But here is what changes when you understand what work actually is. You are not just showing up to grind out another week. You are an image-bearer of God exercising dominion on this earth. You are doing what Adam was doing in the garden: taming what was wild, ordering the disorder, and reflecting the nature of the God who brought creation out of nothing. That is not a small thing. A man who understands that he is God’s representative on earth does not show up to work the same way a man does who thinks he is just trading time for money. It does not matter if you manage logistics for a trucking company or build skyscrapers or create spreadsheets or work a trade. The nature of the work is the same. You are taking what tends toward disorder and bringing it under order. That is bearing the image of God. That is the assignment He gave humanity from the beginning. This does not make the toil disappear. The weight is still real. But now the weight has purpose in the midst of the promised pain. And that is a very different way to live. YOUR CAREER IS BIGGER THAN YOUR HOUSEHOLD Here is where the call goes deeper. God has given you a career as a means of provision. That is real and it is important. Providing for your family is not a small thing and Scripture takes it seriously. But provision cannot be the entire point. If it is, you have reduced your career to a purely transactional exchange — time and skill for money — and you are settling for the lowest version of what work is meant to be. Your career is also how you build wealth. And wealth is meant to be stewarded, not just accumulated. You are not building a financial fortress around your own life. You are managing resources that belong to God in the first place. Which means a portion of what your work produces is meant to be reinvested into His kingdom. That is more than tithing, though tithing matters. It is the posture of a man who understands that his career is a platform — not just for provision, but for mission. For generosity. For kingdom investment that outlasts his lifetime. 2 Corinthians 5:18 calls us ministers of reconciliation: God reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. That ministry does not clock out at five. It goes with you into your workplace, your industry, your relationships with clients and colleagues and employees. You are not just an image-bearer on Sunday. You are a minister of reconciliation in your career, every day. There is a tension here that we should not pretend does not exist. Some men are in careers where they genuinely cannot see the purpose. Where it really does feel like nothing more than a paycheck exchange. If that is you, I want to say two things. First: the reframe is available to you right now, in whatever job you are in. The dignity of work does not depend on the title or the passion alignment. Ordering chaos and bearing the image of God can happen whether you are aware of it or not. What changes is whether you bring the awareness with you. Whether you show up as a man who knows what he is doing and why, or as a man who is just logging hours until something better comes along. Second: if you are genuinely in a season where your gifts, your passion, and your career are completely misaligned, that is worth paying attention to. Not as a reason to be reckless, but as a signal worth discerning. A man who is fully deployed in work that reflects his gifts and calling will naturally experience more of that fulfillment and purpose. If you have spent years settling and calling it faithfulness, it might be time to ask God if He is actually inviting you into something more aligned. Both things are true. You can find purpose where you are right now, and you can still be called to make moves. HEAVENLY WORK We neglect to think deeply about this one. When Jesus comes back and we enter the new creation, we will still have work. Not toil. Not the relentless weight of a cursed ground. But work: real, purposeful, deeply satisfying work. Adam was tending a garden before sin entered the world. The new creation will not be floating on clouds and endless leisure. It will be human beings doing what they were designed to do, finally and fully, without the resistance of the fall. If the idea of that excites you, you are already more aligned with God’s design for work than you realize. And if the idea of that makes you uncomfortable, the issue might not be heaven. It might be what the toil of this age has done to your view of work altogether. Work itself is not the enemy. The curse made it hard. But God designed it as a gift. And He is not taking it back. ONE ACTION STEP This week, before Monday hits, spend five minutes with this question: What does it look like for me to show up to work this week as an image-bearer exercising dominion, not just an employee logging hours? Write down one specific thing that would look different if you actually believed your work was that significant. PRAYER OF DEDICATION God, thank You for work. Not just for the provision it brings, but for the purpose that was built into it from the beginning. Help me to feel the weight of the toil without losing sight of what is underneath it — that I am bearing Your image, exercising the

    13 min

  3. May 22

    Men and Their Master

    We’ve been working through the Maturity Wheel — five interconnected areas where real growth happens. This week we move into Finances and Career, starting with the hardest conversation most men never have: what is money actually for? Most men don’t ask this question. We chase money, stress about it, fight about it with our wives, lie awake thinking about it. But we rarely stop to ask: What is it supposed to be in my life? Jesus did. And His answer cuts deeper than most men like to admit. THE MAMMON PROBLEM In Luke 16, Jesus makes a stark statement: “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.” He doesn’t say “don’t love money too much.” He says you cannot serve both. It’s not balance — it’s allegiance. The word Jesus uses is mammon — money as a master. Money as a god. The thing you ultimately trust, fear, and serve. Most men think mammon only describes the rich guy. The greedy accumulator. And yes, that’s one version. But it’s not the only one. TWO WAYS MEN WORSHIP MAMMON I’ve sat across from two kinds of enslaved men. They just don’t look the same. The first loves money through pursuit. Grinding. Chasing. Convinced that if he makes more, achieves more, accumulates more, he’ll finally feel secure. His worth is his net worth. His identity is his income. He can’t rest. He can’t be generous. He can’t lead his family because money demands all his attention. The second loves money through fear. He doesn’t have enough — or thinks he doesn’t. Striving in his own strength. White-knuckling through financial anxiety. He resents money. He’s angry at it. But he’s equally enslaved. His fear of scarcity is as much a master as the other man’s love of abundance. He can’t rest. He can’t be generous. Anxiety has taken the wheel. Two different men. Same root: mammon is their master. Here’s what Jesus knows that most men miss: you can be broke and love money. You can be rich and love money. Your heart determines whether you’re serving mammon, not your account balance. WHEN MONEY BECOMES YOUR GOD I learned this in college. I needed a credit card to cover expenses — books, tuition, a few things. What started as a tool became a trap. A few hundred dollars in debt felt like thousands to a college kid. And then I felt it: the weight. Not just financial. Emotional. Spiritual. That credit card debt created anxiety I hadn’t expected. I’d lie awake thinking about it. Small in dollars but massive in its grip on my soul. Money had become more than a tool. It had become a source of shame and fear. I worked hard to pay it off. I couldn’t live under that weight anymore. I resolved to never live under that crushing weight again. Maybe you find yourself there. Scripture says that the borrower is slave to the lender. That feeling of being a slave is a heavy burden. One that men need to be freed from. That season taught me: money itself is neutral. Your relationship to it determines whether it serves you or enslaves you. The question isn’t whether you have money. The question is: What is money for in your life? Is it your security? Your identity? Your proof of worth? Or is it a tool entrusted to you for something bigger than yourself? WHAT MONEY IS ACTUALLY FOR Money is a tool for stewardship. That’s it. In Genesis, God gave man dominion: “Tend the garden. Cultivate it. Care for it.” Work was always generative. Money is the exchange of that work — the tool that lets you provide for your household, care for the vulnerable, and participate in God’s work. Money becomes a problem when you treat it like the point instead of the tool. When money is the point, you become a slave. You chase it endlessly. You hoard it fearfully. You let it dictate your decisions, time, relationships, peace. But when you understand money as a tool — something entrusted to you for a season — everything shifts. You can hold it loosely. You’re generous with it. You make decisions based on your calling, not your bank account. You lead your family toward freedom. That’s what the mature man understands: money is not your master. It’s a tool. THE FREEDOM QUESTION A man enslaved to mammon cannot move freely. He cannot obey God if it threatens financial security. He cannot be generous because he fears scarcity. He cannot lead well because anxiety has his attention. But a man who understands money as stewardship is free. He can take risks for his calling. He can be generous without fear. He can make decisions based on what matters most. He can sleep at night. That’s the promise: freedom to obey without chains of fear or greed. Paul wrote in 1 Timothy 6: “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil… But you, man of God, flee from all this, and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness.” When you love money — whether chasing or fearing it — you wander from faith. You stop trusting God. You start serving a different master. The antidote isn’t more money or less money. It’s clarity about what money is for. SO WHAT DO YOU DO? Freedom from mammon requires honesty and intentionality. STEP ONE: NAME IT Before budget or conversation, name where mammon actually has your heart. This is a soul exercise. Sit down and ask yourself: Where is money my source of security? Where am I striving instead of trusting God? Where am I using money to prove my worth? Where am I afraid of not having enough? One of those questions probably landed harder than the others. That might be where mammon has you. You must name it. A man can’t repent from something he refuses to see. STEP TWO: LEAD AT HOME Once you’ve named it internally, lead your household. Leading doesn’t mean what most men think. Some of you are naturally gifted with finances — the spreadsheet person. Your temptation is to control everything and cut your wife out. Don’t. Other men hate finances. Your temptation is to check out and let her carry it all. Don’t do that either. Leading means: you own the rhythm and vision. You stay engaged. Set up a regular money conversation with your wife. Monthly works. Quarterly minimum. Put it on the calendar. In that conversation: Ask real questions. Where are we? What are we worried about? Go first with vulnerability. Name your anxieties. Listen to understand, not to argue. Own the direction together. Your wife doesn’t need to be excluded from money decisions. She needs to be part of the vision. She needs to feel like a partner, not a passenger. If you’re the man who avoids all this — your avoidance is abdication. It leaves your wife carrying weight alone. STEP THREE: TAKE INVENTORY A shocking number of men don’t know their actual financial situation. They know they have debt but can’t name the number. Sit down — with your wife — and take inventory: How much total debt do you have? What’s your actual monthly spending? Where is your money going? What are you saving for? Write it down. Look at it. This is clarity. You can’t lead toward freedom if you don’t know where you actually are. STEP FOUR: INVITE GOD IN If you’re living in mammon’s grip — greed, fear, or avoidance — I can almost guarantee you’re not tithing. Or if you are, it feels like obligation. But tithing isn’t duty. It’s worship. When you give the first portion back to God, you’re declaring: You are my master, not mammon. You are my security. You are worthy of my trust. Tithing is an act of faith. A declaration that God is enough. If that feels terrifying, that’s the point. Tithing is supposed to stretch you past where mammon has its grip. The men who tithe, who give generously, who trust God with their finances — they sleep best at night. Not because they have more money. Because they decided money is not their master. THE MAN WHO LEADS WITH FREEDOM A mature man understands that money is not his master. It’s not his shame. It’s not his identity. It’s a tool entrusted to him for stewardship. And that changes everything. When mammon loses its grip, a man becomes free to lead. Free to provide without anxiety. Free to be generous without fear. Free to make decisions based on his calling. Free to sleep at night. Your wife feels that freedom too. Your kids grow up watching a man who isn’t enslaved to greed or consumed by fear. They see what it looks like to trust God with everything. That’s the legacy of a man who gets this right. So start this week. Name where mammon has you. Have the conversation with your wife. Take inventory. Invite God in. Because freedom matters. Leadership matters. And your household is waiting on you to show them what it looks like to serve God instead of money. That’s where mature men are forged. Join me in this prayer: Lord, I’m naming where mammon has me. Free me. I’m choosing to trust You with my finances — not because I understand how it will work, but because You’re trustworthy. Help me lead my household toward freedom. Help me be generous. Amen. Want more content like this? You can find all of our content and resources here: The Forge exists to provide deep brotherhood, essential tools, and focused coaching so that every man can run with clarity, live with intention, and fully become the man he was designed to be. That’s the mission behind everything we’re building here. We’re creating a place where men can grow, get sharpened, and take real steps toward becoming the man God called them to be. If this content hits home for you, share it with another man who needs it. And if you want to help support what we’re building so we can keep creating resources, coaching, and tools for men, you can do that below. Every share and every ounce of support helps move this mission forward. Thank you! Contact Gabe: gabe@theforgemen.co Get full access to The Forge at theforgemen.substack.co

    11 min

  4. May 15

    The Subtle Drift of Your Priorities

    We are in a series called The Mature Man — working through five interconnected areas of a man’s life using the Maturity Wheel. We have covered your Walk with God, Personal Health, Relationships, and last week we began digging into the Time and Priorities section by talking about time itself. This week we stay in that section and tackle something that sits underneath time management entirely. Your priorities. Many men never intentionally choose their priorities. That is the hard truth. Ask a man what his priorities are and he will probably say the right things. God. Family. Work. Health. It sounds clear. But then look at his calendar. Look at where his energy goes. Look at what never gets canceled and what always does. What you see there is not a list of values. It is evidence of a slow drift. Nobody woke up one morning and decided to let the urgent crowd out the important. Nobody sat down and said, “I am going to let the pressure of work become the thing that defines my life while my marriage runs on fumes.” That is not how it happens. It happens the way most drift happens: quietly, gradually, one small accommodation at a time. The meeting runs over. The weekend trip gets pushed. The conversation with your wife gets postponed. None of it feels like a big decision. But over time, those small accommodations stack up and become a direction. And one day you look around and realize your life does not actually reflect what you said you cared about. THE SCOREBOARD PROBLEM Here is something I have observed in the men I talk to and lead: a lot of men are crushing it at work and losing at home. And deep down, they know it. The reason is not lack of love for their family. The reason is that work has a scoreboard and home does not. At the office, success is visible. Sales numbers. Revenue. Promotions. A deal closes and you know it. There is clarity. There is feedback. There is a score. Home is different. Nobody posts the quarterly results of a healthy marriage. There is no leaderboard for how your kids are doing in their souls. The return on investment of being present and consistent as a father does not show up for years. Sometimes decades. So men naturally invest where they feel competent and valued. And when the scoreboard at work is clear and satisfying, it quietly pulls more and more of what a man has to give. The problem is that home is not a game. It is not a competition with a final score. It is a legacy. And the stakes are higher than any deal you will ever close. I want to say something about your wife here because it matters. A lot of men, myself included for a season, make their wife’s happiness the chief aim of their marriage. When she is happy, we feel like we are winning. When she is not, we feel like we have failed. That sounds noble, but it is actually a distraction. Your wife’s happiness is not the goal. Her holiness is. God did not give you a wife so you could manage her emotional temperature. He gave her to you, and you to her, so that you might spur one another on toward who God is calling you both to become. That kind of marriage requires sacrifice. It requires honest conversation. It requires leading even when you do not feel like it. That does not always feel good in the short run. Holiness many times is in direct competition with short-term happiness. But a man who leads his wife toward God rather than just comfort is doing the harder and more important thing. And over time, it produces something a happiness-managed marriage never will. THE ORDER THAT CHANGES EVERYTHING So how does a man get his priorities right? Not just decide them, but actually build his life around them? Jesus said it plainly in Matthew 6:33: “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” Seek first. Not seek also. Not seek when convenient. First. That verse is not just a devotional thought. It is a framework for how a man organizes his life. When God is genuinely first, not just first on a list but first in practice, first in the calendar, first in where a man’s attention goes before the day starts pulling at him, everything else finds its proper place. When God is not first, everything else quietly slides into the space He was meant to occupy. And a man begins building his own kingdom. Which will not last. Here is the order that I have found to be true and that I believe Scripture supports: * God * Marriage * Children * Work * Everything else And I am sure some of you are asking, “Aren’t you a pastor? Where is ministry on that list? Building God’s Kingdom?” Here is what I have learned: ministry is not a category. It is a posture. Everything on that list is ministry when it is done for God. Loving your wife well is ministry. Raising your children is ministry. Showing up faithfully at work is ministry. It is all encompassing. That is why ministry does not need its own slot — it runs through every one of them. But I will say this: my marriage is my first ministry. My wife and children are the first people God called me to serve, lead, and lay my life down for. A man who burns himself up doing kingdom work while his home is neglected is not being faithful. He is being selectively obedient. And it will cost him, and them, more than he is calculating. THE MATURE MAN AND THE CALENDAR Here is how a mature man approaches this. He does not just agree with a priority list. He builds his calendar around it. Last week we talked about time and how to make the most of it. This week the question is sharper: what are you making the most of the time for? Look at your calendar right now. Not the version you imagine you have, the actual one. Where does God show up? Where is your marriage protected? Where have you carved out time for your children that does not get moved for a meeting? What does your week say about what you actually believe matters? A mature man also knows his warning signs. When my priorities have slipped, and they have at times, I can tell internally before it may ever show on the surface. My spiritual life starts to feel thin. My relationships feel strained. My body pays for it. Everything on the wheel is connected. The priorities section is not one spoke among five. It is what holds the tension in every other spoke. When priorities are off, everything else eventually shows the strain. The goal is not a perfect week. The goal is a man who has defined clearly what matters, so that when life hits you in the teeth, and it will, he knows exactly what to come back to. REFLECTION QUESTIONS What does your calendar say your priorities actually are, and how far is that from what you say they are? Where have you been giving your best energy, and is that place worthy of your best? If your wife and children described your priorities based on your actions this past month, what would they say? CLOSING PRAYER Father, I do not want to be a man who says the right things and lives a different story. Show me where I have let drift decide my priorities instead of deciding them myself. Help me build my life around what actually lasts: You first, then the people You have given me, then the work You have called me to. Give me the courage to lead my home well, not just my career. And where I have been absent in the places that matter most, let it not be too late to come back. Amen. Want more content like this? You can find all of our content and resources here: The Forge exists to provide deep brotherhood, essential tools, and focused coaching so that every man can run with clarity, live with intention, and fully become the man he was designed to be. That’s the mission behind everything we’re building here. We’re creating a place where men can grow, get sharpened, and take real steps toward becoming the man God called them to be. If this content hits home for you, share it with another man who needs it. And if you want to help support what we’re building so we can keep creating resources, coaching, and tools for men, you can do that below. Every share and every ounce of support helps move this mission forward. Thank you! Contact Gabe: gabe@theforgemen.co Get full access to The Forge at theforgemen.substack.com/subscribe

    9 min

  5. May 8

    The One Thing You Can't Get Back

    We are in a series called The Mature Man — diving into the areas of a man’s life where real growth happens. We’ve covered your walk with God, your personal health, and your relationships. This week we step into a new section of the Wheel: Your Time and Priorities. And we’re starting off with something we all have a strange and strained relationship with…time. As a pastor, I have sat at the bedside of a lot of people in their final days. It is one of the most sobering and clarifying places I have ever been. And in all those conversations — all those moments where a man or woman is looking back at a life nearly finished — I have never once heard anyone say they wished they had bought that car sooner. Never heard anyone say they wished they had logged more hours at the office or gotten that promotion they missed. Not once. What I have heard is a longing to go back. Back to seasons that are gone. Back to people they didn’t invest enough time in. Back to moments that seemed ordinary then but feel irreplaceable now. The end of a life has a way of burning off everything that doesn’t matter and leaving only what does. And what’s left is never stuff. It’s always people. It’s always time. It’s always the question of whether the hours added up to something that mattered. When my oldest child was born in 2014, my dad pulled me aside and said something I’ve never forgotten. He said, “Time is going to start speeding up now that you have someone else counting it for you.” He was right. And it has only gotten more true with every year. It’s like trying to hold a handful of water. You cup your hands as tight as you can, but no matter how hard you try, you can’t keep it from slipping through your fingers. The days blur together. Seasons change faster than you’re ready for. And somewhere in the middle of it all, you look up and realize your kids are a different size than they were in that picture on your phone from what feels like last week. There is a strange mix of emotions that comes with that. Amazement at how much life you’ve packed in. The weight of the great memories made. And underneath all of it, sometimes a deep sadness — because they will never be two years old again. That season is gone. You won’t get it back. I don’t cry a lot but in full transparency, if I let myself sit in that reality for longer than a few minutes, it can make me very emotional. I don’t think we talk about that enough. There is a grief in the passage of time that most men push away too quickly. It is not just nostalgia. It is something closer to loss — and it’s real. But here is where faith steps in and gives the whole thing a different frame. Peter wrote: “With the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” 2 Peter 3:8 The reason that hits differently than a hallmark card about “making the most of it” is that it forces us to face what we actually believe. We are not purely physical beings moving toward a biological ending. We are spiritual beings having a temporary physical experience. We were made for eternity. We currently exist inside chronological time — everything has a beginning and an end. And because of sin and death, you and I have a physical expiration date. But we were made for a life beyond this current reality. That sadness you feel when you look at an old photo? It’s not a flaw. It’s a signal. You were wired for something that lasts. And that awareness should not lead you to grief and paralysis — it should produce clarity. Urgency. A refusal to drift through whatever time you have left. Moses understood this. He prayed: “So teach us to number our days, that we may get a heart of wisdom.” Psalm 90:12 Notice what he asked for. He didn’t ask God to slow time down. He asked for the wisdom to feel its weight and live accordingly. James was even more blunt about it: “What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.” James 4:14 A mist. One moment it’s there — then you look up and it’s disappeared. That’s your life in the economy of eternity. That is not meant to depress us, but to wake us up. So how does a man wake up? It starts by being honest about what he’s actually doing with his time. THREE WAYS MEN DEAL WITH TIME There are three postures a man can take toward his time. Most of us cycle through all three depending on the season or even the day. The goal is to understand each one so you can honestly assess where you are. 1. WASTE IT This one doesn’t need much explanation. We already know it. Endless scrolling. Hours of content that literally doesn’t matter. Days that ended without anything meaningful to show for them. No one does this on purpose, but it happens by default when a man has no intentional relationship with his time. And here’s the thing — your phone isn’t inherently the enemy. The same device you use to mindlessly scroll is the same one you can use to send an encouraging text, call a brother you’ve been meaning to check in on, or read something that actually builds you up (like a certain blog I know of that comes out on Fridays). The tool isn’t the problem. What you use it for is. The waste posture doesn’t come from laziness as much as it comes from a man who hasn’t caught a daily revelation of the brevity of life. 2. SPEND IT This is where most men actually live. You’re not wasting time — you’re trading it for things that need to get done. Work. Errands. The demands of family. The obligations that stack up. You’re busy. You’re providing. You’re handling it. And that’s not nothing. There is dignity in that. But think about it in terms of money. You can spend money and get value from what you bought. It’s not waste. But spending is not the same as building. There is a difference between a man who spends every dollar he makes on necessary things and a man who makes every dollar work toward something that compounds over time. The same is true with time. Spending it keeps life moving. But it might not build anything that outlasts you. 3. INVEST IT This is the category that changes the trajectory of a man’s life. And it requires a framework. I want to introduce a concept that helps me evaluate how I’m spending my days. It’s called ROTI — Return on Time Invested. You’ve heard of ROI — return on investment. It’s a financial term. But time works the same way. Every hour you put somewhere is an investment. The question is — what is it returning? When I talk about return, I don’t mean productivity metrics or accomplishments on a to-do list. I mean: does this investment outlive me? Does it build something that lasts beyond this moment, this season, this life? Investing in your kids — showing up, being present, having the conversations — returns a legacy that shapes who they become and who they’ll raise. Investing in your marriage builds a covenant that other people are watching and will remember long after you’re gone. Investing in younger men around you — discipling, speaking truth, being present — is kingdom work that compounds across generations. That is ROTI. It is just like James says, our life is a mist. Not a monument. Not a legacy by default. Just here for a moment, then gone. A short life lived on purpose is a completely different thing from a short life that just happened to a man. Solomon wrote that there is a time for everything — a season for each thing under heaven. The mature man understands the season he’s in and invests accordingly. The man who is in the season of raising young kids who invests that time — even when it’s inconvenient and he’s tired — will look back on those years with deep satisfaction. The man who spent it all managing his schedule will look back with the grief of what he missed. You cannot go back. But you can decide what you do with what’s still in front of you. THIS WEEK Moses didn’t just write about numbering your days — he prayed for it. He asked God to teach him to feel the weight of time so that wisdom would follow. That’s the posture. Not guilt. Not panic. Just an honest daily reckoning with how you’re using what you’ve been given. To help with that, I’ve put together a one-page Daily Reflection sheet. It’s simple — a quick end-of-day audit that helps you honestly evaluate whether you wasted, spent, or invested your time that day. It has a 1–5 score for the areas that matter most, space to write out what was meaningful and what wasn’t, and three declaration prompts for tomorrow — who you’ll invest in, what you’ll protect your time for, and what you’ll guard against. Five minutes before bed. That’s it. Do it consistently and it will change the way you think about your days. CLICK HERE TO ACCESS THE DAILY REFLECTION SHEET CLOSING PRAYER Lord, I don’t want to drift through the time You’ve given me. I feel the weight of how fast it moves and I want that weight to produce urgency, not regret. Teach me to number my days. Help me to invest — in the people You’ve placed in front of me, in the work You’ve called me to, in the legacy that outlives me. I don’t want to waste what You’ve entrusted. I want to make it count. Amen. Want more content like this? You can find all of our content and resources here: The Forge exists to provide deep brotherhood, essential tools, and focused coaching so that every man can run with clarity, live with intention, and fully become the man he was designed to be. That’s the mission behind everything we’re building here. We’re creating a place where men can grow, get sharpened, and take real steps toward becoming the man God called them to be. If this content hits home for you, share it with another man who needs it. And if you want to help support what we’re building so we can keep creating resources, coaching, and tools for men, you can do that below. Every share and every ounce o

    11 min

  6. May 1

    If You Want Your Relationships to Suck...

    We are in a series called The Mature Man where we are working through the Maturity Wheel — five interconnected areas of a man’s life — slowing down to give us a strong challenge and helpful filters. Last week we opened the Relationships section talking about the mission of marriage. This week we stay in that section and tackle the thing that makes or breaks every relationship a man will ever have. So if you want your relationships to suck…stop reading now. SHOW ME A BITTER MAN Show me a bitter man and I’ll show you a lonely one. That’s not an exaggeration. Unforgiveness is a relationship killer. It starts with one wound, one betrayal, one moment where someone did something they shouldn’t have — and if it doesn’t get dealt with the right way, it spreads. It doesn’t stay contained to the relationship that hurt you. It leaks into the next one and the one after that. Distance grows. Trust shrinks. And over time, the man who refused to forgive finds himself surrounded by shallow connections he can’t quite explain. Mature men understand this: forgiveness is not a soft skill. It is the load-bearing wall of every relationship worth having. You cannot build deep, lasting relationships without it. WHAT FORGIVENESS IS (AND ISN’T) Before we go further, we need to establish something. Forgiveness does not require immediate trust. It is required for the building of trust. Forgiveness does not mean there is no accountability for sin. It means you are giving the person the best opportunity to repent. Forgiveness does not require automatic reconciliation. It is required for the process of reconciliation to begin. That last one matters. Forgiveness is the first step toward reconciliation — not the final arrival. You cannot get to a restored relationship without first choosing to release the offense. But releasing the offense does not guarantee the relationship is fully restored. It just opens the door. Hold that. We’ll come back to it. FACE IT BEFORE YOU FORGIVE IT You can’t forgive what you won’t face. As men, we are wired to push through and keep moving. So when we get hurt, we bury it. We tell ourselves we’re good. We keep things civil. We manage the relationship just enough to avoid the conversation. But what’s buried alive doesn’t die — it festers. And it leaks out eventually through anger, sarcasm, distance, and cynicism. Acknowledging the hurt isn’t weakness. It’s honesty. And honesty is always the first move. COVER OR CONFRONT Here’s a filter worth remembering: not every offense requires a conversation. Some things should simply be forgiven and released. 1 Peter 4:8 says that love covers a multitude of sins. There is a version of forgiveness that happens entirely in your own heart — where you choose to release the offense and move on without making it a thing. But some situations require more than an internal release. If the pattern keeps repeating, if there is genuine sin involved, if the relationship matters enough to fight for — it needs to be addressed. The question to ask yourself is this: can I forgive this in my heart and move on — or does this situation require a real conversation? That’s the discernment every mature man has to develop. FORGIVENESS IS A CHOICE, NOT A FEELING Here’s the part most men miss. If you wait until you feel like forgiving, you never will. The feelings don’t arrive first. The choice does. Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” He thought seven was generous. Jesus said seventy-seven times or seventy times seven (490) depending on which translation you read. Either way, the point wasn’t arithmetic — it was posture. Never stop forgiving. Don’t put a ceiling on it. Then Jesus told a story. A servant owed a king an unpayable debt — ten thousand talents. The equivalent of more than a lifetime of wages with no way out. He begged for mercy. The king, moved with compassion, forgave the entire debt. Gone. Then that same servant walked out and found a fellow servant who owed him a hundred denarii — a miniscule fraction of what he’d just been forgiven — and had him thrown in prison. When the king heard what happened, he was furious. He handed the servant over to the jailers until the debt was paid. Jesus closes the parable with this: “So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.” (Matthew 18:35) The weight of that parable is this: when you remember how great a debt you’ve already been forgiven, it becomes harder to hold someone else’s smaller debt against them. Not easy. But harder. Because a forgiven man — a man who understands what the cross actually cost — has no ground to stand on when he refuses to extend what he freely received. Forgiveness is not a feeling you wait for. It is an act of trust. You are saying, Lord, I’m handing this to You. You see everything. You’ll make it right. Romans 12:19 says it plainly: vengeance belongs to God, not to you. When you release it, you make room for God to bring the peace you’ve been trying to manufacture on your own. And the same Peter from above shows us the model of Jesus: “When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly.” 1 Peter 2:23 When Jesus was insulted and suffered unjustly, He did not retaliate. He entrusted Himself to the One who judges justly. That’s the move. Not suppression. Not pretending it didn’t happen. Entrusting it to God. THE COST OF REFUSING Unforgiveness feels like power. Like you’re holding something over them, making them pay for what they did. But the man in the parable didn’t imprison his fellow servant — he imprisoned himself. When you refuse to forgive, you’re not protecting yourself. You’re putting yourself in a cell and handing the other person the key. Bitterness is a chain. And chains don’t discriminate. They don’t just hold you back from the person who hurt you — they hold you back from everyone else too. That’s why bitter men are lonely men. Not because people don’t want to be close to them. But because unforgiveness builds walls that eventually keep everyone out. THE FIRST STEP TOWARD SOMETHING BETTER Forgiveness is not the finish line. It is the starting line. It is a doorway to deep fulfilling relationships. Once you choose it — once you release the debt and hand the justice to God — you create the conditions where a relationship can actually be restored. Not guaranteed. But possible. And possible is where reconciliation begins. A man who walks in forgiveness is a man who can be trusted with deep relationships. He’s not keeping score. He’s not building walls. He’s doing the hard, unglamorous work of staying open — and that openness is exactly what makes him someone worth being close to. So if you want your relationships to suck…stay bitter. REFLECTION QUESTIONS * Is there someone you’ve been carrying an offense toward that you haven’t faced or released? * Are you confusing keeping the peace with actually forgiving? What’s the difference in your situation? * What would it look like to entrust that person — and what they did — to God this week? CLOSING PRAYER Lord, I don’t want to be a man who holds what You’ve already forgiven. I know the debt You cancelled over me was enormous. Help me to remember that every time I’m tempted to lock someone else in a cell over what they owe me. Give me the courage to face the hurt honestly, the wisdom to know when to cover and when to confront, and the faith to hand the justice to You. I want to be the kind of man who walks free — and makes room for others to do the same. Amen. Want more content like this? You can find all of our content and resources here: The Forge exists to provide deep brotherhood, essential tools, and focused coaching so that every man can run with clarity, live with intention, and fully become the man he was designed to be. That’s the mission behind everything we’re building here. We’re creating a place where men can grow, get sharpened, and take real steps toward becoming the man God called them to be. If this content hits home for you, share it with another man who needs it. And if you want to help support what we’re building so we can keep creating resources, coaching, and tools for men, you can do that below. Every share and every ounce of support helps move this mission forward. Thank you! Contact Gabe: gabe@theforgemen.co Get full access to The Forge at theforgemen.substack.com/subscribe

    9 min

  7. Apr 24

    The Mission of Marriage

    In this Mature Man series we are working through the Maturity Wheel discussing 5 interconnected areas of a man’s life and slowing down to give us helpful filters and rails to run on to grow in those areas. This week we are moving into the “Relationships” section discussing the most consequential human relationship we will ever have. Most men have never asked the question, “What is the purpose of marriage?” Not because they don’t care about their marriage, but because nobody told them it was a question worth asking. We picked up our understanding of marriage from movies, TV shows, our parents — however that went — and maybe a premarital counseling session where someone drew a triangle and explained that God goes on top. And then we got married. And we’ve been just figuring it out as we go. The problem is that when you don’t know what something is for, you treat it casually and without the intention it requires. You show up, but you don’t really engage. And over time, that casual posture produces a mediocre marriage. Not a disaster, necessarily. Just... not much of anything. That is what immaturity in marriage looks like. It doesn’t have to be yelling and slamming doors (although that is an immature way to handle anything). Sometimes it looks like a man who is physically present but spiritually checked out. A man going through the motions without any real sense of what he is building or why it matters. The depth of your understanding of marriage is directly proportional to the intentionality you will bring to it. If you think marriage is mainly about companionship and comfort — you will pursue comfort. If you think marriage is a mission — you will pursue the mission. What you believe it is shapes everything about how you show up to it. In order to grow in our maturity in marriage, we need to start at the beginning. Because if we get this wrong, nothing else will stick. IT WAS NOT MAN’S IDEA Most people think the family is a social structure humans invented to make life more manageable. That marriage is a cultural arrangement we developed over time for practical reasons — property, children, stability. And on a long enough timeline it became tradition, and tradition became institution, and here we are. That is not what Genesis tells us. Genesis 1:26-28 says this: Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion...” Before God creates them, he announces his intention. Image and dominion in the same breath. You were designed to represent Him — to show the world what He looks like in how you live, lead, and love. And you were given a mandate to exercise dominion over creation on His behalf. This was not a suggestion. It was a commission. The family was not man’s idea. It was God’s first institution — created before the church, before government — and it serves as the bedrock of all civilization. Marriage was designed to be the primary vehicle through which God’s image and authority would be known throughout the earth. That changes things. Or it should. THE MANDATE WAS GIVEN TO BOTH OF THEM Look at how God issues this commission. He doesn’t hand it to Adam and tell him “good luck.” Genesis 1:27 says he created them — male and female — and verse 28 says God blessed them. The mission was never just his. It was theirs. In Genesis 2:18, when God says it is not good for man to be alone, he says he will make a helper (Hebrew “ezer”) fit for him. The word ezer in Hebrew is not a word for someone diminished by her role. It is the same word used to describe God himself when he comes to the aid of his people. It is strength language. And kenegdo — translated “fit for him” — means corresponding to, standing in the presence of, face to face. The woman was not created as an afterthought or an assistant. She was designed as the necessary counterpart without whom the mission of Genesis 1:28 could not be carried forward. Her full strength — not a toned-down version of it — deployed in service of a shared mission. Two image-bearers. One mission. That is what marriage was built for. WHAT SIN DID TO THE MISSION Then Genesis 3 happens. And everything gets complicated. Sin does not cancel the mandate. But it corrupts the people carrying it. The mission is still in place but the carriers are broken. And here is how the brokenness tends to show up in men specifically. We either check out or we take over. The man who checks out goes passive. He stops leading. He lets the family drift. He is present enough to not be accused of abandoning anyone, but he is not actually in the game. He has abdicated his God-given responsibility and become a shepherd who has abandoned his sheep without ever physically leaving. The man who takes over goes the other direction. He weaponizes his authority. He leads by control instead of sacrifice. He uses his strength to serve himself instead of his family. He has become a king who rules only for himself. Neither one looks like Jesus. And neither one looks like the man described in Genesis chapter 1. PAUL PULLS BACK THE CURTAIN About four thousand years after God gives the mandate to Adam and Eve, Paul writes to the church at Ephesus and says something that should reframe everything: “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. (Ephesians 5:31-32) Paul is saying that marriage was never just a practical arrangement. It was always a living picture of the gospel. God didn’t borrow the marriage image to explain the gospel. He designed marriage to preview it. The husband’s leadership was always meant to look like Christ — sacrificial, not dominant. Laying his life down for the one entrusted to him. The wife’s partnership was always meant to look like the church — not diminished, but fully engaged. Deploying her full strength in the direction of the mission. And the children watching? They are being raised in the most powerful seminary on earth. They are learning who God is through what they see at home. This is why the enemy has fought so hard to destroy the family. He knows what it represents. When the family is broken, the picture of Christ is obscured. When the family is restored, the gospel is on full display. THE MISSION RECOMMISSIONED After the resurrection and before he ascends to Heaven, Jesus tells his disciples (and all of us) this: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and 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 28:18-20) That language should sound familiar. All authority — that is dominion language. Go — that is the language of the mandate. Make disciples of all nations — that is multiply and fill the earth. The Great Commission is not a different mission. It is the original mission restored, empowered, and recommissioned through the blood of Christ. What Adam failed to do, Jesus made possible again. And unlike Adam, we do not carry this mandate in our own strength. We have been given the Holy Spirit — the same power that raised Christ from the dead — to empower us to do what we were originally commissioned to do. That mission starts in the four walls of your home. Strong couples lead strong families. Strong families build strong churches. Strong churches build strong communities. And strong communities become the places where God’s will is done on earth as it is in heaven. This is not sociology. This is theology. WHAT THIS LOOKS LIKE IN REAL LIFE My wife and I have been married for almost seventeen years. It feels like with every passing year, I understand more and more about how God is using our marriage. That deeper understanding leads to a greater reverence for it as well. And the more reverence I have for it, the more intentional I become. I still have a lot to learn and there are times that I still blow it. The growth that I have experienced has never been comfortable. I’ll give you an example. Like every couple, there are times when Staci and I may have some disagreements. Here is the truth…my wife is simply better at arguing her point than I am (maybe you can relate). She just is. She is sharper in the moment, quicker with her words, and if it were a competition, she would win on points every time. For years, I used that dynamic as an excuse to disengage. “Why fight when I know I won’t win?” I would manage the conflict just enough to get back to peace. Keep it calm. Keep it civil and try to move on. I told myself I was keeping the peace. What I was actually doing was choosing comfort over the mission. I was treating the difficult moments of my marriage like a problem to be managed rather than a fight worth having. Not a fight against her — a fight for us. When you don’t fully understand what you are fighting for, it is easy to drift into mediocrity. The stakes don’t feel high enough to engage. You do the minimum to keep things functional and call it good. But here is what changed for me. The more the depth of this covenant grew in me — the more I understood what God commissioned us to do together — the more I became motivated to lean into the uncomfortable moments instead of leaning out. Because a man who understands what his marriage represents does not get to opt out when it gets hard. Apathy is not an option. Not when you

    13 min

  8. Apr 17

    Stay Ready

    We’ve been in a series called The Mature Man. The idea is simple: maturity doesn’t just happen. It has to be built — and it gets built across every area of a man’s life. We’ve been working through a visual of a wheel — 5 different domains that make up a whole man. This week we are continuing in the personal health section and we’re landing on something that is insanely important to becoming a mature man. Your body. How you treat your body affects how you think, how you feel, and how available you are to the people and calling God has put in front of you. Maturity in this area of your life doesn’t mean you’ve figured it all out. I’m getting old enough to know as soon as you think you’ve got it locked in, something changes and causes you to rethink and retool your routines, plans, and expectations. THE CYCLE MOST OF US ARE STUCK IN I talk to a lot of men who get really motivated to get in shape for something coming up. A daughter’s wedding. An anniversary trip. A milestone birthday. I get it — I’m turning 40 in August and I’ve got some physical goals I want to hit by the time I get there. That kind of deadline-driven motivation isn’t a bad thing. But here’s the pattern a lot of us know too well: long stretches of laziness, followed by a jolt of motivation, followed by a crash diet or an intense workout plan or a new trainer. We go hard for six weeks. Then life happens. Then we’re back where we started, waiting for the next deadline to light a fire under us. I’ve lived that cycle. A few years back I wasn’t in terrible shape by the world’s standards — I just slowly let it go. And when I got honest about why, the problem wasn’t discipline. It was that I was measuring everything by the wrong thing. I was either trying to hit a number on a scale, or I wasn’t trying at all. Neither of those is approaching your physical health from a mature place. Then I came back from a trip to India recently. My body has just not been right since. Energy completely sapped. Dealt with a bacterial infection I picked up from over there. Getting my motivation back up has been a real fight. Some seasons are just like that — and I say that as someone who has done the work to build a sustainable rhythm. Even with the right framework, the body is still a fight. Every season looks different. But the call stays the same. IF YOU STAY READY, YOU DON’T HAVE TO GET READY There’s a phrase that you’ve probably heard: “If you stay ready, you don’t have to get ready.” I LOVE THAT! It is so true in not only our physical lives but really every area that truly matters. Most of us live in “get-ready” mode. We wait for a reason to care — a wedding, a health scare, a doctor’s visit that didn’t go well — and then we scramble. But scrambling isn’t stewardship. It’s crisis management. The men who seem to have this figured out aren’t the ones with the most discipline or the best genetics. They’re the ones who stopped waiting for a reason and started building a rhythm. Not because they love the gym. Because they’ve decided that staying ready is part of how they show up for their life. Now here’s where it gets interesting — because that raises a question worth asking. Ready for what? READY FOR WHATEVER GOD CALLS YOU TO DO If staying ready is just about looking good at your daughter’s wedding, that’s a fine goal — but it’s a small one. It has an expiration date. The wedding ends. The trip is over. The birthday passes. And without a bigger reason, the motivation dies with it. Here’s a phrase that I live by as it relates to my physical health: I steward my body well so I can say yes. Yes to serve. Yes to show up. Yes to stay in the fight. Yes to be present for my family in ways that actually require me to have energy. Yes to carry hard things without breaking. Yes to go wherever God sends me — even if that’s across the world and back again. To be usable to the King. To my family. To my future. That’s not the language our culture uses around health. Our culture says the goal is longevity — live as long as you can, avoid risk, preserve at all costs. And that sounds reasonable until you realize most of us don’t want to live longer so we can serve God more. We want to live longer because we are scared to die. But Scripture says, “To live is Christ and to die is gain.” That isn’t a morbid verse, it’s a verse that brings great clarity and context to the brevity of life but also the purpose of it. Look at Jesus. He walked toward the cross, not away from it. Thank God Jesus was focused on usefulness to the mission instead of longevity! Paul described himself as being poured out like a drink offering. Longevity is never touted as the highest good in the pages of Scripture. Usefulness is. Luke 2:52 gives us this small, striking line about Jesus as a young man: “And Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man.” Wisdom. Physical development. Favor with God and with people. These grew together. They weren’t competing categories. Jesus wasn’t neglecting his body or obsessing over it. He was building the kind of man God could use. The question we should be asking isn’t, “How long can I keep this body?” The question should be, “Is the current state of my health making it easier or harder to obey God?” WHAT PAUL ACTUALLY MEANT Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 9:27: “No, I strike a blow to my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize.” He’s writing to a city obsessed with athletic competition. He points at the stadium and says — you already understand training. You already know what it looks like to do hard things in your body for a goal. Now aim that same energy at eternity. He’s not preaching self-punishment. He’s not talking about hating your body into submission. He’s talking about self-mastery — the idea that your body serves you, not the other way around. And then in 1 Corinthians 6 he gives us the foundation underneath all of it: “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.” If that language feels distant, here’s what it means practically: your body is not yours. It was given to you. And the same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead lives inside it. That changes the question from “what do I want to do with my body?” to “what does God want to do through it?” Your body isn’t the point. But it carries the point everywhere it goes. YOUR BODY AND YOUR MIND ARE IN THE SAME FIGHT This connects directly to what we talked about last week. If you’re in a season where depression or anxiety has been grinding you down, your body is part of the solution — and the research on this is not subtle. Studies have found that men who get regular vigorous exercise are 25 percent less likely to develop depression or an anxiety disorder. A sweeping review of global research found that exercise consistently reduced symptoms of depression and anxiety across all ages, often matching or even outperforming medication and therapy. One trial found it was as effective as medication in lowering depressive symptoms over 16 weeks. Regular movement improves sleep, regulates stress hormones, and builds the kind of confidence that comes from doing something hard consistently. Your theology and your body are not two separate conversations. How you think shapes what you do. What you do with your body shapes how you feel. How you feel shapes how you think. It’s a loop — and for a lot of men right now, it’s spinning the wrong direction. The way out isn’t just prayer. It isn’t just thinking differently. Sometimes the way out starts with actually moving your body. WHERE DO YOU START? Most of us are in the neglect camp — and if that’s you, the bar is lower than you think. This isn’t about a perfect program or a complete overhaul. It’s about moving the needle. Start simple. Walk. Sleep. Drink water. Tell your body “no”. Make one better choice this week than you made last week. The goal isn’t aesthetic. The goal is readiness. And if you’re on the other end — if your body has become the thing your identity is built on, if the training is relentless and the satisfaction never comes — this is your invitation to reorient. Not to stop. But to ask why. Both of these are stewardship problems. Both have the same answer: put your body back in its proper place. Not an idol. Not an enemy. A tool in the hands of God. Stay ready. So when He calls, you can say yes. REFLECTION QUESTIONS * Are you in a stay-ready rhythm, or are you living in the vicious cycle of short-term motivation? What’s keeping you there? * Is the current state of your physical health making it easier or harder to obey God? * What’s one thing you can change this week — not for the mirror, but for the mission? If this is something you’d like to change, start with a short prayer like this: Lord, I don’t want to be the man who’s always scrambling to get ready. I want to be the man who stays ready — because I know You can call at any time. Help me steward this body well. Not for how it looks. Not to prove something. So that when You ask, the answer is a quick “YES!” Amen. Want more content like this? You can find all of our content and resources here: The Forge exists to provide deep brotherhood, essential tools, and focused coaching so that every man can run with clarity, live with intention, and fully become the man he was designed to be. That’s the mission behind everything we’re building here. We’re creating a place where men can grow, get sharpened, and take real steps toward becoming the man God called them to be. If this content hits home for you, share it with another man who needs it. And if you want to he

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Forging stronger men through biblical truth, practical challenge, and real talk about the battles men face every day. theforgemen.substack.com

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