The Roar Within

Scriptures: John 10:10, Isaiah 43:1, 2 Corinthians 5:17, Romans 5:10-11

The Roar Within

One of the scariest nights I have ever spent was in a small fenced-in camp in Balule, South Africa, on the southern banks of the Olifants River in Kruger National Park. At night you can hear whole prides of lions roar—it’s awesome.

While I was finishing the last few bites of my meal, something caused me to pause and squint past the glow of the fire into the shadows. I sensed something was locked onto me before I had visual recognition. The eerie shape of a large spotted hyena materialized. 

The jaws of a hyena can crush the pelvis of a buffalo in one bite. Knowing I was its intended victim was no small thing. Within moments, I was engaged in a game of dominance, with the hyena moving in and out of the shadows, when suddenly the hyena’s body language changed from dominance to submission as it cowered and disappeared into the dark. I thought I’d won our game of “king of the hill” until my ears picked up on the true cause of its turning. In the distance, but moving closer, I heard the unmistakable sound of a lion pride roaring, claiming its territory.

A male lion is extremely protective of his home and family; he uses his roar to warn off anything that might threaten them. When the whole pride sounds off, every living creature stops what it’s doing. They all know who the real king of the African plains is. This king is not a thief; he rules the plains, protects his pride, and takes what is his.

A lion’s roar isn’t something it earns from its father or from how many kills it achieves. That roar is something a lion is born with. It’s imputed. The roar is given to the lion by the One who created it. Our time together is about helping you find your roar, your one true voice, the real you God placed in you the moment you trusted Jesus—the you that is Christ in you. Not the flesh and bones walking around afraid, insecure, and full of worry and doubt, but the you from whom, when you live from that place, the enemy tucks tail and runs.

We are embarking on a journey—a safari to help men answer the Big Question: Am I enough? When you understand who you really are in Christ, you live life to the full, the way that God intended.

Are you ready to discover and release the roar within? Is there a fear within that also rises when you answer that question?

Scriptures: Exodus 15:3, Hosea 11:10

The Big Question

Men ask the really deep questions when they are alone. Why am I here? Who am I really? What is my purpose in this life? Will I make a difference? There’s an old Russian proverb: “If you chase two rabbits, you will not catch either one.” When I heard this, it was like a punch in the gut, because that was me for many years. I’d chased so many rabbits—all of them good things—but I was almost no further along in getting my questions answered than when I’d begun chasing them many years before. 

Why? Because I had never been able to identify that one thing. I’d been living my life for the opinions of others. I found the influential words of author John Eldredge pursuing me: “Ask yourself what makes you come alive.”

What was it that made me come alive like a lion on the prowl? I discovered it was fighting for the hearts of men and writing about the adventures God had planned for me to draw men to Himself! I knew, because it roared inside me so loudly that I couldn’t not do it. I was made to be His warrior poet!

But almost as quickly as I heard the roar of God telling me who I truly was at my core and what I was meant to do, I learned the enemy wanted that roar—that purpose—silenced. He knew that if I ever truly lived out of that place where God made me fully alive, I would be dangerous. The same is true for you. Just as God had a plan for me and for you before we were born, the enemy had a plan to keep us from understanding our true identities.

As a big-game hunter, I have found myself in some pretty hairy situations on numerous occasions. When in the wilds, you have to remember that you are in another’s territory. You are constantly measuring each step, listening, smelling, feeling the wind’s direction on your face, and watching for any movement. It’s imperative to pay close attention at all times, as a lapse in any of those areas can alert game to your presence, causing them to either flee from you or try to eat you for lunch.

Whether you realize it or not, everyday life is the same.

What is that one thing that you just can’t not do—the one thing that makes you feel truly alive? Give yourself permission and time to answer this question honestly this week.

Scriptures: John 15:16, Ephesians 2:1-10

Introducing the Big Five Man-Killers

I recently asked a trusted group of over three hundred men to rate the top five struggles—I’ll call them man-killers—that they deal with. I think you’ll find their answers eye-opening.

1. Lack of purpose

2. Lack of respect 

3. Anger

4. Lust

5. Shame

Next, I created an example of how each struggle can avalanche into the next. This may not be the same for you individually, but in staying true to the research, here is an illustration I believe most men will understand: When a man (1) lacks purpose, he doesn’t feel good about himself, so he craves respect from his wife, friends, boss, and/or coworkers. If he perceives a (2) lack of respect, he becomes (3) angry. The anger can cause him to (4) lust, have affairs, look at porn, cuss, throw or hit things, or even quit his job. Those actions lead to (5) shame, which leads to more hiding or attempts at behavior modification. Realizing he can’t conquer this on his own (can’t “manage” his sin), he feels more shame, which eventually leads to more sin. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Lack of purpose is the number one man-killer all men face. When a man loses his sense of purpose—he feels like he is not enough, like he’s in an endless bank of fog, alone, helpless and hopeless, and he’ll run from the very battles and challenges he was designed to overcome. 

A man’s purpose isn’t manmade—it comes from God. What man didn’t give, man can’t take away. The only One whose opinion matters is God. This purpose is not found through performance, achievement, recognition, or respect. Our true purpose can only be found through total surrender to God’s purpose for us. That begins to happen when we start believing God is who He says He is and we are who God says we are.

The only answer to these struggles is when a man realizes that his worth and value will never come through what he did or didn’t accomplish, whether he has others’ respect, or whether he did or didn’t sin. A man’s identity in Christ will never come through his performance but only through Christ in him, which is something he cannot earn; it is a gift. God put His righteousness, His “good enough,” in the believer the moment he truly believed. And that, my friend, is enough to take down any man-killer.

Where in your life do you find you’re most tempted to put on the mask, and why?

Scriptures: Psalms 86:15, Romans 3:22-24, Hebrews 5:14

Quieting My Angry Roar

I was using my cell phone’s GPS during rush hour. An incensed fellow-commuter let me know his disapproval as he roared past, gesturing and sharing language that provoked equal rage within me. It took a few deliberate moments to quiet how I really wanted to react before I could try to understand where this man might have been coming from with his seemingly misdirected anger.

The Holy Spirit reminded me of my own anger and bitterness toward someone who’d changed my life and my family’s life through the use of a cell phone while driving. In January 2013, while stopped at a traffic light, my parents were hit from behind by a young driver who was on her phone. 

My mother broke her leg, and my father had severe brain damage that left him in a coma for several months and then unable to walk for the rest of his life. The stress and physical strain of taking care of my father consequently impacted my mother’s health. They had to sell both their winter home in Florida and their home in Pennsylvania to afford their move into a dark, cramped handicap-accessible apartment.

My memories of what happened to them and to the rest of our family welled up in my mind. The rage I felt minutes before was now replaced with understanding, compassion, repentance, tears, and personal responsibility. I no longer wanted to fight the angry driver. 

I wanted to let him know that he was right, that I shouldn’t have been on my phone and would make changes. This wasn’t about his anger—I couldn’t control that. It was about me dealing with my anger. There was truth in what he was saying to me, and when I was willing to acknowledge that truth, it defused my anger.

Many of us have learned to use an angry roar when we feel disrespected or misunderstood. It’s how we attempt to gain control. That roar is not coming from our core but from our flesh, which is always coveting, always striving to get what we want, forgetting we already have everything we’ll ever need. It’s that roar that needs to be understood. 

However, there is a time and a place to listen to the roar within—when it comes from a righteous anger, a roar that is not rooted in our flesh but deep within the character of God. It can lead us to protect the vulnerable and engage in battle against the enemy’s lies that keep attacking God’s beloved.

Empathizing with another’s point of view can reframe our response of anger. Practice listening before speaking. 

Scriptures: Romans 8:3-4, Isaiah 43:16-19

Restoring My Roar 

 One day I was sitting with my friend Derek, who has also faithfully discipled me over the past decade—repeatedly walking with me through my own sin and pain and back to health. Derek and I met when I was at my absolute bottom. I was paraded in front of a congregation years ago for getting too close emotionally to a woman in the church while I was on the church staff. 

As a part of my “restoration” process, I was required to stand in front of twelve hundred people in three separate services and confess my sin before them. I stood there sobbing before the people I loved, feeling ashamed, isolated, and condemned. As you can imagine, I resigned shortly thereafter and spent the next several months curled up in the fetal position, wanting to die. 

When the opinions of others drive us to contemplate our own demise, we’re listening to the wrong voice. What I desperately needed were restorative voices speaking into me, those who could remind me of my identity in Christ, not my sin. But there were no such voices speaking to me. The message communicated to me through the withholding of relationship and restoration was that my sin disqualified me from love, compassion, and even ministry. 

After moving my family only a few months after my resignation, God led me to Derek. Instead of shaming, shunning, condemning, and judging, he talked to me about God’s grace and how my identity was in Christ, not in my sin. His words were different. They didn’t leave a nasty spiritual residue like performance-based religion did. They didn’t discard me as not good enough. They were redemptive, healing, freeing, and restorative. 

The message of the gospel is always transformative, and I began to truly understand where my “good enough” came from. The liberation of God’s grace created an overwhelming, unquenchable force inside of me to want to share His goodness and love. As a result, I’ve had the opportunity to use my story—my limp—to build stronger, healthier relationships and change lives through the message of love and grace instead of condemnation. I have seen over thirteen thousand people come to Christ in just the past decade. I now know that the dark mud I was dragged through, that Satan tried to use to cover up my core identity, never had any effect on who I really was—and it never will.

Is there a sin from your past that you believe you should feel shame and condemnation for? What does God’s Word say about that?

Scriptures: Psalms 62:5-8, Matthew 4:1-11, 1 Peter 5:8

Counted As Warriors

We must create a place so safe that men can share, cry, and grieve, and still be counted as warriors.

At some point in our lives, our private struggles will become too much. When this happened to me, the feelings of despair were so heavy that an elephant couldn’t carry them on its back. For any man, being honest with yourself and others takes more than just bravery; it takes fully trusting God with your whole self. But here’s the thing: there’s almost always a little truth mixed in with the enemy’s lies. That’s how he gets us to buy into them in the first place. 

There are times when all the renewing of your mind you can do and all the scriptural prescriptions you can come up with don’t fix the problem. You find yourself on a cliff, and the only thing keeping you from going over the edge is trusting God—trusting that God is who He says He is, and trusting that you are who God says you are.

I reached out to my close friend and pastor, Keith, to let him know what was happening with me, not because he needed to know but because I needed to throw the lies—not myself—over the cliff by verbalizing and unpacking them with someone I trusted. 

The first honesty reveal was, “I feel hopeless.” Feeling hopeless wasn’t the lie; that was just a feeling. The lie was that I should feel hopeless, because I was hopeless. But why did I feel that way? Because I wasn’t making the money I thought I should be making at my age, I’d been through a divorce, I was hurting, my kids were hurting, some people close to me had turned their backs on me, and more.

Shame was stalking me. I had been getting my “good enough”—my sense of worth— from the wrong places, and was left feeling hopeless when those things or people didn’t deliver. The truth is that my hope is in the resurrected Christ. He is my hope. I never need to feel hopeless.

Replacing the lies with truth gets rid of the lies, but in order to really heal, we also need to grieve the very real losses tangled in with the lies. 

Where in your life right now are you struggling? What lie about your worth, your identity, needs taking down?

Scriptures: Matthew 26:36-46, Psalms 30:2, Psalms 30:5, Psalms 30:11-12

Restoring the Roar Within

I had come to the place of grieving the loss of some relationships that had been important to me. I understood that it was the lies others were buying into that had caused these people to abandon me, but that didn’t stop the reality that they had gossiped about and shunned me. Those things hurt deeply. The loss of those relationships needed to be grieved.

Too many times we can be quick to tell someone to “get over it and move on.” We must create a place so safe that men can share, cry, and grieve and still be counted as warriors. I know what many of you are thinking. C’mon, Brent—men don’t feel the need to be safe, do they? But then how do we deal with grief?

Grief can go so deep, it’s a gutting of the soul. You don’t argue with grief. If you truly want to find your way out of grief, you have to drink that cup. First, you have to acknowledge your sadness—your deep sorrow—as you look at the cup of grief before you. As you pray and spend time with the Father, ask God for the strength to embrace that cup, to let yourself fully feel the grief. 

Finally, you have to trust God and drink it—all of it. God wants to heal every ounce of your grief, no matter how deep. But you need to work through it in order to fully heal. Jesus didn’t just get away for a few minutes to ask His Father for help with His deep grief and for strength as He knew what lay before Him. God promises to never leave you nor forsake you, and He doesn’t care about the hour, for He neither sleeps nor slumbers, and you are a child of the King. 

God wants us to take our sorrows and troubles to Him. It’s more than just laying them at His feet; it’s knowing we can ask anything of our Father, the King. So let it out, dear friend—all of it. Crawl up into His lap, and let Him hold you. Let Him speak words of sonship into your ear. Trust Him, and allow Him to be the safe place where you can share, cry, and grieve and still be counted as the warrior that you are.

My friend, as a believer, you have the Lion of Judah in you! What will you say to your enemy right now to let him know that no matter what he throws at you, you understand who and whose you really are, and you’re not going to back down?