Where am I going?

Your life is a journey you must travel with a deep consciousness of God.  It cost God plenty to get you out of that dead-end, empty-headed life you grew up in.

1 Peter 1:18 (The Message)

As observers, boys are naturally drawn toward things female; curious, puzzled, and infatuated.  However, they want to become men, and they want to be around those who are doing men-things. 

There are very few things in life that are more pleasant to men than the sounds of girls and women, talking, laughing, and playing together.  But, while they pursue interpersonal relationships with women, men do not want to be a part of the society of women.  Men want to test themselves against other men as foils. They want to compete for place, and for supremacy, in the society of men.  They may even die trying.

Anyone who has been a boy, or who has sons, knows that they love active things like climbing, tumbling, wrestling, running, competing, and testing courage against the strength of other boys.  They love hunting, fishing and exploring.  They can also be attracted to sedentary things that involve learning, developing skills, game competitions, or mastery of ideas, when they can do it on their own spirited terms.  This does not change when they grow up.

Have you ever noticed how men love journeys?  In ages past, they went on hunting adventures, sometimes for days into the wilderness, following, tracking and running game to the ground.  It was often a right of passage for boys on their journey to manhood.  Norse Vikings, and French Voyageurs, took long trips to explore new lands and seas, sometimes not returning for years, or at all.

Why do many men do such things?  There is a wanderlust that resides in the soul of every guy.  It drives him out and away from home for no reward other than the sheer wonder and awe of the journey – and the opportunity for glory.  This is something that cannot be explained in a way that the women in their lives will find easy to understand.

Bring this down to the family outing, or vacation trip.  Dad loads up everything and everyone, and is off – the important thing is the destination.  His challenge is to see how quickly he can get wherever it is that you are going.  How often will he admit that he is lost, or stop to ask for directions, when he really does not know where he is?  Finding his own way out becomes a test of manhood, and an adventure that he cannot explain no matter how foolish it may seem to others.

It is my observation that a man is most motivated in life when he is offered an opportunity to join an exploration, a journey, or what I will call a quest.  He jumps at the chance to be a part of a magnificent endeavor that is larger than he, the chance to be engaged in a search for something glorious – a grand quest that will change the world as he knows it.  John Eldredge captures this idea when he dramatically says, “in the heart of every man is a desperate desire for a battle to fight, an adventure to live, and a beauty to rescue.”[1]

There are five dimensions to the grand quest that we will examine together in future articles, but I just want to mention them here.  When a man finds a journey that engages his imagination, fills him with wonder, demands his loyalty and valor, invokes his passion, and promises him romantic fulfillment, it can become a consuming fire.  Such is the nature of the grand quest that Jesus Christ offers to the man He calls to follow Him.  It is a call to the pathway of the noble life.