The Strength to Name Longing

A few months ago I wrote about masculinity the way most men experience it now: like a crown we’re handed before we know what we’re ruling, and a scepter placed in our hand before we’ve ever taken inventory of our own hearts. I named three counterfeit thrones—Pride, Passivity, and People-Pleasing—and then held up Jesus as the True King, the only Man strong enough to unite Lion and Lamb without turning strength into domination or tenderness into disappearance.

But that raises the next question—maybe the real question:

If Jesus is the True King… what exactly is He forming inside of us?

Because if manhood is not a performance, and not a pose, and not a PR campaign for our insecurities… what is it?

On New Year’s Day, I read a blog by my friend and mentor, Chuck DeGroat, and it felt like a flashlight under the hood. Not a spotlight. Not a lecture. Just a steady beam aimed at what’s really driving most of us into January: not wisdom, but shame. Not formation, but force.

Chuck points out that every January we’re handed the same script: fix yourself, optimize yourself, become your “best you.” And if you fail, the subtext is always the same—try harder, do more, be better.

(And if you need help, there’s a book for that. And if you need motivation, there are twenty people on gym bicycles at 5:30 a.m. to remind you you’re weak. Which, personally, is exactly what I want at 5:30 a.m.—a Peloton of condemnation.)

Then Chuck flips the script with one stanza that landed in my bones:

“Resolutions ask: What should I do differently this year?
Longings ask: What is stirring within me?”

Thank you, Chuck.

That shift isn’t semantic. It’s spiritual.

Resolutions often begin in the land of should. Longings begin in the land of truth.

Resolutions are frequently a form of self-management; longings are a form of self-attunement—listening for what’s actually stirring, rather than what would look impressive on a spreadsheet.

Chuck asks, “What if the deeper invitation isn’t exhausting effort, but attunement?”

That’s a dangerous question for men—because most of us have been trained to treat attunement (if we even know what that word means or care) like a luxury item. Something women do. Artists do. Sensitive people do.

Real men carry weight and keep moving.

Which brings me to the problem.

Men Have Longings. We Just Don’t Call Them That.

Most men aren’t longing-less. We’re longing-loaded. We are full of desire.

But we don’t know how to name it without turning it into either duty or appetite.

Duty is culturally safe.
Appetite is culturally “manly.”
Longing—real longing—feels like exposure.

So we translate everything into performance or consumption.

If we name longing at all, it’s often sexual longing—because that one is permitted. It fits the stereotype. It can be joked about and high-fived. It doesn’t require tenderness. It doesn’t require the terrifying words, I want to be known. It doesn’t require admitting we might want comfort, rest, belonging, dignity, or connection… or worse, to be held.

And for many men, it’s not that those deeper longings don’t exist. It’s that they feel shameful to the strong man stereotype.

So we aim our longing at something safer—success, money, sexual conquest, gym PRs, productivity, control. We call it drive. We call it ambition. We call it discipline. Sometimes we even call it leadership.

Cultural “Beast” Training

This isn’t just an American problem—though we’ve industrialized it beautifully.

Across cultures, men have historically been shaped for survival and responsibility: war, labor, provision, protection. In times of scarcity, societies need men to function. Emotional nuance can feel like a threat to the mission. So cultures reward duty, restraint, toughness, and utility—and discourage anything that looks like softness, need, or dependency.

Then America took that global instinct and baptized it into a myth: the self-made man.

In America, masculinity is often defined by autonomy.

You don’t need help.
You don’t need anyone.
You don’t need rest.
You don’t need to talk about it.

You grind. You win. You provide. You produce.

And if you can do all that while looking calm and in control? Congratulations—you have achieved the highest form of American masculinity:
functioning emotionally alone.

Go forth, young man. You are a beast!

Beast mode.

Except—Biblically speaking—being a beast is probably not a great model.

Because longings require honesty, and in Scripture the Beast is the father of lies. Honesty requires humility, and the Beast is fueled by arrogance. Humility requires tenderness, and the Beast is about as tender as an AK-47. And tenderness requires relationship, while the Beast’s primary work is always division—separating us from God, from each other, and from the truth about ourselves.

Biblical Desire

The Bible does not treat desire as embarrassing or unmanly. It treats desire as directional —a force that will shape you whether you acknowledge it or not.

Chuck points out that Jesus doesn’t offer transformation-by-checklist. He keeps asking a question that is both simple and terrifying:

“What do you want?”

That question shows up early and often in the Gospels. And Jesus isn’t fishing for information. He’s naming the doorway to formation: desire. Not the desire you perform, but the desire you actually live from.

Here’s the key point for men:

Biblical longing is not weakness.
It is the beginning of wisdom.

Because longing—properly named—becomes a homing beacon.

My Two New Year’s Longings (And Why They’re Scary)

This is where I have to tell the truth about myself—and it’s the part of masculinity that makes men clear their throats and change the subject. So here it goes… bros.

For much of my life, I believed that to be a strong man, I had to perform, achieve, and produce. Strength meant competence. Rest felt like laziness. Tenderness felt like risk.

Strength itself isn’t the problem. Scripture does call us to be strong men. But the Americanized version of strength always felt foreign to me.

The locker-room bravado. The tales of female conquest. The one-upping and posturing. From the beginning, it all struck me as a lie—a fig leaf. A way of trying to fit into a masculine culture that wasn’t actually true, or real, or honest.

Still, I got pretty good at appearing strong this way.

I can make a deal, drink you under the table, and quote Braveheart in the same night.

But deep down I always wondered: Is this really what it means to be a strong man?

Then came the second layer of the lie—autonomy.

I didn’t just need to appear strong. I needed to appear self-sufficient. Rugged individualism sank deep. I needed to be known as the strong, self-made man. The autonomous warrior. The dad who protects. The husband who provides. The worker who produces.

Guys—honestly—that’s BS. And you know it. Or at least you should.

I learned it the hard way—by running into my limits. My flaws. My failures. And my need for help. Repeatedly.

And I began to see that Biblical strength looks far more like the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

Take that Andrew Tate.

Oh, and one more thing: masculine strength looks more like dependence than autonomy. Imagining God calls me to be a self-made, autonomous beast is not only foolish—it’s anti-Gospel. The gospel does not create isolated warriors; it forms beloved sons who know where their strength comes from.

So here’s my first New Year’s longing:

I want to be biblically strong—and held.

I am exhausted in being strong without being held.

What I mean is this: I am tired of carrying weight without witness. Of leading without being known. Of protecting everyone else while pretending I don’t need protection too. I am tired of mistaking emotional isolation for maturity.

And yes—that sentence feels dangerous to write. It sounds like heresy in the church of masculinity. It sounds like weakness in a culture that worships autonomy. It sounds like something a “real man” should edit out.

But it leads directly to my second, even deeper longing.

All that performing trained me to live in a need-to-be-needed mindset. That’s a very masculine framework—and it makes sense. Being needed feels purposeful. It feels stabilizing. It feels safe and strong. Lean on me. I can support your weight and mine at the same time.

More BS. And I’m discovering something truer.

I don’t just want to be needed.
What I really want is to be wanted.

Maybe you do too.

The Question That Matters

So my question this year is not, What should I change? It’s the question Chuck named so cleanly:

What is my heart quietly longing for?

Yes—I long to lead better.
Yes—I long to protect my kids.
Yes—I long to love my wife more deeply and passionately.

But I also long to be known.
To be loved without performing.
To be tender without apology.
To be vulnerable without losing my spine.

To be held—and still be a man.
And yes… to be wanted.

Not the manly longings we’re allowed to admit. The real ones.

And here’s the great news: Jesus not only shows us what true masculine strength is, but also that we need Him and His Spirit to get there. And that He will hold us all along the way, not because of duty. But because He wants us.

In Him we can be truly strong, truly held, and truly wanted.

A Way Forward

If this stirred something in you—good. That’s longing waking up.

This is exactly the work I do at The Way Soul Care: helping men and women move beyond performance into formation, beyond autonomy into attachment, beyond false strength into Christ-formed courage.

No hype. No macho motivation. No shame-driven self-improvement.

Just honest, courageous work of becoming human again, following the True King on The Way.

If you want to walk this road with me, you’re welcome. We’re not trying to become better brands of masculinity.

We’re learning how to tell the truth—and follow Jesus there.