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Chapter 1 | The Rat Race
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We’re excited to kick off a new series on The Man in the Mirror book. In this message, Pat Morley is tackling the “rat race”—the endless pursuit of a moving target that so many men are caught up in. For many of us, that includes the man staring back when we look in the mirror! But any good…
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Chapter 2 | Leading an Unexamined Life
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We all want the same things—something to give our lives to that will make a difference, someone to share our lives with, and a belief system that makes sense of why life is so hard. Christianity and secularism both offer solutions to these problems but with dramatically different results. This week, join Pat Morley to explore…
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Chapter 3 | Are you a Biblical Christian or a Cultural Christian?
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Would your family and friends say you lead a vibrant life in Christ? Or do you find yourself vacillating between the values of this world and the values of Jesus? A lot of men you know—maybe you—feel stuck in spiritual mediocrity. They have become cultural Christians rather than biblical Christians. And they hate it! Obviously,…
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Chapter 4 | Significance: The Search for Meaning and Purpose
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What is a man’s greatest need in this world? Women share this need too, but for men it tends to be all-consuming—#1. Yet many men are not able to name it, much less tell you how to satisfy it. And among those who can name it, too many are trying to satisfy their greatest need…
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Chapter 5 | Purpose: Why Do I Exist?
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Do you have a clear sense of purpose? Are you moving in the right direction? Or does life sometimes feel random—or even pointless? Nothing fuels a man’s soul like knowing his purpose, and nothing drains him more than not knowing. Raw, unedited transcript from video Well, we are in the series The Man in the Mirror book…
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Man Alive Launch Party
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For more than 38 years, Pat Morley led the Man in the Mirror Bible Study, but in a new season, it’s time to launch something different. Join us for our Launch Party as we honor more than 38 years of the beloved Man Alive Bible study and embark on an exhilarating new chapter of reaching men…
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How God Speaks to Men through Creation
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We have all felt the agony of wanting to hear from God. Yet, in our hearts, don’t we intuitively know the problem isn’t that God has a speech impediment, but that we have a hearing impediment? In this first message of our new series, How God Speaks to Men, Pat Morley will show you how…
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How God Speaks to Men through Scripture
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In your vehicle you have a dashboard with gauges—some big, some small—that communicate various things to you. These gauges are vital to ensuring you can get to where you want and need to go. But what if you had a spiritual dashboard that could speak to you as clearly as the one in your…
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How God Speaks to Men through Jesus
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What do we learn from Jesus that we would otherwise not know? In the equivalent of a mere seven sermons, Jesus gave us the defining guidance we all seek for essentially every aspect of our life—identity, family, relationships, work, money, health, justice, mercy, compassion, forgiveness, suffering, service, true happiness, abundant life, building His kingdom, and…
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How God Speaks to Men through Discipline
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Raw, unedited transcript from video We may feel like we’re a lost cause. Guess what? God delights in lost causes. Well, good morning! Good to be with you men. Somebody asked, “Where’s Pat?” Who knows? I have no idea where Pat is this week. He just gives me a date and says, “You’re on this…
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How God Speaks to Men through the Spirit
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If you’ve been through a hurricane or tornado and lost power, then you know one thing for sure: It’s better to have power than to not have power. Whatever question, problem, struggle, challenge, or opportunity you’re facing, did you know God promised to provide the power you need for it through His Holy Spirit? The…
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How God Speaks to Men through Prayer
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What is the condition of your prayer life? Are you weary of praying but not getting the answers you want—or not getting any answers at all? Are you tempted to take matters into your own hands? Whether now or in the past, we’ve all been there, haven’t we? Join Pat Morley to not only rehabilitate your…
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How God Speaks to Men through Men
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It takes a man to teach a man how to be a man. Jesus knew this. That’s why He gave us such a highly reproducible model of the way He taught men, and the Apostle Paul totally got the message—we need equippers. Join us as we explore Paul’s explanation of the crucial role equippers play in God’s…
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How God Speaks to Men through the Church
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There is a comfort to driving by a little, creaky, still-standing country church on a Sunday morning, wouldn’t you agree? For reasons we can only imagine, the body of Christ—His church—though deeply flawed and far from perfect, is and always has been God’s primary and most effective voice to share the hope of the gospel…
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How God Speaks to Men through our Circumstances
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If you are a father, you know how much you pray, hope, and even ache for the wellbeing of your children in every area—their faith, relationships, emotions, career, finances, health, sense of identity and purpose, ability to overcome destructive behaviors or conquer loneliness, and so much more. That’s what our heavenly Father wants for His…
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How God Speaks to Men Through Sovereignty
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There’s a certain reassurance in watching the steady rise and fall of the ocean’s tides, isn’t there? The rhythm reminds us that, no matter how unpredictable life feels, something greater is holding it all together. In the same way, the sovereignty of God—His supreme authority and control over all things—offers us a profound comfort. Although…
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How God Speaks to Men Through Ambassadors
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This week, we’re wrapping up our series on how God speaks to men by exploring how He wants to speak through us. We’ll consider how we can apply everything we’ve learned so far in order to become His messengers, and why that matters for millions of men—men like Pat Morley, who became a follower of Jesus because…
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What Was It Like To Grow Up In Your Home?
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There are millions of us. We carry around leftover pain from childhood wounds. As a result of this unprocessed pain, we act out in ways that damage our relationships. We’re easily offended. Fragile. We lash out. We withdraw. We’re baffled by our behavior. Frankly, we’re not even sure what normal behavior looks like. We all…
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How Our Parents Wounded Us
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If your parents were never properly parented themselves, that put them at great risk to repeat the cycle with you. And that puts you at risk of repeating the vicious cycle all over again. If you or someone you love is caught in a cycle, can put a stop to your family’s intergenerational dysfunction. But…
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How Childhood Wounds Affect Adults
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The following questions might apply to you or a loved one: – Do you struggle to believe that people really care about you? – Do others accuse you of being oversensitive or taking things too personally? – Is there something that routinely triggers your anger? – Is there a particular area of your life where…
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How Childhood Wounds Affect Adults part 2
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Do you regularly find yourself feeling insecure and looking for reassurance? Do you experience big mood swings, but don’t know why? Are you especially responsible or immature for your age? Do you have a negative experience, word, thought, or voice in your head from your childhood that stills torments you? Are you estranged from any…
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An Overview of How You Can Heal
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What’s it going to take for you, your loved one, or a friend to start healing from childhood wounds? Healing is all about pain—acknowledging it’s there, identifying where it’s coming from, and then knowing how to face it, grieve, accept it, take control, and heal. Tune in for an overview of the stages of healing.…
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How to Overcome Denial and Face the Truth
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Denial can be tenacious. Facing difficult, painful, or humiliating facts from your or your loved one’s childhood can be hard. Most worthwhile things are. I commend your bravery to tackle the truth. But it can also to be so liberating and soothing that you’re going to feel like you’re seeing things as they really are—perhaps…
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How to Grieve What Should Have Been
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Something was taken from you, your loved one, or friend. You didn’t have the childhood you wanted, deserved, and should have experienced. You have been afflicted. You feel the loss deeply. Now that you’ve faced this truth, you need to grieve what went wrong. In this practical lesson, Pat Morley will help you understand grief, the…
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How to Find Rest for Your Soul
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Did you know that all successful recovery programs address spiritual needs? There’s a reason for that: A relationship with Jesus can give us the rest for our souls that no amount of human effort will ever be able to provide. If you’re on your way to being mended, you have faced the truth of what…
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How to Forgive Your Parents
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If your parents wounded you, they are responsible for that, whether they knew what they were doing or not. But without forgiveness, the future will look no different than the past. Forgiving your parents is not dismissing what they did, or pretending that your wounds never happened. After all, there would be no need for…
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Rethinking Your Parents’ Stories
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To be sure, our parents are responsible for how they wounded us, whether they knew it or not. Maybe they were good people who made serious mistakes, or maybe they were uncaring, toxic, or even evil. Nothing can minimize, justify, excuse, or change that. What happened to you or your loved one happened. But what…
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How to Rebuild Your Relationships (Or Set Boundaries)
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Healing and rebuilding relationships takes time and mutual commitment. What’s the current state of your relationship with your parents and siblings? What’s the level of ongoing dysfunction? How receptive are you to restoring a relationship with them? How receptive are they? Do they and you both have the communication skills to pull it off, or…
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How To Rebuild Your Relationships (Or Set Boundaries)—Part 2
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Two weeks ago we talked about how to honestly assess our family relationships and approach them with the mind of Christ. Now it’s time to explore how we can actually communicate with our parents. Join Pat Morley and learn a tension-reducing way to start an awkward but crucial conversation. Whether your family’s level of dysfunction is…
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The Joy of Walking with a Limp
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All of us who have ever been broken boys will have flare-ups because, to some degree, we all live with the residual pain of what happened to us. We all have an emotional limp. Join Patrick Morley and learn how to evaluate how much pain you’re still in, some examples of what residual pain…
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Owning the Ways You’ve Weaponized Your Wounds
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When men try to put into words what’s holding them back, many say something like, “No matter how hard I try, I just can’t overcome the destructive behaviors that keep dragging me down.” Christian men are not exempt—and no matter how much a man loves God, it’s especially hard to move forward if he’s stuck…
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Changing the Trajectory of Your Marriage
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When the world gets to be too much, who do you take it out on? If you’re like most men, it’s your wife. In fact, the number one place where the residual symptoms of your childhood wounds flare up is your marriage (or it will be if and when you get married). Do any of…
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Parenting Your Own Children
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Pat Morley writes, “When Patsy and I brought, Jen, our daughter and firstborn child home from the hospital, all three of us were exhausted. I lay down and cradled our precious Jen on my chest. The warmth of that tiny body—a living person I helped create—and the thump, thump, thump of her acorn-sized heart will always…
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How to Be a Friend to Men with Similar Wounds
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You’ve made it. You’re an official cycle breaker. You’re hopeful and sense that you’re going to be okay. But millions of other broken boys are still baffled by the destructive behavior that keep dragging them down. They’re our friends, neighbors, coworkers, fathers, and brothers. Who will rescue these men? Don’t be surprised if you find…
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The Rat Race
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The Big Idea: The Rat Race is the conflict between who I am created to be and who I am tempted to be. The proverbial questions of the rat race–“What’s it all about?” and “Is this all there is?”–have tortured us all at one time or another. So let’s kick off this new series by…
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Leading an Unexamined Life
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The Big Idea: It is for a lack of discipleship that men lead unexamined lives. We all want the same things–something we can give our lives to that will make a difference, someone to share our lives with, and a belief system that makes sense of why life is so hard. Christianity and secularism both…
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Biblical Christian or Cultural Christian?
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The Big Idea: No matter how men get stuck in cultural Christianity, the only solution is to disciple them out. When you look around it’s obvious that a lot of men are stuck. Some are stuck because they have yet to experience the freedom of being in Christ. Others have professed faith, yet they’ve been…
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Significance: The Search for Meaning and Purpose
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The Big Idea: The Rat Race is the conflict between who I am created to be and who I am tempted to be. The proverbial questions of the rat race–“What’s it all about?” and “Is this all there is?”–have tortured us all at one time or another. So let’s kick off this new series by…
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Purpose: Why Do I Exist?
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The Big Idea: I will feel most alive, most useful, and most significant when I am doing what God created me to do. It’s just a fact of life. Most men don’t know their purpose in life, or their purpose is too small. Sincerely ask a man, “What is the purpose of your life?” and…
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The Secret of Job Contentment
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The Big Idea: The secret of job contentment is not getting what I want, but redefining what I need. What do you want from your job, and are you getting it? It turns out that most men are not content in their work. In fact, according to Gallup’s 2013 “State of the American Workplace” report,…
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Broken Relationships
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The Big Idea: If you don’t have enough time for your family, you can be 100% certain that you are not following God’s will for your life. Let’s be honest. Work can be intoxicating. It can also be a place to escape unpredictable emotions and whiny kids. Yet no amount of success at work can…
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Children: How to Avoid Regrets
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The Big Idea: Encourage children by fathering their hearts, not fathering for performance. Who hasn’t heard a sobering story about a Dad who alienated his kids? To be a great Dad isn’t a given. Like any worthwhile skill, there are principles to learn and time to invest. Join us to learn the valuable distinction between…
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Wives: How To Be Happily Married
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The Big Idea: After God, but before all others, make your wife your top priority. Sigmund Freud said, “Despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, I have not yet been able to answer that great question…What does a woman want?” Too bad Freud didn’t believe in Christianity, because for Christians the answer…
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Friends: Risks and Rewards
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The Big Idea: Three 2:00 AM friends can make up for a multitude of disappointments. Sooner or later we all realize that friendships are a beautiful thing. We realize that we need some other men who walk in our same shoes–who share similar problems and life experiences. But adult male friendships are difficult to start…
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Money: A Biblical Point of View
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The Big Idea: Don’t buy the lie that money will do what it won’t, and that God won’t do what He will. Many Christians cling to the illusion that money will make them happy. Of course, money is important. Especially if you don’t have enough. When the 10th of the month rolls around, your mortgage…
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The Four Pillars of Financial Strength
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The Big Idea: The greatest source of financial wisdom about earning, saving, sharing, and debt has always been and will forever be the Bible. What should be your financial aspirations as a Christian man? Does the Bible have clear cut principles to guide how we think about money? Yes, and in this lesson we’ll zero…
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Decisions: How To Make The Right Choice
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The Big Idea: The goal is always to bring my will into alignment with God’s will. Most of us will only make a handful of truly major decisions in the course of a year. “Do I change jobs, move, get married, have children, take on a personal ministry, buy a car, lower my lifestyle,” and…