There’s a moment in most men’s lives where the mask slips—where the job title, the house, the car, and all of it stops being enough to hold you together. I had that moment on a Saturday morning at a men’s retreat in Virginia, standing in a room full of guys, listening to a Josh Groban song called “You Were Loved,” when God said something to me I’ll never forget: I want an intimate relationship with you. You’re my beloved son.
I got to unpack that story and a lot more as a guest on Crazy Amazing God Stories, hosted by David Leadbetter. If you’ve never heard of the show, it’s built around a simple, powerful idea: ordinary people sharing extraordinary moments of God revealing His power, grace, and love in everyday life. David gave the episode the title “True Masculinity Begins with Surrender,” and honestly, I can’t think of a better summary of everything I believe about being a man.
WHAT WE TALKED ABOUT
David and I covered a lot of ground, more than an hour of it, but a few threads ran through the whole conversation:
The lightning-bolt moment and the years that led to it. That worship-song encounter didn’t come out of nowhere. It was the culmination of years of quiet dissatisfaction—sitting in church, staring at a wall, realizing I was managing the business of faith without actually worshiping. I talked through how that unraveling led me to a friendship with a man named Paul Bailey, a men’s group, and eventually that retreat that changed everything.
Identity in Christ vs. identity in everything else. I told David about a night early in my marriage when someone asked me what I did for a living, and I couldn’t answer. Not because I didn’t have a job, but because my identity was so tangled up in career, title, and image that when those things weren’t lining up, I had nothing left to say. We talked about how men are wired to answer “what do you do” with the things we’ve accumulated—the boat, the garage, the job stories—instead of who we actually are. That trade never pays off. On the day you die, it’s not the bleachers full of impressed people who show up. It’s your wife, your kids, and a couple of close friends. That’s the whole economy of a life.
The eyeglasses story. One of the moments David and I spent the most time on was something that happened when I was six years old—getting glasses, being told by adults that they “made me look smart,” and how that single comment wired a smart, introverted kid to stop asking questions for fear of being found out. I still see that pattern in men I coach, thirty and forty years later. Almost every guy has an age—8, 9, 10, or 11—where something got said or something happened that built a wall he’s been guarding ever since.
Asking for help as a strength, not a weakness. This is a theme I keep coming back to, no matter what book, talk, or podcast I’m doing, because it’s the one thing standing between most men and the life God actually has for them. Asking for help isn’t surrendering to weakness; it’s surrendering to God, and that’s a completely different thing. It’s the doorway, not the defeat.
God, Family, Country — and why the fundamentals still matter. We closed out talking about American Family Renaissance and why I believe restoring the American family starts with men at the dinner table, Bible open, leading their households instead of drifting through them. Fundamentals never expire. John Wooden started every practice teaching grown men how to put on their socks. Vince Lombardi held up a football and said, “Gentlemen, this is a football.” If the greatest coaches in history started there, we can start by picking the Bible back up.
THE CHALLENGE
If you’ve been coasting—going to church out of habit, staring at the wall instead of worshiping, tying your worth to a job title or a garage full of stuff—I want to ask you the same question David, and I kept circling back to: what would it look like to stop managing your life and start surrendering it?
You don’t need a lightning-bolt moment to start. You need a decision. Pick up the Bible. Find a man or two who’ll walk with you. Ask for help. That’s it. That’s the whole first step.
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Mike Van Pelt (MVP) is a Christian men’s life coach, speaker, author, and host of the True Man Podcast. He is the founder of True Man Life Coaching and serves on the board of American Family Renaissance, calling men back to identity in Christ, brotherhood, and leadership in their homes and communities.