The Three Things Men Want

Manhood is more than not being a girl. After four decades of helping men think more deeply about Christ and life, I find men basically want three main things …

• A Cause: Something we can give our lives to—a mission. This is the need to be significant, to make a difference, that our lives will count, that it will matter we lived.
• A Companion: Someone to share it with. This is the need to love and be loved, to be part of a community, to find acceptance, to have healthy relationships. By nature men want a woman to love, protect, and provide for—we want someone to share our lives with.
• A Conviction: A system, narrative, story, or worldview that offers a reasonable explanation for why 1 and 2 are so difficult. Life is difficult and, for sanity’s sake, we each need a plausible explanation of how the bits and pieces of life all fit together.

There’s certainly a lot more to being a man, but you can use these three as starting points with those in your ministry to men’s group.

Form your men into small groups and study Man Alive to help your men satisfy these primal, God-given desires.

Pat Morley is the Founder and CEO of Man in the Mirror. After building one of Florida’s 100 largest privately held companies, in 1991, he founded Man in the Mirror, a non-profit organization to help men find meaning and purpose in life. Dr. Morley is the bestselling author of The Man in the Mirror, No Man Left Behind, Dad in the Mirror, and A Man’s Guide to the Spiritual Disciplines.