The Long Obedience

Michael opens with two men from the same church—one wealthy and terrified, one modest and free—to show that money is not neutral. Jesus talked about money more than almost any other topic because it reveals what we actually trust and worship. He names the lies money tells: more will be enough, money equals safety, your earnings are your worth, and providing means earning. The antidote is generosit...

SAVE 25% at Start2Finish.org now thru the Fourth of July. Use AMERICA250 at checkout. Michael argues that the phone in your pocket is not neutral. It’s a machine designed by the smartest engineers on the planet to capture your attention, and it’s winning. Your wife sees a man who’s not fully there. Your kids see a man who’d rather look at a screen than at them. And you see a man who can’t sit stil...

Purchase the “What Is the Book of …?” OT Law & History Bundle and SAVE $20 when you use the code “BUNDLE” at checkout. Visit start2finish.org . Michael names the loneliness epidemic among men — fewer close friendships than at any point in history — and explores why it’s so hard: men are socialized to compete rather than connect, terrified of being seen as weak, and have no model for what deep frie...

Michael addresses the spiritual dryness almost every man experiences but few talk about — the seasons when you're doing all the right things and feeling absolutely nothing. Drawing on Psalm 42, Psalm 88, and Elijah's burnout in 1 Kings 19, he normalizes the experience and explores its causes: neglect, unconfessed sin, exhaustion, or a season of growth you can't see yet. The practical section focus...

In this episode, I assert that conflict isn't the enemy of intimacy — avoidance is. Every fight you refuse to have, every hard conversation you sidestep, doesn't disappear; it goes underground and builds until something explodes. I name the ways men fight badly — stonewalling, defending instead of hearing, counterattacking, and fighting to win — and then walks through what healthy conflict actuall...

Building on Deuteronomy 6, I argue that faith is caught in the ordinary moments, not taught in the formal ones. Your kids are learning how to treat their future spouse by watching how you treat yours, learning how to handle failure by watching how you handle yours, and learning whether God is real by watching whether he’s real to you. I get practical about what this looks like: presence over perfo...

In this episode, I name the three sins men rename and let fester—anger, lust, and pride—arguing that pride is the root beneath the other two. Anger becomes armor that keeps people at a distance; lust is almost never about sex but about escape; pride is the voice that says “I don't need help” and keeps men from being honest until it's too late. Drawing from my own failure to tell the truth when a f...

I want to challenge the way most Christian men read Ephesians 5—eyes drawn to “wives, submit” while skipping the part where Paul tells husbands to die. Walking through John 13, I show how Jesus, fully secure in his identity and authority, got on his knees and washed the feet of men who were about to abandon him. Real leadership doesn’t need the title or the final say; if you can only lead from a p...

In the pilot episode, I introduce myself as a divorced preacher who failed at the very thing I’m asking other men to pursue—and that honesty becomes the foundation for everything that follows. I argue that marriages and families don't usually fall apart from one catastrophic failure but from a thousand small surrenders, and I share three lessons learned from my own wreckage: (1) you can't lead you...