Become Good Soil

“If we believe that God made the world, then the world is important as a revelation of God, as a sacred text. If we believe that Jesus is the Son of God, then we must believe that he is the Son of God made flesh, made a human being—and therefore that the life of the human body in this world is important.” — Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community by Wendell BerryTake a moment to breathe. Slow your pace.Another breath.Perhaps another. Allow your soul to catch up with your life—even in this very moment.Another breath.Enjoy this brilliant poem by Wendell Berry, The Peace of Wild Things. Read it as slowly as you are able:“When despair for the world grows in meand I wake in the night at the least soundin fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,I go and lie down where the wood drakerests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.I come into the peace of wild thingswho do not tax their lives with forethoughtof grief. I come into the presence of still water.And I feel above me the day-blind starswaiting with their light. For a timeI rest in the grace of the world, and am free.”The first sacred text given to all of humanity is God’s creation itself. In many ways, the created world was intended to be a sacred container for the Kingdom of God—a primary expression of His presence and love.What if, just as the Creator crafted this redemptive backdrop for the story of mankind, you were invited to partner with Him in creating your life as a continually expanding spiritual refuge? A place where you are known, loved, perfectly safe, and deeply nourished—affording you an ever-increasing capacity to engage the battles God invites you to fight on behalf of your own heart and those entrusted to your care?Just as every creature is designed to flourish within a particular habitat, every soul is also meant to thrive in a specific environment. This is our destiny, and this is God’s invitation. A soul planted in good soil has little choice but to grow into the full expression of all it was created to become—since before the foundation of the world.Even a cursory immersion in the sacred text of nature reveals a profound truth: the health of any living thing is directly tied to the quality of its habitat. When the environment is whole, life flourishes. When it becomes toxic, life withers.Day by day, decade by decade, we hold far more power than we’ve believed to shape our lives in ways that increase our joy, confidence, and contentment in daily life with God.It was the prophetic voice of God through Isaiah that offered this invitation:“My people will live in peaceful dwelling places, in secure homes, in undisturbed places of rest.” — Isaiah 32:18Make no mistake: this restoration is fiercely opposed. And yet, there is One who is greater. Even now, a perfect invitation is being extended—for you to take the next brave step, the next twenty seconds of courage, to partner with God in restoring a habitat where your soul can truly thrive.What if the restoration of the masculine soul depends on our willingness to humbly embrace the formative power of our context? What would it look like to recover a way of life that positions us to receive the revitalizing power of God's own life?Join me as we explore the power and hope of cultivating a habitat where our souls can flourish.As part of the journey of Becoming a King, this podcast offers a deeper exploration into creating that sacred habitat where this dream can be realized.It’s all been prologue. The best is yet to come.For the Kingdom,Morgan & Cherie

"Several of our young people were formerly brought up at the colleges of the northern provinces; they were instructed in all your sciences; but, when they came back to us, they were bad runners, ignorant of every means of living in the woods, unable to bear either cold or hunger, knew neither how to build a cabin, take a deer, or kill an enemy, spoke our language imperfectly, were therefore neither fit for hunters, warriors, nor counselors; they were totally good for nothing. We are however not the less obliged by your kind offer, though we decline accepting it; and, to show our grateful sense of it, if the gentlemen of Virginia will send us a dozen of their sons, we will take great care of their education, instruct them in all we know, and make men of them."— Native American Leader to Benjamin Franklin, 1759Of all the responses I’ve received regarding the encounters and process through which God has fathered souls through Becoming a King over the past five years, none have been as impactful as the invitation to become a generalist.In many ways, this big idea in masculine initiation is a prologue to a deeper question: How do we become honest about our relationship with fear, risk, and failure?Becoming a generalist is the process of engaging in a maturing relationship with risk, and failure through the recovery of repairing our relationship with fear by doing and in time, mastering real things. It’s about becoming the kind of man who, more and more, can handle himself in any situation—whether it’s fixing a broken toilet or helping mend a broken heart.It’s a process of identifying where we overreact and under react, what we avoid, and where we feel exposed; where we even hide behind our gifting, our competence, and our training, allowing precious and essential parts of our soul to remain uninitiated.None of us becomes a generalist overnight. It’s a slow and steady process of healing our relationship with risk. It’s the practice of stepping onto our frontier instead of avoiding it. It’s learning, little by little, how to do real things in the real world.Where are you on your journey of becoming a generalist?Join me as we take a deeper cut at exploring what it means to become the kind of man who brings skill and harnessed strength to meet the world’s needs.Every man has a place where he feels weak, incompetent, or intimidated. Perhaps that place of avoidance is actually the place of our greatest opportunity—for maturity, integration, and ultimately, peace.If you dare to risk more and more, you’ll love this conversation—and this invitation.It’s all been prologue. The best is yet to come.For the Kingdom,Morgan and Cherie

“It is not about the greatness of the giant. It is about the greatness of God.” — King David“Can one stone change the course of history?”It is the question we reflect on when considering the life of David.In his youth, he was an outcast—rejected by his father and older brothers, exiled to wild places to perform the demeaning task of tending sheep rather than the noble work of training as a warrior. Yet it was there, in the lonely hills—not with sword or shield, but with slingshot and harp—that God trained the warrior heart of David.Through direct confrontations with both lion and bear, his courage and identity as a warrior for God’s people were forged, not in royal courts, but in the fields, watching over a flock totally dependent upon his protection and care. There was no audience to cheer him on, only the solitude of his own conscience and the friendship with the Creator of Creation. David’s heart was shaped—not for conquest or acclaim, but purely out of love for what had been entrusted to his care.The wild beasts he faced were not only threats but also gifts from God—tools in David’s apprenticeship as a warrior king in training for God’s Kingdom. So when he would later rise to lead Israel, it was not as a tyrant adorned with crowns, but as a servant after God’s own heart.How do we become the kind of kings who spend ourselves on a worthy cause, willing to die a thousand deaths for those entrusted to our care?How do we become, as Chesterton put it, the warrior who fights “not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him”?How do we engage in the slow and steady process that trains us, like David, to become one of skillful hands and integrity of heart? What does it look like for the warrior heart to be fully deployed in the exact context where our souls are invited to thrive—even in these modern and precarious times?How do we become men who move toward healthy risk rather than avoid it?How do we grow in courage and in our capacity to offer strength in ways that bring goodness and not harm?What place does a warrior ethic have in the Kingdom of God?What is the path and process for maturing the warrior heart within?Join me along with another round of conversation with Grant and Nathan, as we take a deeper dive into the way of the Warrior—as apprentices of the truest warrior who ever lived…It’s all been prologue. The best is yet to come.For the Kingdom,Morgan and Cherie

“We are all under the same mental calamity; we have all forgotten our names. We have all forgotten what we really are.” — G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, 1908In his essay The New Name, George MacDonald reflects on the mystery of each man’s unrepeatable uniqueness before God:“As the fir-tree lifts up itself with a far different need from the need of the palm-tree, so does each man stand before God, and lift up a different humanity to the common Father. And for each God has a different response. With every man he has a secret—the secret of the new name. In every man there is a loneliness, an inner chamber of peculiar life into which God only can enter.From this it follows that there is a chamber also (O God, humble and accept my speech) a chamber in God himself, into which none can enter but the one, the individual, the peculiar man—out of which chamber that man has to bring revelation and strength for his brethren. This is that for which he was made—to reveal the secret things of the Father.”Who are you? What is your true name?What dimension of the Father do you reveal in a way no one else can—or ever will?How is this mysterious, life-saving, and life-sustaining revelation being made known to you?How is it meant not only to grow in depth and breadth over the decades, but also to become a kind of revelatory light—guiding you ever deeper into a life of faith, hope, and love?It takes profound courage to become who we truly are.Join me and brave allies Chris Rice and Ryan Ruebsahm as we take a deeper cut into the mystery and manna of our true name before God.It’s all been prologue. The best is yet to come.For the Kingdom,Morgan and Cherie Snyder

“Your real, new self will not come as long as you are looking for it. It will come when you are looking for Him.”— C.S. Lewis, Mere ChristianityHow have fear and shame shaped the person you’ve become?What patterns have you developed to avoid exposing the parts of yourself that feel afraid, uncertain, ashamed, or weak?How do you reach for aggression or withdrawal as a way to protect yourself from the risk of being hurt or being known?And beneath all the posing and self-protection, what do we truly long for? Who are you meant to be?Join me and brave allies Nathan Jameson and Grant Leitheiser, as we explore what it means to become the kind of man or woman who has nothing to hide, nothing to fear, and nothing to prove.What might a man look like—and what could his impact become, day by day and decade by decade—if he were strong and at peace in and through the God who created and sustains him?In this episode, we take a deeper dive into a central idea of initiation: Becoming True.It has all been prologue. The best is yet to come.For the Kingdom,Morgan and Cherie

“(For God) is our father all the time, for he is true; but until we respond with the truth of children, he cannot let all the father out to us; there is no place for the dove of his tenderness to alight. He is our father, but we are not his children. Because we are his children, we must become his sons and daughters. Nothing will satisfy him, or do for us, but that we be one with our father! What else could serve? How else should life ever be good? Because we are the sons of God, we must become the sons of God.” — George MacDonaldGeorge MacDonald’s reflections on receiving God as Father offer profound guidance for the encounters and process of becoming a daughter or son of God. While Becoming a King offers a trailhead largely on receiving the masculine love of God, have you considered the role of feminine love in your story and your walk with God?What if your relationship (or lack thereof) with the feminine love of God is shaping every moment of your life?Consider these words from Isaiah 55: Come, all you who are thirsty,    come to the waters;and you who have no money,    come, buy and eat!Come, buy wine and milk    without money and without cost.Why spend money on what is not bread,    and your labor on what does not satisfy?Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good,    and you will delight in the richest of fare.Give ear and come to me;    listen, that you may live. What if God’s love holds both the strength, protection, and companionship of masculine love and the overflowing, satisfying, and soothing nurture of feminine love?If God is indeed the headwaters of all that is both masculine and feminine, what feminine nourishment might be available for the human soul, nourishment we’ve been searching for all our lives?Come, drink, and feast. There is more.It has all been prologue. The best is yet to come.For the Kingdom,Morgan and Cherie

Explore the profound themes of identity and purpose through the David and Goliath narrative. Delve into the significance of desire in spiritual growth and its transformative power. Learn to view life's challenges as an essential journey towards faith and understanding personal power in relationships. Discover the emotional complexities of power dynamics, particularly between men and women, and how these affect families. Finally, navigate the hidden struggles of power in marriages, emphasizing surrender and connection.

“What is hard about marriage is what is hard also about facing the Christian God: It is the strain of living continually in the light of a conscience other than our own, being under the intimate scrutiny of another pair of eyes.”— Mike Mason, The Mystery of MarriageWhat is the fruit of a decade given over to apprenticeship, to the slow work of excavation, and to the painful but promising transformation within the Kingdom of God? More precisely, what is the fruit born from the tender soil of our closest relationships?Over twenty-five years spent investing in the shaping of leaders, I have found one of the deepest and most gladdening sources of confirmation to be the voices of the wives of Become Good Soil men. It is one thing, after all, for a man to speak of his own progress—but it is quite another, and perhaps of far greater weight, when a spouse dares to offer her own candid reflections on what it is to share life with one who has set his whole heart upon the precarious path of becoming.As we prepare to launch into an extended BGS Podcast series—a deeper dive into the central truths of Becoming a King—it seems only fitting, indeed right and good, and more than a little risky, to let this voyage begin with the voices of women. These are women who generously offer their honest and loving observations from a deep well of intimate relationships.This episode features the voices of four remarkable women whose husbands have been engaged with the message of Become Good Soil for a decade or more. Join me as they share about the joyous, transformative effects they’ve witnessed in every dimension of their husbands’ lives, their marriages, and their families.For the Kingdom,Morgan and Cherie

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given to you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer. —Rainer Maria RilkeFriends,On our unique paths of initiation as women and men, we often encounter the severe mercy—the painful hope—of having our illusion of control shattered by the rebellious parts of our own souls.The infant, longing for nourishment. The toddler, yearning for eye contact and the smile of an attentive parent. The boyish hope and daring of a third-grade cowboy. The angry teenager, thirsting for a strength both within and beyond himself. The older man, carrying an unsung song in his heart.When we finally summon the courage to face the collective of young men within us, what do we do?To whom do we turn?I suggest that the invitation and intention of Jesus Christ is to welcome, see, love, know, sustain, restore, and champion all the uninitiated men within us—bringing them into an effectively organized community, fully held together and integrated by Him.With permission, this episode offers a behind-the-scenes look at an authentic, real-time mentoring call with a courageous apprentice. He is noticing the parts within and creating a safe space for each one to embark on the journey ever closer to Home.Join me as his story unfolds, opening access to our own stories in ways beyond what we can yet imagine.For the Kingdom,Morgan & Cherie

Discover the transformative power of questions as tools for personal growth and spiritual exploration. Dive into the journey of faith that reshaped understanding and worldview. Explore the benefits of silence and reflection in daily life, fostering a deeper connection with faith. Unpack the impact of personal beliefs on relationships and actions. Finally, illuminate your path with the symbolism of light in scriptures, encouraging a receptive approach to divine illumination.