How Men Can Change the World by Following Jesus

Most men want to leave a legacy—to know their life mattered and they made a real difference. But too often we think that comes through status, wealth, or reputation. In this episode of the Manhood Tribes Show, we explore a radically different path to impact: following Jesus as the ultimate model of manhood. Jesus shows us that true greatness doesn’t start by climbing higher but by going lower—embracing what’s known as the J Curve, a journey down into humility, suffering, and even death before rising into glory and purpose.

We talk about why every man carries wounds, how those wounds are often tied to the very place of his greatest calling, and why healing them is essential to living out the life God created you for. Through real-life stories and biblical wisdom, you’ll see how following Jesus transforms your identity, restores your purpose, and empowers you to leave a lasting mark—not through chasing fame, but through surrender and strength in Him.

If you’ve ever wondered how to become the man God designed you to be, this episode will give you clarity, encouragement, and a roadmap for stepping into your true legacy.

⏱️ Timestamps
0:00 Why men long to leave a legacy
2:15 The world’s path to success vs. Jesus’ model
5:30 Understanding the J Curve
9:45 How wounds reveal your greatest glory
15:20 A personal story of finding healing
21:10 Moving from wounds to true identity
27:05 How following Jesus changes everything
33:40 Your legacy and calling as a man

💪 Want to know how you measure up as a man? Take our free quiz, called How Manly Are You? and learn how you can get better at being a man. Download for free at manhoodtribes.com/manly. 💪

Transcript

Don Ross: 0:01

Most men want to leave some kind of mark on the world. It is part of just our makeup as men to feel like we've done something in life that counts, that we're gonna leave some kind of legacy that goes beyond us. We want to make a difference and be known for how we've made a difference. But for most men, the idea of how to do this usually has something to do with fame or notoriety or a platform or a following of some kind. And so most of us spend the better part of our lives trying to amass and accumulate not only wealth and reputation, but also status and standing and influence so that we can be remembered and thought highly of for the difference that we made in the community that we were a part of. There's not anything inherently wrong with this, but I think there's a model for how to do things differently, and that model is what we want to look at today. Here on the Manhood Tribe Show, we have been looking over the past several weeks at how Jesus is the man who is the most worth following. We've been talking kind of about the idea that when we think about Jesus, we don't usually think of him so much as a man. We think of him as like a good teacher or a religious leader, but we don't think of him necessarily as a man. Who is a man that other men would want to be like. We don't really associate the word manly with Jesus, and yet I think that's exactly what we should do. Jesus modeled what being a man is really all about and how we can do those things well. And so today I want to try to wrap up what we've been talking about by sharing how following Jesus. As a man is the best way that we men can actually change the world. This is how we are meant to leave a mark on the world around us, but it starts in some places that we wouldn't expect because see, the thing about Jesus is that he calls us to follow him. He calls us to be like him and actually to walk the path that he walked. The path that he walked has sometimes been referred to as upside down, or is also sometimes referred to as something that I like to call the J curve. Now I've gotten this idea of the J Curve from several other places, including a book called the J Curve, by a guy named Paul Miller. And the idea here is that following Jesus means that we start at one place, and from there we don't go up. We go down, we go downward into the curve of a J, and then after going through the bottom of the J curve is when we finally begin to make our ascent and go upwards in following the path of Jesus. Now. It's called this J curve because Jesus modeled that style of living, that his life also followed this kind of J curve. We see this in the book of Philippians, chapter two, where Paul, who wrote the book of Philippians, talked to us about this idea of how Jesus lived in such a way. That he took on being a human when he was God, and he took on the form of a servant and that he served and suffered even to the point of death. So he went low and lower and even lower, still all the way to the point of death, and yet it was at that point that God chose to exalt him to give him the highest name, the name above every names. At whose name. Eventually all knees will bow and all tongues will proclaim his glory. So we see that model of going down to then be able to go up, and that is the same kind of path that we are called to follow. It's not really the path that the world suggests at all, right? Most of us know that the pathway of the world is to try to go as up and to the right as quickly as you possibly can with as few dips as possible. Now, to be honest, I think all of us know that there is really no such path. That's the ideal, but none of us actually gets to success without some kind of failure along the way. But still, the point is to try to aim up into the right. Jesus is saying no. Actually, you need to start by aiming downward. If you're going to follow me, it's going to be a path into death, and only out of that place is where glory and goodness and exaltation are going to come from. So what does that look like? Well, for most men, I think the easiest way to figure out what the path downward looks like is actually to look at the wounds in your life. Now, I'm not just talking about physical wounds, although in some ways sometimes physical wounds can actually reveal the places where we are most wounded. But I'm talking more about wounds of the heart. In what ways have you, as a man been wounded in your identity, in your sense of self and your sense of purpose and your sense of just what you're supposed to mean to the world? Where have the words been dealt in your life that they have hurt the most? Maybe you have been told that you just aren't good enough and you're never gonna make it. Maybe you have been betrayed over and over again and you've come to believe that you aren't the kind of man who can ever have real relationships that last. Maybe you have been told that you're weak and you just aren't going to amount too much as a man. And so you have come to adopt a posture that just assumes there's not much that you can contribute. Whatever your wounds are, they have been dealt very specifically to you. In fact, you have an enemy who has sought very intentionally to wound you in the places where you actually would be most capable of making a difference. You are wounded in the place of your greatest glory. Let me say that again because I think it really matters to this conversation. You have been wounded in the place of your greatest glory. Now, glory just means the place where you're meant to count the place of your fame and reputation. The place where you are most meant to be honored. Those are things we talk about here on the Manhood Tribes Channel, that glory that's meant to shine out to the world, that is the place where you are meant to make a difference. That is the place where you are meant to leave a mark on the world, but because of that. And because of the fact that you have an enemy, that is often the place where you get most wounded. So figuring out the path downward usually begins by looking inward. It begins by looking at what are the places that you as a man have actually been most wounded? What things have been said to you? What things have been done to you that have caused you to doubt yourself, to believe lies about yourself, to turn away from the things that you might have been interested in, to choose paths that were different than maybe the things you actually cared most about or were most passionate about. What are those things that have wounded you and have caused you to live a life differently than maybe what you truly and deeply most wanted? Those are the places to begin to explore. And as you follow your heart into those places, it's going to be a way downward. It's going to force you to look at and to pay attention to the really hard things in your life, to examine the things that hurt the most, and it's going in some ways to feel like death. It's gonna force you to tear open old wounds, to examine things that were really painful and have continued to be painful probably for much of your adult life if you haven't looked at them very closely. You are going to need to ask and examine those things in such a way that causes you to say, why were those things done to me? What have I come to believe about myself as a result of those things? As a result of those messages or those actions, what have I come to believe about God as a result of those actions, those wounds. How has my life been shaped by those things? Those are the kinds of clues that you're going to get about why your wounds were given, because they reveal your glory. They reveal what's most true of you and the way that you are meant to make a difference in the world. I'll give you an example from my own life. In a lot of ways, I was a little bit of a. Uh, out on the edge type of boy. Growing up in my kind of like adolescent years, I wasn't the popular jock kind of kid. I was more of the like band geek, if I'm honest. I was the kid who like, eh, wasn't really sure of himself, wasn't very big, wasn't very athletic, wasn't very confident, and so just had a lot of ways that I never. Felt like I quite measured up as a boy in PE class. I was often the kid who was picked last. I was the one who did the worst on all the physical challenges, you know? So like, I just kind of never really felt like I measured up very much as a young man. And so I came to kind of believe about myself that, uh, when it came to Manly and especially physical things, I just didn't measure up. I wasn't gonna be as good as the other boys, and especially as other men. That came to morph into more of an idea that I just didn't belong among the world of men. I was somehow less than and just didn't count as a man. All of these were messages that were sort of subtly delivered to me, but repeatedly over time to where I just kind of came to believe that I didn't have what it takes. I didn't measure up when the world needed men to show up. I wasn't what the world was looking for. This was, I think, a wound that was very intentionally dealt to me because I think on the flip side of that, what God has been asking me to do, the glory that he has given to me is to actually be a leader of men to reach and to speak to men in such a way that helps men come alive to figure out who they are and how to be the best men that they possibly can be. That's why I'm here doing this channel for you. So that that can be true of you. But if I never believed that I was a man, how on earth was I going to lead other men? So, of course, my wounds were dealt in that very specific area to try to take me out before I could ever get started. And to address those things, I had to go deep into those very painful memories and figure out why had those things been done to me and what were actually the things that were really true about me. What had I chosen to believe that steered my life in a direction that wasn't actually where I needed to go, or that wasn't actually true about me? And how could I begin to course correct on those things? Now, what's so good about Jesus is that he met me in those places. He met me in those very low and painful memories of my life and those wounds that had been done to me and those lies that I had believed about myself, and he brought healing and restoration. He taught me truths. To be able to hang onto so that I could see that all those things that were said and done to me weren't actually true. And what he believed about me was something really different that I could hang onto and that I could believe and I could move towards that the man he created me to be was the most true version of myself, and that's what I needed to move towards. And in doing that and finding that healing and that restoration, and those messages from him, I began to move up out of the bottom of that J curve. I began to come up out of that place of death and despair into a life that he had created for me. But all of that was only on the other side of dealing with. All of those very painful wounds. There was no glory to be had without passing through the death of those wounds first. Yeah, that's what life and Jesus looks like, and being able to do that enables us as men to actually be able to have the kind of impact that we are meant to have. When we understand who he has made us to be as men, it changes first our own identity. We begin to see ourselves rightly, the way that he has created us and the kind of men that he has made us to be. And then beyond that, it starts to impact our closest relationships, our wife and our children. If we're married and we have kids, our tribe, our closest group of men around us, those relationships begin to be impacted by the fact that we are showing up as the men that we were created to be. Not the men who are defined by our wounds, but the men who are stepping into the glory that God has given us. And beyond those closest relationships, that identity begins to filter into the way that we show up in the world, in our workplace settings, in our local communities. And even then, it might give us a bit of a sense of dream and purpose even beyond those things. As a way to be able to say, what kind of difference could I make in the world if I actually lived into all of this identity that God has given me? If I truly lived out being the man that he has made me to be. What kind of difference could I make in the world? And often those dreams and those visions are far bigger than we could possibly imagine. If we will let Jesus shape our imagination, if we will let his dreams for us be our dreams for us, we will be blown away by what he wants to accomplish through us. But we have to begin with allowing him to heal the wounded and the broken places in us so that we can then move into the glory that he has created for us. Men are meant to change the world, but if you really want to make the kind of difference that you were meant to make, you're going to do it by following Jesus, following him down into the place of death so that you might come up again into the place of life. These things are so good and this is why Jesus is the man who is most worth following. No other man can we give our allegiance to who is capable of doing what Jesus can do in our lives if we will surrender ourselves to him and follow him closely. I hope men, that as a result of the videos in this series that you are seriously considering following Jesus if you haven't already or if you have made a decision to follow Jesus, that you are actually looking at him in a way that you're going, okay, as a man, there's, there's things that I need to do differently in order to more closely follow him. He is worthy of all of your allegiance, of giving your whole life to so that you are becoming more and more like him, being the best version of yourself that you possibly can be. If you would like to get around some other men who are trying to do that very same thing, I would encourage you to check out our Manhood Tribe's community. There you will find men who are trying to get better at being men, who are trying to get better at following Jesus and who are looking to connect with other like-minded men. If that interests you, why don't you check out manhood tribes.com/community and see how you can put your name on the list for the next time that our community doors will open. I hope if you've enjoyed this content, that you will like this video and subscribe to the channel. It will be the best way to continue getting great manhood content for you each week. I also hope that you will engage with us here in the comments down below. Put something down there about what is one area where you hope to make a difference in the world, and how following Jesus would be able to enable you to do that. All right. I look forward to seeing what you have to say and to responding to your comments there, and I look forward to talking to you again in the future here on the Manhood Tribes Channel. We'll see you then.