{"id":24082,"date":"2025-09-26T10:44:24","date_gmt":"2025-09-26T14:44:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/christoverall.com\/?p=24082"},"modified":"2025-09-26T10:44:27","modified_gmt":"2025-09-26T14:44:27","slug":"why-young-men-wither-a-call-for-a-revival-of-ambition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christoverall.com\/article\/concise\/why-young-men-wither-a-call-for-a-revival-of-ambition\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Young Men Wither: A Call for a Revival of Ambition"},"content":{"rendered":"

Men in the church don\u2019t often get accused of being ambitious, but maybe they should be. After all, the drive that comes from ambition is part of how God created men\u2014to seek, to act, and to shape the world around them. This ambition is part of man’s God-given nature that fuels action, perseverance, and purpose. The Oxford English Dictionary\u00a0defines<\/a>\u00a0ambition as follows: \u201ca strong desire to do or to achieve something, typically requiring determination and hard work.\u201d When men align their ambition with God\u2019s purpose, it motivates them to support their families, engage with their communities, and seek goals that honor Him. In the absence of ambition, life can feel stagnant, and untapped potential can leave men feeling lost and unfulfilled, drifting without direction or purpose, or worse, deriving purpose from lesser goods.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, many in the church view ambition as a vice instead of a virtue. Men are frequently encouraged to \u201cbe content,\u201d \u201cjust be faithful,\u201d or \u201cdon\u2019t rush ahead of God.\u201d While true in their proper context, these statements often hinder action and stifle the drive to subdue. At the same time, our culture normalizes the portrayal of passive and lazy fathers on screen, and the church sometimes reflects these poor patterns in more subtle ways. For example, the popular phrase\u201cfaithful presence\u201d often becomes an excuse for not actually sharing the Gospel with our neighbors or engaging in cultural battles. This leads men to receive mixed messages about ambition; either it\u2019s seen as prideful, or it remains unacknowledged, leaving many uncertain about how to follow God\u2019s calling in their lives.<\/p>\n

The Bible illustrates that ambition, when grounded in things like obedience, dominion, and service, is a powerful tool for productive men. Figures like Joseph, Daniel, and Nehemiah exemplify how God-driven initiative can bring glory to God while benefiting those around them. Recognizing and embracing God-ordained ambition enables men to live purposefully, lead with courage, and make meaningful contributions to their communities.<\/p>\n

Common Reasons Why Christian Men Lack Ambition<\/h2>\n

There are a few reasons why we see fewer ambitious Christian men:<\/p>\n

<\/a>1. The Rise of Therapeutic Christianity<\/h3>\n

Over time, the church has shifted from forming men into strong disciples to soothing them with therapeutic language. Much of modern preaching sounds less like a call to take up the cross and more like a group counseling session. Sermons often emphasize \u201chow you feel\u201d over \u201cwhat you must do.\u201d Instead of proclaiming Christ as King who commissions His people for work and mission, churches reduce Him to a life coach who simply helps us process our emotions.<\/p>\n

Worship music has taken a similar path. The Psalms capture the full spectrum of human emotions\u2014expressing lament, hope, triumph, and battle cries of faith. In contrast, contemporary worship songs frequently revolve around recurring themes of struggle and brokenness, offering emotional ballads to swaying hips. While recognizing our dependence on God is certainly necessary, an overemphasis on emotional appeal fosters a culture of perpetual spiritual adolescence rather than encouraging maturity and a sense of mission.<\/p>\n

The overemphasis on feelings subtly trains men to believe that the Christian life is primarily about inward reflection instead of outward action. Faith becomes something to \u201cfeel deeply\u201d rather than live boldly or build generationally. The result is men who equate holiness with passivity, mistaking the absence of ambition for the presence of humility.<\/p>\n

2. Fear of Worldly Power<\/h3>\n

Men in the church today have largely been taught that power is inherently bad and is something that shouldn\u2019t be desired. Power is no longer seen as something that should be pursued responsibly, but something that should be avoided altogether. No doubt the rise in social Marxism<\/a> in the last few years has influenced this mindset, in which power is always seen as a tool of oppression.<\/p>\n

And yet, this fear of power has likewise stifled ambition in men. No longer do men train, work, or even seek out positions of power. This fear of power has not only resulted in less ambitious men, but it has had considerable costs in the church, culture, and society at large. If good men aren\u2019t seeking positions of power, then evil men will fill this void. Men\u2019s ambitions collapse into private, trivial pursuits while public life is ceded to the very elites who taught them to fear power in the first place. In a society that desperately needs virtuous leaders, Christian men are often trained to be spectators.<\/p>\n

3. A Shrunken Vision of the Kingdom<\/h3>\n

If you were a Christian in the late 2000s to early 2010s, you probably remember the wave of popular books that criticized the pursuit of the \u201cAmerican Dream.\u201d Books like\u00a0Crazy Love<\/em>\u00a0by Francis Chan or\u00a0Radical<\/em>\u00a0by David Platt often gave the impression that the apex of the Christian life was selling everything, moving to a third-world country, and dying as a martyr. Instead of developing skills, building businesses, or preparing financially to pass something on to their children, many young men sacrificed these things to \u201creach the nations.\u201d And while foreign mission work is certainly a needed and ambitious calling, the wake of these influencers left a trail of young men who were suspicious of normal vocations, resentful of those who chose different paths, and hesitant to take calculated risks lest they appear too\u00a0comfortable, too\u00a0worldly, or not \u201cradical\u201d enough.<\/p>\n

4. Passive Theology Produces Passive Men<\/h3>\n

The Gospel Centered movement, in particular, has created a theological allergy to action and obedience that has also contributed to the lack of ambition among Christians. To be sure, Christ is the fulfillment of the law and the prophets\u2014every shadow points to Him, every promise finds its \u201cYes\u201d in Him. But a misapplication of the Christocentric hermeneutical approach reduces biblical narratives exclusively to Christ-types, leaving men without concrete models of godly action.<\/p>\n

Matt Chandler\u2019s famous sermon<\/a> on David and Goliath in 1 Samuel 17 is a good illustration of this. Chandler strongly emphasized that “we are not David,” meaning that Christians should not emulate King David or derive practical wisdom from his story beyond seeing him as someone who points to Christ. But didn\u2019t the Israelites join David\u2019s victory by rising with a shout and pursuing the Philistines (1 Sam. 17:52)? And if David is a type of Christ, aren\u2019t his followers called to follow<\/em> him? Preaching this account merely as a foreshadow of Christ with no ethical imperative strips away David’s courage, leadership, and other virtuous traits as practical examples for men to imitate. <\/p>\n

The movement also labels strong desires for legitimate goods as potential idolatry, with frequent warnings about “the idol of the family,” suggesting that Christians who strongly desire marriage or a generational legacy must regularly evaluate themselves lest they be in spiritual danger. This hyper-vigilance creates men who are afraid to pursue God-given longings with intensity. When every good desire must be examined for idolatry and every Old Testament example is reduced to Christology, men lose both the permission and the pattern for godly ambition. They become spiritually sophisticated but practically impotent\u2014able to articulate gospel truths but unable to translate them into bold gospel action.<\/p>\n

5. Pietism<\/h3>\n

The recent emphasis in\u00a0Pietism is another modern trajectory that has pacified Christian men by creating a false separation between spiritual and material realities. Michael Clary rightly\u00a0defines Pietism<\/a> as a “gnostic tendency to overemphasize spiritual realities at the expense of material realities,” relying on “a fortune cookie, bumper-sticker, and ultimately fear-based approach to Scripture.” This distorted Christianity treats cultural engagement, business building, and institutional development as “distractions” from true spirituality, producing men who are introspective but ineffective. Biblical piety, in contrast, encompasses practical duties, family responsibilities, and actively living with one another alongside personal spiritual development.<\/p>\n

6. The Church Often Equates Passivity with Godliness<\/h3>\n

A significant factor contributing to the declining ambition among men lies in the church\u2019s tendency to conflate passivity with godliness. Many well-meaning pastors and teachers highlight messages such as \u201cwaiting on the Lord\u201d and \u201cbeing content in all circumstances.\u201d However, these exhortations often overlook the broader biblical narrative that encourages men to embrace courage, risk, and decisive action. Verses like Isaiah 40:31 and Philippians 4:12 have been misinterpreted, leading many to view waiting or contentedness as synonymous with inactivity, while Scripture actually conveys a message of active trust, expressed through initiative and endurance.<\/p>\n

This mindset has fostered a culture where taking risks is often viewed as recklessness and where bold ambition is met with skepticism. Those who dare to build, lead, or pursue grand endeavors for the Kingdom frequently face cautionary remarks about pride or worldliness. In contrast, men who retreat into passivity are lauded for their \u201chumility\u201d and \u201cfaithfulness.\u201d Over time, this creates a narrative in which men equate inactivity with holiness, suppressing their God-given drive under the pretense of spiritual maturity.<\/p>\n

The consequence is that this teaching distorts masculinity. Scripture consistently depicts godly men as proactive individuals who advance in faith, like Abraham, who left his homeland; Joshua, who led Israel into conquest; David, who faced Goliath; and Paul, who tirelessly planted churches. True godliness is characterized not by retreat but by stepping forward in obedience, even amidst significant risks. When the church fails to communicate this truth, it results in generations of men who mistakenly link timidity with virtue, leaving the Kingdom short of builders, leaders, and warriors.<\/p>\n

Ambition in Creation<\/h2>\n

With the reasons why many modern men lack ambition laid out, it\u2019s necessary to ask what the Scriptures say about it.<\/p>\n

The creation account shows us that ambition is woven into the very fabric of man\u2019s nature. God formed man an active agent commissioned for transformative work, saying, \u201cBe fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth\u201d (Gen. 1:28). God’s mandate to Adam was inherently ambitious: he was given raw materials of a good-but-unfinished world that needed cultivation and subjugation. The word for “subdue” implies bringing something under control through effort and skill, while “dominion” speaks to responsible leadership and governance. [1]<\/a><\/sup><\/sup> The Garden of Eden itself required tending (Gen. 2:15), and beyond its borders lay an entire world waiting to be developed under human stewardship.<\/p>\n

1. For \u201csubdue,\u201d see the thirteen instances in the Hebrew Bible (Gen. 1:28; Num. 32:22, 29; Josh. 18:1; 2 Sam. 8:11; 1 Chr. 22:18; 2 Chr. 28:10; Neh. 5:5; Esth. 7:8; Jer. 34:11, 16; Mic. 7:19), along with the standard lexical denotation in Ludwig Koehler, Walter Baumgartner, and Johann Jakob Stamm, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament<\/em>, trans. and ed. M. E. J. Richardson (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 2:460. For \u201cdominion,\u201d see the denotation of subduing in twenty-three of its twenty-seven occurrences in the Old Testament (Gen. 1:26, 28; Lev. 25:43, 46, 53; 26:17; Num. 24:19; 1 Kings 4:24; 5:16; 9:23; 2 Chr. 8:10; Neh. 9:28; Psa. 49:14; 68:27; 72:8; 110:2; Is. 14:2, 6; 41:2; Jer. 5:31; Lam. 1:13; Ezek. 29:15; 34:4); see also HALOT,<\/em> 3:1190.<\/h6>\n

Even in providing Adam with Eve as a “helper suitable for him” (Gen. 2:18), God placed a sense of generational ambition into human existence. The directive to “be fruitful and multiply” extends beyond simply having children; it encompasses the establishment of families, the creation of communities, and the transfer of wisdom and purpose through the ages. This kind of vision necessitates long-term thinking and planning, inspiring individuals to create something enduring for their descendants<\/p>\n

Compare this mandate given to Adam with the risk-averse and mere present-thinking society we live in now. God did not design men to lazily veg in front of a screen for hours at a time, or even to mindlessly doomscroll in a cubicle while on the clock. Men were created to be laborers, producing work that glorifies God and promotes human flourishing. The Fall, of course, made this labor more difficult. But it\u2019s no wonder so many men find themselves depressed and left with a purposeless disposition that compels them to say, \u201cThere must be more to life than this.\u201d Thankfully, there is!<\/p>\n

Ambition in the Church: Properly Ordered<\/h2>\n

In 2 Corinthians 10:13-18, Paul addresses his own ambitious ministry, stating clearly, \u201cour hope is that as your faith increases, our area of influence among you<\/em> may be greatly enlarged<\/em>, so that we may preach the gospel in lands beyond you<\/em>\u201d (2 Cor. 10:15\u201316, emphasis added). Paul was not timid; he sought to maximize his influence for his ministry.<\/p>\n

Paul’s example demonstrates the distinction between holy ambition and worldly ego-building.\u00a0Holy ambition seeks to build God’s kingdom rather than personal kingdoms, is interested in Christ rather than self-promotion, and measures success by faithfulness rather than by comparison with others. When Paul writes a few verses later \u201clet him who boasts boast in the Lord\u201d (2 Cor. 10:17), he is not lamenting\u00a0the absence of achievement, but he is rather redirecting the focus and essence of ambition towards a higher purpose.\u00a0What sets Godly ambition apart is the object<\/em> of ambition\u2014whether it is for God’s glory and others\u2019 good, or for mere personal indulgence. Again, this is what the intention was in the garden: Adam, as God\u2019s image bearer, will rule the earth and use raw materials to take dominion.<\/p>\n

Consider the example of Christ, the second Adam. He came to fulfill a profound purpose: the redemption of His people. He did not wander aimlessly or spend years searching for his identity; instead, He faced His mission with determination (Luke 9:51). Jesus endured the cross because he was ambitious to accomplish the mission that God had given him, and he was resolute to lose not one of the souls entrusted to him. Jesus\u2019s ambition for the glory of the Triune God carried him through the hungry wilderness, through lonely Gethsemane, through forsaken Calvary, through the empty tomb, and all the way to the right hand of God. For the joy set before him, Jesus endured the deepest agonies because he had a godly ambition for a finished task (Heb. 12:2). From the Father\u2019s side he now gazes at us with eyes that burn with fire as he commands: \u201cfollow me.\u201d<\/p>\n

This well-ordered ambition is what the church needs today in its men. These types of men will plant churches, start businesses, or work in their vocations that serve their communities, lead families that have generational influence, run for political office with integrity, and build institutions that outlast them. The church doesn\u2019t need to suppress this drive, but to inflame it and guide it toward God-honoring purposes.<\/p>\n

Ambition & Contentment Properly Ordered<\/h2>\n

A recent trend within the church has been the use of contentment as a means to justify inaction. However, it is important to recognize that ambition and contentment are not mutually exclusive. Unfortunately, contentment is frequently misinterpreted as passivity, resignation, or even laziness, allowing individuals to disguise their avoidance of the hard work needed for personal and spiritual growth.<\/p>\n

Genuine contentment is not characterized by a lack of ambition; rather, it is the steady reliance on Christ that enables believers to glorify God in every circumstance, whether in abundance or in need (Phil. 4:11\u201313; Prov. 30:8\u20139). The wise puritan Jeremiah Burroughs defined contentment as \u201cthat sweet, inward, quiet, gracious frame of spirit, which freely submits to and delights in God\u2019s wise and fatherly disposal in every condition.\u201d[2]<\/a><\/sup><\/sup> This does not mean passive resignation or a fatalistic acceptance of circumstances. Paul, after all, knew how to be content even in hunger (Phil. 4:12), but his contentment did not keep him from seeking food! Contentment, rightly understood, is the posture of trusting Christ\u2019s sufficiency so that we avoid sin in hardship and pride in prosperity, while faithfully laboring in the vocations God has given. Far from stifling ambition, such contentment provides the foundation for pursuing God\u2019s purposes with courage and diligence.<\/p>\n

2. Jeremiah Burroughs, The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment<\/em><\/a> (London: Banner of Truth Trust, 1964), 19.<\/h6>\n

Genuine contentment involves trusting in God\u2019s timing while engaging proactively in the present. In contrast, false contentment misuses the concept of divine sovereignty as a rationale for personal inaction. The biblical perspective illustrates a balance: while ambition devoid of contentment can lead to a destructive fixation, contentment without ambition may result in stagnation. Men need both the confidence that comes from trusting God\u2019s oversight in all things and the holy drive that compels them to pursue their vocations wholeheartedly. When contentment and ambition coexist in proper alignment, they foster leaders who embody both peace and productivity.<\/p>\n

Conclusion<\/h2>\n

Ambition serves as a driving force for men, motivating them each morning to make a difference in the world, support their communities, and honor their material and spiritual responsibilities through their work.\u00a0But what happens to men without ambition? They rot. They get hooked on video games, porn, and cheap dopamine rushes. They waste away, bitter at the world and raging at God (Prov. 19:3).\u00a0They find themselves trapped in mindless distractions, losing sight of their potential, while others actively pursue and build meaningful legacies. A man without ambition is only existing<\/em> rather than truly living (to paraphrase William Wallace).<\/p>\n

Our communities do not need more passive observers. They need ambitious men who are willing to create, lead, and stand firm with conviction. These kinds of men say with eighty-five year old Caleb, \u201cmy strength now is as my strength was then, for war and for going and coming\u201d (Josh 14:11). They say with an outnumbered Jonathan \u201clet us go over to the garrison of these uncircumcised . . . for nothing can hinder the LORD from saving by many or by few\u201d (1 Sam 14:6). And they say with a stalwart Christ, \u201cnot my will, but yours, be done\u201d (Luke 22:42). Every man must choose whether to surrender to passivity and watch himself wither, or embrace the ambition God placed within him and build something worthy of his calling.<\/p>\n

Charles Spurgeon challenged his hearers with this: \u201cAspire to be something more than the mass of church members. Lift up your cry to God and beseech him to fire you with a nobler ambition than that which possesses the common Christian\u2014that you may be found faithful unto God at the last, and may win many crowns for your Lord and Master, Christ.\u201d[3]<\/a><\/sup><\/sup><\/p>\n

3. Charles H. Spurgeon, The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit Sermons<\/em>, vol. 15 (London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1869), 232.<\/h6>\n

May the Lord raise up men who aspire to more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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