What the book is about

I wrote this book for men who want to love God with all their mind as well as their heart (Matthew 22:37). Over twelve weeks it walks through thirty-six passages of Scripture and reads each one alongside what researchers have learned about stress, attention, sleep, anger, friendship, temptation, and habit. Every chapter asks four questions. What does the passage say in its own setting? What did the studies actually find? Where do the two meet, and where don't they? And what will you do about it on Monday morning?

The answers keep pointing in the same direction. The disciplines God asks of us, such as rest, gratitude, forgiveness, guarding our thoughts, and staying close to one another, are not arbitrary rules. They fit the way He made us. The God who wrote the commands also designed the man who receives them, so it shouldn't surprise us when the two line up.

Why I wrote it

This book started in a study group. On Thursday nights a group of men gathers at my church, and I'm one of the participants. We have amazing leaders and participants in that room. We bring our books and Bibles, watch the teaching videos together, and work through the points, talking honestly about what it means to live as men of God in the middle of real lives.

While we worked through a study on taking responsibility for how we live, I kept noticing connections between the passages on the table and the research I'd spent years reading. I started bringing a few notes. The men were interested, so the notes became a paper, and the paper became this website. Then the men asked for more: more depth in the Scripture, more of the science, and more help knowing what to do with it. This book is my answer to that request.

How it fits with the paper and this site

The paper started the process with twelve passages, and it still stands as written. This site grew from there to 36 passages, each with its research, its limits, and five practices. The book takes all thirty-six, groups them three to a week, and goes much deeper. It adds stories from my own life, a closer reading of each passage in its setting, the research explained in plain words, and a running thread of connections from one week to the next. A brain that ruminates (Week 2) also worries (Week 3), sleeps poorly (Week 4), and snaps at the people it loves (Week 5). Pull on one thread and the others move.

The site and the book work together. Every chapter ends with a Go Deeper section that sends you to the pages here, where you'll find the full research, every source, and the Ask guide.

How each week works

An opening story from my own life, from the Navy and carrier decks to thirty-five years of building technology, told as honestly as I can.
The Word. A careful look at the week's three passages in their setting, with the other Scripture that speaks to the same theme.
How We're Made. The research in plain words, with short boxes that explain the technical terms.
Where They Meet, and Where They Don't. An honest summary of the convergence and its limits.
Two More Witnesses. Two more stories, usually from Scripture, that bring the theme home.
Threads Through the Book. How the week ties to the book's four threads and to the other weeks.
The Group Session. Everything a group needs for a 60- to 75-minute meeting: an opening, readings, eleven discussion questions, five practices with evidence labels, and a closing prayer.
On Your Own. Five days of personal study for the week between meetings, with a simple log.

The book closes with A Rule of Life, which gathers the practices from all twelve weeks into a daily, weekly, and lifelong pattern, with a thirty-day plan to get started. After that come notes for group leaders, a map of how all thirty-six passages connect (you can explore that map here), a Scripture index, and the full list of references.

Convergence, not proof

The book holds to the same ground rule as the paper: the verse does not need the study, and the study does not prove the verse. Scripture doesn't need a laboratory's permission to be true. When a passage converges with a finding, I mean only that the human pattern the text describes and the pattern the research measures look like the same pattern seen from two angles. I say plainly when a finding rests on a large trial and when it rests on one small study, and every practice carries a label for the strength of the evidence behind it. Some practices are labeled obedience, because God commends them whether a study has tested them or not.

Who it's for

Men's groups. Read the chapter before you meet, use the group session together, and work through the five days on your own during the week after. The readings and questions stand on their own, so a man who missed the reading can still join in.
Group leaders. You don't need to be a scientist or a theologian. The leader notes at the back show you how to run each session.
Sunday school classes and small groups of any kind.
A man reading on his own. Consider asking one other man to read along with you. Week 7 will tell you why.