Module 6 · The Hunt for Souls · Lesson 2 of 2
Going back
You do not have to fix him. You have to find him. Sometimes finding him is the fix.
Module 6 of 6
Your first instinct will be to solve it, because solving is faster and it lets you leave.
But a man in the dark does not need your solution first. He needs somebody who will stay long enough to be believed. Most men have had advice. Very few have had presence, and presence is what makes advice survivable later.
This is slow, inconvenient, and it will cost you evenings. That is the work. Anything faster is you managing your own discomfort at his expense.
Jesus went to the tombs. That is where they kept the man everybody had given up chaining, the one who cut himself, the one the whole region had agreed was beyond reach.
He did not shout the solution from the boat. He got out, walked over, and asked him his name.
Asked him his name. The man had been reduced to a condition, and the first thing done for him was being treated as somebody who had one.
That is the model, and it is not complicated. Go where he actually is, not where it would be convenient for him to be. Treat him as a man rather than a situation. Ask, and then be quiet long enough for the answer.
It will cost you reputation, sometimes. Being near certain men makes other people uncomfortable and some of them will say so.
It will cost you time you do not have, and it will not resolve on your schedule, and some of the men you go back for will not make it, and you will carry that.
Do not let anybody tell you that part is not real. It is real, and it is the price, and you should know it before you start rather than discovering it in year two.
But every man you reach becomes another fire lit in the dark. That is how this advances. Not through programs. One man at a time, one rescue at a time, going back for people nobody else went back for.
This is what every module was for, and it is worth saying plainly now that you are at the end.
You did not name your patterns so you could feel understood. You did not guard your eyes so you could feel clean. You did not build brotherhood so you would have company. You did not kill the thing so you could be comfortable.
All of it was so you could be trusted with somebody else's freedom. And a man cannot be trusted with that while he is still owned by something. That is the entire reason the order of this course was what it was.
Heaven does not count what you accumulated. It counts who you went back for. Every man's purpose ends exactly where another man's freedom begins.
So go get him.
The workEight questions
Three are answered in your head and never collected. They are marked, so you know before you start which is which.
Name one man you are going back for. First name is enough, but write it down.
What are you afraid he will pull back up in you?
What is your first move with him?
- AShow up where he actually is, without an agenda
- BSay the true thing about my own life first
- CAsk a question and then be quiet
- DI do not know, and that is why I have not moved
Jesus asked the man his name. Write what you know about your man that is not his situation. Who is he, apart from what is happening to him?
What will you do if he does not make it?
What is this going to cost you?
- AEvenings and a schedule I already cannot manage
- BReputation with people who will not understand it
- CEmotionally, because he reminds me of me
- DMoney, and I have not decided how I feel about that
Write the first message. The actual words, not the intention. Then send it.
Every man's purpose ends where another man's freedom begins. Write what you want said about you by the men you went back for, after you are gone.
DeeperThree reflections
Longer than the questions and harder. Nobody reads these but you. Write them anyway, because the ones you would not say out loud are the ones doing the damage.
- 1
Write the full account of your own way out. Not the testimony version. The real one, with the parts that do not make anybody look good.
- 2
Write about who you would be today if the person who came back for you had decided they were not ready.
- 3
Write the list. Every man you can think of who is where you were. Then circle one and put a date next to his name.
Before you close this
You are not being asked to try harder
Everything above was written to corner you, because a man does not change
what he will not name. But conviction without Christ is only shame with better
vocabulary, and shame has never made a man free. It has only ever made him
quieter.
He walked into hell unarmed and came out holding the keys. That is not
encouragement. It is the reason the thing you just named can actually die
instead of being managed for another ten years.
Take the last question you answered. Tell one man. Do the one small thing
you wrote down. Not the whole plan. The one thing.
Written for men who are done pretending.
The Hunt · Module 6.2