I usually skip the exercises in self-help books. This week I tried one from Jordan Raynor's Redeeming Your Goals, and it showed me how even my most righteous goals could quietly become counterfeits.
Since I stepped into the world of full-time speaking, the stack of books on my nightstand keeps getting taller. Friends recommend them, fellow authors send them, and I'm in a season of discovering fresh wisdom like never before.
If I'm honest, I'm like most of you. When a self-help book gets to the worksheet or the exercise at the end of the chapter, I skip it. I want to get through the content and on to the next book in the stack.
This past week I broke that habit, and I'm so glad I did.
The Exercise I Almost Skipped
A good friend recommended Jordan Raynor's new book, Redeeming Your Goals. Chapter one is about choosing "redemptive quests," and Jordan includes an exercise built on C.S. Lewis's classic The Screwtape Letters. If you've never read it, Screwtape is a senior demon who writes letters to his nephew Wormwood, coaching him on how to lead a human astray. Jordan gives you a prompt to paste into your favorite AI tool, along with your real goals for the year, and asks it to write a Screwtape letter about you.
So I got specific. I typed in my speaking goals and my health goals. I added the way I hope to reach people through Market Like a Rockstar, and my hopes for my family and my bandmates as THIRD DAY heads back out on the road.
These are good goals. Righteous goals, even. I would have told you every one of them was for God. What came back showed me how I could chase every one of them for God while forgetting to pursue them like God and with God. It showed me how I could take up the mission of Jesus and drop the methods of Jesus.
The Letter
Here is what came back, in full.
My dear Wormwood,
I have read your report on the bass player, and your complaint irritates me. You say he has turned toward the Enemy and now speaks openly of "redemptive" goals, as though this were a defeat. It is an opportunity. A man who wants nothing for God is hard to steer. A man who wants great things for God can be steered almost anywhere, as long as he never notices that he has taken the wheel himself.
Do not try to talk him out of his goals. They are good ones, and that is exactly what makes them useful. Our aim is not to change what he pursues but how he pursues it, and above all with whom. Let him keep the Enemy's mission. Just see to it that he forgets the Enemy's methods.
Begin with the money. He has set ambitious financial goals for his speaking, and he tells himself, truthfully, which annoys me, that reaching them would free him to serve. Leave that alone. Instead, turn the goal into a scoreboard. Let every offer quietly tell him what he is worth. Let him feel a small chill when a bureau calls with a lower fee and a small glow when the figure is large, and keep him from asking what the chill and the glow are telling him. Within a year he should be weighing every invitation by its fee first and its people second, while calling the whole arrangement "stewardship." That word has done excellent work for us.
Next, his trade. He has written a book about marketing like a rock star, and he is good at it. Encourage this. Let him polish the brand until the brand is easier to love than the man, and then let him start to believe the brand is the man. The Enemy's Son, you will remember, had crowds and kept walking away from them to be alone with His Father. That habit of withdrawal is what you must break. Keep the patient reachable. A phone in his hand at all hours is worth more to us than any vice.
On the stage he wants to project confidence and add value to every room. Lovely. Now make sure the confidence is borrowed from the applause. The Enemy called His Son "beloved" before a single sermon or miracle. The approval came first, and the work flowed out of it. Reverse that order in your patient. Let him earn his worth every night and lose it again by morning. As for adding value, let him walk into rooms asking "What can I bring?" in a way that slides, imperceptibly, into "How am I coming across?" The towel and the basin, kneeling to wash the feet of the least impressive person present, should strike him as a wonderful illustration for a keynote rather than something to do on a Tuesday.
His body. He wants to be lean, rested and strong. We cannot make discipline wicked, but we can make the mirror an altar. Let him think of his body chiefly as a credential for the stage. As for sleep, you cannot stop him sleeping, but you can turn even rest into a performance metric. Let him optimize his sleep like a campaign instead of receiving it as a gift. The Enemy, irritatingly, gives sleep to those He loves, and a man who rests because he trusts is beyond our reach for eight hours a night.
Now the real prize: his family and his band. He says he wants those relationships to deepen. Let him mean it sincerely and schedule it never. Let him give his best stories, his warmest energy and his freshest attention to strangers in ballrooms, and bring home whatever version of himself is left over. His wife and children will get the man who is "decompressing." His bandmates, back together after all those years, can become colleagues on a tour, then content, then a line on a speaker one-sheet. Nostalgia will help you here. Let him relive the old glory instead of building something new with these men.
Finally, his prayers. Do not stop them. Shape them. Let him pray at the start of a plan and again at the end, like bookends, and run everything in between on his own skill. "Lord, bless this" is a prayer we can live with. "Lord, what are You doing, and may I join You?" is the one that ruins us.
Remember what happened in the wilderness. Our Father Below offered the Son exactly the right ends: bread for a hungry body, a spectacle to win the crowd, and the kingdoms of the world. He refused, not because those ends were evil, but because the shortcut skipped the Father. Your patient will be offered the same three: a body, a platform and a kingdom. Do not tempt him with sin. Tempt him with success gained without God. If he builds a mighty ministry while walking a few steps ahead of the Enemy instead of beside Him, he will be more useful to us than any atheist: exhausted, admired and alone.
Your affectionate uncle,
Screwtape
The Line That Stopped Me
I read it once and got chills. I read it again and got quiet.
There's a lot in there I need to sit with. But the line that stopped me cold was about my bandmates: "Let him relive the old glory instead of building something new with these men."
It would be so easy to do exactly that. We've been given something rare: a second season together after years apart. The counterfeit version of that gift is simply looking backward, playing the hits, and treating each other like coworkers on a tour. The real version is building something new.
So that's my fresh prayer this season: God, help us build something new.
Trading One Prayer for Another
The other line I can't shake comes near the end. Screwtape is perfectly happy to let me pray "Lord, bless this" at the start and end of my plans, as long as I run everything in between on my own skill. The prayer he fears is, "Lord, what are You doing, and may I join You?"
That's the prayer I'm learning to pray, for my speaking, my book, my health, my family and my band.
If You're the Praying Type
This month THIRD DAY heads out for 12 more shows alongside TobyMac and Chris Tomlin. If you're the praying type, here's how you can pray for me:
That we would build something new together, not just relive the old days
That my family gets my best and not my leftovers while I'm on the road
That I would rest because I trust, not because I've optimized it
That I would walk beside God in this season, not a few steps ahead of Him
So I have a question for you
What would Screwtape write about your goals?
If you want to find out, here's the prompt Jordan shares in chapter one. Paste it into your favorite AI tool, and be specific and honest. The more real your goals, the more the letter will hit home.
"I am a follower of Jesus who is pursuing these goals: [list some of your professional and personal goals here]. Write a 'Screwtape letter' imagining how Screwtape might advise Wormwood to thwart me personally in my redemptive quests. Highlight how I might be tempted to pursue goals that are for God while neglecting to pursue those goals like God and with God. Show me how I might pursue the mission of Jesus while neglecting the methods of Jesus."
