The book “Killing Lions” is a conversation between John and Sam Eldredge about the trials young men face.

[Sam]  Obviously we’ve been told to chase our dreams. Over and over again every high school and college graduation speech challenged us to reach for the stars (as though they had just stumbled upon an original metaphor). But all the while we weren’t given much on becoming the people who could handle the dream when we got there. Probably because Disney didn’t think it had the right musical ring to it. 

[John]  As a warrior you will have to fight to hang on to your dreams. As a young man you also have to learn the discipline not to lose heart through really hard stuff. I am a successful author now, but in my early twenties I went through some pretty tough times. God is shaping us to become men who can handle life. Money actually destroys a lot of men. Money in the hands of people who are still children inside does enormous damage. So does power, fame, and influence. Mankind has an allergy to God; we find it uncomfortable to seek him, to align our desires and our way of doing things with his desires and his way of doing things. Agnosticism comes so naturally to us — to forget him, to accept the “evidence” that life is pretty much up to us. We are half-hearted creatures when it comes to God and his way of doing things. So he allows trial, confusion, and distress in hope that it will compel us to seek him. As we do, things in us are being addressed: our unbelief, our independence and self-reliance, our fear, our pride. (Better sooner than later to address these, by the way — they are the things that destroy a man’s life somewhere down the road.)

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