Sons First
How Finding Our Primary Identity Changes Everything
BY RYAN HUBER
June 2026
No one wants to start crying in the middle of a deserted cigar bar on a Tuesday afternoon. That was never the plan. But that’s exactly what happened to me a few years ago. My friend Mac had asked me a question I wasn’t ready for. Or maybe it was a statement. Either way, it’s a moment that has stayed with me through the years, and guided me through the vocational wilderness I’ve been trekking through.
And that’s how Mac saw it; that season was the beginning of me hacking my way through the jungle with a machete. There’s no established career path for people who write books and talk to people for a living. And I had left an extremely well-worn track not too many months before. It was a messy ending to my corporate career, one I thought would give me and my family all of the practical things we needed. A good salary, great benefits, and promises of nearly limitless opportunities for growth. Again, it didn’t end that way.
And here I was, in a cigar bar with a friend who was actually doing the thing, wanting to blaze my own trail, but worried that it made me a bad person to risk pursuing it. A bad husband. A bad father. How irresponsible do you have to be to leave behind the security of the business world and never look back? I had been doing all the right things. I was making money, serving at church, keeping my promises to my wife and kids.
But over the years, the call that God put on my life had taken a back seat, in favor of paying bills, funding house projects, and making student loan debt disappear. Those were responsible goals, the goals that a father should have. Who was I to put the bulk of the weight of breadwinning on my wife? What kind of man does that? What kind of provider risks failing to feed his own children?
But Mac cut through all that. I had two boys, sure. My wife made more money than me; ok. But the question seemed to echo through the nearly-empty cigar lounge, cutting through the smoke and slapping me in the face:
“You know that God has three sons in your family, right?”
I knew exactly what that meant, and the tears started right away. It wasn’t long before I realized that my lens, the way I viewed the world, had subtly changed over the years. I was a husband, a father, a provider, an employee, but I had stopped thinking of myself as a son. A beloved son. An adopted son. But that’s what God says I am, and Mac knew it.
Provider? I knew that was God’s job, in my mind. But it had slipped from the center of my heart. Father? Absolutely, but not The Father. Again, Jesus was clear about that. God is our Father, the one who owns everything, knows what we need, and loves to give his kids good gifts. Husband? Of course, but also part of what the Bible calls the Bride of Christ, the church, the one He loves. And I never fully lost it. I always knew it at some level. But I needed brothers and sisters to remind me as I walked through the wilderness that those things were still true, and that the weight of all of it didn’t belong on my shoulders, all alone. That moment in the cigar bar was one peak in a season of a mountain of reminders that at the most fundamental level I am not a provider, husband, or father:
I’m a son first.
Risking faith in that fact changes everything. The weight comes off pretty quickly. You take other risks. Your creativity starts to flow again. You’re more honest with yourself and others. You lean into friendships in a new way. You know you’re not alone. You have a Father, and brothers, who are going to walk alongside you as you hack your way through the jungle. You have an older Brother who paid it all so you could be a Beloved son, and a Spirit that makes anything and everything possible again.
The same is true of you, by the way. If you’re a man following Jesus, if you are in Christ, then you are a son first. A son of God. A beloved son. A son he wants to give good gifts, and provide for, and lead, and empower. A son with brothers and sisters to lean on. If you’re weary and burdened, if you’ve forgotten that you are a son first, then maybe you just need to be reminded. At New Canaan Society, we believe in friendship. Friendship with Jesus, and friendship with other men. Real, authentic, honest relationships. We also believe in sonship. You are a son first, and if you need brothers to remind you of that, and walk it out beside you, then come join us.
“ … as God said, ‘I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people … and I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to me, says the Lord Almighty.’” – 2 Corinthians 6:16, 18
