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Faith and masculinity meet kingdom living to help Christian husbands rebuild their confidence and masculine strength, so they can enjoy attraction-filled and passionate marriages.
You want to live a life on fire and on mission.
You want to be filled with such conviction and drive that you stop caring about what ANYone thinks.
You want to face each day alive, authentic, and fully present in every moment: with your wife, kids, on the street, at the gym, at work.
You want to bring yourSELF to the table, and to stop bringing the watered-down, nice, what everyone wants version of you.
You want that self to be a man who is burning in passion for Jesus, unafraid to bring his kingdom to anyone in your path, no matter the cost.
You want to love the one in front of you without fear, without needing love back, and without reserve.
You want to experience God for real, to not just believe, but to KNOW that he’s got you and that he’ll show up on your behalf. That he’ll show up THROUGH you.
You want to get to the end of your race and say, “Yep…I gave it everything. Jesus, you know I’m all in.”
...And you want to know just how to get there.
Welcome to Man Warrior King. Congratulations. You are among the violent taking the kingdom by force. You are among the chosen, answering the call to rise above your self. You are in the forge being stripped down and strengthened—and you WILL rise stronger, solid, unshakeable.
You are a man. You are a warrior. You are a king.
Matt (00:00)
I want you to be a man who is powerful.
who is able to change things, who is able to be a miracle working force in the earth, who changes the atmosphere everywhere you go, who kicks the devil out when you walk in. I want you to be that kind of man, but in order to get there.
You're gonna have to do some things that are different than most people. You're gonna have to learn how to be a pioneer and to push out in front when everybody else is saying pull back.
Good afternoon and welcome to another episode of the Man Warrior King podcast. I'm your host, Matt Halleck, and today I want to talk about some
heavy topics based on what's going on out there in in our church culture at large. So my last episode I spoke, I ⁓ spoke about the the current scandals coming out about ⁓ charismatic leaders like Sean Bulls, Todd White, the involvement of Bethel Church and things like that. I'm not going to go revisit that anymore. But this is this is going to get to something important. So
Essentially, what I want to talk about is how you as a man can.
in general, overcome the the status quo that we see in a typical church pew on a Sunday morning. All right. The status quo as it currently exists, I believe is far inferior, far less than what Jesus intended it to be. So how do you how do you become different? How do you ⁓ pull ahead of the pack?
become one of the forerunners, the front runners, one of the ones who's going to place in the race.
So yesterday I was ⁓ listening to a Sean Ryan podcast episode. Shout out to Sean Ryan. I appreciate the work that you do, Sean, if you ever see this. And the episode was talking about... ⁓
instances of child abuse at a certain summer camp, famous ⁓ nationally, internationally famous summer camp. And in that episode, which was very good, there, there was discussion about the scandal that came out, ⁓ like three, four years ago about the Southern Baptist convention and how there had been a few investigations.
finding that there were up to and probably more than 700 different Southern Baptist leaders and pastors who had been credibly accused of sexual abuse, some of it involving children, some of it involving adults, but 700 or more. Not only that, but the
investigations found that the Southern Baptist Convention as a whole had handled all of these different situations miserably, and with very little care for the victims, very little ⁓ work or action done to stop this rampant problem. And even now they're they're kind of
slow walking or reneging on some of the action items that they committed to doing a few years ago. I just, just yesterday, I just was, was processing this, the, the, the entire, the entire Christian church, at least in our nation, I don't know about the rest of the world, but at least in our nation, it's riddled with corruption, scandal, perversion, and evil.
This is not a charismatic versus evangelical thing, a charismatic versus Bible thumping thing, a Baptist versus Pentecost thing. This is across the entire church. We have leaders, people in positions of power who are abusing their position to abuse other people. And some of the abuse that goes on is
far more depraved than your average man ⁓ with a raging sex drive.
and
It's starting to make me wonder like who in the world is trustworthy?
I start to wonder when I listen to Christian music, I mean, are those people real? I listen to any preacher on YouTube or through podcasts or whatever, can I trust that you're the man that you seem to be?
And the truth is, I don't know.
So if we have this church system that is riddled with corruption and perversion and evil, then here's where I wanna go today. I'm not just gonna comment on that the whole time. Here's where I wanna go today for you.
The way that you think is so extremely important in your life. In fact, it may be the single most important, most influential aspect of who you are.
And your thinking, your thought life will absolutely determine how much of God's presence and power you will experience in your life. See, just because there is something real about him, just because there are promises that he has given you, just because there is power and authority available to you to bring breakthrough, that does not guarantee that you will experience the breakthrough, the victory.
See, His promises and His will, His desires for your life, they are not automatic, contrary to what the vast majority of our Christian culture believes and talks like. His will is not automatic. Everything that happens in your life is not part of His will. That is not biblical. It cannot be supported through scripture.
We do have verses that say, a man may plan his steps, but the Lord directs his path, stuff like that. That still does not say that every single thing that comes your way is from God.
So we have, you know, we have this, this mindset, this general mindset that says any, any hardship, let's use, let's use disease as an example, any disease that comes my way, is part of God's plan. And it's either part of his plan because he wants to heal me from it. Or what many of us would believe is that it's part of his plan and he probably won't heal me from it. And it's his plan for me to, to somehow learn.
how to still have victory and thrive even with disease. And that's what God intended. He brought it up to me for that purpose. And sometimes I wish that it was different, but he knows better than I do. So I have to learn how to trust him and submit. And that's part of the Christian life. That's kind of the norm.
If I think that way, and yet God intends that all disease be illegal now that Jesus bore my sicknesses and carried my infirmities, then my thinking will impede my ability to receive the fulfillment of that promise of health and healing.
Because think about it, like.
Salvation exists for anybody who will receive it. The act, God's part was done for everyone already. Millennia ago. Everybody in one sense.
has is covered by Jesus's act of salvation, dying and rising again. So God's part is, yeah, I want you saved. But if a person continues in their life thinking in this way that, that, no, that's not for me. No, Jesus isn't real. Or he is really probably did it, but there's no way I could ever receive that. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not worth that.
or I bet it is real, but I don't want it. I want to do things my own way. Then that person's thinking will actually supersede the work of Jesus that he did for them. And that person's thinking will be what determines what they experience from God. Either forgiveness and intimacy and eternal life starting now and into forever, or separation, hell, all that.
So a person's thinking is far more important than what it is that God wants in terms of salvation. And yet sometimes when you and I are just doing the normal day-to-day of life, we assume that what's happening to us is part of God's will and it's a little bit inescapable. And it's my job to just learn how to endure until the storm passes or to learn how to be thankful and content with the Lord. And if things are going well to...
shrink it in for all it's while it's here.
So we kind of assume that no matter what I think, God's will is what God's will is and he's gonna do what he's gonna do.
But here's the problem.
We're seeing now that our entire church institution
has been absolutely riddled with lies, perversion, corruption, and evil.
We have these men that have been portrayed as superheroes, super Christians. We have these men that have been put into positions of power and that have portrayed an image of wholesomeness only to find that there's rampant child abuse and sexual abuse of adults and men and women alike and covering it up and dismissing victims. I mean, that's, that's just, that's, that's horrible.
So my question for you is why would you want to be loyal to the standard Christian party line? Because that's, you know, because that's what everybody has been taught. Why would you just keep on thinking the way the majority of Christians think?
if the place that our thinking came from was this system.
You were never told to just simply believe what your leaders tell you. You were never commanded to simply accept what a pastor teaches.
You were told to test the spirits. You're told to follow the example of the Berean Christians in the book of Acts who examined everything that Paul said in the scriptures. You were essentially you were told to formulate your own opinions, your own mindset, your own way of thinking, based on what God says, not based on what a system has told you. Because my question now is, does our system work?
Does the standard body of Christian mindset that most Christian men live according to, does it work?
Well, for the leaders, don't think it does because clearly we have a way higher percentage of sickos in leadership than should ever be allowed. should there never should have. This never should have happened. I don't even know how it did. I don't know where it came from. I have some ideas, but I'm not going to speculate on all of that, but I
It's clearly not working for our leaders. And so if it's not working for our leaders, is it working for the pew sitters? And my, my honest opinion is no, it's not. have an impotent.
body of Christian men sitting in the pews on Sunday mornings. Impotent.
because we've inherited ⁓ a way of thinking that has kept you and I passive and bound in chains saying there's nothing you can do about your life. You just have to learn to submit to God's will.
If you want to break out of the status quo and not be one of the ones who's just constantly struggling and defeated and never really seeing much of anything happen and breakthrough in your life, never really seeing many miracles, never seeing much of an experience of God, never seeing your marriage get better, never seeing your health thrive, then go ahead and keep thinking the way that you always have. Go ahead and keep thinking the way that so many believers think. But question
where it came from, because the system we've been operating under is massively corrupted and broken. So I wouldn't be surprised if what we have inherited as ways of thought are a big old fat body of lies.
And it's time that you be willing to push against the status quo and be willing to push against the crowd and be one of the few who says, you know what? The way you're thinking about this, the way you talk, that is, not, that's not, I'm not doing that. I know it sounds Christian, it sounds holy, it sounds like it's submitting to God's will, but it's not in scripture.
I'm sorry, I don't think anyway, unless it's inscription.
You know, another common one is this idea that we all just kind of we all get old and decrepit and we break down as we get older.
that's just, that's, that's how the world is. You can't deny that. We live in a fallen world. Our bodies are fading.
Remember Psalm 103, it says,
That you satisfy me with good, so that my youth is renewed like the eagles.
I wonder if God never intended that our bodies get brittle and frail and riddled with disease as we get older to the point where we are just fragile shells of the man we once were. I wonder, like, when you borrow a book from the library and your time to have that book starts to run out, you can go on there and renew it, which kind of extends your right to have that book for a bit longer.
So what if God intends that our youth keeps on getting renewed? And as you get older, you don't have to break down. I'm just suggesting, you don't even have to agree with me. But what I'm saying is you need to examine everything you think and figure out why you think that way and figure out then does that agree with the promises of God?
Or is it contrary to what he said?
If you think that sometimes there's some people that God just chooses not to heal, is that what you saw in Jesus? Do you see Jesus choosing not to heal in the gospels? You might see it in the chosen.
But you don't see it in the gospels.
Anybody who asked him, said, yeah, I'll heal you. Whether they earned it or not, whether they were believers or not. In fact, none of them were yet. Jesus hadn't died and risen.
Well, God just has me. He's in control and he's got me going through this marriage season for whatever reason. He knows what he's doing. Yeah, he does know what he's doing, but do you know what you're doing?
Because if you just think that your marriage is designed right now to be in strife, and that's God's will, you don't know what you're doing. That's not God's will. It doesn't line up with what he says about your marriage in Scripture.
Well, marriage, know, sex is mostly for men to enjoy, not women. That'll come right from the pulpit.
And it is absolutely not what you get from scripture. So we have gotten so many of these lies that masquerade as truth. They masquerade as holy Christian thought.
And if ever there was a time for you to question everything, it's now because the source of your body of thinking.
It's not what you thought it was. The men that have taught you what you now believe are not who you thought they were.
And even if your own pastor is a good man, likely the men who taught him what he now teaches you, there's been corruption all through it.
So it's no wonder that we have a church full of impotent men.
who are too timid to go change things who are too timid to see a problem and be the solution for it. They're always afraid of stepping on God's toes. And what if this is just me and it's not God's will. There's all this thinking out there that is not healthy. It's not biblical and it didn't come
and in your life, I want you to be a man who is powerful.
who is able to change things, who is able to be a miracle working force in the earth, who changes the atmosphere everywhere you go, who kicks the devil out when you walk in. I want you to be that kind of man, but in order to get there.
You're gonna have to do some things that are different than most people. You're gonna have to learn how to be a pioneer and to push out in front when everybody else is saying pull back.
David is a great example. He shows up on the battlefront and the entire army of Israelites is cowering in fear.
And he overhears them talking about the different rewards that King Saul would give to the one who kills Goliath. And they say that he would give the one who kills Goliath, he'd give him his daughter's hand in marriage. He would give them a bunch of money and he would make the family be able to live tax free. And David's intrigued by this and he asks the person to repeat it. And his brother walks up and he overhears part of the conversation. He's like, who, where,
What are you doing here? Don't get back to the sheep. Who do think you are, David? I know the presumption and the arrogance that's in your
Who do you think you are?
And you know what David does? He doesn't, he doesn't listen to Eliab, his brother and think, ⁓ man, I don't want to overstep. Maybe look, nobody else is being this confident and bold around here. Maybe I should, maybe I should change my tune. Maybe I should tone it down.
he just goes back to the person who is telling him about the rewards and he says, Hey, remind me again what I'd get if I killed Goliath. It's like he is proactively guarding his thoughts against the naysaying.
And he's filling his thoughts with the reward.
see how you think matters. And if you keep thinking the same way everybody else does, then you're only going to get a mediocre ho hum Christian life where you never see God do much of anything. Your marriage is bland at best. Your friends but you're not passionate. You know, raging sex machines in the bedroom like there's you that you you might have mediocre health, you'll probably grow old and get decrepit like everybody else. If you if you just think the same way everyone does.
In David's day, the way everybody thought was, too scared, we're too weak to kill Goliath. So we're going to stand here and cower. And that's what most of us do today.
but David thought differently.
And when Saul said, David, can't do this, David said, Saul, you don't understand. I've killed a lion and a bear and the same God who gave me that lion and bear will give me Goliath today. You watch. See, David spoke in such faith because it was rooted in God and not in men.
So my invitation to you today, my challenge to you is to do some work to examine what you think about your life, about the world, about your circumstances, about your worth as a man, about your abilities, about your marriage, about your health, about your money. That'll push buttons and make people real mad at you.
and figure out what God says apart from all the human explanations and the ways that we dismiss his promises, the ways we come up with way of with with like a method of downplaying the promises and how good it sounds and you've got to well, no, God's not a vending machine and all these things.
and just see what he says and be willing to be the one who doesn't think the way everyone else does and be willing to be the one who goes out in front even all by yourself, but you're not alone because that's where the Holy Spirit is waiting for you. And he's saying, will somebody come here to me and learn from me?
And if you and I can do this...
You and I can become a generation of leaders in the church who...
Set a new tone.
who live what we say we believe. It doesn't mean that we're going to be perfect. It doesn't mean that every one of us is going to be sinless. I mean, I sin.
But I am after the Lord. am after His righteousness and His goodness in my life. And my heart is His. The leaders that have done this, have engaged in repeated, willing, depraved, damaging sin over and over. It's like they hardly even know who they are. I don't even know who they are.
It's time that you and I become somebody.
different than the status quo.
And if you want to go deeper on this, I would like to ask you to pick up my book, The DNA of a Man. It's a three-part book on becoming a man of identity, a man of principle, and a man on mission. And in that book, it is not your average Christian do's and don'ts for men. It's not your average all the qualities of a godly man. It is an identity reboot. It will help you find who you are. It will resurrect your...
your connection to God, your fire for life, your zeal, and it will resurrect the passion in your marriage if you walk out its principles. Come to think of it, I have a workbook that goes with it. I'd love for you to pick that up as well. And if you need help with your marriage, there's a link in the description and get on my calendar. We can talk about what I can do to partner with you, mentor you into the marriage of your dreams.
So take one of those actions. Subscribe, comment, let me know what you think. If you're on iTunes or Spotify, please leave a review.
And until next time, I'll see you.