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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)
If you've ever tried to fix yourself.
as husband or as a man, then you might know how impossible it feels.
You also might know the shame that comes on its heels rather quickly when you've been trying to change and become a better husband, more strong, more attractive, more confident, and it just doesn't, it doesn't stick. It doesn't last. And you hear those words from your wife again, you see the look in her eye and you feel like you let her down again.
Here's the thing, you weren't designed to self-transform, but neither were you designed to just sit by and passively wait and pray.
real transformation in God's Kingdom.
results in you being a word made man. And I don't mean a man who is constantly trying to do all of the right commandments. I mean a man who literally is beginning to embody the promises of God. And it's more and more effortlessly every day.
Today I'm going to talk with you about how the Holy Spirit can transform you from the inside out from a man who is weak, full of shame, frustrated, spinning your wheels, discouraged, depressed into a man who is confident, strong on fire.
Good afternoon and welcome to another episode of the Man Warrior King podcast. I'm your host, Matt Halleck. I'm the author of The DNA of a Man and I am the founder of the Man Warrior King movement, the creator of the Masculine Husband Transformation Program to turn you as a man from powerless faith and passionless marriage into a kingdom man who is experiencing the power of God in daily life and experiencing desire.
and hunger from his wife more than he's ever known.
Glad to have you today. So today we are talking about this issue of transforming.
And this is a crucial issue because if we're honest with ourselves. We church going Bible believing Jesus following men. The faith that we have picked up, the faith that we have adopted has been, for lack of a better word, ⁓ somewhat disappointing and unfulfilling. Maybe not for everybody, but for a lot of men. In our church culture. They feel discouraged and let down.
Because even though they know they are doing the right things and believing the right things they themselves carry the same struggles day after day, month after month, year after year.
and you look in the word and you see that Jesus promised life and life abundantly. And you ask yourself, where is that for me? You ask God, where is that for me? Why is it that you don't seem?
to work for me. Why is it that the transformation power of the gospel seemed to overlook me?
And there are many.
guys out there who wish that they had more of a testimony. I know I have felt this way, where, I sure love the stories of those people who were living on the streets and gangs doing drugs, sex, whatever, blah, blah, blah, all that stuff, maybe even into witchcraft and the occult, and then they had this crazy radical encounter with God and it completely transformed from the inside out.
That sounds incredible. I'd love to have an encounter with God in my history like that. But a lot of guys simply don't. Their testimony is more boring to them.
And they don't see evidence of God doing much of anything in their life to take them from this way that they, you know, used to be to the way they are now. And in fact, most many guys have stuff about them that they hate and that they wish would be gone. They don't like themselves. And so the version of the faith that we have stepped into
is quite unsatisfying. And I can hear, I can hear the heresy police out there talking about, well, it's not about whether you're satisfied. It's not about you. You selfish man. It's about Jesus being satisfied. No, it's not.
It's not a- it's not this... one-way thing.
It's about both. This marriage, right? That's what it's supposed to be between the bride and the bridegroom. This marriage is about mutual satisfaction, mutual fulfillment. Otherwise it's a sucky marriage.
So what is the current, what is the situation that we face then? If we are, if you, let's say you, a Christian husband, there are things about you that you would love to see change, particularly, let's just call it like becoming more confident with my wife. This is a huge, a huge issue that, that guys face. They might feel confident out in the world. And then as soon as they cross through the front door or
come in through the garage, that confidence disappears and they become afraid of their wife and they start cowering to her and she becomes more distant and disrespectful because she can't respect a man who doesn't have a backbone. And these guys are so absolutely just crushed about this whole thing. They don't want it, but they don't know how to change. That is very common. So let's deal with that issue. Okay. So we can put flesh and bones on this thing.
So what does this guy have at his disposal?
Let's look at the Christian version of change. And granted, there's going to be some other variations out there, but this one is pretty representative of what you're going to find in Christian circles.
So here it is from Desiring God. Okay. We have this article written on, ⁓ you can change or can you? Well, that's already a depressing title because if I can't change, then I'm stuck with me. And I know that's not the point that this author is making, but let's just see what they say.
He says, the central message is that we cannot change ourselves through our own effort. Okay. Yeah. Kind of agree, kind of disagree. Instead we are changed by God through faith. The key is understanding how the dynamic of change by faith takes place and how other disciplines like avoiding temptation and the means of grace fit into a faith-based approach. Okay. So.
Christians are very ignorant and naive. We make these big claims like change is impossible on your own. You can't possibly change without God, without Jesus. I'm sorry, but I love Jesus and I believe life is all about him. But that's just not true. There are thousands and thousands of men and women
who have gone through a process of self-discovery, self-transformation, up-leveling from one version of doing life to the next. They have changed and they may not even know Jesus. So we come up with these statements because we think that that is like, it's defending the faith. It's not. It's ignorant and makes us look stupid. So people change without Jesus. I just am of the opinion
that there's easy mode and there's hard mode.
Then he goes on to talk about the key is understanding how the dynamic of change by faith takes place and how other disciplines, okay, I can get on board with disciplines, but then he says like avoiding temptation. So here we have Christianity light, except for the fact that it's presented as the depths of the wells of Christianity.
Our church culture has been so obsessed and addicted to discussing sin. We focus on it all the time. Stop sinning, avoiding temptation, stop sinning, avoiding temptation. And it's not actually everything Jesus cares about. Does he want you to sin? No. Should you sin? No. But let's go onward from there. So avoiding temptation is
not actually going to hand you many keys to transform. It's just not. You already know to avoid temptation. Besides, how is avoiding sin supposed to help me grow confidence so that I can actually be more attractive to my wife? Yes, now if I'm engaged in sin, in secret and ongoing way, whatever, that's absolutely going.
to hurt my confidence and it's going to hurt a whole bunch of my existence. 100%. But let's just talk to the average Joe Christian who wants to live righteous, who is not stuck in sin, let's say, although maybe that's inaccurate. Maybe the average Joe is in which case you still need, you don't need to be told to avoid temptation. If you're stuck in sin and you don't want it, that doesn't help you.
because you already know to avoid it and you hate the fact that you fall into it. Anyway, let's keep going.
So he asked these different questions. How would you like to change? Okay. Through Jesus, we can again reflect God's glory. Okay. Yeah, sure. ⁓ So the change that matters is becoming more like Jesus. Okay. I still don't know how. I'm here trying. I'm praying. I'm asking the Lord.
He says, then why would you like to change? And he says, we change to enjoy the freedom from sin and delight in God. That's it. Again, there's an obsession with sin. I want to change because I want to be the best version of me. I want to be the man that I know is in there somewhere on the inside.
How are you gonna change? He says, we can't change ourselves through rules and disciplines because behavior comes from the heart. Okay. Instead, God changes us through the work of Christ for us and the work of the spirit in us. Okay. Sure. Except for the fact that a lot of people do change without God, but we are not without God, we are believers. So yes, I would like to change. ⁓
in conjunction with the Lord. like the work of Christ in me, the work of the Holy Spirit in me to bring change in me. great. My question is, how do I do that?
So he says, we sin when we think or believe a lie instead of trusting God. change takes place as in response to God's goodness and grace, we turn to him in faith. Legalism says you should not, faith says you need not. So here's where I am going to take this and say yes to it, but in a very different way. So the point he's making is
When we sin, we do something that is wrong, that is immoral. It came because we first believed a lie. How do know he's saying that? Because he's defining down below. Legalism says, hey, you shouldn't do this. Don't go get drunk or don't go cheat on your wife. Faith says, hey, you don't need to do that because God is bigger and better. That doesn't
somebody who wants to change.
They already know God is bigger and better. ⁓ I'm sorry. The root of my problem was that I thought God was smaller than cheating on my wife. ⁓ that's right. And he's better than that? Okay. That doesn't help. So that's the meaning here. I'm going to take this paragraph. I'm going to tell you something different.
Believing a lie is in and of itself sin.
Okay, but I still don't need you to tell me how wrong I am. That's not my point. When you believe I am not a confident man, what if that thought is sin?
What if...
What if change takes place as you turn from that thought, I'm not a confident man, which is sin, because why, wait, Matt, why is that sin? Because the word says the opposite.
It says you're as bold as a lion, not that you don't have confidence. So if you believe something other than what God has told you, aren't you sitting? Aren't you saying God's wrong?
So then if we think about that change takes place as you turn to what God actually says in faith. Now we're getting somewhere, but it's not what the point of this article was. I'll get to that. What desires do you need to turn from? So we sin when we desire or worship something that's not God. Okay. Yes. ⁓ Repentance is a continual act of turning from sin and denying yourself. This is just so un-
helpful for the man who wants to experience abundant goodness in his life. ⁓ does truly that's not denying myself. That's wanting to to be fulfilled. That's wanting to satisfy the desires that I myself have. So denying yourself and turning away from immorality is not what the sum total of transformation is.
What stops you from changing our pride? It makes us minimize our sin or excuse our, no, yes, it can do that, but this is just so entry level. This does not help the man who doesn't like himself.
He doesn't need to be told that he's minimizing his sin, or he's excusing it, or he's hiding it. Maybe he's not hiding a darn thing.
And yet he can't figure out how to be more confident.
What strategies do you need to put in place? Well, again, stop sinning is one strategy it says. Run away from temptation. Okay.
Then it says, you know, avoid the influence of the world. My gosh. This, we get it. We get it. Be holy, be righteous. We get it. Help me.
It says, means saying yes to whatever might strengthen our new spirit given desire. So reading the Bible, praying, going to church, finding Christian community, worshiping, serving. If you do enough of those things, you will get better and change. Not always. There are so many men who spend their lives doing their religious duties and they are unfulfilled and they're starving and they can't figure out.
why they won't transform.
Matt (18:11)
this is what a lot of our Christian methods for trying to transform leaves us with. You can't really, God can, and it kind of happens while you pray, read the Bible, go to church, serve, worship, and it just becomes kind of part of you. You may not even notice it. And that's the problem is that a lot of times guys just don't notice themselves changing because they're not.
And I'm sorry, it's just, it's not such an automatic thing. It's not like, Oh, because you're a Christian, Christian is guaranteed to happen. And everybody else who's not a Christian won't. It's not the way it works. So if a guy can't figure out how the Christian methods are, are helping, and he's doing everything he knows, then he's going to try to do self-improvement stuff. And
It often fails and we know this, we get frustrated with our own efforts of trying to fix ourselves by sheer willpower.
because what we find out is that I can modify my behavior for a time. But here's the key. Behavior modification doesn't last without identity overhaul.
So guys don't know how to overhaul their identity. So they try to build new routines. They white knuckle new habits and things. And some of it sticks a bit and some of it doesn't. And it's usually less than ⁓ exciting.
And if you find that you are trying so hard, often you can run out of steam.
And then you start to believe that you are weak and that you're incapable of change. so that belief will actually lead you to behave in weak ways, to behave in powerless ways.
And what happens at that point, you have your efforts at modifying behavior often peter out. The next part of this cycle is that self-improvement.
will put you into shame when it is not working.
So you try, you fail, you feel ashamed, you try harder, you fail again, you feel more ashamed because now the higher level of effort didn't work.
You can see where this cycle can take you, right?
So shame kind of becomes a fuel for change. But if that shame is just let to stand and you're like, well, I'll let go of the shame as soon as I fix this part of myself. That shame will grow and become toxic and it will take you out. You were never meant to be motivated and fueled by shame. Shame is hell's version of conviction.
Shame says, I suck unless I change. Conviction says, I'm incredible, so I'm gonna start living.
You see the difference?
So, behavior modification can only go so far and very often.
it eventually wears out.
So what's the answer? The answer is to have identity transformation. See, your self-improvement changes what you do and how you behave, but the Holy Spirit and the power of the gospel changes who you are. And I'm not just talking about dirty rotten sinner to now going to heaven when you die.
The gospel and the Holy Spirit, the two together can change you from a man who identifies as having no confidence. I'm not a very good husband. I'm not very capable of loving and leading my wife.
and it can change you into, I'm an incredible man. I'm very capable. I'm a great husband. I love and lead my wife well, expertly. And when I mess up, I fix it and I get back on the horse and I keep doing better next time. That's the type of identity transformation that you need if you are going to transform out of that man who has
who has seen that look in your wife's eye, like, ⁓ she just can hardly stand me, to the man who starts to see a new look, like, she can hardly keep her hands off.
You need that identity piece.
And speaking of identity, I want you to pick up a copy of my book, The DNA of a Man. In it, I talk about becoming a man of identity and we go deep on it and also a man of principle and a man on mission. But your identity is crucial. And so many men have never received this kind of teaching on
who what your identity actually is. We have everybody walking around in this false humility and woe is me and I'm horrible. I'm just this little scumbag. But what if it's not true? So this book has been read by 12, 13,000 people so far.
I want you to be one of them. go look it up on Amazon. I'll put a link in the show notes, but you look it up, you're going to find a bunch of reviews of guys saying, man, this book changed my life.
You buy it from me on the sales page. You'll see even more reviews. And by the way, I'll put a link as well. I just completed the companion tactical guide that goes along with the DNA of a man. know it's blurry. I apologize. And I'm still waiting on my proof copy of the workbook. Is that brand new? But man, I'm excited about that. This is going to take churches by storm.
Guys have been asking me for a long time. Matt, do you have group materials? Matt, do have group materials? Well, now I finally do the tactical guide. So go pick it up. Click the link.
So how does the Holy Spirit transform a man?
How does he do it? So we have first step conviction. This one, no, nothing big, no big deal. We know this. The Holy Spirit convicts us when I do something wrong, I feel like, I shouldn't have done that, whatever. But I want to present to you a different type of conviction. And I hinted at it before. Conviction, I said, says I'm awesome. And so I'm going to start living like it. We are familiar with the conviction about like,
I shouldn't have sinned. What about the conviction of my friend, my son?
You're believing wrong things about yourself. You were made for more. You are more than you thought you were.
What if the Holy Spirit convicts you with a hope?
rather than condemnation.
Okay, so he convicts you and then he empowers you. But it's like, Matt, I have never experienced the empowerment of the Holy Spirit. I always feel like I'm doing this on my own. And if he's helping me, I guess it's like some kind of some like, you know, anti virus software running in the background that I don't ever see. And for the most part, it doesn't affect my life at all until a virus comes in and then it all, you know, we detected something.
That seems to be how the Holy Spirit is for a lot of us. And that's never what God intended. He intended that the Holy Spirit be literal dynamite power. That's the Greek word. You probably know that. The dynamite power coming to take residence on the inside of you and burst out of you because he's not easy to miss.
and we've presented him like he is.
So he wants to come and empower you into a place of emotional self mastery, into a place of confidence and courage.
He wants to give you the ability to perform and to lead even when you feel incapable, when you're afraid, whatever. He wants to show up and make you healthy where you were sick.
to enable you to do literal miracles before when you realized you didn't think you could. He wants your life to be supernatural, not just a moral version of natural.
The question is, how do you tap into this empowerment? Well, I talked about it before when I was looking in the article.
You've got to shed all of the lies that you believe and you've got to start renewing your mind. Why? Because that is the prescription for transformation. The book of Romans literally says it. will get transformed when you renew your mind. Jesus said is you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.
not not sinning, not even somebody laying hands on you, knowing the truth. So if you are entertaining lies about yourself all day long.
then you're going to start living stuck in whatever the character flaw may be. We've been using confidence as the primary example here, but you fill in the blank. So your job to receive the empowerment of the Holy Spirit, because it is not automatic.
That is a common and very dangerous faulty belief about all things kingdom and God related that if God's going to do it, it will happen automatically. No, not even the parting of the Red Sea happened automatically. God commanded Moses to do it. You go and look it up.
So if you want to receive the empowerment of the Holy Spirit, have to do it His way.
and you've got to clean up how you think. And gentlemen, this is how people who don't even know Jesus transform. They change the way they think. Why does it work for them? They don't have Jesus because they're tapping into kingdom ways. The kingdom works whether you love Jesus or not. The kingdom principles will work. And so people have tapped into how those kingdom principles and they have seen benefit.
So if you want to see change, you change your identity. And that starts with how you think. And then from how you think, you begin to behave differently. And sometimes you need to step out and force yourself to do things that are not comfortable. But that forcing yourself to do doesn't last when there's no accompanying identity change.
And when you begin to allow yourself to receive what's true, even if it sounds too good to be true, then then your father can heal the wounds that you carry. But it's very difficult to heal when you're always embracing the knife. You're not letting it be pulled out. That's why you've got to let go of the lies. You've got to let go of them.
and gotta fight the battle for it. This is what I challenge men into. This is what I lead them into. I have a free training for you, by the way. It's called Frustrated to Desired, and it tells, it gives you the five kingdom keys for how to become an attractive husband.
a masculine Christian husband, not the kind that's always bowing to everything, not the kind that's just happy wife, happy life, but the kind that is actually attractive.
And if you want that free training, you'll click the link in the description in the show notes. Come join me. It's completely free. And it's going to, it's going to set you on a course to change your entire marriage and your life.
And once you do this, your living becomes different. You start making decisions proactively and assertively, not reactively. You'll stop overthinking and wondering, I doing it right or am I going to get in trouble? And you just become literally the confidence flows. This isn't this identity transformation is literally effortless change. You start to be like, my gosh, this is incredible.
rather than always forcing it. And why do I know that this is the route? Because Jesus promised that rivers of living water would flow from you. And if they're not, if you feel like you're having to push really hard to eke out a trickle, then you're not tapping into the life that Jesus intended for you.
You step into not just a better decision making, but emotional leadership. You can stay grounded even when your wife is in an emotional storm. Maybe she's upset with you. Maybe she's saying things that sting, whatever. You'll start to realize that you have this newfound easy strength that you're like calm. You're stable. You're present. You're not being shaken. You're not giving into your own fit. This was one of the biggest ways to increase your wife's attraction and trust.
Once you start living like this, you'll become safe and present.
rather than always distant and preoccupied.
You'll feel more joyful and you'll create joy in your home. You'll be a presence of joy, which is the second most important quality for a man. If he wants his wife to be attracted to him, confidence is the first.
which obviously leads us to attraction. If you go through this identity transformation.
Your wife will begin to feel that change, even on a subconscious level in her body's nervous system. A lot of times her not being attracted to you is not a conscious decision. It's a subconscious reality. And she recoils even though she doesn't consciously know exactly.
That attraction is a natural fruit of your masculine presence and identity and strength.
Finally, if you really feel like, I just want to go at this change as quick as I can with masses of acceleration, I want I want not only to take on a new identity, but I want to learn how to show up as an assertive and bold man who earns the respect of my wife back. I want to learn how to stop playing the wrong game in my marriage, where I'm always trying to
please my wife and do everything exactly as she said. And the goalpost keeps moving and I never succeed and she never gets more attracted to me. You want to learn how to stop playing that game and play a different one instead one where she starts running to you. You want to learn how to communicate your desires to her and start having sex more again and all that you want to learn how to walk in miracles. You want to learn how to hear the voice of God. I'm telling you you want all this stuff that I want to
to encourage you to click the that link and apply for a free phone call with me. I'll get on the phone with you personally and and and talk about one on one coaching. That's only for guys who are able and willing to put in a significant investment, though. I'm just to say that right here, I'm not going to bait you onto a phone call and then have you realize, this is expensive and I can't do it. Know that that working with me is only for those who have the financial means to afford it.
But if you don't, already given you the info about the book and the workbook and the free training and everything else like that. So there's something for you.
That's all we've got for today, gentlemen. Thank you for joining me. I love you. I bless you to experience the power and the transformation of the Holy Spirit. I bless you to experience a brand new marriage than what you've ever had.
Until next time, peace.