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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 Hallock (00:03)
Good morning and welcome to the next episode of the Man Warrior King podcast. I'm your host, Matt Hallock. And before we jump into the episode today, I just want to take a minute to invite you into some things going on here with Man Warrior King. So at the time that you'll hear this episode, we will have done two webinars in the last about month or so.
And we are beginning to create a bit of a cadence, a routine of holding one or two of these per month. And I'm really excited because for the first time in a really significant kind of official capacity, my wife, Corey and I are beginning to lead some of these and we even creating a new course. It's called Unleashed.
So if you were not able to make it to those, I want to encourage you to please keep your eyes on emails coming from me because we are more than likely we're going to do another round of Unleashed in the next month or so. So I want to just make sure that everybody's aware of that. We're going to keep building that thing. Unleashed is a course. It's really a movement on marriage the kingdom way.
And the whole purpose of it is that we are looking to help husbands and wives both become unleashed in their individual identities to be able to be free, to be fully alive as themselves. Still, obviously, in the kingdom, obviously loving Jesus, serving the Lord and everything like that. But
We want them to step into their full identity, to live from a place of fire and desire. And from that place then, our goal with this is that we would help marriages to become unleashed into also some fire, some passion, desire for one another, couples getting their fire back for life and learning to dream again and learning what God has put them here for beyond just survival. So,
It's really, really powerful and I wanna encourage anybody to jump in, keep your eyes out for webinar emails from me coming up in the near future. And by the way, if you haven't yet, make sure you grab the book, The DNA of a Man. That's really the thing that kicked off this whole movement. And I keep getting feedback from readers who tell me just how much has changed their lives. So I really encourage you to pick that up as well.
You can find links in the show notes. You can also find it on Amazon. And without further ado, we are going to now switch gears and introduce the guest for today. As you are familiar with now, this is our third episode. This is my brother in law, Chris Miser, and he is busy building some really exciting new projects in the kingdom. Speaking of unleashing and finding dreams and goals and passions and living from fire, he's living that out right now.
as we speak. we are today talking about actually a very, a very appropriate, relevant topic with everything that I just introduced to you guys. And we're talking about cutting the chains off of the status quo. So Chris, thanks for coming back. And also, why do we call it? Why are we calling it cutting the chains?
off of the status quo.
Christopher Miser (03:51)
Hmm, that's a great question.
Matt Hallock (03:56)
Thanks.
Christopher Miser (03:56)
So
bottom line is because if we don't, if we do not break out of the status quo, we're just holding ourselves back. We're just chained up. If we don't break out, if we do not, we're going to talk about it. But following God means we're going to have to break out from some of the chains in our society, in just culture, in the world, the chains of the world, the chains of that. We're going to have to break that out.
Matt Hallock (04:24)
Yeah.
Christopher Miser (04:25)
We're gonna have to be willing to boldly walk with God. it's gonna, like we're gonna talk about, it's gonna take some guts. And that doesn't come from a place, I'm not saying it's easy. Yeah.
Matt Hallock (04:32)
Yeah.
Mm. Mm-hmm.
So what's the what would you say are some of the like. You know the various status quos that. Need to be broken out of for your average Christian guy out there right now.
Christopher Miser (05:04)
Well, some of those status quotes are just...
Wow, I didn't know you were going to ask these hard questions. We should have prepared better. I should have prepared better. Well, mean, one is just the one place is the fear of being different or the fear of like there is a fear that I mean, I have faced the same fear of if I
Matt Hallock (05:21)
That's all right. Well.
Christopher Miser (05:43)
in walking with God and I'm boldly proclaiming that and I'm boldly choosing the way that God wants me to walk, I'm gonna look weird or they're gonna judge me or because of whatever. One of the things that you gotta break out from is the fear or guilt of something in your past. And that will stop you because you're like, well, how could I share that when I messed that up?
Matt Hallock (05:54)
Yeah. Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Christopher Miser (06:13)
And that
holds you back. that's part of that status quo. and just as you've talked about before, Matt, just being kind of like stuck in a quagmire, I feel like I have felt like that before where you're just like stuck in this in. In a fear that while I can't speak on that or I can't, but the but the thing is, is that God can. So forget what you think and forget, forget that and forget what you.
Matt Hallock (06:22)
Mm-hmm.
Alright.
Yeah.
Christopher Miser (06:43)
have done if you can, but I mean you're not gonna necessarily always forget that, but ask God to forgive you, repent, go to what he says to do, and then do that going forward and see what happens. Because that's when you break out. And that's when you break, and that's not just, that translates to breaking out in your workplace and in your family.
Matt Hallock (06:49)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Christopher Miser (07:13)
and in your church. And then, you know, a lot of times we think of status quo as those things that are like, the things we always have done them. We've always done them this way. You see that all the time in church. Churches become like, this is the way we do it. And then soon that becomes, well, that's the right way or that's the truth. And really, no, it's just the way that that church does it. What does God say? So sometimes,
Matt Hallock (07:28)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Christopher Miser (07:42)
We're talking about things like that and then sometimes we're talking about, you know, just how How we're stuck just in our own guilt So, I don't know
Matt Hallock (07:53)
Right, right. I think,
yeah, no, I think that's good. I think that guilt thing is really, like you said, it's kind of the core. Cause if you, if you start breaking out of that, then it starts to translate into your family, your workplace, your church and everything. But there is a status quo in normal Christian, I think just mentality right now. And it's not, it's not every
It's not every Christian by any means, and it's not every church by any means, but a large number of Christians in our, in our culture really do carry this continual, like disqualification feeling. And because I either messed up a long time ago or just yesterday, or because I, maybe it's not a specific sin, but because I just,
Christopher Miser (08:38)
Mmm.
Matt Hallock (08:51)
I've never done anything all that great and I don't know why God would want to use me. There's so much of that kind of thinking that gets fostered a lot in church culture by being told how we're such wretched sinners all the time when now we're not because of Jesus. And so we take on that identity of, of I suck.
And that becomes fairly normal. And I know like so, so much of the time conversations like with people at church and stuff are, are about struggling. I'm struggling with this thing right now and I'm struggling with that thing. And I don't, it's not often that there's conversations about where I'm winning. And I think a lot of it has to do with that, like view of themselves.
Christopher Miser (09:38)
Hmm.
Matt Hallock (09:50)
in my opinion.
Christopher Miser (09:52)
Yeah, that is a
really, really good point, Matt, because I have felt like that so many times. I feel like so often the message at church has been about struggling. A lot of the messages are about struggling. But when you break out of that, you break out of the struggle. OK, what does winning look like? What does that look like? What is winning with walking with God and winning?
Matt Hallock (10:06)
Yeah.
Christopher Miser (10:21)
What does that look like? And then what does it look like to store up treasures in heaven? What does that look like? Because that's the winning. So what does it look like to store up treasures? Because that's not in the future. That's now. That is now. You are storing up treasures now. Not something I fully understood a while back. So that's not like.
Matt Hallock (10:22)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Right. Right.
That's right.
Christopher Miser (10:51)
This is not something I've known for a long time or understood for a long time. But recently, that's something that God has shared with me and encouraged me in is you're storing those things up right now. When you lead your family the way I want you to lead them, when you do, that's storing up treasures. Or when you reach out to somebody, maybe in your church or in your community, and you reach out to them and you,
Matt Hallock (10:55)
Yeah.
Mmm.
Christopher Miser (11:20)
either share Jesus Christ with them or maybe they already know Jesus and you just encourage them in that. That's building them up as another believer and that's a treasure, that's a friendship now that you have that you're gonna have for eternity. You're storing that up. So if we can break out of this I'm worried about how people are gonna view me or how my statements are gonna be viewed, they're gonna think I'm crazy or whatever the case may be, once we break out of that.
Matt Hallock (11:26)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Christopher Miser (11:50)
And I'm not saying it's easy, because I'm stuck in it all the time. But if we can break out of that, the result of that, the treasures that start, and it starts to multiply. It's just like stuff goes viral, or you have lots of content, and then all of a sudden it just builds on each other, builds on each other. It's the same kind of thing. If we go out, if we're going out and we're reaching out to people, and then they're reaching out to people, and they're encouraging, and then in our church, we're building each other up, and then they're building more people up, and then they're.
Matt Hallock (11:53)
Yeah.
Christopher Miser (12:18)
leading better in their households and in their marriages and everything. And it just explodes. And that's the awakening, that's the revival that takes place in the life of every believer across the world. But we gotta break out. We gotta be willing to break out. We gotta be willing to break chains, the things that hold us back, that chain us down, that lock us up. We gotta be willing to break those. And we can only do that walking with God and following his truth, what he says.
Matt Hallock (12:22)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah. Yeah.
Right.
that, that, that, like you described it, like the growing momentum, kind of that exponential compounding is really powerful. And I think that
Christopher Miser (12:48)
in
Matt Hallock (13:04)
I do, think that when we stay focused so much on sin and we read the Bible through so much of a lens of do the right moral thing, don't do the wrong moral thing, and we interpret promises of God, we interpret even commands of God.
so much strictly through a moral lens. And I'm not saying that we should sin at all, but I think we stay so limited on this one little tiny like plot of land in an entire kingdom that's been made available to us when we stay so focused on am I sinning or am I not? And if people can break free from that, understand, yeah, it's okay, I'm not gonna go out and.
Christopher Miser (13:46)
Yeah.
Matt Hallock (13:57)
try to center anything, but I don't need to be so obsessed over sin. Now I want to be obsessed with taking ground. want to be obsessed with advancing the kingdom and pushing darkness out everywhere. I see it. That's when we can start to have that forward momentum and that, that compounding effect that you're talking about. And I think, I think also another, like a similar thing that, that gets people
bogged down in status quo. Maybe, okay, maybe so there's the guilt and the disqualification on the one hand, but then there's also just the crap that I've gone through in my life. And I learned to accept that crappy stuff as just the way that my life is. And in my opinion, when I studied Deuteronomy 28,
few months ago in depth. Deuteronomy 28 talks about the first portion of it is the blessings of obedience. And the second portion is the curses for disobedience. If you really look into that chapter, so many of us have normalized a life that looks like the curses. The curses talk about disease of all kinds. They talk about
confusion. They talk about working hard, but hardly getting anything out of the land. They talk about so much that many Christians are like, it's a fallen world. It's a tough life. You look at the blessings and God talks about, want you to only ever increase and not decrease. I want you to be the head and not the tail. I want to prosper you when you go in and when you go out. I want your
your barns to overflow, your bread bowls to overflow. I won't put any of the diseases on you that I did on the Egyptians. You look at these blessings and I think too many of us have adopted a mindset that says those blessings are not for me anymore, or they're not for me yet. They'll be for me when I get to heaven. And we learn, we learn to just get bogged down by all of these things that look like the curse.
instead of clinging to faith for God's promises and actually breaking out of those things as well. So we can run full steam ahead and not bogged down by all of the attacks of Satan. That's something that I've had to deal with a lot with my own health battles and stuff like that.
Christopher Miser (16:46)
Yeah, dude, that's awesome. Yeah, that's it. I need to go read through that a little bit more. Now that you mention that, I'm going to go back and read that. That's cool.
Matt Hallock (16:48)
Okay.
yeah.
It's so man, that chapter is one of my favorite chapters. It's like. Because because I also read it through the lens of weight, God says, like, if you're careful to obey everything I tell you, you'll get these blessings. But now when we have the New Testament and the New Covenant, Jesus said, I didn't come to do away with all that stuff from the Old Testament, but I came to fulfill it. So like.
Christopher Miser (17:01)
Hmm.
Matt Hallock (17:25)
He fulfilled my end of the covenant that I couldn't fulfill through my own effort. And so now I get those blessings and those promises without having to earn them. Now my job is to believe is to have the faith for them. Right now. I just love it because it, I feel like that chapter just, it paints a picture of like, I'm not, I'm not going to settle until my life looks like this. And
I don't know how long it'll take to get all the way there, but I'm going to go for it.
Christopher Miser (17:58)
Well, that's awesome. And when we're talking about God's promises, or in we're talking...
The next few years, it's, you know, I'm, let's say I live to be, let's just for easy math, I'm live to be 100, which would be incredible, right? But that's a like nothing, that's nothing. That's 55 years from now, which is literally nothing. So we have very, very limited time and God wants to bless us now. We're not gonna get out of the hardships. We're not gonna get out of the adversity.
Matt Hallock (18:20)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Christopher Miser (18:40)
There's going to be all kinds of things in this fallen world that we're going to have to deal with, whether it's the disease, whether it's what we got sin we got to deal with. all that stuff. But he is preparing us right now, literally, for eternity. So this little blip, we got to jump on board and be all in right now. And break out and just start going full speed, walking with him.
Matt Hallock (19:01)
Yeah, yeah.
Christopher Miser (19:09)
at this point running with him because we don't have much time before eternity and he really has a lot for us. I've kind of feeling overwhelmed lately in a different way, not really feeling overwhelmed about all the guilt or anything. I'm feeling overwhelmed about, he might have too much for me. I don't know if I can keep up.
Matt Hallock (19:14)
Yeah.
Right.
You
Christopher Miser (19:34)
What are we going to do? I think we're going to have a lot to do. think there's going to be leadership opportunities and it's going to be busy in a really, really good way. I mean, it's going to be so awesome. think it's going to be incredible, it might be a little overwhelming. I don't know.
Matt Hallock (19:42)
Yeah.
I agree. agree. I don't think it's gonna be. I've always liked when I was a kid, I was like,
when I was a kid, I was always like, what is heaven? Are we really just gonna stay like, worship forever? Like sing songs like the whole the whole time from now until never ending. I was always a little bit disappointed by that prospect.
Christopher Miser (20:14)
Right.
Right.
Matt Hallock (20:16)
And as an adult, I still am because
I think you're right. I think it's going to be way, way more multifaceted than that. 100 percent.
Christopher Miser (20:21)
Now, yeah.
Well, and I don't know, I mean, we're talking about, we're talking not just about eternal life, we're talking about an eternal universe. We're talking about eternity both out and in. And so the...
Matt Hallock (20:34)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Christopher Miser (20:44)
The result of that is something we can't, we can't understand that, not result, but the, we can't understand that. So, right. So anyways.
Matt Hallock (20:48)
Right.
I think it's
going to involve something like the original mandate in Genesis where, where God said, go and take dominion, subdue this place and, and rule it in my, in, in, as an ambassador for me, I really feel like that's that that's what he baked into how we operate, what we are wired for. And so I just have a hard time thinking that he would be like, okay, that part's over. You know, I think that he loves that.
Christopher Miser (21:09)
Hmm.
Matt Hallock (21:24)
prospect of expansion and, and reigning and wanting us to learn to be like our dad, like him in that sense. Yeah, right. There you go. Right. So
Christopher Miser (21:24)
Hmm.
Well, it's in our DNA.
Literally
built in. You know, we haven't even talked about anything I wrote down, man.
Matt Hallock (21:45)
That's I was going to get back into. I was going be, hey, let's get back on track here. So I know you have it is good. It is good. I know you have some some like stories, examples of that I think are really, really powerful of this breaking out of the status quo thing. I wanted to get into some of those guys.
Christopher Miser (21:51)
man, this is good though.
Well, couple of the things I thought of were just like the extreme cases where we can't break out, like extreme examples of not being able to break out or of going along with what we are told or forced to do even when it's wrong or even when we just... And one of the examples, in fact, it was just, I think maybe, I don't know why I saw it. Just a couple of days ago, I saw a hat on an article that said one in 25 on the hat.
And I was like, what's the one in 25? know, there's all kinds of all kinds of hats these days and all kinds of stuff. But the one in 25 caught my eye. Anyways, it's talking about it's the the story of August Landmesser. He was a German that lived in Hamburg, Germany, in 1936. And when the Nazis came through and they forced a bunch of people to
give the Nazi salute. This gentleman, August, was unwilling to do so. He was married to a Jewish woman, I believe. He felt he was against what the Nazis were doing, which was exterminating Jews. So on an extreme example, he was against something that we are all right now very staunchly against, So that's an extreme example. But people were going along with it. Even those who didn't necessarily
Matt Hallock (23:29)
Yeah.
Christopher Miser (23:38)
agree even which is crazy that anybody would Be on the fence about that but they looked the other way a lot of people looked the other way Well, the one in 25 is august was the only one he was the one of 25 That would not raise his arm in a nazi salute And he paid for his life. I mean he paid with his life rather so he was killed for that one in 25
Matt Hallock (23:39)
Mm-hmm.
Totally.
Wow. Yeah.
Christopher Miser (24:07)
And that's what that represents. Then you have, we were talking earlier, Matt, about the Milgram experiment, which is where an individual thought that in the other room there was someone that was going to be shocked when they pushed the button. And they would start at small doses of, or small charges, small electric charges, then they ramped it up. And they could hear the person screaming in the other room. But they were being told by their handler, hey.
Keep shocking them, keep shocking them. And 65 % of the people in that experiment took the shock all the way to 450 volts, which kills them. So unknown to them, they don't realize that in the other room the person is just acting. They think they're really actually shocking them. And so we need people who are willing to
Matt Hallock (24:47)
golly, it's so scary.
Yeah.
Christopher Miser (25:04)
to stand up for what's right.
no matter the cost. And so we must be the one. We must be the one in 25 or whatever the statistic is. God has called us to be that. God has called us to stand up for those who are being oppressed, mistreated. That's what we're supposed to stand up for. And we're standing up for it because that was the example that Christ gave. Christ stood up ultimately for
Matt Hallock (25:10)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Christopher Miser (25:38)
everybody by dying on the cross, which is a horrible way to die. And so he raised his hand and and and died on the cross for every one of us, even for those who are like, now. Or even for those who are like, I hate you. He still died for them. Which is just, you know, crazy. It's it's it's wild, but.
Matt Hallock (25:51)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I know.
Christopher Miser (26:05)
We must, you know, I wrote down, let's see here, I wrote down, you know, so those are extreme examples, but on a much more benign level, let's go all the way down to like little stuff, like, someone's gonna say, you know, put a comment on Facebook that it's gonna make fun of me, or someone's gonna roll their eyes at me when I say what, at a benign level, we're afraid and we're fearful of that. And so it holds us back.
Matt Hallock (26:27)
Mm-hmm. Yep.
Christopher Miser (26:31)
Even those little things hold us back from being one of the 25 because and which is crazy because we're not talking about death. We're not talking about that at all. We're not talking about a situation where we're lined up in the town square and we're being told that we're going to do that, you know, perform the Nazi salute or look the other way as the as the trucks go by full of of people that we're going to go exterminate. We're not talking about that. And we're still afraid to stand up.
Matt Hallock (26:40)
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah,
yeah.
Christopher Miser (27:00)
And so we need to understand what we should actually fear. And so breaking out of the status quo, we need to understand who we fear. And I get caught up all the time in it. I fear all these other things when it's very clear from God. Fear me. Not because he's, know, he loves me. He wants the
Matt Hallock (27:05)
Yeah, that's really true.
Mm-hmm.
Hmm.
Christopher Miser (27:29)
He wants everything for me. He wants to give me everything. you fear a God who is the I Am. That's the only way you can go. There is no other way. You are going against creation. You are going against the entire universe. You're going against eternity, which is not something you can go against. So you have to walk with God. You just have to turn. One of the verses I wrote down, Matt,
Matt Hallock (27:37)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Christopher Miser (27:59)
is Proverbs 25 to which is it is the glory of God to conceal a matter but the glory of kings to seek out a matter and that is because It's it's not it's it's not a real common verse when talking about the fear of God. There's a lot of other ones, but I I like that one because We should be we should fear a god who does not need any input He does not need input from anywhere we do
Matt Hallock (28:23)
Mm-hmm.
Christopher Miser (28:28)
Whether we're in leadership positions or not, we all need input not only from God. So we should get our input number one from God, but we also need input from fellow believers who are also walking with God so we can encourage each other. We need input because we are sinful and because we are flawed. God does not. And so you have to fear. You fear a God who does not need any input. That is perfection. And so that's
Matt Hallock (28:53)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Christopher Miser (28:57)
probably the first thing to breaking the status quo.
Matt Hallock (29:01)
Yeah.
Christopher Miser (29:02)
Because going along
with some things is great. I going along with what God says is great. That's not something we gotta break out from. We gotta break out from the things that are holding us back from following God. In our families, at work, all those things.
Matt Hallock (29:11)
Yep. Yep.
Right. And, and yeah, you said like, we don't have it in our, in our country, least anywhere near as bad as, know, the Nazi Germany and stuff like that. But we've been, we've been really like taught that as a Christian, it's best if we don't openly like, you know,
conflict with some of the other prevailing mentalities of the day. We wanna stay quiet and let our example do the preaching. That's been a big thing, like a big mindset that's out there in the church. I don't know if it's still that way. know it was, I remember.
that being a very prevailing thing, like as a kid, like hearing people talking like that and preaching like that, like Christians want to make sure that we don't offend people. And so we've got to, we've got to keep it pretty chill, keep it pretty quiet. And we're going to let God do the work of bringing people in. And that's just really like, it's really, it's really just fear-based and it's really passive. And,
It it's definitely it's definitely the kind of thing that would have been happening in Nazi Germany, in my opinion. So, yeah.
Christopher Miser (30:48)
Absolutely, and it did.
there, my goodness, should have, my mind's going blank, but there was a very famous pastor in Germany at that time. maybe it'll come to me what his name was. Yes, yes. And he stood up.
Matt Hallock (31:04)
Would it have been like Dietrich Bonhoeffer or something like that? Was it him? Yeah. Okay.
Christopher Miser (31:14)
You know, yeah, no, that's great, Matt. Those are the.
Matt Hallock (31:22)
Yeah. Well, you, you mentioned family as well. You mentioned, um, I know before we started recording, we were going to go there and you just mentioned, you know, just a second ago, but how does this, how does this translate as a husband with my wife, the two of us together? What are your thoughts on that?
Christopher Miser (31:49)
Yeah, so I wrote down, okay, so.
I'll come back to that because I wanted to talk about the Air Force too, something about the Air Force. when we're talking about in families, men breaking out and dismantling the status quo, becoming Christ's following warrior husbands, right? When we're talking about that, I think we already discussed and not really, it's not something I think, it's what God says. Fear God, that's probably one. And obedience to God.
Matt Hallock (32:03)
Mmm.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Christopher Miser (32:29)
If you fear God, you're going to obey him. So those two things must take place. And then the understanding, at least I think something that's helped me, this has helped me, is when we're talking about plans and assignments that God has for us, when we're talking about, all these great plans, these big plans that God has for us, Peter in the Bible talks about your wife as an heir with you, okay? And so I don't know this and I
Matt Hallock (32:31)
Yeah.
Mm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Christopher Miser (32:59)
And you may know, maybe the Bible says something about this and I just don't know where it is, but I don't know of a place where it says, hey, you know, when we die, we're going to be together in heaven with our spouse. I don't know. I don't know of a verse that says one way the other on that. But we do become one flesh, right? So we have an assignment right now. As husband and wife, so.
Matt Hallock (33:15)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Christopher Miser (33:28)
Whether we're gonna be husband wife through eternity. I don't know but right now we have an assignment that is to raise godly children to love each other to To to be a team to be one flesh and We break the chains of status quo when we when we leave at cleave, right? So we are
When we leave the things that are getting in the way and we are committed and we love our spouse and we're together, we're now walking, we're on a really cool adventure together. And one of the things that when we're doing that together, so if we're walking with God together and we have this assignment to walk with God and raise godly children,
Matt Hallock (34:12)
Hmm.
Christopher Miser (34:23)
and to be involved in the church and in the community and be and also like giving money or time and we're doing that together when we're doing that together and we're standing up for what's right. We are together one in twenty five. We're that couple. The world talks about power couples like those power couples that have like, he has a fatty job and she's got a fatty job. They're a total power couple.
Matt Hallock (34:42)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Christopher Miser (34:53)
That's
not what we're talking about. God's like, I don't know who cares about that stuff. The power couple God is looking for is that one couple in 25 who has broken out together. They're on an adventure together and they're doing cool stuff together. And because in a church there is opportunities for a man to lead other men and there's opportunities for women to lead other women. Then there's opportunities for them, just like you and Corey.
Matt Hallock (34:57)
You
Yeah.
Christopher Miser (35:24)
Online and through your webinars and all that you're leading other couples That's our couple and that is a power couple for god That's god's couple. He puts you guys together and then he's like, hey, I got an adventure for you It's it's I think it's cool. It's super cool And it's just that is something that god has been sharing those things with me and it's radically changing the way I view stuff Because I didn't view it that way
Matt Hallock (35:29)
Yeah.
Wow. Wow.
Right. How would you say you did view it previously?
Christopher Miser (35:59)
That's a really good question. viewed it, well, a lot more pride. mean, a lot more like, this is what I do. This is what I got to do. But at the same time, I'm not doing it. So I know what I should be doing. And it's all on me. But I'm not doing it. So you're just like, again, we're stuck in this quagmire.
Matt Hallock (36:14)
Hmm.
Yeah.
Christopher Miser (36:26)
But
really God is like, no, I got all kinds of cool stuff for you to do. I want you to walk with me and you're going to do. And then I've got people you're going to talk to and you're going to reach out to this guy and you're going to help this guy and you're going to talk and then you're going to help this couple and you're going to just be friends with this couple over here. And then, hey, I've got something that I want you to be involved in with your donations. Like, and so something comes up, it's like we should really try to give as much as we can to that, those kinds of things. And then God's like, and now
Matt Hallock (36:48)
Mm-hmm.
Christopher Miser (36:56)
You're while you're you're walking with me and then I want you to lead in your family I want your wife to walk with me So now you and your wife are walking together with God and God's like I got assignments for both of you I got stuff you're both gonna do and and soon That was the whole design is that you Got married and you were doing those things together
Matt Hallock (37:07)
Yeah. Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Christopher Miser (37:23)
I don't know. But I wasn't, I was thinking about it very individually.
Matt Hallock (37:24)
That's
Yeah. Yeah. Which a lot of people do. They don't really, they don't really know any better. Or sometimes people end up thinking about it individually because their marriage has been in such a challenging place. And so it's like, well, we can't even, how can we think about our assignment or our purpose when we can't even like get along, you know, or when the fire's fading or whatever, you know, so there's a lot.
Christopher Miser (37:33)
Yeah.
Yes.
Matt Hallock (37:57)
There's a lot that would keep people from thinking like that.
in this unleashed webinar that we're doing, that's actually one of the five pillars that we're teaching in the course is purpose. And as a couple stepping into your purpose and talking about your purpose is to reign in life with Jesus through him. And it's so much more than just the logistics of the day and, okay, we got to get the bills paid and get the kids here and there. It's like,
Christopher Miser (38:11)
and
Matt Hallock (38:30)
What you describing God's I've got this for you to do. I've got more than just what the urgent things like that. The tyranny of the urgent. I've got more than just that for you and.
Gosh, you were talking about God, you know, setting you up with all these different things. I just think about the Holy Spirit throughout scripture. He's always every like you have to learn how to hear his voice because he's always pulling people out of the status quo every every time. Abraham, leave the place where your dad is and go to a place. not even going to show it to you. Just go, Moses, get out of the wilderness. You I've made you for more than this. Right. Go back to Egypt. David, hey.
Christopher Miser (39:09)
Yes.
Matt Hallock (39:15)
Your time is here. You're not going to be a shepherd anymore. I need you to go kill a giant. like it's just always breaking out of status quo. Jesus, right? Like, Hey, Peter, okay. You're a Fisher. Now I'm going to make you a Fisher of men. Matthew, your tax collector. You're going to be done with that. It just, that's just the way God rolls. He's, he's always doing it.
Christopher Miser (39:32)
you
Yeah, that is,
that's a really, really good point. mean, and parables too. The parables were always, he spoke parables that broke people out of the way that they had been thinking for so long and even teaching for so long. They had been teaching and thinking completely false. The Good Samaritan is a great example, which we talked about last time, just in their own,
Matt Hallock (39:50)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Christopher Miser (40:05)
Quote, you know their own thinking they think they're really smart and God's like nah, you're not getting it This is the truth and then he eminent he lays it out and he breaks He breaks the chains of that status quo thinking you brought up tyranny of the urgent. Yeah, I was I recently read that small little book for those, you know for those Listening you can get a little book. It's like five bucks on Amazon it's called tyranny of the urgent and in that that book does really
Matt Hallock (40:11)
Yeah.
Christopher Miser (40:35)
It highlights how all these things, these urgent things get in the way of the important things. And so in our lives, what's important and how important is spirituality in our lives? One of the things that came up, you know, one of the things that I was reading the other day, you brought it up that just now that Jesus Christ, Jesus was breaking the status quo. Well, if you look at all the harmony of the gospels and all the things
that so all the accounts of what Jesus did throughout the gospels, you'll find that he was extremely efficient. He did a lot of stuff in a very short amount of time. You look at what Jesus did like it's amazing. So he was he knew what was important and was not getting bogged down in a bunch of urgent stuff.
Matt Hallock (41:16)
Hmm.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Right, right. And John even said, sorry.
Christopher Miser (41:36)
And there is a he was
very he was very efficient. Sorry
Matt Hallock (41:41)
I was just
saying, and John even says that we've only written down a fraction of the stuff that he did. Like if I wrote everything, not even I don't remember what he says, something like I suppose not even all the books in the world could hold it or whatever. if if that's if it's that amazing just with what's written, I mean, what are all the other things that it's been incredible to think about? And it's really interesting.
Christopher Miser (41:49)
Right.
Matt Hallock (42:10)
Excuse me. So we are, we are coming to the, the duration of our time here for right now. Are there any last though points, thoughts, punches you need to throw before?
Christopher Miser (42:30)
Well, I wanted to bring up the Air Force just real quick. One of the things that, just to kind of, because what we're talking about, breaking the status quo is not just in our families, but also at work. We talk about all the time in the Air Force. We talk about change and being okay with change. And we would have these meetings about change and how we're going to do this or that. And sometimes it was really good. But sometimes we, like, I remember this one meeting where we brought up
Matt Hallock (42:35)
Yeah.
Christopher Miser (43:00)
Simon Sinek you've probably I know you've heard of him Okay, and one of the things he talks about is he believes that courage is a key trait of a great leader and that leaders must have courage to speak truth to power and so being able to speak truth and say that's a bad idea or that's a good idea or Hey boss This is what we should do and this would be more efficient
Matt Hallock (43:03)
Yeah, yeah.
Christopher Miser (43:29)
And let's break out of the way we've always done it because this is a better way. And we have to have that boldness to do that. And we would talk about it. It sounds great until nobody does it. So we, we would sit in this meeting, talk about what Simon wrote. And then we would leave that meeting and nothing would change because at the end of the day, people didn't have the boldness to break out of how we just had always done things. And.
When I was in leadership positions, I always loved having that person that one in 25, right? Who was willing to walk into the office and go, sir, this is a bad idea. Or because sometimes in a vacuum where we, just make these decisions in the workplace because we're the boss or whatever. We just, got to, we got to make decisions. That's great. Except for the fact that we don't always make the best decisions. So.
Matt Hallock (44:11)
Yeah, yeah.
Christopher Miser (44:27)
And there are people that have a better way. Now, we know who has the best way, that's God. So we go to him first, but we can also encourage each other and stand up and say, hey, here's a way, here's what I learned, and here's a way, but we gotta be bold to do it. That was one of the things that frustrated me sometimes is there was just this, there was a lack of people that were willing to come and tell the boss.
And when I was the boss, they weren't willing to come in and tell me that. But I loved it when they did, because it was so helpful. They had way better ideas than me.
Matt Hallock (45:00)
Hmm.
Wow.
Christopher Miser (45:09)
Just think about it from as Christians, if we go to who has the best ideas and we are on fire for sharing the best ideas, how powerful that is, because the best ideas are from Jesus Christ. And so if we are bold to speak those, that's ultimate power and it's not from us.
Matt Hallock (45:19)
Yeah.
Yeah. And
what you're talking about kind of conveys this idea that like the fear that we might have of speaking up is kind of a smoke screen sometimes. Obviously there are examples of people who stood up and yes, they paid for it as you've already said, but many times we're afraid of standing up when we have no idea that the end result of us doing so
will actually be good and like we'll have a net gain from it. Right. Like you're talking about, like, I'm afraid to talk to the boss, but come to find out, no, that like you're going to, you're going to actually receive more honor, probably more promotion if you do that kind of a thing. And.
Christopher Miser (46:20)
Yes, and it's okay to talk to
you should talk to God about what you don't understand there I I did that I went to God as we talked about I went to God on the trail and I said I'm not happy with this and I argued with him the thing is is you're arguing with someone who is perfect so he's gonna his response is Perfect. That's which is actually kind of frustrating right because you're like
Matt Hallock (46:26)
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Christopher Miser (46:47)
You keep saying, what about this? What about that? And then the response is perfect. And you're like, OK, shoot, I'm pretty dumb. that's OK, though. It's OK to go to God and say, God, don't get it. I don't get this. Help me. Help me get this. Or help me be this. Or even to say, I don't even agree with this.
Matt Hallock (46:59)
All right, like Job, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Christopher Miser (47:15)
And God's going to show you that why you should agree with him.
Matt Hallock (47:17)
Yeah.
That reminds
me. sorry. Were you? thought. Sorry, I don't want to cut you off.
Christopher Miser (47:26)
No, no, no, no.
Well, you were saying how we... No, I don't know. I was gonna read Ephesians 6-12 just because it's one of the verses that's so common and yet I think as Christians sometimes kind of holds us back because while it's a great verse, for we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. And that's very true.
Matt Hallock (47:37)
Hmm.
Christopher Miser (47:56)
But we say this sometimes as that quick response to help assuage our fears of real violence, of what is real. And here's the thing, here's what's real, is the real violence, the real wickedness is actually very physical. Look at school shootings, look at terrorism, look at human trafficking, look at sex slavery and all that stuff is real, it's physical, and it's
Matt Hallock (48:15)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Christopher Miser (48:26)
destroying people.
Matt Hallock (48:28)
Yeah. Yeah.
Christopher Miser (48:30)
And
so we wrestle, we wrestle against real violence. And so if we are willing to be bold and fight. And we, and I'm not necessarily, I'm not talking about, I'm not talking about physical violence. I'm not saying that this verse is telling us to be physically violent. It's telling us to walk with God and in
Matt Hallock (48:38)
Yeah.
Christopher Miser (48:59)
walk in his power because we've got to change some things so we can fix our culture, so we can fix our society. Only through God can we do that. So I think sometimes we read that verse as a little bit of a cop-out.
Matt Hallock (49:07)
Yeah.
Yeah, I think it's definitely see that. Yeah.
Christopher Miser (49:18)
But it's real, it's real and
you gotta be ready to stand up and it might cost you.
Matt Hallock (49:26)
right. So it's not saying, Hey, all this stuff that you're seeing, it's not that big of a deal. The bigger deal is all the unseen stuff. It's saying that evil that you see, has its roots in the unseen spiritual realm. So you have an additional layer of the fight.
Christopher Miser (49:33)
Right.
Yes.
Yes. So we got to break out of just, well, that's not ours. That's, that's no, God called us.
to fight back, to say no, that's not right, that is not following God. What happens after a school shooting? Everybody prays. The whole school gets together on the lawn of the school. They have a candlelight vigil and they pray. But before that ever happened, there was no prayer allowed in school, there were no small groups allowed in school. And then after the school shooting, everybody goes, we gotta, no.
Matt Hallock (49:57)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Christopher Miser (50:23)
We separated God a long time from all this stuff, and now we're wondering why this happens?
Matt Hallock (50:27)
you
Right. Right. Right. It's because we it's because we withdrew from the fight however long ago.
Christopher Miser (50:36)
Yes, and that's a
piece of the status quo we gotta break. We gotta break it.
Matt Hallock (50:40)
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah. Yeah. And none of this like, well, the world is, it doesn't matter anyway, because it's all, you know, the end is going to come and the rapture and all. No, this will absolutely matters.
Christopher Miser (50:55)
Right, or we
can't teach creationism because it just doesn't match with science. And science says, you got to look at the statistics. The statistics of evolution are absolutely unfathomable. It's statistically impossible. But we removed it. We said, at school we talk about evolution.
Matt Hallock (51:07)
Hmm.
Right.
Right, right.
Christopher Miser (51:23)
You can talk about Christianity, you can talk about creation at church, you can talk about it in your homes, but you cannot bring that into the school. Well, guess what? Now there is zero hope in that school, and now they have completely shut their doors to the truth.
Matt Hallock (51:30)
Yeah.
Yeah. And, we bought this lie like, well, we got to be loving and we got to make room for everybody. You can be loving while standing for the truth. Yeah, you're right. You're right. It's a, I had this side note the other day I was doing an experiment and I, I asked chat GPT, Hey, so here's my viewpoint on the world. You know, the, the biblical worldview, supernatural.
Christopher Miser (51:40)
And so we got to break out of that.
That's right.
Matt Hallock (52:07)
angels and demons and creation and stuff evaluate that worldview up against evolutionary worldview. And its response was like the evolutionary worldview has so many holes. The evidence is so spotty. and it's full of a bunch of circular reasoning. was like, I didn't know this would come out of chat. GPT that's interesting.
Christopher Miser (52:21)
Yeah.
Well, you know, it
talks about in revelation, it's in revelation, right? Where it talks about as in the the end times, the truth will be very clear, like you will see the truth and yet people will not believe. I think that AI might actually, AI may come and say, improve the existence of a creator and still the people will say, no, I don't want that. And what I'm, what I.
Matt Hallock (52:41)
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Yeah.
Christopher Miser (52:59)
One of the things god has really been encouraged me to do is to Is to just say Why why are we not following god like to talk to people about that like? What if we got nothing to lose god says follow me and he's the creator of all this and we want us and we say no No, don't say no anymore. Say yes follow god. Let's go And and and see See how he blesses our lives. See what he what he
Matt Hallock (53:18)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Christopher Miser (53:29)
does and how he builds us and and how he prepares us for what's next.
Matt Hallock (53:34)
Absolutely. Man,
absolutely. It's really good.
Christopher Miser (53:38)
because
the evil is physical. that's, let's see, I wrote down here, breaking out of the prison of status quo, helmet of salvation, sword of spirit, shield of faith, which is the word of God. So walking in the word of God, obedience, being obedient to what God says, and we will break out.
Matt Hallock (54:02)
Mm-hmm.
love it.
It's powerful. It's really powerful.
Christopher Miser (54:11)
So.
Matt Hallock (54:17)
So everybody out there listening.
If you have, if you feel like, in my life, I don't, I haven't been very good at this or, or whatever, any of the other thoughts of, of, you know, I'm not a power Christian like somebody else's or whatever. I want to encourage you that, that it's never too late to start making new choices, new habits.
to start breaking out. It's never too late. It's a lie of hell that says, yeah, your time has passed already. So I wanna encourage you to tap into that time with God, listen to his voice, listen to him talking to you, because he's gonna encourage you, he's gonna give you some things. Hey, it's time to break out of this. Hey, I wanna take you over here.
Christopher Miser (54:59)
Hmm.
Matt Hallock (55:20)
He's not going to shame you because you haven't yet. So a lot of times people are afraid to go and be in his presence because of all of that. No, he's a, he's a merciful and gracious father who's always pushing us higher. And so I just encourage you to, to go seek him. Like Chris is saying, see what he's having to tell you, obey him and break out. And until next time, thanks for listening.
Bless you. We'll talk to you soon.