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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.
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Jesus wasn't nice, he was dangerous. But your marriage might be floundering, might be in a place of a ton of pain and strife and disconnect because you're trying to be nice, you're playing it safe. You're living small, trying to be polite and not rock the boat. You might need to change your approach.
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Good afternoon and welcome to another episode of the Man Warrior King podcast. Matt Halleck here. I'm the author of The DNA of a Man and I'm the founder of the Man Warrior King movement. I'm the creator of the Masculine Husband Training Program for Christian husbands who are looking to reignite the desire and the fire in their marriages. Today I want to talk to you about this idea of niceness. See,
I grew up.
thinking that niceness was the peak virtue that I could attain as a Christian man. I grew up with this idea that always being extremely obliging, never having my own opinion necessarily, always honoring what everybody else says and doing it.
not ever having my own thoughts, not ever pushing back. I thought that that was what a Christian man was supposed to be, right? Because we hear, die to yourself, prefer others above you. And it can lead us to think that way.
You have a large portion of church culture today that's preaching to us all these things. And we get told that if we if we focus on ourselves, sometimes even just a little tiny bit. Then we're overstepping, we're venturing into sinful territory, and we need to quickly backtrack and go back into only ever.
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just thinking about Jesus and other people. And I'd like to present to you the idea that that is actually very dangerous, very unhealthy. It's not biblical and it leads to men who actually are poor husbands and not even good at being Christian men.
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So.
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Let's just analyze for a moment this idea of niceness versus kingdom masculinity. So a nice man, first of all, is different than a kind man. All right, let's be clear on that. Kindness is a quality of virtue that we should attain to. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness.
goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Kindness is in the fruit of the Spirit, but niceness is not.
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So kindness is treating others with honor. It is serving them. It's sacrificing something that you may want in the moment in order to better someone else's life. It's doing things for someone.
Niceness is deceiving because it can look like that. It can feel like that to the man who is being nice.
Of course I am putting someone else before me. I am sacrificing for their good. I am serving them.
So the difference between kindness and niceness is not necessarily in the behaviors. It's in the inner state that the man is in. The difference is in your motivation for those behaviors.
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I'd like to argue that kindness comes from a man who is strong on the inside and niceness comes from a man who is weak on the inside.
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Kindness is done purely for the good of the other. Niceness, I'm engaging in those same behaviors, but I often am doing it for ulterior personal motives. And they may not even be horrible.
but they're still selfish. So if I'm being nice, I am always going along with what other people want. Why? Because I want their life to be good? No, because I have a hard time with confrontation and making people uncomfortable. I'm afraid to cause discomfort. I'm afraid to rock the boat. I'm actually fearful of the people around me. So I just go along with what they want.
so that I don't have to be at odds with anybody.
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Kindness.
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drops what you have to do on a certain day to go help another person over there. Niceness goes and helps another person.
so that I can get the praise and the affirmation from somebody that says, wow, you're so incredible. You're such a good friend. Because I'm needing that in order to be okay.
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Kindness to my wife may buy her flowers.
or leave her a quick little note of some kind just because I want her to know that she matters to me and I was thinking about her. Niceness is buying the flowers leaving a note hoping that it will get a romantic response from her and create a spark.
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Kindness comes home from work, plays with the kids because they just are awesome and they deserve their dad to play with them. Niceness does that because I'm trying to get my wife to notice and maybe get sex from her later then.
You understand?
Part of the confusion we have to clear up is that kindness and niceness are not the same thing.
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So.
Niceness is essentially a man who is living in co-dependence, who needs affirmation and validation from other people. for our purposes, we're going to talk about this in marriage terms. So a man is living in co-dependence with his wife. He's needing validation and affirmation from his wife in order to feel okay about himself.
So he lays down his own opinions, he lays down his own desires, he does not speak when he thinks that he should, and he goes along with whatever it is that she wants.
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That is niceness. Niceness is not bold or courageous and does not stand up for what one believes in.
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It wants to make everybody else's feelings okay, even if the situation calls for little bit of discomfort.
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So most Christian marriage advice would fall into the category of niceness. For example,
I've worked with various men on their marriages over the years, and I'm not going to refer to any specific names or anything like that, but this what the examples I'm going to use are real examples. So if a man is living in a in a marriage situation that is full of unhealth and toxicity, and maybe his wife is is continually berating him, criticizing him.
usually having negative things to say, no positive things to say. And this has gone on, let's say for years.
I know of pastors that advise these men to not speak up because their wife won't be able to handle the confrontation. So just work on keeping on forgiving.
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This is Christian niceness at its finest.
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or a wife accuses a husband of not being close with God. And she says, you shouldn't even talk about him because you're hardly even saved. Christian, nice advice. This is real advice.
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Christian Nice Advice says, then maybe you should stop talking about God so
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If she's uncomfortable with that, then stop rocking the boat.
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or a man who wants to have a more frequent, more passionate sex life and his wife has decided, you know what, this is just not for me, I don't need this anymore and I don't want it and you should be okay with the other parts of our marriage, okay? The Christian council would say,
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God sees your suffering. He knows where you're at. Trust Him and learn how to just keep loving and serving.
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now.
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The problem, gentlemen, is that usually...
A marriage gets to this place partially, not only, Both parties bear responsibility here. But for the man's part, the marriage gets to this place because the man has already been overly accommodating, overly nice. He has essentially disappeared from the picture because
His desires and his standards and his boundaries no longer show up anymore. He has caved into every whim, desire and boundary of his wife and has not provided any of his own. And in that process, he has lost her respect.
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He has lost her admiration. He has lost her affection. She is no longer attracted to him. So why do we think that more of the same will fix the extreme situation that we are faced with right now? Why would we think that? Maybe, just maybe, we as a Christian conglomerate are getting it wrong.
And the way we've done marriage...
has created problems for thousands.
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If the methodology is not working, then do a new method.
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Let's contrast this.
with Kingdom Masculinity.
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We men are members of the Kingdom of Heaven as are women. We are called to rule in that Kingdom, not to simply be vassals, subjects to the King. We are subjects to the King, but we are also co-rulers. And that is, there's more scripture to that than I'm going to get into in this video.
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But we are called to rule.
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A ruler is to have opinions. A ruler is to have certain standards. A ruler is to have certain boundaries. A ruler is to present his desires, his decrees, his, his way that things should be to the environment around him. Now a good integrity filled ruler is not a dominator, is not a tyrant. And you have a
faulty debate in the Christian world between egalitarian and Complimentarian then I think that debate is false altogether. I don't think either of those dynamics are correct and I'm not about to present to you that a husband is meant to is to meant to heavy-handedly rule over his wife Okay, that's not it because she is a ruler as well. You are we are actually supposed to be building a life
and a home with two rulers who are fully healthy in and of themselves looking to become one. You have a whole and a whole becoming an exponentially greater whole. This is not two incomplete people making a whole. So when you have two whole people, both to be rulers under the king, coming together to become one, of course there is going to be clashing. See, we as Christian husbands have
learned to be so nice to try to eliminate the clashing, but what we've done is we've eliminated the spark. We've eliminated the passion, we've eliminated the fire.
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And we wonder why the attraction is gone.
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So man.
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Kingdom Masculinity, which is not niceness, is marked by some character traits of confidence, boldness, assertiveness, joy, gentleness, understanding, kindness, compassion, proactive.
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Disagreeable.
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All these things are kingdom masculine virtues. They're even feminine virtues. They just look different.
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So, a man who's in the marriage where the wife has been continually berating and critical for years and years, Christian niceness says, well, brother, she can't handle the confrontation, so you might as well not try to talk with her about it and just resort to more and more forgiveness. But strong kingdom masculinity steps into this moment and says, this is not healthy for the marriage.
This is not healthy for me or my wife. And no, I am not just going to enable this to continue and shield my wife from the consequences of her own actions. I am going to.
allow her to experience the consequence of this constant beratement and criticism, which is it's producing some distance.
which is we need to have a hard conversation.
And I'm going to start establishing boundaries and not allowing this treatment of me.
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or the one who says, if your wife doesn't want you talking about Jesus because she says you're hardly even saved, then maybe you should tone it down a bit.
Is it wrong to be open about what the Lord is doing in me in my day? Is it wrong for me to share with my wife stories about how he's been talking to me and things that I've been learning from him? Is that wrong? I think we could all agree it's not. So why would you stop to try to appease another? Who's the one with the real problem? Is it you or is it her?
then stop pretending like it's your problem. It is unhealthy and it is not moral to make her issue that she has to work on become mine.
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Toning that down is just shying away. It's cowering away from her. It's being afraid of her emotions, her anger, her responses, and letting that shape me into the man that I'm called to be, rather than letting God shape me into the man that I'm called to be, and allowing her to deal with the uncomfort that she experiences when I'm talking about these things. Am I trying to preach at her? No.
I'm just revealing what's going on in my own life.
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If the man is in a marriage where there's non-sex happening and the wife has decided, I just don't need it and you should be fine without it, rather than the nice Christian advice of, learn how to love and forgive and suffer well, maybe we need to stand up for what God says about the marriages, which is they are meant to be intoxicating. You should always be intoxicated by...
Her body's meant to bring you joy and satisfaction as yours is to her. Now you can't necessarily use this as an argument with her, but it's the principle you should stand on. So why would you roll over and just die and take the lack of sex? Why would you do that if that's not God's will for you? Why are you letting her unhealthy will supersede God's good will?
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So maybe instead you need to grow and mature and learn how to advocate for your desires for more and better sex and learn how to present those requests to her and let her deal with now being in this difficult place where she's not wanting it, but you're not going away.
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I'm not advocating that you be mean.
but I'm just giving you this, this contrast between how we've been taught to do marriage and how maybe we should. Now let's say this is not just in marriages that are in a really difficult place.
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Your niceness causes you when she says, do you want for dinner tonight? I don't know. Whatever you want, babe.
What if she wants structure? And I'm preaching to myself, okay? But what if whenever she asks, what about this? What do you think of that? Should we do blah, blah? What if I don't know needs to become an illegal answer from us? Because what if every time she's wanting somebody to carry a burden that
she's been caring and she needs it offloaded.
So instead of, don't know whatever you want, I would like this. Let's do this. How does that sound?
You have direction, have intentionality.
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What if instead of asking for permission, can we go out on a date on Friday? You say, babe, I would love to take you out on Friday. Subtle but big difference.
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Because the little bits of niceness over and over and over are eventually accumulate into a lifestyle of passivity and lack of fire and attraction.
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This is how the spirit of niceness actually kills marital heat.
Because instead of you being your own person, the one that she was initially drawn to, you go away. You disappear.
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You fade into the background of your own life. And now she's forced to lead. She's forced to make all the decisions. She's forced to initiate. Whatever it may be.
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And as she is forced into that role, which is the masculine role, she starts to fade in her femininity.
And that softness and the warmth and the flirtation becomes more and more rare and hardened. I know that's not what you want.
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So
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I have a couple of action items for you. Okay, the first one is to repent. So get alone with the Lord. Maybe write out some thoughts. Maybe write out the ways that you've been nice over the years of your marriage.
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and
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Tell the Lord I'm sorry that I have given into this and it's deep and it's ingrained and I'm not even fully sure how to come out of it but I know that I do not want it. And so I break the agreements that I have made with the lies of hell about how I am to be as a man. I break the agreements I've made with every demonic spirit surrounding this niceness way of life.
I do not agree with them.
It's a good, fantastic starting place.
Second action item.
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would be to just have an opinion. Give yourself a small goal, a small win. I'm going to initiate this activity this week and I'm going to communicate it in terms of statements, not with a question of permission.
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Third thing, you haven't yet, want you to click the link in the show notes and read my book, The DNA of a Man. It walks you through three parts, how to become a man of identity, a man of principle, and a man on mission. And all that, the whole book is about shedding niceness, getting away from passivity, getting away from codependence and learning.
the value, the worth that you have as a redeemed son of the king. Fourth thing, I want you to join the Masculine Husband Program. I open up enrollment into it periodically and in that program we go hard. It's a three month intensive. We go hard at rewiring your thinking and your being.
so that you actually do make this change from the inside out. It's not just behavior modification. It is inside out transformation. Romans 12 to you become transformed by the renewing of your mind. This is what we do inside the program. We tap into the power of the gospel and the power of the Holy Spirit to bring that radical transformation. We come alive in the kingdom in miracles and in Holy Spirit experience and fire.
And we then go from all of that into how do you communicate with your wife from a brand new perspective, from a brand new place? How do you show up as masculinity embodied so that she can melt into your arms and step back into her femininity and where all the flirtation and the sensuality and everything resides? We go into how do you increase your sex life? How do you build that attraction again?
how to create safety for her in a way where she truly feels loved rather than manipulated.
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So want you to click the link in the show notes and check that out as well. If the registration is pages open and there, then the enrollment is open. If there's a message of enrollment is closed right now, then you can get on the wait list and you can join at the next enrollment window. All right, gentlemen, thank you for being with us today. And I want to remind you, please like, please subscribe.
Please follow, please leave a review, please comment, all of the above. Get the message out. It does a lot to help me. I appreciate you fellas. We'll see you next time.