I’ve got to be honest with you from the get-go. If we’re going to run this race together, then there’s really no other way.

If you and I are going to take more if our lives back from the hands of hell than we ever have before, then we’ve got to start right. Because I guarantee you, that’s where we’re going. If you’re hurting and wounded, discouraged and losing hope, struggling to survive (forget about thriving and spreading the kingdom when I can barely hold my emotions together), don’t worry. You and Jesus are about to conquer all of that.

In fact, this post is exactly meant for you if you:

Are battling pain, hurt, bitterness and anger in your marriage. If you feel like your wife doesn’t want or like you much, you don’t get intimate with her like you would like. You feel like you’ve been trying your damnedest to be an amazing husband, but somehow you must be royally missing it because you fight all the time, and you can tell your wife is really hurting.

Are battling pain, hurt, bitterness, anger, and depression in your connection with God. If you feel like he doesn’t pay much attention to you, like you’re on his B-team instead of his favorite A-squad. You’re riding the bench no matter how much of your life you’ve been chasing after him. There’s a wall of separation, no dunamis power of the Spirit, and you certainly don’t feel transformed.

Are battling pain, hurt, bitterness, anger, and depression about yourself. Maybe you’ve been battered by life. Disease in your body or someone close to you. Finances being more of a curse than a blessing. Children growing distant and needing the dad you just don’t think you can be. You feel worthless and like you don’t have much blessing to give, but you sure as heck could use someone to give you a blessing.

Hang tight, my friend. Again, you and Jesus are about to conquer all of that.

Men aren’t to be manipulated through clever words. Men are meant to be transformed through the power of the Spirit and the Gospel.”

Romans 1:16 “ For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.”

What’s that?

Did I hear a sigh come out of you? Did I hear you think to yourself, If only that were true. If only the gospel worked for me like it apparently works for other guys. Like it works in other countries. Like it worked back in the Bible times.

It’s okay. Might as well let it out. Like I said, if we’re going to do this right, then it’s time to stop playing stupid little boyish games of trying to be the “good Christians” we’re supposed to be. We’d better just be totally honest with exactly where we’re at.

You are disillusioned with Jesus, the gospel, the power of faith, and you’re wondering if you’ll ever get to experience the exciting, powerful, overcoming life that you see in guys like Todd White, Shawn Bolz, and Francis Chan. Or the old guys like John G. Lake, Smith Wigglesworth, Moody, or Spurgeon.

Sounds perfect.

Sounds like the makings of a warrior-king army.

Sounds like you’ve taken just about enough…crap…such that you’re finally
      fed up with settling for a less-than Christian life, with living in the
      mental/emotional turmoil of self-accusation, guilt, condemnation, low
      confidence.

Sounds like we’ve got nothing left to lose.

Sounds like the only way out is up.

Sounds like the same way David’s Mighty Men started out before becoming the
      most bad-A warriors history has ever known.

Perfect.

Check this out. 1 Samuel 22:1-2:
David departed from there and escaped to the cave of Adullam. And when his brothers and all his father’s house heard it, they went down there to him. And everyone who was in distress, and everyone who was in debt, and everyone who was bitter in soul, gathered to him. And he became commander over them. And there were with him about four hundred men.

This, sir, is the story I’m inviting you into. I’m inviting you to join in the ranks of a rag-tag army of men who had just about had it. Who had no other option. No plan B. No hope for life-change. I’m inviting you to step out of your tent, to pick yourself up on more time. To step out and see, the king is here.

Will you, in spite of all the pain and disappointment, humbly lay that down for a moment and say, “Okay, I’ll join you Jesus. I don’t know what I’ve been doing wrong, if anything, but I know that something has been broken. My way hasn’t worked, and I’m willing to go wherever it is you’re going.”

See, if you join this story with me, you won’t stay where you are. It’s impossible.

YOU. WILL. TRANSFORM.

You will experience Life-Change.

In 1 Chronicles 11, it says of these same down and out men:
Now these are the chiefs of David’s mighty men, who gave him strong support in his kingdom, together with all Israel, to make him king, according to the word of the Lord.

And it goes on to list individuals and the crazy stuff they did in battle. Go. Read it for yourself. See for yourself the transformation that’s possible—that is COMING to you.

You are a chief of the King’s men. You give him your strong support in advancing his Kingdom in the earth. And don’t worry, that also means that you too will see the Kingdom of heaven advance in your own life, in your own mind, your marriage, your mission. You will not be left out of the health and restoration that you yourself are meant to facilitate.

So here’s what I want to do for you in the rest of this post…

1) I want to give you a trail guide, a plan for how you can begin to step into this Mighty Man story. How you can become the man, the warrior, the king you were meant to be.

Because you have more power in this thing than you think. You’re not a victim. Never a victim.

And I guarantee you, all those places you’re hurting in…your marriage for example? They will start to change when you follow this process. Take me to task on this. I will stand by it 100%.

2) At the end, I want to give you a free download of part of my own story. It’s an audio file, a quick 10 minute listen that you can take with you. Let it inspire you for your own life to change. Let it give you hope. If God has done it for me, then he will do it for you.

In the same free download, I’ll also be giving you your new marching orders, straight from heaven, detailing for you how to start reframing your life. This extensive verse list, and my own advice on how to implement it, will get you going on a path to transformation

3) Finally, after you enter your email and download my own account of Life-Change, I’m going to offer you a complete mindset overhaul, called the DNA of a Man. It’s a 7-part teaching series that will help you reset your operating system.

Because these areas you’re struggling in—even though they are largely external circumstances that you’ve been asking God to change—they are often outward symptoms of your own inward broken thinking and believing. And they are largely rooted in your own lack of understanding who you are called to be both as a Man—and as a man in the Kingdom.

Fair warning? Good.

Your Trail Guide to Life Change

Step 1: Believe differently than you have been.

We get ourselves into trouble when we, often without knowing it, switch our allegiance from Jesus to satan.

Strong words? I know.

But it’s true.

I’m not talking about you jumping off the deep end and engaging in all kinds of debauchery and sin. Maybe you do. We should take care of that. But I’m assuming that for the most part you don’t.

Instead I’m talking about you going through a season of your marriage where you started facing pain and disappointment, and instead of holding true to what God declares over you, your wife, and your marriage, you let your thoughts drift into blame, accusation, “Well if she would only…then I would be able to …” And all of a sudden, before you know it, you’re aligning with all of this dark thinking and emotion and, though you’d never SAY it, your thoughts and actions show that you don’t think Jesus is king over your marriage. Instead you are. And you’re reigning in bitterness.

Or how about in the storms of life. Maybe you lost your job and now, instead of maintaining your course in hope and in strength and in the confidence that God will indeed supply all your needs, you panic. You ask for money from sources he never gave you the go-ahead on. You make your own way through instead of asking him, listening to his ways, and obeying. In fact you don’t involve him much at all because he’s not big enough or powerful enough, or dare I say, REAL enough to impact your finances.

Then there’s your own inner monologue about YOU. Though you love Jesus and pray to him, mostly asking him to rescue you, the thoughts you usually allow to wreak havoc in your head tell you how low and worthless you are. They tell you that you’re a “sinner saved by grace” rather than a saint being made more and more glorious by the grace and power of Jesus through his spirit. I’m telling you this is evil thinking masquerading as holiness. But it’s destroying your life.

So you’ve got to sit down, open up the Scriptures, and find for yourself a BETTER word to believe. Find for yourself a different thought than you’ve had. Find for yourself God’s thoughts.

In the words of Bill Johnson, “I can’t afford to have a thought in my head that God doesn’t have in his.”

What this will do for you is give you a new vision for what’s possible. A renewed hope that maybe, just maybe around the next bend, there’s hope. There’s change. There’s breakthrough.

Believe differently. Let your beliefs reflect your spirit’s allegiance to Jesus, not to all the other dark crap.

Step 2: Prune Back Your Emotional Efforts

A powerful concept that I recently stole from the book Think Like a Warrior by Darrin Donnelly is this: “Focus only on the things you can control.”

In the middle of your toxic thinking that you’re going to get out of, you also most likely started focusing on all the stuff coming against you. God, why is this happening? God, why aren’t you fixing it? God where are you? How can I make these things stop?

And all your praying and your work is spent on trying to get people and things other than yourself to change, whether that be God, your wife, your money, even your health.

You don’t have the direct power over any of those things to make them suddenly change. You just don’t.

You have influence with them, sure. You can effect change. But the way to that is by surrendering to the Lord right now, in this present moment of life. And saying,

“You know what? This isn’t changing! And it doesn’t match what I see the Bible saying my life should be like! And that’s frustrating! But I’m done wallowing in self-pity because of it. Jesus would you show me a)who you want to be for me right now in this? And b)who you want for ME to be in it?”

So, prune way way back and allow Jesus to do his surgery within you. Focus on you. Focus on getting your perspective right, on reconnecting with the Lord again. On dropping the bitterness you have against him and venturing to trust and thank him EVEN IN THE FACE OF YOUR DISAPPOINTMENT.

…Which leads us to step 3

Step 3: Get to Know Jesus…for the first time again

As you struggle through painful areas of life, it can be very very easy to make your relationship with God all about fixing those things. And all of a sudden, before you know it, your only basis for connection with him is on whether circumstances change or not. And if they don’t change as fast as you’ve been desperate for, then it’s just one more reason to not be connected with God.

But he’s calling you to more, sir.

He’s asking you to man up a bit and to decide what your priorities are going to be no matter what situations happen.

Will HE, his person, his friendship be your priority? Will you day in and day out come to him to engage with him and know him? Will you choose to believe he’s good and that you are right in his family, that he loves you and likes you and is near, even if you don’t feel like it?

Or will your wound-licking be your priority? Will you allow yourself to live less-than because you’re justified by all the bad stuff happening to you? Will you allow yourself to carry unforgiveness until your wife changes? Will you allow yourself to be discouraged and unthankful until your body is well?

So will your praying be all about changing these things?

If so, you’re probably going to hear crickets coming back at you…if you haven’t already.

God says that when you seek HIM you’ll find HIM. Don’t seek his answers first and foremost. Seek HIM again. Be like Moses or Abraham or Joshua who built a history and a relationship with God. When you do, you’ll find that he will be all for you. He will “restore the fortunes you’ve lost” as Jeremiah says.

He has no intention of leaving you un-rescued. He is good and has good gifts for you. He instated a gospel of restoration where he DOES in fact come and fix all the broken things in your life.

But seek him for his own sake.

Don’t make everything always all about you and your problems. You’ll never get closer to him. You’ll never REALLY get to know him. And you won’t get to see his crazy miracles on your behalf.

He’ll wait patiently for you as your heart finally comes around to surrender to Him and love him for who he is, not just what he does.

Step 4: Do it.

This one is short and simple. Don’t go by your feelings anymore. Go by your powerful decision to just do it. One way to do this is to support step 3 by disciplining yourself to set aside time for him. Every day. Rain or shine. Whether you feel like it or not. Get moving. Lead your feelings. Don’t let them lead you.

Trust me, we can see our lives change. We can find ourselves in the story of the mighty men. You can start out messed up and then turn into a freaking giant killer, a single-handed army-taker-outer. But it’s going to take you taking charge.

Take ownership over yourself. You’re not on your own, no. But you’re also not some bystander who’s been dealt a bad hand.

I want us to stand up as men who understand the power we have to see heaven in our own lives. Make the choice. Take the action. Do the work.

A good first action is to download my Campfire Story below. In it, I’ll introduce you to the 2-part way of living in the Kingdom that I’ve chosen. I’ll tell you

-How I beat pornography.

-How I’m beating disease and self-pity and despair.

-How I have and am beating the toxic crap I brought into my marriage that fed the
      strife and bitterness and wounded my wife.

And it’s not just me. I saw Jesus show up powerfully to fight on my behalf.

See, you absolutely CAN be the man you wish you were. In fact, you already are that man.

I’m also throwing in a verse list with powerful words from God telling you what he thinks about your health, your mind, your marriage, and your potential.. You need new thoughts…I’m literally handing them to you. The truth sets you free. So…you’re welcome.

Until later, friend.