The Church Handed Me to Satan (Steve's Story) | Episode #004

Loving your wife through every season of marriage means loving the version of her that doesn't make your life easy. New baby. New house. A new job that keeps you on the road. Foreclosure papers on the table. Her grieving the father she lost. Seasons change, and so does she. So do you. That wedding photo on your shelf is a snapshot, but marriage isn't one. Every husband has to answer this: do you love your wife, or do you love her when she meets your expectations? Maybe you found an extra gear. You're doing the dishes, handling the toddlers, paying the bills, carrying the load through her brutal first trimester. You're physically present, and she still tells you you're being robotic. You say you have no bandwidth left. You have more in the tank than you think. Like lifting, emotional capacity has to be trained. So sit down, ask her "Where am I missing the mark?" and take the answer without getting defensive. That is dying to self. If your employer gets your B+ and your family gets your C-, you have a leadership problem. And like the salesman who stops prospecting once he has a book of business, the husband who stops doing the work that built his marriage will drift. Marriage is a covenant, not a contract you renegotiate when your preferences aren't met. It takes sacrifice. It takes daily gratitude so she's never taken for granted. It takes long-suffering: being long-tempered and refusing to retaliate when provoked. It takes servant leadership, the kind Christ showed washing feet. If that sounds beta to you, you need a heart check. And you won't sustain any of it apart from faith and the power of the Holy Spirit. Audit your selfishness this month. Bring it to her. Catch the little foxes. Choose her again tomorrow. Questions, or need prayer? Reach out to us anytime: [email protected]. Come honest. Leave lighter.

You accomplished the mission. Dream job, uniform, the title you chased since you were a kid. So why does Adam F. Jones, a former Black Hawk pilot, end up on a back road in Pittsburgh at the lowest point of his life? Because high performers do not crash. They drift. And you will not see it first. Your wife will. Your kids will. Your crew chief will. And when they call it out, your move is the same move every driven man makes: "Am I though?" You rationalize. You push harder in the other direction. You overcorrect. And the trees get closer. If you have been hiding behind provider mode, if the paycheck has become the shield you use to dodge being a present husband and father, this one is going to sit on your chest. The warrior face that works on the mission does not work at your dinner table. Your kids do not need the captain. They need the dad. Your wife is not a subordinate waiting for your debrief. And the stoic weight you think you are carrying alone? You are not suppressing it. You are spreading it. It leaks into your home, your leadership, your team, every man who looks to you. This is a conversation about identity over performance, availability as a core value, and what it looks like to stop proving and start leading. Drift happens. Drift does not define who you are. It defines where you are. And where you are can change tonight. Guest: Adam F. Jones, former US Army Black Hawk pilot, founder of Kingdom Operatives and author of Weapons of Mass Deception. Questions, or need prayer? Reach out to us anytime: [email protected]. Come honest. Leave lighter.

Steve is on vacation, so Jack and Dillon try something new: reacting to Jubilee's What Makes a Real Man debate. Fifty men argued over whether society needs more tradwives or girlbosses, whether men should be watching porn, and who leads in a romantic relationship, and we talk through what Scripture actually says about each one. Jack lays out why the burden of provision sits on the man, Dillon unpacks how the culture defined girlboss in a way nobody would actually sign up for, and the porn prompt turns into an honest conversation about what it costs a man. We close on leadership: the difference between godly headship and the tyrant the critics are actually arguing against. First episode in our new react format; tell us what we should react to next. Original video: What Makes a Real Man? 50 Men Debate by Jubilee on YouTube.

This episode was not planned. All three of us were burnt out and tired, and instead of passing on recording, we hit record and worked it out live. Steve opens by naming the hardest season of his life: the business still struggling and layoffs on the table, a medication that nearly sent him to the ER, and an active investigation close to home that he cannot detail, one he says is harder to walk through than losing his mom and his dad. He admits he is not leaning on the Lord the way he should, that he is stuck in acceptance, and that inside he is seething at the injustice. Jack lays out the three responses to overwhelm: head in the sand, brute force, or walking through it with God, and Dillon adds a fourth, masking and toxic positivity. From there we get into awareness and acceptance before action, the difference between a sowing season and a harvest season, and why fighting the season you are actually in only wears you out. Dillon brings the conversation to Job and David, and the case for being raw with God instead of hiding behind sanitized Christianese prayers. We also work through the practical side: Dillon's text survey where nearly every man named rest, wife, brotherhood, and exercise. Jack shares mapping his life on a tree from John 15 and treating growth as subtraction and pruning. Dillon and Jack talk about protecting the family schedule, learning to say no even when it clashes with American culture, and running weekly family meetings. Steve lands on the question he keeps returning to: God, what are you trying to teach me in this moment. Dillon closes us in prayer.

We asked our wives one question: where do we fail to emotionally support you? The answers cost us. Steve got called out for his phone and his Apple Watch stealing moments with his wife and his son. Dillon got called out for turning Natalie's pain about her body into a three week diet and cardio plan. Jack got told he shows up fine, but only when he decides it is worth his time. From there we unpack the real problem: men default to fix it mode instead of presence. We talk about why empathy can feel like signing off on a lie, why active listening feels fake when you disagree with what she believes about herself, and why handing her a ladder never gets her out of the hole when what she wanted was for you to climb in and sit there. We take 1 Peter 3:7 seriously and ask what it actually means to live with your wife in an understanding way. It gets uncomfortable. Jack confesses three years of workaholism and hiding behind the shield of financial provision. Steve admits his wife has told him the same thing about her tears more than once and he still has not learned it. Dillon pushes back hard on the word commiserate and we work through whether sitting in someone's misery is godly. If your wife cannot bring you her feelings in real time without joking first, you need to hear this. This one is for the married man who leads well at work and runs out of tank at home, and for the guy who is dating or engaged and would rather learn this before he has to apologize for it. Questions, or need prayer? Reach out to us anytime: [email protected]. Come honest. Leave lighter.