Does Christianity Make Men Weak? with Ryan Miller

Culture keeps offering men too bad options. You become loud, aggressive and impossible control or you stay quiet, agreeable and out of the way. But neither one of those options look much like Jesus to me. Biblical strength knows when to surrender, when to stand firm and when to speak up. Our guest today Ryan Miller has built an audience of more than a few million people on social media helping Christians navigate that very tension especially when it comes to the uncomfortable issues that most believers would rather just avoid. Ryan is the author of the new book Meek is a Mustang where he argues that meekness isn't weakness at all. It's actually strength surrendered to God. Let's jump into the conversation. If you had to give a State of the Union on manhood day, you look around our landscape as a country. What would you say? What does it look like? It looks like confusion. I think every single man is asking the question from the time we're three years old, maybe five years old. What is a man and am I that? And we go to these different heroes in our life. We know that Jesus is our ultimate authority if you're a Christian, but that's a macro hero, right? There are micro heroes we have in our lives. Our dad is the first one. Then we have mentors, then we have peers and now we have influencers and podcasters and all these different people that are giving us this different message either directly to us that what you just did or what you just said aligns with my virtues and values of what it means to be a man or in a macro way, the way you're living your life is what it means to be a man. But there's this murkiness of the foundation of that. Of what actually is that? What does that look like? And I think that's where a lot of men get really confused. That's where a lot of men are led by their impulses and by their wounds rather than the bedrock of what it actually means to be a godly person first and foremost and then a godly man secondarily. So what I would say is this, that every single man is asking the question daily, what is my value and how do I find value and they're attaching themselves. And you would say Christians and non-Christians are asking that same question. Oh, it's almost more confusing for Christians because at least non-Christians can be a little bit more honest than we are. At least non-Christians can be like, I want to go hook up with girls. I want to be the best NFL football player in the world. I want to go to college, I want to, whatever it is, I want to make a lot of money. They can at least be honest about it. But where the confusion comes in is now you have these non-believing influencers that are saying things that are, the algorithms now are set up in such a way where the most ridiculous, most egregious things rise to the top of the algorithm. I'm an influencer, I know this.

Which that's... Yeah, I was going to say that's interesting to hear you say that because I have way less experience with social media than you do. But I've even noticed that in my own stuff. The stuff that is the most clickable goes crazy. 100%. And it doesn't even have to be true. It's just, so it's almost like they're gaming for division and hostility and confusion. Well, and this is again, when you say they, who's they? I don't know. I was hoping you could tell. Yes. So when you say they, we have to define who are they because we do have an enemy. And the enemy is not just Satan, it's Satan in his kingdom. So it's the prince and the power of the heir. What does that mean? There are principalities and dominions where Satan is on a leash, but he is the ruler of this world. And we need to be really clear about that. So we need to look at the different mountaintops in this world, government, education, entertainment, sure, Hollywood, all of these different mountaintops. And we need to say, who owns those? And we need to be honest, that who owns them right now, though he's on a leash and though God is still working in the midst of those things and those industries, obviously, is that Satan is ultimately has, has dominion over many of these things. There are principalities that we are called to topple and overthrow and we're called to expose. The scriptures are really clear, take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. And so we need to look at these things for what they are and we need to look at how we're being influenced and what we're being influenced towards and going back to what's the question that every single man is asking themselves every day. It's what is a man? What value do I bring and am I those things? And so in micro ways, the enemy is flat firing flaming arrows at us. And the flaming arrows oftentimes don't look like a sickness that he's going to give us. It looks like a truth that's a that's just a quarter turn off. Andrew Tate's a great example. Does Andrew Tate say things that are true? Yes. Is he really compelling? Yes. Does he model some virtues? Yes. You can't just have this good bad split where you look at a guy like Andrew Tate and you say all bad. Now, I think he's a, I think he's an awful human being. Let me just be very clear about that. He is. But there are things he says that I'm like, yep. And no one else is saying that right now. And so there's it, you know, and this might get me in trouble. I don't really freaking care. Can't wait. Donald Trump is another great example. I voted for the man. There's a lot of things he's done, a lot of things he has said that I really like. There's a lot of things that he's done that are pure blasphemy and are misogynistic and that are awful. And we have to have a balanced

view to look at some of these men that are put on these pedestals in our lives and to look and get really curious if I was the they that we were just talking about, the principalities that have dominion over this world. What would I want to do? What ways would I want to influence 10 year olds? So Ryan, I found it interesting that, you know, if you could, you picked one word to describe where you see the conversation on masculine and menhood as confusion. I agree with what you're saying. You know, Satan is the father of lies. Every time you see him show up in confusion, you show up in scripture, you see confusion thereafter. And what I've seen in men and even experienced in my own life, this tension and then in, you know, the guys I run with and a lot of the guys that are part of this, this community is there, it seems like there's two polarities and you've referenced one where you've got like the the red pill masculinity, andrutates of the world that are shouting at men to be, how would I describe it, savage, right? And that's what a man looks like. And don't be, don't be apologetic about it. Or you're weak, right? And then that's the other side, where if you represent anything that is masculine, yes, you're toxic. And then there's this, okay, so we're going to revert 180 degrees in the other direction, be passive, be soft. Is that what you're seeing too? That's exactly what I'm seeing. I'm seeing a pendulum. I'm seeing that, that these men asking the question, what is a man in am I that they get on the pendulum and they swing back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. And they're missing the whole time, the biblical picture of masculinity, because being a savage in its proper context is the call to the man. In the context of andrutate, it's misogyny, it's awful, it's demonic. Being gentle, being a gentleman in its right context is the definition of a man. But in another context, to be gentle as a man is not a man at all. You need to be a savage. And so that's why I'm saying there's confusion, because I could say that right now and people are like, well, what the heck am I supposed to do? And that's exactly the question. What the heck am I supposed to do? Because I'm getting all of these inputs and the number one input you're getting or the number one input you've gotten has been when you were six or seven years old watching your dad. There's a study that shows the number one factor that determines whether a person is going to follow Jesus is the warmth of their father growing up. Did they experience a warm dad? Why is that? Why is that the number one factor on whether someone is going to follow Jesus? The answer is it's because they were shown the heart of the heavenly father. And they caught it from a young age. And they might not have been

taught it with their words, but they caught the feeling of warmth. And they said, that thing that I felt when I was six years old when dad took me to hit off the tee at the park down the street. And when I screwed up, he was still there for me. And when I did great, he was still there for me. That actually is the image that I have when I think about who God is because God chooses to identify himself as a father. That's right. And so what is the answer to the confusion? The answer to the confusion is to get off the pendulum and to look at it and they go, that's really dumb. And to say, okay, I'm going to look elsewhere and to recognize the futility in it, right? It's not working for anyone. Do you think men in America have become weak or have we simply forgotten what strength is for? I think men in America have become literally weak. The testosterone has dropped significantly since the 60s. Like, like, which is, which is interesting for what it's worth. And now, you know, being 32, almost 33, that's kind of when you start to pay attention to that stuff. And it's fascinating that I would say more often than not guys that are five to 10 years older than me. And then beyond that are starting to really have those conversations on what the heck happened to my testosterone? And the answer to what you do with that obviously is different for everybody. But well, again, let's look at the day. Let's look at the day of the principalities. And let's see. What is the day targeting? Because feminism has completely, modern feminism has completely emasculated men. Correct. Feminism has created pornography. Feminism has created abortion. And this is all, this is all Satan. This is quintessential Satan where he's going to take something that is the most horrific thing you can do and apply virtue to it. This is my body, my body, my choice. It's a demonic parody of the Eucharist. And what he's doing is he's taking sacrificing unborn children, the thing that men were supposed to step up and defend and protect.

And he's making it a women's rights issue. Why does he want to do that? Because Satan wants to get the spines out of the most demonic issue of our day. He wants to get the leadership out of the most demonic issue of our day. So why is it the Christian Hawkins and the Lila roses that are stepping up and speaking out about abortion? Where are the men? Where are the men talking about the greatest genocide in the history of humanity? Well, going back to the day, going back to the demonic principalities, using words to manipulate, to cause passivity. He did it in the garden with Adam from the very beginning. What does Satan want to do with men? He wants to create passivity. There's a lot of scholars that believe that when Satan tempted Eve, what was Adam doing? He was just standing off to the side. He was there and he did nothing. So we say, okay, the first sin in the Bible and then he blamed her and they blamed her and God. So maybe the first sin in the Bible wasn't pride. Maybe the first sin in the Bible was passivity of a man. Maybe he didn't step up when he should have reminded Eve of the truth. And in that in of itself is pride because it's trusting in yourself and it's self-preservation and self-protection outside of trusting God. And so I think we have to look holistically at what's happening to manhood in our world. And we need to say, okay, something's happening pharmaceuticals, contritionally, something's happening where now, I don't know if the stats are, it's something like 80%, 90% of young men are not physically fit enough to fight in the army. Are you serious? I hadn't heard that. That's ridiculous.

It's ridiculous. So you have to holistically ask, what is the demonic principality doing against manhood? Because he's creating passivity in them, which prevents them from fighting the greatest genocide of our time abortion. He's creating obesity in them, which creates passivity in fighting literally in the armed forces. He's creating emotional unintelligence in them, frying their pre-prunneled cortex through pornography, through cheap imagery instead of authentic intimacy. And all of a sudden now we're just these like walking flesh blobs that are just looking for the next scroll and swipe so we can beat off and get our jollies with no intentionality or intimacy whatsoever. So we're creating this, we're creating men without spines. The issue with masculinity right now is very few people are stopping and asking the question why, why are we seeing such chaos in marriage, such chaos in the church? Such chaos in some of the greatest human rights violations of our day. Why are we seeing a genocide happen against Christians in Nigeria right now? Well, it's because men in the government of Nigeria are being soft and passive because they want to get voted in by the Fulani who are killing the Christians. And so they're going to protect the Fulani's to protect the next election so that the Christians continue to get slaughtered because they want their seat. They want to keep their seat in the office. And so this is not a new issue. The issues might be new, abortion might be new in our last century, but the issue of passivity in men is not new. And so again, we have to go back to the pendulum. We have to ask, okay, if there's abuse here and there's abuse here and we're swinging back and forth from this man be pamby soft wimp to this domineering jerk and we just swing back and forth and we're looking at social media and we're like, wow, okay, well, there's that guy who's wearing a dress and, and, you know, being weird. And then on the other side of manhood, there's Andrew Tate that might be jacked and have

some self control, but he's hooking up with, you know, all these women and speaking irreverently and all these things. Horable thing for everybody. Yeah. Awful stuff. and to study the person of Jesus as a man and to study the person of Paul as a man and the person of David as a man and the person of Moses as a man and the person of Peter and James and John as men and to say, what do they all have in common? What do all of these men have in common? And I learned this because the Lord took me on this journey and I was on the pendulum. I, my brother came out of the closet when I was a freshman in high school. I didn't have a single hair on my underarms or my legs. It was just like five foot two, 115 pounds, but still fat and like prepubescent. - I'm pretty sure I had hair on my, like in fifth grade. That was the opposite. - Oh man, I didn't, I didn't get puberty. They're like almost college, like it was bad. - Late bloomer, huh? - Late bloomer and then my brother comes out of the closet and we look like twins and he's a sophomore. I'm a freshman and so I now got mistooking for the gay kid at school. And so I'll never forget I had a kid come up to me and he shoved me to the ground.

I had another kid spit in my face and it was, it didn't hold a candle to the abuse my brother got. But this question came in my mind. I got cut from the baseball team. I want to be a major league baseball player my whole life. I got cut my freshman year, my sophomore year and my junior year. Made the team my senior year 'cause I grew seven inches and 40 pounds, but I was now like gangly and awkward and I sat on the bench. But for three years, kept trying out, didn't make it. So I was forced with this question of am I, what is a man and am I that from a really young age? And now my brother's gay and my home life is in chaos. And I had to answer that question really young and thank the Lord. I think he actually plucked me out of a lot of the nonsense and a lot of the garbage and gave me an extra measure of his presence from a young age. And I fell madly in love with Jesus as a high school kid. Flash forward to college and now, you know, I've grown. I put on some weight. I walk on at a division three school to play baseball. I make the team, start on the team, all conference, all region, freshman of the year. That summer, I'm now playing in the second best collegiate summer baseball league in the nation, getting scouted by the Cubs,

have a chance to go on after college, play some minor league baseball and had a girl cheat on me. And once again, I was thrown into this question. Now I had arrived. Now I'd made it. Now I'd been like successful. - Yeah, you looked like a man. - Now I looked like a man. And then I started, the pendulum went from the middle where it wasn't high school. It swung like I was, I was in this place where I was soft. I was a kid, right? And so I was learning to find Jesus off the pendulum. But then all of a sudden now that I've got a lot of the things that people see as valuable or see as masculine, I got back on the pendulum and started trusting in those things and started hooking up with girls and started just trusting in my sport and trusting in a bunch of different stuff. And eventually I got released from my final baseball team, was still really wrestling with, am I a man still wrestling from the wounds of being cheated on and feeling like I got duped and like what the heck just happened and embarrassed and all that stuff. And I would like to tell you that I found Jesus again and like went into ministry and it was all great. And that's why I have the blooming ministry I have right now, but I took my crap into ministry with me.

And I went into ministry on the far side of the pendulum, still trying to prove myself on staff at a church, wanting the stage, wanting a claim, wanting to be Christian famous as gross as that sounds. To be, if I'm really honest, I wanna be Christian famous. And long story short, I decided I wanna be a famous filmmaker and I made this documentary series, The Lord Put Together, this amazing team, Oscar award-winning producer, Emmy award-winning director. We were able to go out and raise a few million bucks off their backs. And my vision was I wanna take four young men out of gang's prison foster care addiction and pair them with wild mustangs to tame and train. 'Cause I was a wild kid growing up and I had a coach pull me off the field after getting in a fight and he said, Ryan I'd rather tame a Mustang than inspire a mule, never lose your fire. I thought he was-- - And this is where your book came from. - This is where the book came from. - That's what God started doing, playing those seeds and now it's become a thing. - Well yeah, I mean first I had to go into the wilderness for a while. So all of a sudden we finished this film series and it was really gnarly and really raw. Um, they So you're watching this throwaway horse got a big tattoo

on side of its neck because the federal government has federally protected wild Mustangs. You can't kill them, but they're doubling in population every four years. So what do you do with something that's a little too wild that you know, you don't know what to do with, you cage it. - Sure. - It's a prophetic picture of what's happening with young men in America, tattoos on their face as well. And so you take this wild spirited young man, this wild spirited Mustang, you put them together and they're actually opening, you know this, you got behind bars. They're opening equine assisted psychotherapy, Mustang taming centers in federal prisons right now. - Oh yeah. - And you've seen it. And so that's what we did. And we filmed it and it was freaking crazy, dude. I got punched in the face a couple times, I got cussed out every day. I'm like this kid who like grew up in the suburbs now like, yeah, but you seem like a guy that's like, people punch you in your face and you're like, all right, give me another one. Like I'm not quitting, let's go. Well, yes, and I also started having my first panic attacks 'cause I was fully unequipped. And I'm now the executive producer of this multi-million dollar show

and I'm the mentor for these boys living in the same cabin as them. And you know, they're like, I'm talking like Hell's Angels, gangster disciples. Like these are like fresh out of prison. - But man, I've seen, I've seen through my work in prisons like no one is too far beyond the reach of God and every single time, every time the turning point is when they recognize that yes, God is God, but he's also their father and he's good. Every single time that's the turning point. - Well, that's gonna blow your mind. Okay, so we finished this film series. I now know the ins and outs of Taming Wild Mustangs. I've now watched it on display for months. We edit the show, we sign with the biggest agency in Hollywood being repped by the vice president. We're now on the phone with a VP of Netflix. We're going in getting million dollar offers from MGM studios and I thought I was gonna be everything that I set out to be. If this Christian fame is successful late 20s dude. And the Lord, this sounds crazy. In one week, the Lord started giving me my wife and our producer dreams and visions to pull the project from Hollywood like over and over again to the point where the producer calls me and she goes, I have something hard to tell you, but the Lord's been telling me for the last week chasing wild needs to die.

That was the name of it chasing wild. And I snap back at her. Even though I know I've been having dreams and visions too. So is my wife and I snap back at her. I'm like, I don't even know what that means. Like tell me what that means. I have a quarter of a million dollars debt on this project. So what I'm just gonna pay off this debt myself. Like what are you talking about? And finally I relent and we call our agents and we pull it. That day, the state of Alabama, which gives an incentive program if you do a film project in their state, they give you pretty much a quarter for every dollar you spend 'cause they want people to see Alabama on screens, right? So they send a check for $252,000. - That was the exact amount you were in debt. - Well, 2000 more. (laughing) You get the point, the Lord was like winking. Like you were obedient, you pulled it. - There you go. - The sink and die. So now all the donors and investors are looking at me like WTF, like you just failed us. And they're not gonna believe me when I say the Lord told me, right? Like no one's gonna believe me. - But they may not care either one, you know.

- Right, they might not care. And so I went into this season where I just tried a bunch of stuff for a while. I tried starting ministries and starting businesses and everything failed. Like I'd go raise hundreds of thousands of dollars, maybe seven figures for one of them. And this just all failed. So I'd go on these hikes and I'd continue to have anxiety and I'd just be praying to the Lord and just like asking him like Jesus, what are you doing? Like I was so confused to be honest with you because I went from the guy that in call, like you know, when you get back together with your college buddies, I would like hear them talking and they'd be like, are you hearing what Ryan's doing? They went from saying that stuff to being like, did you hear what happened to Ryan? Like that poor guy. - Which is a real big shot at your ego. - Oh, it's huge. Oh, the Lord, the Lord just started chopping the ego. And in so many ways, finances were down the toilet, success down the toilet, career down the toilet. Everything was just in shambles. And I would be waking up, I never forget I had this pink yoga mat that I would wake up but go downstairs and I couldn't control my body. I'd be having so much anxiety. I'd never experienced that before.

I thought anxiety was for like weak people before but now I'm having these panic attacks when I wake up and I'd be on my face on this pink yoga mat and I'd literally be asking the Lord, what are you doing? And every time I'd ask that, I would hear him say meekness. And he said, meekness. And later, I know he was talking about my life. He was doing meekness. But I thought he was talking about my book, because I had also written a book. Again, I was supposed to be a big thing. So I had like a book agent and the book was called Taming Mustangs. And I had a chapter in there called the meekness paradox where meekness isn't weakness, it's strength and humility in tandem, which isn't a bad definition. So I'm like, oh, okay, like you want me to write a book on meekness? Okay, I guess I'll need to study what meekness is. And so I just look up every Bible verse on meekness. This is where it gets good. Look up every Bible verse on meekness. I go to the Greek lexicon and I look up what's, when Jesus is saying the word, the meek will inherit the earth. What's the actual word? Like what is, what's the Greek? And the Greek word is praise, which means to tame a wild Mustang. I'd written a whole book called Taming Mustangs with a chapter. I did not know that. Yes. I had written a whole book called Taming Mustangs with a chapter called the meekness paradox. In the whole time, I didn't know that meekness met taming a wild Mustang. So when people say that meek is a mouse or something or they use meek to describe like a personality type, that's like really soft, nothing could be further from the truth. So here's the context. The Greeks would go into the mountains. They would find wild Mustangs and they would gentle them into war horses. That process, which is freaking awesome, which is awesome. You take this wild, autonomous prey animal that's scared to death of you but could stomp the yard on you that could kill you with a kick to the face and you put it into a round pen and you had mentioned kindness, how kindness changes people before. So this is the process of how you tame a wild Mustang. You get this wild Mustang into a round pen and it's kicking, bucking, snoring, going buck wild because you walk in and it instinctually knows you're a predator. We've got eyes on the front of our heads. Like that means we're predators. They got eyes on the side of their heads. That's God's design, scanning for prey, right? Sure. And so we walk in, it thinks predator, this

thing's going to kill me. So the question becomes, if you're going to take this wild horse that's scared of you that thinks you're going to kill it and can very literally kill you, how do you get it from that state of anxiety, of fear, of panic to trust you and to give you its back and to become loyal enough to be a war horse? So the first thing you do, if you ask any good Mustang tamer is you get what's called acknowledgement. You follow this wild Mustang around this round pen and it goes crazy. You just kind of walk semi aggressively towards it. And again, it's running around this thing going crazy, kicking up dust. And the minute that thing gets curious, that Mustang gets curious just for a second and turns its head and looks at you, it's called releasing the pressure. You drop your shoulders, you turn around or you slowly back up and you just walk away, you give it what it wants, which is to get the heck away from you. So you reward it for looking at you. So what happens after doing this over days, weeks on end, this horse gets addicted to looking at you. And slowly it realizes, huh, this thing that I thought was going to kill me is not a threat. It's not a threat. And then you can get close enough to where you can touch it. And they've never experienced a touch from a per they've got hooves that don't have hands. So when this horse looks at you, sees your kindness, it literally begins to follow you eventually. That's a picture of Romans two four. It's the kindness of the Lord that leads us to repentance. What is repentance? It's a turn. So this horse goes from running from you to following you. And eventually, as you slowly get closer, you go close to it, you release the pressure, you give it what it needs. You can touch this horse and oh boy, they've never experienced it. Pleasure like that in their life. And slowly you build this bond with this horse. That's more than any other horse you could have. It goes from being the most throwaway, most rejectable, most hazardous horse, most hazardous animal, to being the most loyal, most valuable war horse you can have. Well, and Ryan, as I think about like, I've experienced this in my life. And then when I think about guys that are listening to this podcast, I think there's probably a bunch of them that feel like that right now 100%. And I see that with men all the time where man, they got strength, they got power. People in their life may have tried to get close to them. They constantly push them away. Right? It's that they got the eyes on the side of their head to use your metaphor and they're watching for the next thing that's going to come get them. And what I've, what I, what I will never get tired of seeing is when a man finally recognizes, recognizes that a call to follow Jesus is not happening because he wants them to - Dude.

- It's that he wants to reshape it. - Yes. - He wants to reshape it. And it actually looks like, because you talk about surrender and worshiping somebody, maybe even being loved or given love, it's kind of like, well, that's kind of fruity. - What I have found as the Lord, and some men are listening to this in prison right now, some men are in the wilderness, they're in the waiting season. They don't know what's next for them. What I have found is there's a theme with every single man in the Bible that God made meek, because he will not use you until you become meek. It's why the meek inherit the earth. - Well, and what I've seen is when guys recognize that God actually wants to give them power, he's gonna take it first, 100%. He's gonna take it first. But what does it say when the Holy Spirit falls in Acts chapter two, and Acts one, I'm sorry, says you will receive what? Power, when the Holy Spirit dwells within you, when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. And I've seen men shift. You wanna get out of that pendulum swing? It's when you recognize that true power is transformed as Second Corinthians 12 says through your weakness, right? That's how meekness doesn't come across as weak.

- Hey guys, we're back to the episode in just a minute. Real quick, I wanna say something. Did you know that 64% of you who watch the show are not subscribed? And so if you don't mind, if you're part of that 64%, would you click that subscribe button? It'll help you by staying up to date on all things on gaining ground, and help us, by having the show become more visible for men all across the world. If you're listening on audio, if you can follow the show, leave a rating and review, incredibly helpful. All right, let's get back to the conversation. Thanks as always for tuning in. - So when I heard the Lord say meekness, when I saw the words for meekness meant to tame a wild Mustang about fell off the couch, and I said, okay Lord, I need to be obedient. I need to learn from the meekest people on the planet. And so I hit up some of my contacts that were just like the most connected people I knew. And I said, here's what just happened. I need to talk to the meekest people you know. I said, I just need you to connect me with them. I don't want anything from them other than a 30 minute conversation. Just get me on a Zoom call with them. So dude, I started getting on the phone with CIA agents in foreign countries, four star generals, missionaries in Africa.

- People who are dangerous. - Dangerous people, dude. And I mean, some of these conversations were intimidating, bro. - I bet. - Like there was one four star general. I just like, I remember being on the call and being like, you're the scariest man I've ever met in my life. Like it's just like this masculinity embodied. But there was one conversation I had with the CIA agent that really gave me a word for meekness. So this guy, I won't say his name obviously. Back in the day, he was working in Afghanistan. This was in the early 90s, when we were actually training up the Taliban to fight the Russians. Crazy we trained the Taliban before we fought them. But we're training the Taliban to fight the Russians. And he's like, dude, I'm trying everything I can to train these dudes, to just be shrewd. But every time a Russian helicopter would freakin' buzz, they would hear the rotors. These dudes would grab their little Soviet AKs that they stole and they'd run outside and start poppin' off shots at this helicopter as if it's gonna do anything. And this Chinook, I don't know what it was, but this Russian helicopter starts raining down fire on these dudes and they do not care.

And he's like, I'm screaming. I'm trying to get these dudes to just get behind a rock. Like, what are you doing? But he's like, I could not control these men from running out and firing shots at this helicopter as if it would do a thing at all. And he said, there was one moment where I'm yelling at these guys that the Holy Spirit tapped me on the shoulder. And he said, these men are misguided. They're following a demon. They're Muslim, but they're more meek than you are. Because you've made Christianity a part of your life. They have lost the entire ownership of their life to follow their God. And they do not care if they die. And it's made them fearless. You still have fear. And he said, Ryan, you keep using the word surrender when you talk about meekness. I think there's actually a better word. The word is ownership. When you have fully surrendered ownership of your life, you have become meek. And fully laying down everything, fully laying down your family, your finances, all of it. Like Moses, wilderness, David, wilderness, Peter, Paul, James, John, wilderness, Jesus, wilderness, Ryan, I want to, I want to talk about that. And actually, I want to get practical as, you know, we've only got a couple minutes left. All right. But I think, I think we've hit on a lot of good

stuff. And I want to go back to, because that's what, man, listen, I pastor been a pastor for a long time. I preach it, churches and prisons and all over the place. And I see guys hear the word of God respond to it or have a chance to respond to it. I'm sorry. Bible says the word of God doesn't return void. God is moving all over the room. But there's something in them that's saying, not me, not right now. I can't do that. I'm not ready yet. Or they're looking at it and saying, that looks soft. That looks passive. And I, and I meant what I said, and I resonate with you. I'm madly in love with Jesus. As a man, I think there's like this unspoken tension of like, what does that mean for, for me and who's in charge and where my power comes from? You and I would agree that true power comes from Jesus. The power that he gives is so much better than any of the other fake power that can be manufactured from, from this world or what the world has to offer. Yeah. So let me, let's get real practical here. For a guy listening to this podcast, it's trying to grow a business, trying to grow a family that is trying to increase their net worth, take territory, a lot of the things that we all care about, right? And do what is the first step, Ryan, to become in meek in the way that Jesus describes it. Well, I go through this in my book. Meek is a Mustang. The first step is, is acknowledgement. So there's this, uh, there's this scripture that is one of the most beautiful scriptures in the whole Bible, but so many Christians quote it and they misunderstand it. It's in Psalm 67 where it says, may God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face shine upon us. That phrase in the Hebrew, make his face shine upon us is an ancient Hebrew blessing that fathers would give to sons. And what it means is trying to impart your joy, make your face shine upon your children. What it really means at its core is making a baby laugh. You are trying to impart your joy to a baby. So you're just becoming a complete idiot. You didn't like to hear babies laugh. Right. It's the best, especially your own baby. Exactly. So make, may God be gracious us and bless us and make his face shine upon us. His posture towards us is as a father so desperate to impart joy to us that we just, he becomes a complete fool. Anything to get us to experience his joy. The question becomes, how do you receive that joy? You receive that joy by first acknowledging that that's his face towards you, that it's the kindness of the Lord that leads you to repentance. If you want to change your life, you have to start there. You have to start by looking at your father, repenting of the ways that you've misunderstood him because you can go on with these

lies. All you want, like God could never accept me or forgive me for the things I've done. Stop. Stop it right now. Like you need to stop those lies. Someone needs to tell you to shut up and repent of those lies. It's not okay to believe things about yourself that God doesn't believe about you. So stop it. If it's hard to believe because you had a really bad dad growing up, I'm not trying to be mean here. What I'm trying to say is you need to cut it out and you need to work towards it. If you feel worthless because someone took advantage of you, you need to go to the scriptures. You need to go to mentors. You need to go to a counselor. You need to do everything you can to align yourself with God's heart. And this, again, I'm not trying to be mean. I'm just saying that so many men wallow and you don't even know you're being soft. You think you're just like, oh, you don't know what I've been through. No, no, no, no. You are aligning yourself with your truth, which makes you a wild Mustang kicking and bucking and snorting and thinking you're powerful instead of putting the bit in your mouth and the saddle on your back and finally being used by the king to go to war. So if you want to be useful, first repent of your lies of how you see God, how you see his face towards you. Because if I were to ask you, if I were to ask you, how do you see God looking at you right now? And it's anything but gladness and joy, you're wrong, theological, which I don't, I don't know that most men that sit in the seats of our church, my church or our churches and men scrolling at midnight trying to figure out what to put their worth in in their life. If they see and recognize that when God looks at them, it's to use your phrase as a heavenly Father who is taking joy and seeing you. Yeah, have joy. Yeah. that needs to happen for, for so many of us, man is, is like, he is a heavenly father. He loves you. He wants the best for you. He's got a plan for your life. And, and by surrendering your life, you not only, it's not, it's not you losing all your power. It's actually him transitioning power to you. And, and that's the piece that has changed my life as a reason why I'm doing this. It's the reason why you're doing what you're doing. And, Ryan, I'm thankful for you. Um, let me ask you this, 20 years from right now, what do you hope people say that you fought for? As they think about Ryan Miller, social media guy, husband, Annie, dad, do a bunch of kids. Follower of Jesus. As you think about me because of Mustang, what do you hope people remember you as and say you fought for? Because I think you answering that would encourage some people. Um, it's really simple for me. I, I hope in 20 years of somewhere to look at my life,

they would say, man, that guy, he, he sent it. He took risks. He, he, you know, um, pursued doing big things for the kingdom. But the thing he fought for most was the secret place with Jesus. That every day, he fought in his schedule. He rearranged his schedule so that he could turn off his phone and be quiet with Jesus. Um, for the last, probably four months, I've made it a goal every single day that I want to have a 45 minute phone off time with the Lord. And I can't even begin to describe to you how much that's impacted my marriage, my parenting. I've heard the Lord speak to me about random stuff. I had the Holy Spirit tell me to take supplements the other day, random junk, dude. I had him, I had him reconfigure a massive, like expensive project I've been working on, completely reconfigured it because I just stopped and I asked him, what do you want to do here, Lord? And I heard the still small voice. This is deeply biblical. There will be a voice behind you saying, this is the way walk in it. The problem is we don't get quiet enough to hear it. There's only one man in the Bible that continually asks the Lord, what should I do? How should I do it? Will I win if I go up against this army? It's David. Everyone else who's known as man, I forgot his own heart. That's right. Now because of his spotless track record, heck no, dude. Heck no. Dude was an idiot. Like it says, it says in, uh, in the, in the springtime when Kings go to war, David was on a couch looking at a naked woman. Yep. Slapped with a shiba, got her pregnant, killed off her husband. This is, this isn't like, if you've got a past listening to this, like, bro, just read the Bible. Look at Moses. Look at David. Look at Peter. You got some idiots here and God chooses to use them. Why? Because they've been in the round pen with him enough to see that he's the only one worthy of the complete loss of ownership of their life and complete surrender to his leading. They put the bit in their mouth and the saddle on their back and they're able to be used to either me can inherit the earth because you cannot go to war with your master as a warhorse without the bit, without the saddle. And you are not the master. You are the Mustang. And once you realize that you have found fearlessness, I do not care what you think of me. Like respectfully, I just don't care. Um, I care as a friend, but I don't care to the point where it's going to move me. Sure. And that is only because the Lord chopped and chopped and chopped and chopped. He pruned out of me the fear of man. He's he has made me, I hope, a fraction of of what I will become as I continue to spend time with him and continue to learn from him and continue to suffer as a person and go into the wilderness seasons. And the Lord has me in a

really sweet season of life right now, but I don't want to be so arrogant as to presume that the Lord can't take me out of it. And I've learned that the wilderness is a grace. You know, Moses stood right in front of the promised land and he begs the Lord. He says, Lord, if your presence doesn't go with us, I don't want it because he actually learned that the treasure was in the presence of God in the wilderness. That was the whole point of the wilderness was for Moses to realize that the greatest gift I will ever have on this planet is God with me. Jehovah Jaira, Jehovah Rafa. Well, I think if I could summarize this podcast, and I'm going to do something I haven't done in gaining grab podcasts in just a minute, but it'd be loving. Loving Jesus with your whole heart is the most manly thing you could possibly do. thank you for calling guys to that. Guys, I hope this episode has been helpful to you. I'm gonna, I'm gonna pray it in this episode. Cool. And pray for you, but also to any for anybody who's listening right now. Alright, let's pray and then we're gonna, we'll be done. Great. Heavenly Father, thanks for the chance to be here. Thank you for Ryan and his ministry and everything he's doing. Thank you for the gift of meekness, the example of the Mustang. Lord, I just pray that every guy listening on this call would take this to heart. That that they'd walk into their business, their home. They got their air pods in the gym right now. Lord, that they would grow to become that man, a man after your own heart, where we get our strength and our power, not from a bunch of loud voices in the world, but of the quiet place, dependence on you God. And in that place of dependence, we find faith. Lord, may this generation of men change the definition, the world's definition of masculinity, to be people who truly follow Jesus to the ends of the earth, no matter what it costs. We love you, Lord. We thank you and your heavenly name, we pray. Amen. Amen. Hey, thanks for joining us on the Gaining Ground podcast. If you enjoyed today's content, it would help us a ton. If you could

like this video, click the subscribe button and turn on your notifications so you never miss an episode. If you're looking for more resources or how to get connected, please feel free to look in the description below, find our website Gaining Ground Men dot com. We'd love to connect with you there. We'll see you next time. (upbeat music)