Geoff Stroud just wrote an article defending himself against being called a cult. I want to walk you through it line by line, because it does the opposite of what he intended.

By Matthew Adams · May 25, 2026 · MyR2B Ministries Cult Watch

I want to sit with you for a few minutes and walk through something together. Geoff Stroud just published an article on his Substack called “The Voice They Don’t Recognize.” He wrote it in response to me naming his community as a cult. I want you to read it with me, slowly, because what he wrote is one of the clearest examples I’ve ever seen of a man making the case against himself.

I’m not going to mock him. I’m going to show you what’s actually there.

He calls himself a voice. Then acts like the gate.

Right in the middle of the article, Geoff quotes John 10:7, where Jesus says “I am the gate for the sheep.” Then he says this:

Sounds humble, right? Keep reading.

At the bottom of the same article he tells you that time is running out, that you need to come out of Babylon, and that the place to do it is his website, his community, his platform. His exact words are “Come out of Babylon here.” The link goes to jesuspluszero.com.

So he’s not the gate. He’s just the one telling you where the gate is, what it looks like, who the real sheep are, who the strangers are, what Babylon means, and where to go when you’re ready to leave it. For a fee.

That’s not pointing at the gate. That’s standing in it.

He says you need no human teacher. Then announces a teaching series.

This one I want you to read twice, because I couldn’t believe it when I saw it sitting there in the same article.

Near the end, Geoff writes this:

Then, in the very next paragraph, he announces a daily podcast teaching series covering Genesis, then every book of the New Testament, in chronological order, taught by him.

He writes both of those things. Back to back. Without pausing.

You don’t need any human teacher. Now subscribe to my daily teaching.

That’s not a minor slip. That’s the whole operation summed up in two paragraphs. He tells you that you’re free from human authority, and then he becomes your daily authority. He tells you the Good Shepherd is all you need, and then he inserts himself between you and the Shepherd every single day.

He calls me his “thorn in the flesh.”

I want to be straightforward with you about this one, because it matters.

When Geoff refers to me as his “thorn in the flesh,” he’s using Paul’s language from 2 Corinthians 12. Paul used that phrase to describe a physical affliction he believed God allowed in his life to keep him humble. It’s one of the most intimate pieces of writing in the New Testament.

Geoff is using it to describe a person raising documented concerns about his community.

Think about what that framing does to his followers. It doesn’t just dismiss me. It spiritualises me as something sent to test him, something to endure, something that proves he’s walking the narrow path. Anyone inside that community who reads it is now primed to see my concerns not as worth examining, but as spiritual opposition to be resisted.

That’s not humility. That’s armor. And it’s built out of scripture.

He defines what cults do. Then does it.

This is the part of the article I want you to sit with the longest.

Geoff writes that cults require “intense psychological maintenance, control, and fear to keep people in line.” He’s right about that. That’s a fair description of how high-control groups operate.

Now look at how he closes the article.

Ignore outside voices. Urgency. A special calling only you can fulfil. Time pressure.

He described what cults do, and then demonstrated it four sentences from the end of the same article.

I’m not saying that to be clever. I’m saying it because if you’re inside this community, this is the water you’re swimming in right now and it’s hard to see it when you’re in it.

What the scripture he’s using actually says

Geoff leans on John 10 throughout this article, and I want to spend a moment here because the passage is real and it’s worth reading properly.

In John 10:12, Jesus describes what distinguishes the true shepherd from the hired hand. The hired hand, Jesus says, runs when he sees danger coming. He abandons the sheep because they’re not his own.

The true shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.

He doesn’t build a platform around them. He doesn’t charge them a subscription to access his voice. He doesn’t tell them to ignore everyone outside his community. He lays his life down. For them. Not the other way around.

Geoff also uses Matthew 10:34-39, the passage where Jesus says he came to bring a sword, not peace, and that families would be divided. He uses it to explain why people following his teaching get pushback from family and friends.

But that passage is about the cost of following Jesus. Not the cost of following any teacher who invokes his name. Any leader in any group can use that passage to explain away every broken relationship his teaching produces. It proves nothing about whether the teaching is true.

A true Berean tests everything against scripture. Including the teacher telling them to be a Berean.

Here’s the danger, plain and simple

When a man starts claiming that criticism of him is prophecy being fulfilled in him, he’s moved into dangerous territory. When he frames his critics as proof that he’s on the narrow path, there’s no longer any feedback he can receive. There’s no correction possible. There’s no outside voice that can reach him or the people around him.

That’s not faith. That’s a closed system. And closed systems don’t protect the sheep inside them. They trap them.

If you’re part of this community right now, I want to ask you something directly. When did you last bring a genuine concern about Geoff’s teaching to someone outside his platform and feel completely free to do it? When did you last disagree with something he said and not feel like you were stepping away from the remnant?

If those questions feel uncomfortable, please don’t push that feeling away. Sit with it. That discomfort is worth more than you know.

The real Jesus doesn’t need urgency tactics to keep you close. He doesn’t need you to ignore critics. He doesn’t need a subscription model. He’s been calling people to himself for two thousand years and he’s never once told them that time is running out and they need to come to a particular website to find him.

You don’t need Geoff Stroud to find Jesus. You never did. And I love you enough to tell you that straight.

— Matthew Adams, MyR2B Ministries Cult Watch

Need to talk to someone?

If you recognize these patterns in a community you’re part of, or you’re trying to help someone you love who’s caught up in this, you don’t have to figure it out alone.

Reach out through cultwatch.com — confidential, no pressure, just people who understand high-control groups and want to help you think clearly.

You can reach me directly too. I mean that.

Nobody prays for patience. Not really. We pray for the thing we’re waiting for. We pray for the door to open, the answer to come, the situation to shift. But patience itself? The actual capacity to wait well without losing your mind or your faith? Nobody is lining up for that. And yet it is one of the most transformative things God can develop in a person. The problem is the only way He develops it is by giving you something to wait for.

So here we are.

THIS IS FOR YOU IF...

You are in a waiting season that has gone on longer than you expected. If you have been faithful and obedient and the thing still has not moved. If patience feels less like a virtue right now and more like a sentence. If you are starting to resent the wait instead of learn from it.

BOTTOM LINE UP FRONT

Waiting is not the gap between where you are and where God is taking you. Waiting is part of the trip. It is doing something in you that the destination alone never could.

OUR SPRINGBOARD FOR TODAY’S DISCUSSION IS:

“And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.” — Romans 8:28, ESV

MAIN MENTORING

Romans 8:28 is one of the most quoted and most misapplied verses in the Bible. People reach for it as a quick comfort when things go wrong. But Paul wrote it as a theological anchor. All things work together for good. Not some things. Not the comfortable things. All of it, including the waiting, including the silence, including the seasons that make no sense from where you are standing.

The word together is what most people skip. Paul is not saying every individual thing is good. He is saying that in the hands of God, all of it is being worked toward something good. The waiting season is part of that. It is not good in isolation. But God is using it to build something in you that movement and momentum simply cannot produce.

Waiting reveals what you actually believe about God when there is nothing visible to lean on. It strips away the props and leaves you with either a faith that was always rooted in Him or a faith that was always rooted in circumstances. That is not a comfortable process. But it is one of the most important ones He will ever take you through.

DAILY ACTION

Ask God today to show you one thing He is developing in you through this waiting season. Write it down. Then thank Him for it specifically, even if gratitude is hard to find right now.

THE DAILY CHARGE

The wait is not wasted. Every day you remain faithful in it, something is being built in you that will matter far beyond this season. Stay in it. Trust the process. God is working all of it together.

LET’S PRAY

God, I will be honest. I do not like waiting and I am not good at it. But I trust that You are doing something in this season that I cannot see yet. So today I am choosing to receive the wait as a gift instead of resenting it as a delay. Work in me what only this season can produce. I trust You with the timeline. Amen.

By Matthew Adams · May 25, 2026 · MyR2B Ministries Cult Watch

I want to talk to you. Not at you. Not past you. To you - because if you’re reading this, there’s a chance you’re already inside something that’s slowly tightening around you, and you haven’t quite been able to name it yet.

I know Geoff Stroud personally. I’m the “Matthew Adams” he named in his recent Substack article - the one he brushed off as a “thorn in the flesh” for raising concerns about his community, Jesus Plus ZERO. He called what I said a “cult label” and used it to pull his followers closer to him.

That response alone should tell you something.

I’m not writing this to attack a man. I’m writing this because I’ve watched people I care about walk into this community looking for Jesus, and come out the other side more isolated, more dependent, and less able to trust their own spiritual instincts than when they went in.

That matters to me more than being right about this.

He gets some things right - and that’s what makes it dangerous

Let me be fair, because you deserve that. Geoff’s not wrong that institutions can get corrupt. He’s not wrong that Jesus called people out of religious systems that stopped serving God. He’s not wrong that the narrow path is narrow.

These are true things. And they’re powerful in his hands precisely because they’re true.

The most effective manipulation never starts with a lie. It starts with something real - something that scratches an itch you already have - and then it slowly redirects your trust away from everyone else and toward the one person with the answers.

When you first come across Geoff’s teaching it feels like fresh air. “Come out of Babylon.” “Religion has failed you.” “You don’t need a middleman.” These land because there’s real pain behind them for a lot of people who’ve been hurt by the church. He speaks to that pain well.

But watch what happens next.

The move that changes everything

In the same article where Geoff says he’s “merely a voice in the wilderness pointing at the gate” - not the gate itself - he’s also offering you a paid subscription community, a daily podcast, and a website called jesuspluszero.com where you can, in his own words, “Come out of Babylon here.”

Read that again. Here. At his address. On his platform. Through his content.

He tells you that you don’t need a human middleman, then positions himself as the guide for every step of the journey out. He says the sheep need no teaching from any human - then announces a chapter-by-chapter series through every book of the New Testament. He says he’s just a finger pointing at the moon, then asks you to pay to follow his finger.

This isn’t a contradiction he’s missed. It’s the architecture of the whole thing.

Five patterns worth knowing - not just about Geoff

I want to give you something you can carry with you, because what Geoff’s doing isn’t unique to him. These patterns show up in high-control groups all across the church. Learn to spot them:

• Persecution as proof. Any criticism - from family, from friends, from other Christians, from me - becomes evidence the leader’s on the right track. The circle closes: disagreement confirms he’s right, which means there’s no outside voice that can ever reach you.

• Special identity. You’re “the remnant.” You’re the elect who hear what others can’t. You left Babylon when others were too blind or too cowardly. That identity isn’t just flattering - it makes leaving feel like a betrayal of who you now are.

• “I’m not the authority” while being the authority. The leader points to God constantly, while being the sole interpreter of what God means. Your access to God gets mediated through his lens, his content, his community - even while he tells you that you need no mediator.

• Separation from outside relationships. Family, friends, and former church communities get framed as Babylon. Gradually the people in your life who might offer a different perspective become spiritually unsafe. The only safe relationships are inside the community.

• Urgency and exclusivity. “Time is running out.” “Come out now.” “The walls of Babylon are crumbling.” Urgency stops you thinking slowly. Exclusivity stops you thinking with others. Both together stop you thinking at all.

What the Bible actually says - and what gets left out

Geoff leans heavily on John 10, the Good Shepherd passage. It’s a beautiful passage. But he quotes the part about sheep following the Shepherd’s voice and skips the part that matters most for his situation.

In John 10:12, Jesus describes the hireling - the one who’s not the true shepherd — as the one who sees danger coming and runs to protect himself. The mark of a true shepherd, Jesus says, is that he lays down his life for the sheep. He doesn’t build a subscription model around them.

Geoff also quotes Matthew 10 - the sword passage - to explain why families get divided over his teaching. But Jesus gave that warning about the cost of following him, not the cost of following any teacher who claims to speak for him. Any leader can use that passage to insulate himself from accountability. It proves nothing about who’s right.

A true Berean - the kind Geoff claims his followers are - tests everything against scripture. Including this. Including him.

If you’re inside this, I’m not your enemy

I know what it’s like to read something like this when you’re part of a community like Geoff’s. It feels like an attack. It feels like exactly the kind of outside pressure your leader warned you about. It might even feel like confirmation that he’s right.

I’m asking you to sit with that feeling for a minute before you act on it.

Ask yourself a few honest questions. Not for me - for you.

When did you last spend time with someone who disagrees with Geoff’s teaching, without it being framed as spiritually dangerous? When did you last question something he taught and feel completely free to take that question outside the community? If you walked away tomorrow - not because you stopped believing in Jesus, but just because you weren’t sure about this specific group - would you have people around you? Would you know how to find your feet?

If those questions feel uncomfortable, they’re worth sitting with.

Jesus does call people to himself. He doesn’t call people to a paid Substack. Any shepherd worth following will point you toward a life that exists and thrives outside of his direct presence - because that’s what freedom actually looks like.

You’re allowed to think slowly. You’re allowed to ask questions out loud. You’re allowed to take your time. Anyone who tells you that time’s running out and you need to decide now - about a community, not about Jesus himself - is using urgency to get around your judgment.

Your judgment isn’t the enemy. It’s a gift.

The real Jesus - the one in your Bible, not behind a paywall - is so much better than what’s being sold here. And I love you enough to tell you that straight.

— Matthew Adams, MyR2B Ministries Cult Watch

This is Geoffrey’s Article:

Jesus Plus ZERO End Times Remnant Community

The Voice They Don’t Recognise

There is a predictable pattern that occurs whenever people begin to untangle themselves from the machinery of institutionalised religion and cultural compromise…

Read more

a day ago · Geoff Stroud

There are seasons where prayer feels like talking to a ceiling. Where you open your Bible and the words are familiar but nothing is landing. Where the presence of God that once felt so close and so real now feels like a memory you’re trying to hold onto. And the scary part isn’t just the silence. It’s what the silence starts to make you believe.

If you’ve been in one of those seasons lately, I don’t want you to feel alone in it. It is more common than people admit and more survivable than it feels.

THIS IS FOR YOU IF...

You love God but you haven’t felt Him in a while. If your faith is intact but your feelings are lagging behind it. If you’ve been doing all the right things but the connection feels thin. If you’re starting to wonder whether the distance is your fault or whether something has shifted that you can’t quite identify.

BOTTOM LINE UP FRONT

The feeling of God’s distance is real. The fact of God’s distance is not. He has not moved. Your emotions are not a reliable GPS for His location.

OUR SPRINGBOARD FOR TODAY’S DISCUSSION IS:

“Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.” — Joshua 1:9, ESV

MAIN MENTORING

God said that to Joshua right before one of the most daunting assignments of his life. Moses was dead. The Jordan River was ahead. The Promised Land was on the other side and Joshua was the one who had to lead the people into it. The pressure was real and the weight was enormous.

And God didn’t say you will feel My presence every step of the way. He said I am with you wherever you go. Those are not the same promise. One is about emotion. The other is about fact. God was making a statement about His nature and His commitment, not about how Joshua was going to feel on any given morning.

That distinction matters enormously for where you are right now.

Feelings are real. They are not nothing. But they are also not the most reliable source of information about spiritual reality. Feelings are influenced by sleep, by stress, by unresolved conflict, by physical health, by seasons and cycles that have nothing to do with the state of your relationship with God. You can feel far from someone who is standing right next to you. You can feel alone in a room full of people who love you. Feelings lie sometimes. Not maliciously. Just because they are feelings and not facts.

The fact is this. God is with you. Not was with you. Not will be with you when you get yourself together. Is with you. Right now. In the dry season, in the quiet season, in the season where nothing feels alive and nothing feels close. He is present in it the same way He is present in the breakthrough moments. His presence is not performance based. It does not fluctuate based on how spiritually alive you feel on a Tuesday morning.

What God asks of you in those seasons is not to manufacture a feeling you don’t have. He asks you to choose truth over sensation. To say out loud what you know even when you don’t feel it. To anchor yourself to what He said rather than to what you feel in the moment.

That is not fake faith. That is mature faith. And it is exactly the kind of faith that keeps people standing when the feelings finally catch back up.

DAILY ACTION

Write down one thing you know to be true about God today, regardless of how you feel. Read it out loud before you do anything else. Let truth lead and let your emotions follow.

THE DAILY CHARGE

God has not gone anywhere. He is with you in the dry season the same way He is with you in the fruitful one. Stand on what you know. The feelings will catch up.

LET’S PRAY

God, I am going to be honest. I have not felt You lately and that has scared me more than I wanted to admit. But I am choosing today to believe what You said over what I feel. You are here. You have not moved. Help me to trust that even when I cannot feel it. That is all I am asking for today. Amen.

Monday has a reputation.

Most men dread it. They coast through Sunday trying not to think about it and then wake up Monday morning already behind — mentally scattered, spiritually unprepared, reacting to whatever hits them first instead of leading the day with any kind of intention.

I have been that man. More times than I want to admit. Sundays that should have been preparation turned into avoidance, and Mondays that should have been purposeful turned into survival mode before 9 AM.

And here is what I learned the hard way. A man who enters Monday unprepared does not just have a bad Monday. He has a bad week. Because the tone you set at the beginning of something tends to follow you through it. The posture you carry into Monday morning is usually the posture you are still carrying by Wednesday, when the pressure has stacked and the fatigue is real and the small decisions that accumulate into character are being made.

Monday is not the enemy. Monday is the assignment. And a man of God does not wait to see what Monday brings. He decides before Monday gets there who he is going to be when it does.

Start the week on your feet. Not scrambling. Not reacting. Standing.

Bottom Line Up Front: The way a man enters the week is a decision, not a default. A warrior does not stumble into Monday. He walks into it with his armor on, his mind set, and his assignment clear. This week does not have to happen to you. You can happen to it.

SUN TZU SAID

“Every battle is won before it is fought.”

Sun Tzu was not talking about luck or talent. He was talking about preparation. The commander who wins has already won in his mind, in his positioning, in his planning — before a single soldier takes the field. The fight itself is just the execution of what was already decided.

Most men wait until they are in the middle of the week before they start thinking about how to handle it. By then they are already taking hits they could have anticipated. Already behind in places they could have been ahead. Already reacting instead of leading.

The battle for your week begins before Monday starts. It begins on Sunday night when you either prepare or you don’t. It begins Monday morning when you either arm yourself or you walk out the door exposed. The man who wins his week before it starts is not lucky. He is prepared. And preparation is a choice that every man in this room has the ability to make.

SCRIPTURE ANCHOR

“Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil.” Ephesians 5:15–16 (ESV)

Paul is not telling men to be busy. He is telling them to be intentional.

There is a difference. A busy man fills his hours with activity. An intentional man fills his hours with purpose. The busy man gets to Friday exhausted and wonders where the week went. The intentional man gets to Friday having moved something forward — in his family, his faith, his calling — because he did not let the week just happen to him.

The phrase “because the days are evil” is the part most men skip over. Paul is not being dramatic. He is being tactical. He is saying the environment you are walking into is not neutral. It is not going to cooperate with your growth, your family, your purpose. The world, the flesh, and the enemy all have a vote on how your week goes — and if you are not walking with wisdom and intentionality, their vote tends to win by default.

Monday is not a blank slate. It is contested ground. Walk into it like a man who knows that.

THE LESSON

A man who wants to stand firm under pressure cannot wait until the pressure arrives to figure out where he is standing. That is too late. The foundation has to be set before the weight comes down on it.

Monday is where that principle gets tested every single week.

Here are three things a man of God does to start the week on his feet.

He sets his mind before the week sets it for him.

The first hour of Monday morning is a competition. Your inbox wants your attention. Your calendar wants your anxiety. The news wants your fear. Your unresolved problems from last week want your focus. Everything is fighting for the first real estate of your mind — and if you do not claim it first, something else will.

Before you open your phone. Before you check your email. Before you let the noise of the week in — take that first block of time and give it to God. Not as a ritual. As a tactical decision. Because a man whose mind is set on the Word before it is set on the world is a different man by midday than the one who let Monday have the first word.

That difference shows up in how he responds to the difficult conversation. In how he leads when the plan falls apart. In how he treats his family when he comes home tired. The morning shapes everything that follows.

He names his assignment for the week.

Not his task list. His assignment.

A task list is what needs to get done. An assignment is why it matters. A man with only a task list can execute his week and still feel like he missed the point. A man who knows his assignment — what he is building, who he is protecting, what he is called to advance — does his tasks inside a framework of meaning.

Before Monday gets going, every man should be able to answer two questions. What is God asking me to move forward this week? And who is depending on me to show up as the man God made me to be?

When a man can answer those two questions on a Monday morning, the week has a spine. It has direction. And when pressure comes — and it will come — he has something to orient himself around instead of just absorbing the hit and hoping to stay upright.

He decides in advance who he will be when it gets hard.

Because it will get hard. Probably by Wednesday. Maybe sooner.

There will be a moment this week where someone says something that gets under his skin. Where a plan fails and he has to decide between frustration and flexibility. Where he is tired and the easiest thing is to check out and the right thing is to stay present. Where a decision needs to be made and the shortcut is tempting and the right path costs more than he wants to pay.

That moment is coming. And the man who wins it is the man who already decided, before Monday started, who he is going to be when it arrives.

Not feeling. Not reaction. Decision. In advance.

This week is going to test you. Start it on your feet, with your armor on, your assignment clear, and your character already decided. That is not a performance. That is preparation. And a prepared man is one of the most dangerous things the enemy can face on a Monday morning.

THE DAILY CHARGE

Before this day gets any further, take five minutes. Set your mind. Name your assignment. Decide in advance who you are going to be when this week gets hard.

Don’t let Monday happen to you. You walk into it.

PRAYER

Lord, I am walking into another week. And I am not coming in unprepared.

You know what this week holds. You know what is going to try to knock me off my feet — the conversations, the pressures, the decisions, the moments where I am going to have to choose between what is easy and what is right. I am asking You now, before any of that arrives, to go ahead of me.

Set my mind on what is true. Anchor my identity in who You say I am before the world says something different. Give me clarity about my assignment so I do not spend the week busy but directionless. And when the hard moment comes — and it will come — remind me of who I decided to be before I got there.

I want to stand firm this week. Not by willpower. By preparation. By staying connected to You as the source of everything I need to hold the line.

This week is Yours. Lead me through it.

Amen.

Bad week for sleep.

I lie in the dark and go back over the same ground until the light comes through. Used to be the investigation keeping me awake. Now it is the feeling that somewhere out there a man is doing the same thing about me.

Have not been able to shake that since Thursday.

Worked the lower market Monday and Tuesday. Legitimate work. Mended four sandal straps, resoled a merchant’s traveling boot, moved two small belt pieces to a Galilean trader heading north. Enough coin to justify the presence. Enough ground covered to call it useful.

I was watching for him the whole time.

The man from the copper tray. The one Mattathias flagged at the lower gate last week.

Did not see him Monday. Did not see him Tuesday. Checked the streets the way you check them when you already know something is wrong but cannot name it yet. Nothing I could put a hand on.

That bothered me more than seeing him would have.

When a man knows he has been spotted he does one of two things. Pulls back and waits. Or changes everything about how he works so you are no longer looking for the right shape.

By Wednesday I was moving like he had done the second thing.

Jonah noticed something was off by midweek.

He did not come out and say it. Wednesday evening, sitting in the courtyard after the day’s work, he asked if I wanted him to take a different route to the market the next morning.

Just like that. Casual. Like it was nothing.

It was not nothing.

I looked at him. He looked back. Neither of us said what we were actually talking about.

I told him yes. Eastern approach rather than the main gate road. He nodded and that was the end of it.

I have been thinking about that exchange ever since. Four months ago this man was a stranger at the Jordan who let me travel with him because his sister asked and he decided to take a chance. Now he is reading a situation he has not been told about and finding the right question without being given the information to ask it.

I do not entirely know what to do with that. So I am writing it down instead.

Sara asked me Thursday where we were going next.

Not the next market. The larger question. Where this whole road leads eventually.

She was at the table mending the hem on her outer cloak. Working the needle at the angle I showed her. She asked it without looking up. Just put it in the air and kept working.

I told her I did not know yet.

She nodded like she expected that.

Then she said Jonah thinks they are getting close to something.

I asked what she meant.

She thought for a moment.

“He gets quiet in a different way,” she said. “Like he is listening for something he has almost heard before.”

I did not have an answer for that. She did not need one. She went back to the hem.

I sat there for a while after she said it.

She is fourteen years old and she just described Jonah better than I could have.

Went back to the lower gate area Friday.

Same bundle, same pace, same route I walked last week. Stopped at two stalls, made one small repair, moved on. Kept my eyes working.

An hour in I found something at the corner where the spice row meets the cloth merchants. There is a low wall there where travelers rest. I remembered it from last week because of the way the foot traffic splits in two directions at that spot. Clear sight line to the passage I ducked into when I lost the tail.

Scratch marks on top of the wall. Fresh. Four lines and a diagonal crossing them.

Five days. Someone had been counting days from that position. Coming back to the last place they had eyes on me and marking time from there.

Patient. Not rattled. Not gone.

I smoothed the marks with my thumb and walked on.

Mattathias found me Saturday near the Temple courts.

Came up on my left the way he always does. Never behind, never the right side. Just appears at your elbow.

He did not look at me.

“He was at the inn three nights ago,” he said.

I kept walking.

“Which inn,” I said.

“Yours.”

I did not break stride. Did not change my face. But something went cold in my chest that had nothing to do with the morning air.

“How long,” I said.

“Long enough to know the layout.”

He turned at the next corner and was gone.

I walked back toward the inn faster than I should have. Not running. Close to it.

Jonah was inside with Sara. She had the mended cloak folded in her lap. They both looked up when I came through the door. Jonah read my face in about half a second and started to stand.

I told him to sit. Told him everything was fine. Told him I needed to check something in the back room.

He sat down. He did not believe me.

Sara went very still. She looked from me to Jonah and back. She did not ask anything. She waited.

I checked the back room. The window. The latch on the outer door. Nothing obviously disturbed. Nothing moved or searched that I could see.

That is the problem with a careful man. You would not know. Not until he decided you should.

I came back out and sat down. Jonah handed me a cup without being asked. Sara kept her eyes on the table and her hands on the cloak.

We sat without talking for a while.

I have been in tighter spots. That is not the thing sitting heavy right now.

The thing sitting heavy is that neither of them asked for this. Jonah is a Judean traveler with a sister to look after and a road to walk. Sara is fourteen and she is mending hems at an inn table because that is the only home she has right now.

And somewhere out there is a man who has been counting days on a wall and now knows the layout of the place where they sleep.

He thinks he is watching a leatherworker.

That is the only edge I have right now.

I need to find out who he is before he figures out it is not enough of one.

[To Be Continued...]

I want to apologize for going quiet the past several days and for not sharing what was happening sooner.

Many of you knew I recently underwent hernia surgery, but what many do not realize is just how invasive and complicated the operation truly was. This was not a small or simple procedure. It was a major operation that required a 12-inch incision and extensive surgical repair. Recovery alone has already been physically demanding.

Then things suddenly became much worse.

I honestly believed the incision site had become severely infected because I started crashing physically in a very serious way. The pain became overwhelming, my body began shutting down, and things escalated quickly enough that I ended up in the hospital for 4 days.

What the doctors eventually discovered shocked even me.

They SLAMMED my body with ton of antibiotics.

The issue was not the incision after all. It turned out I had a massive kidney stone, about the quarter size of a golf ball, creating a serious medical situation on top of everything else my body was already trying to recover from. I spent four days in the hospital dealing with complications, pain management, testing, procedures, and recovery.

I should have communicated sooner, and I’m sorry for the silence. I know many of you care deeply about Michelle and me, and I never want to leave this community wondering what happened.

Right now, I’m home recovering, moving slower, listening to my doctors, and trying to regain my strength. I would deeply appreciate your prayers during this season. Please pray for healing, wisdom, strength, peace, and a full recovery with no further complications.

I do need to stay home till my body can regain it’s immunity.

Thank you for your patience, your kindness, your support, and your prayers. They mean more than you know.

Matthew

A daily 10-minute devotional through Genesis and the New Testament? That’s genuinely a solid idea. Wanting serious, uncompromising Bible study is a legitimate and healthy desire. Nothing about wanting depth is wrong. Hold onto that — because the desire for real fellowship and real teaching is exactly what makes the red flags below dangerous. Predatory dynamics in ministry almost always start by meeting a real need.

Now, the Red Flags — In Plain Language

1. “The Remnant” Identity

This word does appear in Scripture. But watch how it’s being used here. In this post, you are the remnant. The scattered, special ones. The escapees. Everyone else is, implicitly, Laodicea — the lukewarm church Christ rebukes in Revelation.

That framing does something subtle but powerful: it tells you before you’ve studied a single verse that you are already the spiritually elite. That’s not how healthy Bible teaching works. Healthy teaching humbles you. It doesn’t recruit you by flattering your spiritual status.

2. “Escapees from Laodicea”

This phrase should stop you cold. It positions the mainstream church — your current church, your pastor, your denomination — as the enemy you’ve fled. Before Geoff has taught you anything, he’s already told you that the people most likely to hold him accountable in your life are compromised.

That is a textbook isolation move. It doesn’t matter that it’s done gently and spiritually. The effect is the same.

3. The “Sacred Hearth” Behind a Paywall

Real community, he says, requires a protected space away from the open internet. That’s not unreasonable on its face — many healthy ministries have private forums.

But notice the sequence: the free content broadcasts the call, and the real fellowship, the deep questions, the mutual strength — that’s $10/month. The most vulnerable place of spiritual processing is now a paid product. Ask yourself: did Jesus charge for the upper room?

4. “Fiercely Protected on the Inside”

His words, not mine. He describes the community as fiercely protected on the inside, yet loud enough on the outside. That’s a description of a closed system with a recruitment funnel. Healthy churches are open to scrutiny. They welcome outside accountability. A community that is deliberately fierce about who gets inside and what happens there is a community without external checks.

5. One Voice, One Vision, One Man

Read the post again. There is no mention of elders. No co-teachers. No accountability structure. No denominational covering. It’s Geoff’s journey, Geoff’s decision, Geoff’s portal, Geoff’s roadmap. Even the self-title — Remnant Journeyman — is a solo identity, not a team one.

Scripture is clear: in a multitude of counselors there is safety (Proverbs 11:14). A ministry built entirely around one man’s singular vision, with a private paid community and no visible accountability, is a structure that protects the leader, not the sheep.

The Seeker Problem

Here is a question the post never answers: where does an unbeliever go?

If someone outside the faith — genuinely curious, wrestling with God, carrying hard questions — finds the Single Eye Podcast and wants to go deeper, what happens? They hit a $10/month wall. Not a church door. Not a pastor’s open office. A payment portal.

The Gospel has never been a subscription service. The most searching, disruptive, faith-shaking questions in Scripture came from outsiders. The Syrophoenician woman. Nicodemus. The woman at the well. Thomas. None of them were charged for access. None of them were filtered out to protect the teaching environment.

Charging for the deeper community doesn’t just inconvenience seekers. It removes them entirely. And that should trouble every serious believer because the early church grew precisely because it was scandalously open — not in spite of it.

The Accountability Problem

Now the harder question — and it’s the most important one in the whole post:

Is the paywall less about protecting seekers from confusion and more about protecting Geoffrey from challenge?

Read his own words again. He wants the community fiercely protected on the inside. He describes it as a refuge from the noise and vitriol of the open internet.

That sounds reasonable. Until you ask: what counts as vitriol?

In high-control ministry environments, “noise and vitriol” has a way of expanding over time to include:

• Honest theological disagreement

• Questions that challenge the teacher’s conclusions

• Comparison with other scholars or traditions

• Members talking to outside pastors or teachers

• Anyone who says “I’m not sure that’s what the text means”

A closed, paid community with a single teacher and no external accountability is a room where Geoffrey’s interpretation becomes the ceiling. You’re not paying for community. You’re paying for an environment where the teaching cannot be effectively questioned — because the only people in the room are the ones who already bought in, literally and spiritually.

That is not Bible study. That is a controlled information environment dressed in Scripture.

The Mentor Moment

If a young believer came to me and said “I found this online ministry and I really feel like it gets me” — here’s what I’d say:

The Bottom Line

Geoffrey charges unbelievers to ask questions and charges believers to never truly challenge him — and calls both of those things protecting the remnant.

This post may represent a sincere man with genuine faith. That’s entirely possible. But the structures and language in this single post match several recognized patterns of unhealthy, high-control religious dynamics:

• Elite identity language

• Implicit separation from the broader church

• Monetized inner community

• Single-leader authority with no visible accountability

• Closed, fiercely protected group culture

• Unbelievers filtered out before they can ask hard questions

• Believers filtered in only after financial and ideological commitment

You don’t need to call it a cult. You just need to ask the questions. And if the answers aren’t transparent, that is your answer.

To be straight with you: Geoff does get a couple of things right here.

Genesis is foundational to the Christian faith. And he’s correct that if death existed before Adam’s sin, it creates a real problem for understanding why Jesus had to die. That’s a legitimate theological point that many serious Bible scholars wrestle with. He also rightly connects Jesus’ warning about “the days of Noah” to His return. That’s solid scripture.

So — give credit where it’s due. But what Geoff does with these correct starting points is where the wheels come off.

Where Geoff Goes From Teacher to Gatekeeper

Here’s the thing you need to understand about Young Earth Creationism (YEC) — the belief that God created the world in six literal 24-hour days roughly 6,000 years ago. It’s a legitimate Christian position. Millions of sincere believers hold it. That’s fine.

The problem isn’t that Geoff believes it.

The problem is what he does with it.

Geoff doesn’t say “I believe YEC is the most faithful reading of Genesis.” He says it’s the only reading a true Christian can hold. Everyone else — old-earth creationists, framework hypothesis scholars, theistic evolutionists — is guilty of “theological poison” and has “blurred the single eye.”

Here’s what he’s not telling you: serious, godly, Bible-believing scholars have held old-earth positions for centuries. B.B. Warfield — one of the greatest Reformed theologians who ever lived — was not a young-earth creationist. C.S. Lewis wasn’t. Many deeply orthodox Christians aren’t. Geoff’s framework requires you to believe all of them were spiritually blind.

That’s not teaching. That’s gatekeeping.

The Free Will “Myth” — Watch This Move Carefully

Geoff calls the belief in free will a “myth,” a product of “pride,” and one of the four great deceptions of our age.

What he’s actually doing is dressing up a specific Calvinist theological position — one that has been debated by equally sincere, Bible-saturated Christians for 500 years — and presenting it as settled truth. The other side of that debate, Arminianism, has serious biblical scholars and a mountain of scripture behind it.

Geoff isn’t presenting a debate. He’s declaring a winner and calling the losers deceived.

Why does this matter for a cult watch? Because once Geoff has convinced you that your free will isn’t real, you’re far less likely to trust your own judgment about him.

The Timeline That Doesn’t Add Up

Geoff presents a confident, mathematical timeline placing Jesus’ arrival at the exact 4,000-year mark of human history — as if this is a proven fact that validates everything else he’s saying.

Two problems:

First, his own dates are jumbled. His chronology table lists Adam in “0–1,000 BC” — which is backwards. Standard YEC puts Adam around 4,000 BC. It’s either a basic error or confused formatting. Not a great look for someone selling mathematical precision as proof of God’s plan.

Second, even within YEC scholarship, the genealogies in Genesis 5 and 11 are debated. The Hebrew Old Testament and the Greek Old Testament (the Septuagint) give different numbers. Treating one version as producing an airtight calculation is selective. It’s a debated estimate dressed up as a mathematical certainty.

Why This Fits Geoff’s Larger Pattern

Here’s the big picture — and this is what you need to understand if you’re watching someone you love get drawn into his community.

Geoff has taken a specific bundle of theological positions:

• Young Earth Creationism

• Hard Calvinist sovereignty (no free will)

• His own end-times timeline

• His “Single Eye” framework

...and he has welded them together into one package that he presents as the faithful Christian worldview. Reject any piece of it and you’re not just theologically wrong — in Geoff’s world, you’re spiritually compromised, double-minded, or deceived.

This is the classic cult-adjacent move. It’s not about any one doctrine. It’s about creating a framework so tightly bundled that questioning any part of it feels like you’re questioning God Himself.

He does this with urgency language too. “We are in the final minutes of the 6,000th year.” That kind of language keeps people anxious, keeps them engaged, and keeps them from stepping back and asking: wait, who put Geoff in charge of the clock?

The answer, of course, is Geoff.

The Bottom Line in Plain English

Geoff Stroud is a man with strong theological opinions — some of them shared by many Christians, some of them held by a minority, and some of them unique to his own system.

The danger isn’t his opinions. The danger is that he presents all of them as the only faithful option, wraps them in end-times urgency, charges a subscription fee to access the full framework, and operates with zero accountability to any church, elder board, or theological body.

A genuine teacher says: “Here’s what I believe, and here’s why — now go test it.”

A gatekeeper says: “This is the only faithful view — and if you can’t see that, your eye isn’t single.”

Geoff Stroud is a gatekeeper.

MyR2B Ministries Cult Watch — equipping believers to test all things and hold fast to what is good. (1 Thessalonians 5:21)

Based On: Jeremiah 1:5 ESV — “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.”

My Beloved…

I knew you before you knew yourself.

Before the doubt crept in. Before the failures stacked up. Before the voices — yours and everyone else’s — started building a case for why you weren’t enough. Before any of that, I knew you. I saw you completely, without the filter of your insecurity or the noise of your past, and I chose you anyway. Not reluctantly. Not as a backup plan. Deliberately, intentionally, and with full knowledge of everything you would walk through.

I want to talk to the part of you that has forgotten that today.

You have been measuring yourself against a standard I never gave you. Comparing your insides to other people’s outsides. Tallying up your shortcomings like they tell the final story of who you are. But they don’t. They never did. The final word on who you are was spoken before you ever arrived — and it was spoken by Me, not by your failures, not by your critics, not by the narrative you’ve built in your own head on your worst days.

I consecrated you. That word means I set you apart — not because you performed well enough to earn it, but because I decided it before the performance ever began. Your calling is not contingent on your consistency. Your identity is not built on your track record. Those things matter, yes — but they are not the foundation. I am the foundation. And I do not shift.

I know you’ve been doubting yourself lately. I know the internal conversation has been louder than usual — the one that says you’re too much of this and not enough of that, that someone else could do what you’re supposed to do better, that maybe you misheard Me or misunderstood what I put in you. I hear that conversation. And I want to interrupt it today with something true.

I do not make mistakes. I made you on purpose. The gifts I put in you are not accidents waiting to be corrected. The calling I placed on your life did not come with an expiration date tied to your performance. I am not up here reconsidering you every time you fall short. I am a Father who knew exactly what He was getting when He chose you — and I chose you anyway. Completely. Permanently. Gladly.

You are not too late. You are not too broken. You are not too far behind. You are exactly where I can reach you, which means you are exactly where I can use you. Stop waiting until you feel worthy and start walking in what I already declared over you.

I knew you before you doubted yourself. And what I knew then — I still know now.

You are Mine. Walk like it.

— Your Father

At some point most of us learned — consciously or not — that making ourselves smaller made life easier. You stopped talking about the vision because people looked at you funny. You dialed back the passion because it made others uncomfortable. You started qualifying everything God put in you so nobody would think you were arrogant or out of touch. And over time, what started as social awareness turned into something much more dangerous — a habit of shrinking that you started calling humility.

I want to challenge that today. Because I don’t think God is impressed by it.

THIS IS FOR YOU IF…

You’ve been holding back who God made you to be because of how it might land with the people around you. If you’ve been editing your calling to fit someone else’s comfort level. If you’ve mistaken smallness for holiness. If deep down you know you’ve been playing it safe in a way that has nothing to do with wisdom and everything to do with fear of what people think.

BOTTOM LINE UP FRONT

Shrinking is not the same as humility. Humility says I know who I am and I give God the glory. Shrinking says I know who I am and I’ll hide it so nobody gets uncomfortable. One honors God. The other just protects you.

OUR SPRINGBOARD FOR TODAY’S DISCUSSION IS:

“For God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.” — 2 Timothy 1:7, ESV

MAIN MENTORING

Paul wrote that verse to Timothy — a young leader who was genuinely gifted but who had developed a pattern of holding back. He was timid in situations that required boldness. He was hesitant when the moment called for clarity. And Paul didn’t coddle him about it. He reminded him directly that the spirit of timidity he was operating in was not from God.

That is a significant statement. Because a lot of us have spiritualized our shrinking. We call it waiting on God when it’s actually waiting on courage. We call it humility when it’s actually people-pleasing. We call it wisdom when it’s actually the fear of being seen, judged, or rejected dressed up in religious language.

God gave you a spirit of power. That word in the Greek is dunamis — it’s the same root word as dynamite. It is not a quiet, apologetic, just-trying-not-to-bother-anyone kind of power. It is intentional, purposeful, God-given strength designed to move things. And He paired it with love and self-control — which means it’s not reckless, it’s not arrogant, it’s not about drawing attention to yourself. But it is absolutely meant to be used.

Here’s the thing about shrinking that doesn’t get said enough. It feels safe, but it is actually one of the most costly choices you can make. Every time you edit down what God put in you to avoid someone else’s discomfort, you are choosing their momentary ease over your God-given assignment. You are prioritizing the approval of people over the assignment of God. And that trade is never worth it.

True humility doesn’t make you small. It makes you accurately sized. It keeps you from thinking more highly of yourself than you ought — but it also keeps you from thinking less highly of yourself than God does. Both extremes miss the mark. God made you on purpose, gifted you on purpose, and placed you exactly where you are on purpose. Walking fully in that is not arrogance. It is faithfulness.

Stop shrinking. Step into what God built you for — fully, unapologetically, and with the spirit of power He already gave you.

DAILY ACTION

Identify one area where you have been consistently playing small. Take one visible step today toward operating at full capacity in that area — even if it feels uncomfortable.

THE DAILY CHARGE

You were not made to fit quietly into someone else’s comfort zone. You were made to carry something significant. Walk in it fully, give God the glory completely, and stop apologizing for what He deliberately put in you.

LET’S PRAY

God, forgive me for calling my shrinking humility when it was really just fear. I don’t want to stand before You one day having buried what You gave me to protect what people thought of me. Give me the courage to walk fully in what You built me for — not for my own glory, but for Yours. I’m done playing small. Amen.

Not with the last shot fired. Not with the objective secured. Not even with the team safely back at base.

It ends with a debrief.

The team sits down - together, honestly, without ego protecting itself - and they go through what happened. What worked. What didn’t. Who made a good call. Who made a bad one. What they would do differently next time. What they need to carry forward and what they need to leave behind.

The debrief is not punishment. It is not shame. It is the mechanism by which a good team becomes a great one. By which lessons get locked in instead of lost. By which the same mistake doesn’t get made twice - and the same ground doesn’t have to be taken again.

Without the debrief, every operation is just an event.

With it, every operation - including the hard ones, especially the hard ones - becomes training.

Now bring that into your marriage.

Because here’s what most men do after a conflict with their wife.

Nothing.

Or worse - they do the counterfeit version of nothing. They go quiet. They act like it didn’t happen. They wait for the temperature to drop and then try to return to normal without ever actually addressing what occurred. No ownership. No repair. No honest conversation about what went wrong and why.

They call that “moving on.”

God calls it something else.

Jesus was direct about this - more direct than most men are comfortable with:

“So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift.” — Matthew 5:23–24

Leave your gift at the altar.

Jesus is saying that unrepaired relationship is serious enough to interrupt worship. Serious enough to stop what you’re doing - even something as significant as bringing an offering to God - and go deal with it first. Reconciliation is not optional in the kingdom. It is not something you get to when it’s convenient. It is not something you wait for the other person to initiate.

You go.

The man goes.

That’s leadership.

Paul reinforces it from a different angle - and this one cuts deep if you let it:

“Love is not irritable or resentful.” — 1 Corinthians 13:5

Not irritable. Not resentful.

That word resentful in the original Greek is logizomai - it means to keep a record, to calculate, to log. Paul is saying that love does not keep a running ledger of offenses. It does not store up the history of every hard moment, every sharp word, every conflict that didn’t get resolved cleanly - and then draw from that account the next time things get tense.

But that is exactly what happens in a marriage where the debrief never happens.

Every unresolved conflict becomes a deposit into a ledger that neither of you meant to open. And over time that ledger gets heavy. Heavy enough that small things carry the weight of everything that came before them. Heavy enough that a conversation about dishes is actually a conversation about the last three years.

The debrief is how you close the ledger.

It is how you keep the account clear.

So what does a real debrief look like in a marriage?

It is not a post-conflict argument. It is not a second round where you relitigate who said what and who started it. It is not you explaining yourself until she agrees with your version of events.

It is a man sitting down with his wife - when the heat has settled, when both of you can actually hear each other - and doing three things.

First — own what was yours. All of it.

Not the percentage you think was yours. Not the part that you’re willing to admit after she admits her part. All of it. Every sharp word. Every dismissive tone. Every moment you checked out or shut down or fired when you should have held. You own it without qualification, without conditions, without the word “but” attached to the end of it.

“I got angry when I shouldn’t have. I said that in a way that was unkind. I shut down instead of staying present. That was wrong and I’m sorry.”

Clean. Unqualified. Yours.

Paul puts the standard plainly in Colossians:

“Husbands, love your wives, and do not be harsh with them.” — Colossians 3:19

Do not be harsh. And when you have been - own it. That is what love does. That is what a covenant man does.

Second — ask her what she needed that she didn’t get.

Not defensively. Not as a setup to explain why you couldn’t give it. As a genuine question from a man who wants to understand his wife better after this moment than he did before it.

“In that moment, what did you need from me that I didn’t give you?”

Then listen. Like you learned in Part 2. Without fixing, defending, or correcting. Just receive it. Because what she tells you is not an attack - it is a map. It is your wife handing you the intelligence you need to cover and protect her better next time.

Third — make a covenant decision together.

What are you going to do differently? Not what is she going to do differently. What are you going to do differently. Because you are the leader of this home and the debrief ends with the leader taking responsibility for the next operation.

Maybe it’s the checkpoint from Part 4 - committing to deal with yourself before you walk through the door. Maybe it’s the pause protocol from Part 3 - agreeing on a signal between the two of you when the heat is rising and you need sixty seconds. Maybe it’s as simple as committing to come back to hard conversations instead of going quiet and hoping they dissolve.

Whatever it is - name it. Commit to it. Write it down if you have to.

Because a decision without a plan is just a wish.

Here is what nobody tells men about conflict in marriage.

Conflict handled well - owned honestly, repaired faithfully, debriefed thoroughly - does not weaken a marriage.

It builds one.

Every time you sit down after a hard moment and do the work of reconciliation, you are laying another stone in the foundation of your covenant. You are showing your wife that she is safe with you - not because you never fail, but because when you do, you come back. You repair. You don’t run from the hard thing. You walk toward it.

That is the kind of safety a woman spends her whole life hoping to find in a man.

And when she finds it in you - when she knows, not just hopes, but knows - that you will always come back and do the work - something in her opens up that cannot be manufactured any other way.

Trust that deep. Intimacy that real. Security that solid.

It doesn’t come from perfect behavior.

It comes from faithful repair.

This is the full mission of Cover and Protect.

📍 Knowing your theater - the battlefield inside you, not beside you.

📍 Reading the intel - what she’s actually communicating beneath the surface signal.

📍 Holding your fire - the tactical discipline of pausing before the damage is done.

📍 Securing the perimeter - dealing with what you carry before you carry it inside.

📍 And debriefing - owning it, repairing it, building something stronger from the wreckage of the hard moment.

Five disciplines. One mission.

That’s not a perfect man.

That’s a trained one.

And training never stops.

There’s a reason the most effective mentors, leaders, and spiritual guides you’ve ever encountered weren’t the ones with the most polished credentials. They were the ones who had been somewhere. Who had walked through something real and come out the other side with something worth passing on. Their authority didn’t come from a title. It came from experience — the kind that only gets forged in seasons you wouldn’t have chosen for yourself.

I want to talk today about why God takes you through things before He sends you to speak into them.

THIS IS FOR YOU IF…

You’re in a hard season and you can’t figure out why God hasn’t moved you past it yet. If you feel overqualified for the struggle you’re currently in. If you’ve been asking God when this season ends and He hasn’t given you a clear answer. If you’ve started to suspect that what you’re going through right now is preparation for something — or someone — you haven’t met yet.

BOTTOM LINE UP FRONT

God doesn’t waste your pain. He warehouses it. And at exactly the right moment He pulls it back out and uses it to reach someone who needs to hear from a person who has actually been there.

OUR SPRINGBOARD FOR TODAY’S DISCUSSION IS:

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves have been comforted by God.” — 2 Corinthians 1:3-4, ESV

MAIN MENTORING

Paul opens 2 Corinthians with one of the most honest theological statements in all of his letters. He doesn’t sanitize suffering or pretend it doesn’t exist. He acknowledges it directly — and then he reframes it completely. The comfort God gives you in your affliction is not just for you. It is being stored up for someone else who is going to need it later.

That changes the way you look at what you’re going through right now.

The season you are in — the one that feels like it is only costing you — is actually producing something in you that cannot be manufactured any other way. It is giving you access. Access to the person who is drowning in the same thing you survived. Access to the conversation that nobody else in the room is qualified to have. Access to the words that land differently because they come from someone who has actually been in that water.

Theoretical knowledge is useful. Lived experience is transformative. There is a significant difference between someone telling you it’s going to be okay because they read it somewhere and someone telling you it’s going to be okay because they sat in the same darkness you’re sitting in right now and found God faithful on the other side.

God is making you that second person for someone who doesn’t even know they need you yet.

This is why He doesn’t always rush you through difficult seasons. It’s not because He is indifferent to your pain. It’s because He is serious about your purpose. He knows that the depth of what He is building in you right now is directly connected to the depth of what He will be able to do through you later. You cannot lead someone through a valley you sprinted past. You have to have walked it slowly enough to know where the footing is.

So the question shifts. Instead of asking God when this season ends, try asking Him what He wants you to carry out of it. What comfort is He giving you right now that He intends to give through you later? That question will change how you experience what you’re in.

Your pain has a purpose beyond you. That doesn’t make it hurt less. But it does make it mean more.

DAILY ACTION

Think of one person in your life who is currently going through something you have already walked through. Reach out to them today — not with advice, just with presence. Let them know they are not alone.

THE DAILY CHARGE

What you’re going through is not just about you. Someone is waiting on the other side of your endurance for a word that only you can give them. Stay in it. Carry it well. Your story is still being written — and it’s going to help someone else find their way.

LET’S PRAY

God, help me to see my suffering the way You see it — not as waste, but as material. Not as punishment, but as preparation. Use what I’m going through to make me useful to someone who needs it. And give me the grace to endure this season without bitterness, so that what I carry out of it is something worth giving away. Amen.

I want to talk about something most men will not admit is happening.

Not the big surrenders. Not the obvious ones where a man walks away from his faith or his family in one dramatic moment. I am talking about the small negotiations. The quiet compromises. The slow, incremental giving of ground that happens so gradually a man does not realize how far back he has drifted until he turns around and cannot see where he started.

It looks like this. He does not quit praying. He just prays less. He does not abandon his integrity. He just bends it slightly in situations where it is inconvenient. He does not stop leading his family. He just gets passive when leading gets hard. He does not renounce his faith. He just stops letting it cost him anything.

None of those moments feel like surrender. Each one has a reasonable explanation. Each one seems small enough to justify. But the enemy is not playing for moments. He is playing for territory. And he is perfectly content to take it one quiet compromise at a time.

I have caught myself in this. There have been seasons where I looked up and realized I had given ground I never consciously decided to give. Nobody took it from me by force. I negotiated it away — one small concession at a time — until something that used to be solid in me had quietly eroded.

That is how the enemy prefers to work. Not with a battering ram. With patience.

Bottom Line Up Front: Every small compromise is a negotiation with an enemy who does not negotiate in good faith. He takes what you offer and immediately positions for the next concession. Stop giving ground. Reclaim what you have already lost.

SUN TZU SAID

“There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare.”

Sun Tzu understood that a war dragged out through indecision and slow erosion costs more than a decisive engagement. The commander who keeps giving small concessions to avoid the full weight of conflict does not avoid the war. He just loses it slowly. Piece by piece. Until the accumulated cost of all those small retreats is greater than what a decisive stand would have required at the beginning.

The man who keeps negotiating with the enemy to avoid conflict is not keeping the peace. He is losing the war on an installment plan.

A decisive stand early is almost always less costly than a prolonged retreat. The question is not whether the fight is going to cost you something. It is whether you are going to pay it upfront with clarity or bleed it out slowly through compromise.

SCRIPTURE ANCHOR

“Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” James 4:7 (ESV)

There is an order here that most men skip. They want the second part — resist the devil and he will flee — without doing the work of the first part. But the submission to God is not a warm-up. It is the foundation the resistance stands on. A man trying to resist the enemy while not fully submitted to God is fighting from borrowed strength, and it runs out.

And notice what James does not say. He does not say negotiate with the devil. He does not say find a middle ground or manage the tension or coexist with the pressure. He says resist. That is a posture. That is a clear, deliberate, fully committed refusal to give ground. And the promise attached to that posture is not complicated. He will flee. Not maybe. Not eventually. He will flee.

The man who stops negotiating and starts resisting — from a place of full submission to God — changes the dynamic of the entire engagement.

THE LESSON

Here is what negotiation with the enemy actually looks like in a man’s daily life.

It looks like knowing what God called him to and choosing comfort over obedience because the timing is inconvenient. It looks like recognizing a thought pattern that is pulling him away from truth and entertaining it anyway because shutting it down feels like too much effort right now. It looks like a standard he set for himself — in his marriage, his business, his faith, his integrity — that he keeps making exceptions to until the standard no longer means what it used to mean.

Every exception is a negotiation. Every compromise is a concession. Every time a man tells himself just this once or this situation is different or I will get back on track tomorrow, he is handing the enemy something he did not earn through force. He is being given it.

And the enemy is a skilled negotiator. He does not ask for everything at once. He asks for something small enough to seem reasonable. And then he waits. And then he asks for something slightly larger. And the man who said yes to the small thing has already established a precedent — that in certain situations, under enough pressure, his positions are moveable.

That precedent is more dangerous than the original concession.

Because now the enemy knows something about that man. He knows the price. He knows what kind of pressure produces a negotiation. And he will apply that exact pressure every time, in every area, until the man has given away the territory God told him to hold — not in one catastrophic surrender, but in a thousand small ones.

The way out of this is not complicated. It is just costly. It requires a man to stop justifying the small concessions and start calling them what they are. It requires him to go back to the positions he has drifted from and reclaim them — not in a moment of emotional resolve that fades by Thursday, but in a disciplined, daily, non-negotiable commitment to hold the ground God gave him.

Submit to God. Fully. Not in the areas where it is easy. In the areas where it costs you something. And from that place of full submission, resist. Not halfheartedly. Not with one eye looking for an exit. Resist with the posture of a man who has decided this ground is not for sale.

That is when the enemy flees. Not when you feel strong enough. When you stop negotiating.

THE DAILY CHARGE

Look at what you have been slowly giving away. Name it. Stop justifying it. Go back to the position God placed you in and plant your feet. The enemy cannot take what you refuse to hand him. Stop negotiating. Start resisting. That is when the ground shifts — back in your favor.

PRAYER

Lord, show me where I have been negotiating instead of resisting. Show me the small concessions I have been justifying and the ground I have quietly given away one reasonable exception at a time. I do not want to keep bleeding territory I was called to hold. I submit to You — fully, not just in the easy areas. And from that place, I choose to resist. I am done making deals with an enemy who only wants my destruction. Reclaim what has been lost in me. Restore the positions I have drifted from. And give me the daily discipline to hold the line — not just today, but tomorrow, and the day after that. Amen.

Before you enter a secured facility — before you walk into a command center, a sensitive briefing, a protected zone — you go through a checkpoint.

Not because you’re a suspect. Not because you’re untrusted. But because what you carry in matters. What’s on you, what’s attached to you, what you’ve picked up along the way — it has to be checked before it crosses the threshold. Because once it’s inside, it’s inside. And some things, once they’re in, are very hard to contain.

Now I want you to think about your front door.

Because every single day, you are walking through a checkpoint. And the question isn’t whether you’re carrying something. You are. The question is whether you know what it is — and whether you’ve dealt with it before it gets inside your home.

Most men haven’t thought about this once.

They finish a brutal day — a hard meeting, a frustrating commute, a financial pressure that’s sitting on their chest like a stone — and they walk straight through that front door and right into their family. No checkpoint. No debrief. No transition.

Just a man full of unprocessed weight stepping into the most important environment he is responsible for protecting.

And then he wonders why the smallest thing his wife says sets him off.

It’s not the small thing. It was never the small thing.

It’s everything he was already carrying when the small thing arrived.

Paul saw this coming. He wrote the prescription for it with surgical precision:

“Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil.” — Ephesians 4:26–27

Give no opportunity to the devil.

That phrase right there deserves more attention than it gets in most marriage conversations. Paul is saying that unprocessed, unresolved anger — anger that you don’t deal with, that you carry from one context into another, that you let sit and ferment — becomes an open door. A vulnerability in your perimeter. A crack that the enemy will find and exploit.

He doesn’t need a big opening. Just a crack.

And a man who drags his undealt-with stress, his unprocessed pain, his accumulated frustration through his front door every evening is leaving cracks all over the place.

Solomon understood the same thing from a different angle:

“A man without self-control is like a city broken into and left without walls.” — Proverbs 25:28

A city without walls is not just vulnerable — it is indefensible. It cannot protect what’s inside it. It cannot keep out what’s hostile. It has no perimeter. No boundary. No capacity to say this far and no further.

That city is open to whatever comes at it.

And a man who has never built the discipline to manage what he carries — who lets the outside world bleed unchecked into his home — that man is not protecting his family. He is exposing them. To his mood. To his stress. To his unhealed wounds. To his flesh.

He thinks he’s just tired.

But his home is absorbing everything he brought in with him.

So what does the checkpoint actually look like?

I’m not talking about a complicated ritual. I’m talking about a deliberate transition — a moment you build into your day, every day, between the world you’ve been in and the home you’re walking into.

Here’s what it can look like in practice.

Before you touch the door handle — sit.

If you drove home, stay in the car for five minutes. If you walked or took transit, stop outside. Don’t go in yet. You are at the checkpoint. This is where the debrief happens.

Inventory what you’re carrying.

Ask yourself honestly: What did I pick up today that doesn’t belong in my home? Anger at your boss. Anxiety about money. Shame over something you did or didn’t do. Frustration that has nothing to do with your wife and everything to do with your own unmet expectations. Name it. Be specific. A vague sense of “I had a hard day” isn’t an inventory. An inventory is: I’m carrying resentment from that meeting, I’m anxious about the account we lost, and I feel like a failure right now.

Name it before you carry it in.

Take it to God before you take it inside.

David modeled this constantly throughout the Psalms — bringing the raw, unfiltered weight of his day to God before he did anything else with it. Not a polished prayer. Not a religious performance. Just a man handing God what he’s holding.

God, this is what I’ve got. I don’t want to bring this into my home. I don’t want to take this out on my wife. Take this from me. Give me what my family needs instead.

That’s it. That’s the prayer. It doesn’t need to be longer than that.

Psalm 4:4 comes back here with a different weight than it carried in Part 3:

“Be angry, and do not sin; ponder in your own heart on your bed, and be silent.” — Psalm 4:4

Ponder in your own heart. Be silent.

David is describing interior work. The kind of processing that happens before the words come out. Before the reaction. Before the conversation with your wife that you’re about to have. He’s describing a man who takes responsibility for his own interior life — who doesn’t outsource the management of his emotions to the people around him.

Because here’s the hard truth: when you walk into your home unprocessed, you are making your wife responsible for managing your interior state. She didn’t cause it. She didn’t create it. But she’s going to absorb it — in the way you look at her, the way you answer her, the way you respond to the kids, the temperature you set in the room the moment you walk in.

She becomes the receiver of everything you didn’t deal with.

And she will feel it, even if you never say a word.

This is what it means to secure the perimeter.

Not locking people out. Not building emotional walls that keep your wife at a distance. That’s not protection — that’s isolation. What I’m talking about is a man who takes his role as the guardian of his home seriously enough to deal with himself first.

Who understands that leadership at home doesn’t start when the hard conversation begins.

It starts in the driveway.

It starts in the five minutes before you open the door.

It starts with a man who loves his family enough to hand God what he’s carrying before he carries it inside.

That man walks through the door differently. His wife feels it the moment he enters the room. Not because he performed something. Not because he put on a face. But because he actually did the work — and what walks through the door is a man who has been to the checkpoint.

A man who came home clean.

Most people don’t quit dramatically. There’s no big announcement, no public declaration, no clear moment where they decide it’s over. It happens quietly. They just slowly stop showing up. The prayer gets shorter. The Bible stays closed a little longer. The passion that once drove everything starts to feel like a distant memory. And one day they look up and realize they’ve been coasting for months — not because they made a decision to quit, but because they never made a decision to stay.

I want to talk to the person who is in that in-between place right now. Not fully out, but not fully in either.

THIS IS FOR YOU IF…

You’ve been closer to quitting lately than you’ve told anyone. If the fire that started this season has burned down to something you can barely see. If you’ve been going through the motions but your heart hasn’t really been in it. If part of you is looking for a good enough reason to walk away and another part of you is desperately hoping someone talks you out of it.

BOTTOM LINE UP FRONT

The enemy doesn’t need you to renounce your faith. He just needs you to get tired enough to stop. Quitting quietly is still quitting — and it almost always happens right before something significant.

OUR SPRINGBOARD FOR TODAY’S DISCUSSION IS:

“Therefore do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward. For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God you may receive what is promised.” — Hebrews 10:35-36, ESV

MAIN MENTORING

The writer of Hebrews wasn’t writing to people who had already quit. He was writing to people who were thinking about it. People who had started well, believed genuinely, paid a real price for their faith — and were now exhausted and wondering if any of it was worth it. His instruction wasn’t complicated. Don’t throw away your confidence. You’ve come too far and it cost too much to drop it now.

That word confidence in the original language carries the idea of boldness — a frank, open, unhesitating trust in God. And the warning is specific. Don’t throw it away. The implication is that it doesn’t get taken from you. You have to release it. Quitting is always a choice, even when it doesn’t feel like one.

Here’s what I know to be true about the moments when quitting feels most reasonable — they are almost always the moments of greatest proximity to the thing God promised. The enemy is not strategic about random timing. He pushes hardest when you are closest to something significant. The increased resistance you feel right now is not evidence that you’re losing. It may actually be evidence that you are about to win.

Think about every major story of breakthrough in Scripture. The Israelites were at the edge of the Red Sea before it parted. Joseph was in prison right before he was promoted. David was still running from Saul right before the throne changed hands. The darkest moment in almost every story comes immediately before the turn. That is not a coincidence. That is a pattern.

You don’t know how close you are. You can’t see what God is about to do from where you’re standing. But He does. And the instruction He keeps giving — through Hebrews, through Galatians, through every endurance passage in Scripture — is the same. Hold on. Don’t let go. The promise is still coming.

The day you almost quit might be the most important day to stay.

DAILY ACTION

Think back to why you started — the calling, the word God gave you, the moment you said yes. Write it down today and put it somewhere visible. Let it remind you what you’re still fighting for.

THE DAILY CHARGE

Don’t quit today. Not because it’s easy, not because you feel like continuing — but because God is not finished and neither are you. Hold your position. The breakthrough is closer than it looks.

LET’S PRAY

God, I’ll be honest — I’ve been closer to done than I’ve let on. But I’m still here. And I’m asking You today to give me one more reason to keep going. Remind me of what You said. Remind me of what You started. And give me just enough strength to not let go today. I trust You with the rest. Amen.

MyR2B Ministries Cult Watch — Matthew Adams

Hey, I want to talk to you about a website called JesusPlusZero.com. It’s run by an Australian “self proclaimed teacher” named Geoff Stroud, and it’s been quietly growing its audience among Christians who are genuinely concerned about the End Times and genuinely hungry for something deeper than what they’ve been finding in their church.

I get why people are drawn to it. The writing is good. The language is spiritual and warm. It talks about Jesus a lot. And Geoff clearly knows his way around the Bible.

But I’ve spent time going through his material carefully — and I want to walk you through his End Times Prophecy page specifically, because what I found there tells you a lot about how this whole operation works. I’m going to keep this simple. No seminary jargon. Just what’s actually going on.

What Geoff Is Selling On This Page

The basic pitch on Geoff’s prophecy page goes like this:

Most Christians today have been deceived into a false understanding of End Times prophecy. That false understanding — called Futurism — was invented in the 1830s by men named John Nelson Darby and Edward Irving. Before that, the real, historical, accurate way to read prophecy was called Historicism. Historicism matches prophecy to actual historical events with what Geoff calls “mathematical accuracy.” And if you want to recover this lost prophetic map and finally have clarity and peace about the End Times — well, Geoff’s community is the place to get it.

That’s the pitch. Sounds reasonable enough on the surface. So let’s look at what’s actually true and what isn’t.

Problem #1 — Futurism Was Not Invented in the 1830s

This is the foundation of Geoff’s entire argument on this page — and it isn’t accurate.

He tells you that Futurism was a brand new theological invention that appeared in the 1830s with Darby and Irving, and that before that, Historicism was the Church’s true prophetic framework. He presents this like it’s settled history.

But here’s what the actual historical record shows. Futurist elements — the idea that certain prophecies point to events still to come — appear in the writings of Irenaeus in the second century, Hippolytus in the third century, and other early Church Fathers long before anyone named Darby was born. These weren’t fringe voices. These were foundational figures in the early Church.

The truth is that Christians have been reading prophecy through multiple lenses for most of Church history. Historicism is real and has serious people behind it. So does Futurism. So does Preterism — the view that many prophecies were fulfilled in the first century. So does the Idealist view. These are all legitimate traditions with deep roots. None of them was “invented” in the 1830s. None of them is a conspiracy.

When Geoff tells you Futurism is a modern deception and Historicism is the recovered ancient truth, he is not giving you Church history. He is giving you a version of Church history carefully shaped to make his framework look like the only honest option. That matters — because it’s the move that’s supposed to make you distrust every teacher you’ve had before and come looking to Geoff for the real story.

Problem #2 — His “Mathematical Accuracy” Is a Lot More Flexible Than He’s Letting On

One of the most impressive-sounding claims on this page is that Historicism is anchored in what Geoff calls “the undeniable mathematical accuracy of historical fulfilment.” He talks about something called the Day-Year Principle — the idea that in certain prophecies, a “day” in the text represents a “year” in real time — and he says this produces a perfect 1,260-year alignment with medieval history.

That sounds precise. That sounds scientific. And that’s exactly what it’s designed to sound like.

But here’s what he doesn’t tell you. Historicist scholars — people who agree with Geoff that the Day-Year Principle is correct — have proposed wildly different start and end dates for that 1,260-year period. Some start it in 533 AD. Some say 538 AD. Some say 606 AD. Some say 756 AD. The “perfect alignment” only works if you pick the right starting point — and different Historicists pick different ones to make the math land where they want it to land.

That’s not mathematics. That’s picking your answer first and then adjusting the calculation to fit. When William Miller used this same Day-Year Historicist method in the 1800s, he calculated that Christ would return in 1844. He was so convincing that thousands of people sold their farms and waited. Christ didn’t return. That devastating failure was so significant it became known in history as the Great Disappointment. The Jehovah’s Witnesses built their entire prophetic system on the same method. You know how that turned out.

I’m not telling you the Day-Year Principle is worthless — that’s a genuine theological discussion worth having. I’m telling you it is nowhere near the locked-down mathematical certainty Geoff is presenting it as.

Problem #3 — I Found Something in the Website Code That Tells the Whole Story

This one I want you to really pay attention to, because it’s small but it’s everything.

When Geoff built this page, he uploaded a picture to go at the top. And like every image on every website, that picture has a file name. The file name he chose was this: “no-gap-daniel-9-27.”

Now, Daniel 9:27 is at the center of one of the most hotly debated questions in all of End Times prophecy — whether there is a gap of time between the 69th and 70th week of Daniel’s famous prophecy. Serious, Bible-faithful scholars have wrestled with this for centuries and landed on different sides.

But Geoff’s image file — sitting there in the code before you read a single word of his article — already has the verdict. No gap. Case closed.

Here’s why that matters. Geoff spends this entire page telling you that he’s the kind of teacher who examines evidence carefully, who helps you escape speculation, who anchors you in facts and history. The whole pitch is built on the idea that he’s a rigorous, honest examiner of Scripture.

But he named the picture file after the conclusion he already reached before the page was written.

That’s not examination. That’s a courtroom where the verdict was decided before the trial started and the evidence is just theater. And if he’s doing it there — right there in the code where most people will never look — you can trust he’s doing it throughout everything else he teaches.

Problem #4 — The Stuff He Gets Right Belongs to All of Us

Here’s something Geoff does that is genuinely clever. He anchors his argument in things that are absolutely, undeniably true — and then uses those true things to pull you toward conclusions that are much more contested.

For example. He talks about the succession of empires in Daniel — Babylon, then Medo-Persia, then Greece, then Rome. And he’s right. That sequence is in Daniel. That sequence happened in history. It is genuinely remarkable. It genuinely does point to the supernatural origin of Scripture.

But here’s what he doesn’t tell you: every serious Christian tradition agrees on this. Futurists believe it. Preterists believe it. Every scholar of Daniel across every interpretive school nods their head at the succession of empires. This is not a Historicist discovery. This is not Geoff’s insight. This is the common inheritance of the entire Church.

What Geoff does is take evidence that every Bible-believing Christian already owns, present it as though it uniquely validates his particular system, and then use it to sell you that system — and his subscription.

It’s like someone handing you a key that already opens your own front door, acting like they just discovered it, and then charging you $10 a month to keep using it.

So What’s Really Going On Here?

Let me just be honest with you about what I see.

Geoff Stroud is building a paid subscription community — $10 a month, $80 a year, or $220 for a lifetime membership — around the idea that you need his framework to understand End Times prophecy clearly. To make that work, he needs you to believe that what you’ve been taught before was either wrong or incomplete. So he tells you Futurism was invented in the 1830s. He tells you his method has mathematical certainty. He presents the Church’s shared inheritance as his private discovery. And he names his image files after predetermined conclusions while presenting himself as an open, honest examiner of Scripture.

None of this means he isn’t sincere. He may well be. But sincerity doesn’t make something true. And sincerity doesn’t make a closed, unaccountable, subscription-based system safe.

Here’s what I want you to walk away knowing. The real anchor of End Times hope is not a prophetic map that costs $220. It is the resurrection of Jesus Christ — the most documented event in the ancient world, the fulfillment of every prophetic promise, freely available to every person who opens a Bible and trusts the Lord.

You don’t need Geoff Stroud’s framework to understand prophecy. You need the Holy Spirit, a Bible, and a good church. All three of those things are free. All three of those things have been equipping Christians to stand firm for two thousand years.

Jesus is so much better than what’s being sold on that website. And you deserve to know that.

— Matthew Adams, MyR2B Ministries Cult Watch

Never fire into confusion.

When the situation is unclear, when the smoke is thick, when you can’t positively identify what’s in front of you - you do not pull the trigger. Not because you’re afraid. Not because you’re weak. Because a disciplined warrior understands that a round fired into confusion doesn’t just miss the target.

It hits something you didn’t intend.

And in a marriage, that something is the woman you swore before God to love, honor, and protect.

Most men have never been taught what to do with anger in real time. They were either raised in a home where anger exploded - so that’s the only model they have. Or they were raised in a home where anger got buried - so it leaks out sideways in contempt, sarcasm, and cold withdrawal. Either way, nobody sat them down and said: here is what a trained man does when the heat rises.

So let me be that voice for you today.

Because what you do in the three to five seconds after anger shows up - that window right there - will determine whether this moment builds your marriage or damages it. Three to five seconds. That’s the whole game.

Solomon didn’t write the book of Proverbs to fill space. Every line in it was hard-earned wisdom from watching human nature play out over a lifetime. And when he wrote this, he meant every word:

“Whoever is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he who rules his spirit than he who takes a city.” — Proverbs 16:32

Better than the mighty. Rules his spirit. Takes a city.

Solomon is putting self-control in the same category as military conquest. He’s saying the man who can govern himself under pressure is operating at a higher level than the man who can overpower an enemy on a battlefield. Because anyone can fight when the adrenaline is up. It takes a different kind of strength entirely to stand in the middle of rising anger and choose - deliberately, consciously choose - not to fire.

That is not weakness.

That is the highest form of masculine discipline.

And God knew this about us long before Solomon wrote it down. Through the preacher in Ecclesiastes, He put it plainly:

“Be not quick in your spirit to become angry, for anger lodges in the heart of fools.” — Ecclesiastes 7:9

Quick in your spirit. That’s the reactivity He’s warning against. The automatic, unexamined, hair-trigger response that doesn’t pass through wisdom before it comes out of your mouth.

Anger that lodges. That’s the kind that moves in and unpacks its bags. The kind that doesn’t come out as one sharp word in one hard moment - it comes out as a pattern. A posture. A marriage where the temperature is always slightly too high and nobody can remember exactly when it started.

God is not telling you to suppress anger. He’s telling you not to let it drive.

There’s a difference. A big one.

Now let’s talk about the biology - because this matters.

When anger rises, your body is not neutral. Your brain triggers a threat response. Cortisol and adrenaline flood your system. Your heart rate climbs. Blood moves away from your prefrontal cortex - the part of your brain responsible for reasoning, empathy, and wise decision-making - and toward your muscles, preparing you to fight or flee.

In a physical threat situation, that’s a gift from God.

In a marriage conflict, it is a liability.

Because you are now physiologically less equipped to think clearly, hear accurately, or respond with wisdom - at the exact moment when you need all three the most.

This is not an excuse. This is information. A trained man doesn’t say “my body made me do it.”

That’s what Paul called a fruit of the Spirit:

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.” — Galatians 5:22–23

Self-control is not a personality trait. It is a fruit. Something grown. Something cultivated through time, through the Spirit, through practice. That means if you don’t have it yet - you can develop it. And if you’ve had it and lost it - you can get it back.

But it has to be trained before the moment hits. Because in the moment, you will default to whatever you’ve built in the quiet.

So what does “hold your fire” actually look like in real life?

It’s not complicated. But it requires a decision made in advance - because you will not have the bandwidth to figure it out while the heat is rising.

Here is a simple protocol. Three steps. Practice them until they’re automatic.

Step 1 - Name it internally. The moment you feel anger rising, say it to yourself: “I’m getting angry right now.” Not out loud. Not to her. Just inside. Naming the emotion engages your prefrontal cortex. It literally begins to slow the physiological response. This is not soft - this is neuroscience working in your favor.

Step 2 - Buy yourself time. Say something like: “I want to respond to this right. Give me a minute.” Then breathe. Slowly. Deliberately. Four counts in, four counts out. This is not a stall tactic. This is a trained man creating the space he needs to respond with wisdom instead of react with flesh.

Step 3 - Pray before you speak. It doesn’t have to be long. It doesn’t have to be eloquent. God, give me your words, not mine. That’s enough. You are acknowledging in that moment that your mouth, left to itself, will do damage. And you are asking the One who knows both of you completely to speak through you instead.

Three steps. Name it. Buy time. Pray.

Do those three things and you will never regret what you said in anger — because you won’t have said it yet.

Psalm 4:4 captures the whole thing in a single line. David - a warrior, a king, a man who knew real conflict — wrote this:

“Be angry, and do not sin; ponder in your own heart on your bed, and be silent.” — Psalm 4:4

Be angry. He’s not telling you not to feel it. He’s telling you what to do with it. Ponder. Be silent. Process it before you project it.

That is a warrior’s relationship with his own emotion.

Not suppression. Not explosion.

Discipline.

Your wife doesn’t need a man who never gets angry.

She needs a man who has decided - before the moment ever comes - that he will not let his anger make decisions for him. A man who has done enough work on himself, spent enough time with God, built enough discipline in the quiet - that when the pressure comes, he doesn’t reach for the trigger first.

He holds his fire.

And in that pause - that small, sacred, disciplined pause - he chooses his wife over his flesh.

Every. Single. Time.

That’s the mission.

There is a particular kind of loneliness that comes not from being isolated, but from being surrounded by people who simply don’t feel what you feel. You see what God is doing. You feel the weight of the assignment. You’re carrying something that keeps you up at night — and the people closest to you are completely unbothered. They’re not against you. They’re just not with you. And after a while, that gap starts to wear on you in ways that are hard to explain.

If you’ve been carrying your calling in a room full of people who don’t seem to notice, this one is for you.

THIS IS FOR YOU IF…

You feel alone in your spiritual urgency. If the people around you — friends, family, even fellow believers — don’t share your passion for what God has put on your heart. If you’ve started to wonder whether you’re the one who’s off, because everyone else seems so unbothered. If the loneliness of the assignment is starting to feel heavier than the assignment itself.

BOTTOM LINE UP FRONT

Not everyone is called to carry what you’re carrying. That doesn’t mean you’re wrong — it means you’re assigned. And assignment by its very nature is specific, not universal.

OUR SPRINGBOARD FOR TODAY’S DISCUSSION IS:

“For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” — Ephesians 2:10, ESV

MAIN MENTORING

Paul’s language in Ephesians 2:10 is worth slowing down for. He says you are God’s workmanship — the Greek word there is poiema, which is where we get the word poem. You are God’s crafted work. His intentional creation. And the good works you were made for were prepared beforehand, meaning God didn’t assign your calling randomly or casually. He built it into you on purpose, before you even arrived.

That means the thing you’re carrying — the urgency, the vision, the weight of what God put on your heart — is not an accident. It is not something you manufactured out of ambition or emotion. It was placed there deliberately by a God who knew exactly what He was doing when He made you.

Which also means not everyone around you was built to carry it with you. That’s not a flaw in the plan. That’s the plan. Every person has their own poiema — their own specific assignment that God crafted them for. The fact that yours doesn’t match the people around you doesn’t mean yours is wrong. It means it’s yours.

Nehemiah understood this. When he was rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem, the people around him mocked, threatened, and tried to distract him. Even some of the people he was building for didn’t fully grasp what he was doing or why it mattered so much. He kept building anyway. Not because he was stubborn, but because he was clear. He knew what God had told him, and he refused to let the lack of shared urgency in others become a reason to slow down.

That clarity is what you need right now. Not validation from the people around you. Not everyone catching the vision on your timeline. Just the settled confidence that God told you, God equipped you, and God is with you — regardless of who else shows up to help carry it.

The loneliness of assignment is real. But so is the companionship of the One who gave it to you. You are not building alone, even when it feels that way.

DAILY ACTION

Write down your assignment in one or two clear sentences — what God has specifically called you to in this season. Read it out loud today as a declaration, not a question.

THE DAILY CHARGE

You are not crazy for caring this much. You were made for this. Stay the course, keep building, and trust that God will send the right people at the right time. Until then — keep going.

LET’S PRAY

God, the loneliness of this assignment is real and I won’t pretend otherwise. But I trust that You put this in me on purpose. So today I’m choosing to stop waiting for everyone around me to catch up and just stay focused on what You told me to do. Be my companion in this. That’s enough. Amen.

There is a difference between a man who has never been broken and a man who has been broken and rebuilt.

I know both kinds. And I will tell you honestly — the one I trust in a fight is not the one who has never taken a hit. It is the one who took the hit, went down, and got back up with something in him that was not there before.

I have been that second man. There have been seasons in my life where I did not just feel pressure — I felt collapse. Moments where the weight did not bend me gradually. It broke something. A relationship I thought was solid. A vision I had built years toward. A version of myself I had been carrying that could not survive what God allowed to happen to it.

And in those moments — in the actual breaking — it did not feel like formation. It felt like loss.

But here is what I know now that I could not see then. The enemy thought those breaks were his wins. He thought the collapse was the end of my effectiveness, my calling, my impact. What he did not understand was that God was not watching those seasons with His hands over His face. He was in them. Working. Rebuilding from the inside out. Removing what could not hold what He was about to put in me and replacing it with something the enemy does not have an answer for.

You cannot break a man God has already rebuilt from the inside.

Bottom Line Up Front: The enemy’s best weapon against you may already be spent. If God has walked you through a breaking and rebuilt you on the other side of it, what the enemy throws at you now is hitting something he has already tried — and failed — to destroy.

SUN TZU SAID

“Know yourself and you will win all battles.”

Sun Tzu was not talking about self-confidence. He was talking about self-knowledge — the hard-won clarity that comes from having been tested and understanding exactly what you are made of on the other side of it.

A commander who has never been under pressure does not actually know his own army. He has a theory of what his men will do when the fighting gets real. But the commander who has been through a breaking season — who has seen his weaknesses exposed, his plans unravel, his assumptions fail — that commander knows something the untested man does not. He knows what holds. He knows what breaks. And he knows how to build around what is actually solid.

The breaking you survived gave you intelligence about yourself that cannot be acquired any other way. That is not a liability. That is a weapon.

SCRIPTURE ANCHOR

“We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.” 2 Corinthians 4:8-9 (NIV)

Paul was not writing poetry here. He was writing testimony. He was describing what it actually felt like to be in the middle of pressure that should have finished him — and documenting that it did not. Not because he was made of something extraordinary. Because the power at work inside him was not his own.

Hard pressed but not crushed. Struck down but not destroyed. There is a line the enemy cannot cross. He can press. He can perplex. He can strike. But he cannot crush what God is carrying. He cannot destroy what God is holding together. And the man who has been through the fire and is still standing has personal evidence of exactly where that line is.

THE LESSON

The enemy studies history. Yours specifically.

He knows where you broke before. He knows the words that cut you, the situations that destabilized you, the losses that made you question everything. And he is not above going back to the same well. If a tactic worked once, he will run it again. He will resurface old wounds, old narratives, old fears — not because he has something new, but because he is betting the old thing still works.

Here is what he miscalculates. He keeps sending the same weapons against a man who is no longer the same man.

The breaking you went through — the one that felt like pure loss in the middle of it — changed the internal architecture of who you are. The things that used to destabilize you may not have the same grip anymore. The wounds that used to be open may have healed into something harder than what was there before. The version of you that crumbled under that particular pressure no longer exists. God rebuilt what broke, and He did not rebuild it the same way.

That is what the enemy does not account for. He is running a strategy against a man who no longer lives at that address.

Now, this does not mean a rebuilt man is an untouchable man. He still bleeds. He still has vulnerabilities. He still needs the armor, the community, the daily discipline of keeping his position. Surviving a breaking does not make you bulletproof. But it does give you something that cannot be manufactured — the firsthand knowledge that you have been through something that was supposed to end you, and it did not.

That knowledge changes how you stand under pressure. You are not wondering whether you can survive the hard thing. You already know. You have the evidence. You have been in the fire before, and you came out the other side carrying something you did not have going in.

The enemy’s greatest miscalculation is continuing to threaten a man with what God has already walked him through.

Hold your position. Not because the pressure is not real. Because you already know what happens when it does its worst. You are still here. That is the testimony. And the testimony is a weapon.

THE DAILY CHARGE

The breaking you survived was not your defeat. It was your training. Stand today with the confidence of a man who has personal evidence that God does not let go — because you are the evidence. What the enemy sent to destroy you became the thing that made you harder to move.

PRAYER

Lord, thank You for not wasting what broke me. Thank You that You were in those seasons — not watching from a distance, but working from the inside. I know now that what the enemy meant for my destruction You used for my formation. Help me stand today with that knowledge as a weapon. When old tactics resurface, remind me I am not the man who broke under those things. I have been rebuilt. I am standing on what You put in me on the other side of the hardest seasons I have walked through. Let that testimony be ammunition in the hands of someone who needs to hear it. Amen.