The Lion Within Us - Leadership for Christian Men
Christian men are in a battle for their lives. Satan will do everything possible to destroy them. The Lion Within Us is a community that provides encouragement to become the leaders God intends us to be. Our main focus lies within three categories: Health (Mental/Physical), Wealth (Careers/Finances) and Self (Husbands/Fathers/Brothers in Christ). By sharpening these areas of our lives, we can find the strength needed to stand firm in our faith and unleash the Lion Within.
The Lion Within Us - Leadership for Christian Men
622. Live For Christ, Not Control - Fun Friday
What if the difference between passivity and purpose is a handful of daily choices you can start today? We dive into Christ-centered leadership for men who want to serve with strength, handle money with wisdom, and love their families with steady, secure presence. Grounded in 2 Corinthians 5:14–15, we explore how the love of Christ moves us from living for ourselves to living on mission—and what that actually looks like between work, workouts, and weeknights at the ball field.
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Check it out at thelionwithin.us/youversion or search The Lion Within Us directly in the Bible app.
It’s time to stop sitting on the sidelines.
Step into the fight and become the man God called you to be. Join a brotherhood built on truth, strength, and action. Visit thelionwithin.us right now and start leading with boldness and purpose. Iron sharpens iron — let’s go. 👉https://thelionwithin.us/
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Men, if your ready to build lasting relationships, deepen your faith, and grow into the leaders God calls them to be, then this is for you. Step boldly into your calling—Lions seeking purpose, not house cats avoiding the challenge. 👉 https://den.thelionwithin.us/landing
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The enemy is relentless—doing everything possible to steal, kill, and destroy what matters most in your life. It’s time to fight back. True transformation happens when intentionality meets obedience. Take notes, apply these truths, and extend grace to yourself. Real change takes time—but if you stay faithful, the impact will reach far beyond what you can see. 👉 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FLWYQJMB
Get Free Daily Inspiration With Our Bible App Devotionals
Our devotionals dive deep into the pillars that define The Lion Within Us - health, wealth, and self. W...
Welcome to the Lion Within Us, a podcast serving Christian men who are hungry to be the leaders God intends you to be. I'm your host, Chris Granger. Let's jump in. All right, fellas, it is your fun Friday. Let's get right into it, okay? Scripture the week this week, guys, as a reminder, 2 Corinthians, 5th chapter, 14 and 15th verse. For the love of Christ controls us, having concluded this, that one died for all, therefore all died, and he died for all, so that those who live will no longer live for themselves, but for him who died and rose on their behalf. So, guys, took some time to unpack that. Back up to in your podcast feed, and you'll find it right there, your spiritual kickoff episode. Again, we'll do these Monday through Friday in our Lion Within Us communities. Go check it out. It's free. We take basically take the way it works, I take scripture every morning. We go live. It's a live feed. So there's a video component to it. You can hop on the live feed when I'm working through the scripture, just trying to give you some encouragement for your day. And guess what? You can even chat directly, we can engage, or if you can't make the live feed, we put those videos right there in that library. So it's all exclusive for you, just for the guys in a daily SKO. We don't put them anywhere else. They're not going on YouTube, they're not going on Facebook, they're not going on Instagram. They're just right there to give you encouragement. And we also open up our prayer requests section of Lion Within Us community. That's all for free, guys. We're just trying to do this. So look, if just if you've been listening to the line for any length of time and you haven't at least done this daily spiritual kickoff, what are you waiting on? I mean, it's it's right there. It's free. It's an easy way to engage. And I'd love to reach out, connect with you, and just say thank you for listening. If nothing more, just for me to give a heartfelt thank you for taking the time to listen to the show. Okay. All right. Well, guys, our conversation with Alex Kochman was great, talking about striving for the faith, really looking through the book of Philippians. And we took it to a different area where we talked more about practically applying uh and fighting and battling against evil. What does that look like? How can we as Christian men not be so spiritually passive and be active in what God's called us to do? So hopefully you guys enjoyed that one. I certainly did working through it with Alex. Okay, so for our fun Friday, the way we do this, guys, we do the health, wealth, and a self tip. Okay, so the health tip is how do we strengthen our minds and our bodies? Wealth is how do we be how can we be better stewards and of our finances and our careers? And self is what can we do? Just small tips to improve as husbands and fathers. And look, we're always like to go back to Alex, striving, we're always striving for improvement, right? And this is areas we want to think about. All right. So for the health tip this week, simply put, don't skip leg day. All right, so here's why. I I I had a brutal ankle injury on July 26th of 2025. This was a brutal injury. I'm I'm still recovering. And I learned how much strength in the legs, it matters. I mean, it matters for your health and stability. Getting that strength back in my, it was my right ankle, my right leg has been slow. It's been humbling, but it's reminded me we don't skip leg day because it has consequences. The sum of the build of my ability to actually get back faster had to do with I was I was I was running six days a week. So my little body was in shape. And strong legs supports your entire body, right? They help to prevent injuries, except when a tree hits you, right? They help you improve balance and it keeps you mobile for the long run. And so for you guys out there leading your families or you're trying to serve others or you're trying to serve us in your in your church, strength isn't about vanity, it's about stewarding our bodies well. And if God has given you a body to serve, we can't neglect the foundation. And the legs are literally the foundation that we're standing on, okay? So if you hate leg day, if you hate doing squats, if you hate doing lunges, if you if you hate running all that stuff, I'm sorry. It's not about your personal what you enjoy, but this is for endurance to run the race that God has called you to run, and we gotta stop ignoring it, okay? So I'm telling you, someone who just came through a massive, I mean a brutal injury to my leg, I'm thankful that I had that foundation, and now I'm being more intentional even more about building that strength up. All right. Wealth tip, guys. Use your FSA and your HSA wisely. So most people overlook the tools right in front of them. Flexible spending accounts, your FSA, and health savings accounts, the HSA, are great ways to manage expenses. This could be medical expenses, it could be uh uh uh um type of expenses that come with child rearing and things like that. And this helps also reduce taxable income and build some margin out there. I mean, think of them as investments in your family's well-being. It's money you can set aside specifically to cover the unexpected. We have to tap into our HSA because of my injury, right? And that's that's been helpful for us to have that there. Again, stewardship isn't about just tithing and giving, stewardship is about wisely managing what God has entrusted to you. So if you have these options and you haven't exercised them, why? Like go have the conversation with HR. Understand what your options are so that you can make the best decisions for you and your family and the people you're trying to help moving forward, okay? By planning ahead and you and you can start using these counts regularly, you can free yourself from unnecessary stress. I mean, this literally could take stress off of you and even create more headroom to give, save, and lead with generosity, okay? So don't ignore those areas, guys. Please, please check it out. Now, a self-tip think about this. Celebrate your kids beyond performance. And and and as someone who coaches their kids, all four, um all my kids, I'm coaching them all, love them, love coaching. It's easy as a dad to get caught up in how our kids perform on the field or on the court, right? The greatest gift we can give them, though, guys, just as a quick reminder, I'm sure you guys know, it's affirmation that our love is not tied to any results. I mean, I started trying to be more intentional about just telling my oldest daughters, I just love watching you play. I just really enjoy watching you play. I mean, don't focus on the performance, right? Because it shifts it from the performance focus to just being present, man. Just being present. Reinforce the effort that you see, the character that you see, and the joy that you see in their in and them playing the sport, whether they win or lose. Now, obviously, we want to celebrate when they win, right? For sure. But let's build resilience and security in them, teaching them that their worth, particularly from with you as their father, doesn't depend on their success, but on just who they are. They're made in God's image. God has trusted you to raise them. So in a culture that is so obsessed with achievement, our dads, our our our kids rather, need dads that are just unconditionally showing love to their kids. And this is just so just think about this. I mean, next time you're at a ball game or next time you're at at a practice or whatever, don't focus so much on the performance celebration. Let them know you just enjoy watching them. You just enjoy being there. Hey, I have a ball watching you play volleyball, watching you play softball, watching you play baseball, whatever it is. I just thoroughly enjoy it, and I just want to encourage you to keep going. All right. So there are your three tips, guys. Your health, wealth, and self-dump and self. Don't skip leg day. Use that HSA and FSA wisely and celebrate your kids beyond performance. Again, the book of the week right here, Striving for the Faith, A Journey Through Philippians for a Life on Mission. Alex Kochman, highly encourage you guys to get that, check it out. It even has some resources as through this where you can actually do this as a group and have some reflection questions, some prayer prompts and things like that as you go along. Okay. All right, so the dad joke time, fellas. So let's get up to our dad jokes. Number one, what do you call an iPhone that isn't kidding around anymore? Hmm. An iPhone that isn't kidding around anymore. Well, you would call that dead serious. All right. So there you go, fellas. That's number one. Number two, how do trees access to internet? Well, they they log in, fellas. So there goes number one and number two, what do you call an iPhone that isn't kidding around? That's dead serious. And number two, how do trees access the internet? They log in. So, fellas, again, the whole point of the dad jokes, just get an eye roll. So if you get an eye roll or sigh, you know it's a good dad joke. And by the way, if you have a dad joke you want us to use, send it over to support at theliontan.us. Email that right there. We'll give you a shout out on the show and hook you up with some free resources for helping us out. Okay. So the question of the week this week is Ben, where are you clinging to control instead of surrendering? And we all struggle with this in different areas of our life, right? So I'm highly encourage you guys, if you need support, if you got if you're clinging onto something that you just need to let go and you don't know how, reach out. This is where we try to help guys have these types of conversations. Uh, help help them reflect, help them really think through, help them, hey, here's what has worked for so-and-so, here's what's worked over here, give resources and things like that. But all again, thelionwithin.us is where you can find all that stuff at, fellas. So it's been a great week this week on The Lion. Hopefully, you guys are enjoying it. I I can't just say thank you enough for taking the time to listen to the show. There's so many podcasts out there, we get it. It's a saturated market, but at the end of the day, we're just trying to do what God has faithfully called me to do, which is create these episodes each and every week. And hopefully you're finding encouragement in them. You're finding a little bit of maybe some laughter from time to time. I can be a little silly. And but hopefully, at the end of the day, it's helping you grow as a disciple of Christ because that's it. If we're not helping and giving you some encouragement to help you continue to grow closer to Christ, then we miss tomorrow. And I'm sure some days we do miss tomorrow, but I'm prayerfully we hit it more than we miss it. And if it's helping you, I'd love to hear from you. I would just love it's just it would be an encouragement to me to hear from you. Uh, you can also leave a rating and review, those are always encouraging to read. So if you get a chance to do that, that would help the show big time. This helps in those areas. Follow us on YouTube, connect with us on Instagram or Facebook. We're trying to do more and more of the social media type stuff, which I'm terrible at. We're trying to do more of that now. Just to connect with guys in different areas. Check out our book, Unleashing the Lion Within. That's again another way we try to help guys. We have the audible version, the Kindle version, the print version. So, whatever way you enjoy consuming, it's right there for you, okay? All right, guys. Well, I do hope you have a great day. And this if there's anything we can do to serve you, the lionwithin.us, connect with us there. Sign up for our weekly roar. That's our weekly newsletter that goes out. So I hope you get a little bit of encouragement along the way. Thanks for listening again. Have a great weekend, guys. And you know what's coming. Just keep unleashing the lion within. If you're tired of going at it alone, we understand every man needs wise counsel, but finding it can be quite the challenge. That's why we build our leadership masterminds. This isn't just more content, guys. It's real discipleship with a consistent rhythm, small cohorts of no more than seven guys, honest hot seat sessions, and biblical counsel that turns good intentions into action. You'll get accountability, clarity, and a circle of brothers who will challenge you and cheer you on. We open up new options regularly so there's room to find the right fit. It's not always easy, but it is worth it. The first step is simple. Take the leadership mastermind assessment. No pressure, no hype, just thoughtful questions to help you see where you are, where God is leading you, and whether this is a good option for your next step. Hey, if it's a fit, we're gonna follow up with details. And if it's not, we'll point you to resources to help you keep growing. Either way, you move forward. So if you're ready to take the assessment, head over to thelionwithin.us slash mastermind. So that's thelionwithin.uslash mastermind to get moving today.
