True Transformation Starts with This One Verse

This week I’m talking about something that’s been sitting heavy on my heart: the decisions we make as men, and how Romans 12:2 is the starting point for all of it. I’m not giving you a full masterclass on “the code” today — this episode is really the beginning of a journey I’m taking right alongside you. As I said in the episode, “Where you are in your life… are a result of the decisions and the choices you’ve made.” That hit me hard, and I think it’ll hit you too.
I’m also shifting how I show up on these Valiant Monday episodes. No scripts. No polished AI hooks. Just me, letting the Holy Spirit lead and sharing what I’m learning in real time. Like I said, “Now you’re gonna hear the real me… the Midwestern not‑eloquent‑speech guy.”
Romans 12:2 has become the foundation for what biblical masculinity looks like in my own life — not conforming to the world, but letting God renew my mind so I can actually make godly decisions. That’s the code. That’s where it starts.
If you’re a man trying to grow, trying to get unstuck, or trying to become who God called you to be, this episode is for you. Drop a comment, share your thoughts, and let’s walk this out together.

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https://youtu.be/xdZqqgid3gU

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Insert compelling hook here. Then insert some kind of a promise that this episode is supposedly going to deliver. Oh hi, I'm Mark Osborne of the Valiant Forge Podcast. A lot of my podcasts start with some kind of a hook that's supposed to grab your attention and then tell you what I'm going to deliver in the episode that's supposed to make you stay here. And there's nothing wrong with that, but I've been doing that for a little while now, and it just feels so inauthentic and robotic to me. So it's time for me to start changing how I'm doing things. My last episode that I put out last week was all me. It was my idea, but I ran it through AI and figured out all these compelling hooks and things to say and a great way to say this, but that's not who I am. Before we go any further, I'm Mark Osborne, and you have found the Valiant Forge podcast. Give me 30 seconds with a little musical intro, and you'll find out what this podcast is about. I'll see you on the other side of this.

SPEAKER_00 1:15

Welcome to the Valiant Forge Podcast. Where we help me overcome life battle. Are you ready to overcome your doubt and fulfill your purpose with my idiot? Yes.

SPEAKER_01 1:41

Now that you know a little bit about the Valiant Forge podcast and what we do here, I'm going to tell you my name is Mark Osmore and I'm the host of the podcast. Today I'm going to talk about biblical masculinity, but before I get into that, there's a few things I want to get into that will explain my weird intro. So bear with me for a moment. Because last week I put out my first solo podcast that I've done in a long time, and I talked about direction. Really, what I wanted to talk about was clarity, but I thought that's not me. That's not a word that I would use very often. So I changed it to direction. And weirdly, that that video podcast didn't do near as well as my interview podcast. Now that may just be because the interviews are a little more exciting, I don't know. But I am trying this new thing where I am doing solo podcasts because I want you, whoever you are out there listening, to get to know who I am as a person. What I've been doing, and that last episode, if you go back and listen to it, great points, great message. My idea, not my idea, sorry, scratch that, the Holy Spirit's idea, that I ran through AI, and I said, give me four points based off of this revelation that I got this morning. Then I had AI help me put it all together. And if you go back and watch it, I'm not gonna get rid of it because it's evidence of when you use the Holy Spirit and when you don't. So I'm not gonna get rid of it. I'm gonna keep it on my playlist. I don't think I even put it in a playlist. I it's on the podcast playlist. Maybe I'll make a playlist for these solo episodes. I'm gonna be calling these solo episodes Valiant Mondays. Now, what you're seeing now is my thoughts getting jumbled up because I'm just talking. I'm not going off of a script. So, what I'm before we get into biblical masculinity, what I want to tell you is be patient with me because I got convicted last week of using AI too much. While I had that conviction, I saw first I had the conviction, then I saw three listen to three podcasts about only using AI for certain things, and then I saw two YouTube videos about letting the Holy Spirit move through you instead of using AI. It's like, alright, God, I got the message. So, what I'm saying is now you're gonna hear the real me, the Midwestern, not eloquent speech guy. Now I do, when I'm gonna talk about biblical masculinity in a minute, I do have an outline made up, so you may see me looking down. There may be jump cuts in here, but I'm gonna do my best to let the Holy Spirit flow and just talk based off of my points that I got written down. If you go back and look at that video that I put out last week, there were a ton of jump cuts. You can see me looking down at my script like that. I'm trying to be a real man of God, a real example of a man of God, and the way that I can do that is by being led and letting the Holy Spirit flow through me by presenting my body as a living sacrifice holy and acceptable unto the Lord. Now I just kind of paraphrase that scripture, which is Romans 12.1. We're gonna get into biblical masculinity. Romans 12.1 is the setup for what I'm gonna talk about. Now, as I said, you're gonna be using, you're gonna be seeing jump cuts, which you probably just saw. You're gonna be seeing them because I have points written down, and I don't want to leave dead air and dead space on these videos. I don't know if people have a problem with jump cuts. I personally don't. Most podcasts, even if I watch them on YouTube, I will pull up the video and do stuff in the background while I'm listening. If you're if you watch on YouTube, please keep the video open because it helps my watch time hours and eventually, and again, I'm just being honest. I would love to monetize this podcast so I can invest more time and more tools to help other men. My purpose through the beginning of this, because it would be a lot easier for me to not do this at all and just go on about my life. But God is pressing me and calling me to do this, so I'm gonna continue doing it. So now I'm gonna talk about biblical masculinity. I'm gonna try to make these Valiant Mondays what I'm calling them. I'm gonna try to make them quick and short and let you get on with your week. Think about what I've said, let it encourage and uplift you, and help you to become the man God has called you to be. Now, biblical masculinity. If you noticed, I changed my cover art, my banner on YouTube, and I've been using, even in some of my intros lately, I've been using using Romans 12, 2, which says I don't have that written down. I'm gonna paraphrase it the best I can. Do not be conformed of this world, but be renewed by the transforming of your mind, which is in Christ Jesus. That's pretty accurate. I think I got a little bit off. The concept is still there. So it's weird. I've been doing some more guest appearances on other podcasts, and in my profile on PodMatch, I have biblical masculinity as one of my tags. So this host asked me, and it's it's different when you're guesting on a podcast because you don't really know what the host may ask you, and you have to be prepared. So I definitely like am I try to be prayed up and ready to just because I don't want a lot of dead silence on a podcast, so I just try to be ready to answer the way that God tells me. The host asked me, can you define biblical masculinity for me? I hadn't really ever thought that hard into it. Like obviously, masculinity is being a man, a man of good character, a man of good integrity, and doing all the right things. That's real masculinity, and the world likes to throw titles in front of it like toxic masculinity, which is a misnomer, but so biblical masculinity is a term that's often used on faith-based podcasts. So I got it in my tags. When the host asked me that question, I said, There are so many. I'm paraphrasing, I don't remember exactly what I said, but it was around this this area. There are so many voices in the world today that men are listening to. You got the Andrew Tates, you got uh what's his name, the motivational guy. See, this is where I'm gonna do a jump cut because I'm thinking through. Tony Robbins. You got Tony Robbins. There's so many different voices out there. I can name a whole bunch, but I'm not gonna just say a whole bunch of names. Nothing wrong with Tony Robbins. I like what he has to say. Andrew Tate, on the other hand, don't like everything he has to say. But the world, us men have so many different voices out there to listen to. I'm gonna name one guy that I would recommend you go listen to if you want to find out how to be a good biblical man, is Joe B Martin. He has a whole series on YouTube called Act Like Men. I would recommend you listen to the whole series because it will definitely help you if you apply what he's talking about. So I said in that podcast, there are that us men have so many different voices to listen to out there telling us which way to go and which way not to go, and we don't know where to go because there's they're all differing opinions, and that's the key right there is opinions. But I said, and what it causes us to end up doing is to be conformed to the world's standards, and I said, we shouldn't be conformed to the world's standards, we should be renewed by the transforming of your mind, which is in Christ Jesus, biblical masculinity, is men trying to be like Jesus because he's our example. And when I said that, I don't know if it's years of church and hearing that scripture quoted a lot, me reading the Bible for I don't know how many times through in the past five years that that scripture kept coming up. Maybe it was in my spirit, maybe it was the Holy Spirit. When I said it, something clicked in my mind to notate that. And when that podcast was over, when that podcast was over, I looked it up. I knew about where it was, I knew it was in Romans, and as I was reading it, I felt like the Holy Spirit told me this scripture should be the foundation of your podcast. Because when men get their mind renewed by the transforming, be renewed by the be renewed by the transforming of your mind, which is in Christ Jesus. When you get your mind renewed by Christ Jesus and not by the conforming of the world, what everybody else in the world is telling you. Now it's kind of ironic because I'm sitting here on a podcast for Christian men telling you how to be a good biblical man. Don't listen to me. I mean, listen to what I'm saying, but cross-reference what I'm saying with the Bible because I'm a human, I falter, I fail, I may get it wrong. Please check me and let me know if I got something wrong because I need to know. As I said, I'm human and I get it wrong. But, so I went and changed my banner, my cover art, and you'll see in my cover art the scripture, Romans 12, 2, be renewed by the transforming of your mind. Before that, though, present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable unto the Lord, uh, as an act of worship. I'm trying to remember this without having to look down at my screen too much, as an act of worship. That's really where it starts. You can't have Romans 12.2 without having Romans 12.1. Now I'm trying to keep these kind of short. I just looked at my screen to see how long I've been recording. It's been 14 minutes. What I want you to do this week, I'm not gonna talk a whole lot about it, but I I just wanted to get the basis out there. I'm gonna talk more about it in the next coming weeks. I'm gonna start breaking down the scripture, and again, it's gonna be Holy Spirit-led. I don't really know at this moment what I'm going to say. I've been doing a study myself. This was like three weeks ago, I think I did this podcast. And it's just been sitting with me ever since, and I'm trying to dive deeper into it. I know, and this is one thing I want to leave you with. Where you are in your life for the most part, not counting mitigating circumstances, are a result of the decisions and the choices you've made in your life, your career, your life, your finances. Again, I know there are mitigating circumstances that you cannot control, but the things that you can control, where you are in your life, they're a result of the decisions that you've made that brought you to this point. Where do you make your decisions? You make your decision in your mind. You want to be a better man, you have to make better decisions. A better biblical man, a better godly man. That comes through making godly decisions by the renewing of your mind, the transforming of your mind. That's where it comes from. So, what I want for this week is for you to sit on that, let me know what you think. I want to hear your thoughts. You can send me a comment below if you're listening on YouTube. If you're only listening on audio, I'm gonna have a link to this very video in the show notes, so you can just click on this and it'll take you right to this video, and you can leave a comment. Or if you're uncomfortable doing that, you can just send me a text through there and I'll get a fan mail. I don't know yet about the back and forth conversation on email how that works, but I'll figure it out if you send me an email. I think it's anonymous, I'm not sure. But for now, okay, I'm trying my best not to make these long. So for now, I want you to sit on that. Let me know what you think. Let me know how it sits with you. Let me know what you think about this point where you are in your life right now. What are you struggling with? Is it because of the decisions you made? Or are there mitigating circumstances that led you to where you are right now? And maybe I can have some encouragement or help to get you out of it. Before we end, I'm going to be dropping another interview on Thursday. This is how the format's gonna go for now. There's gonna be these short little solo episodes. This was all me. I'd looked down at my notes when we first talked. Not me. Not me, Holy Spirit. This was all Holy Spirit. I'm just talking and letting the Holy Spirit flow through me. So, the way these episodes, excuse me, you're probably gonna hear some wheezing in the microphone. It's something that I've been dealing with for a while, but I'm just powering through it. If you want more of this, if you want to go deeper, I created a group on the school platform. Right now it's raw. I'm going to be putting in there in the classroom a hit workout that you can do with kettlebells. If you want to start getting your physical self better, because it's all it's all one physical mind, body, and soul. So you got to get your physical right, you gotta get your mental right, you gotta get your spiritual right to become a biblical man, a valiant lawyer. Let me know what you think about all this. If you want to know more, if you want to find out more, subscribe to the channel. And if you think another man needs to hear this, please share the video with them or the podcast with them. And I will see you on Thursday for the interview episode with Phil Tage. With that, stay strong, stay valiant, keep forging your path, and be blessed.