A Man Without Self-Control Is a City Broken Into Without Walls

What happens when a man loses self-control?

In this Valiant Monday episode, Mark Osborne breaks down Proverbs 25:28 and explores why self-control is more than discipline. It’s protection.

Too many men are spiritually exposed:
 distracted, exhausted, isolated, angry, addicted, and disconnected from God.

This episode is about rebuilding the walls.

Through Scripture, personal reflection, and practical encouragement, we talk about:
 • Why self-control is a fruit of the Spirit
 • Why willpower always fails
 • How men slowly drift spiritually
 • Why physical discipline matters
 • How to rebuild consistency brick by brick

If you’ve felt stuck, numb, ashamed, or spiritually worn down, this conversation is for you.

The walls can be rebuilt.

Join the community and get your free workout plan:

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:00

I used to read Proverbs like a checklist, a list of things to do. Be wise, be self-disciplined, have self-control. All the things that should make you a good man. One day, for whatever reason, I came across this one verse that just hit me, stopped me in my tracks. Proverbs 25-28. A man without self-control is like a city broken into without walls. And when I read it that time, I didn't read it as a command. It was more like a diagnosis. Solomon wasn't telling me or his son or whoever the reader is to have self-control. He was explaining what happens when you don't have self-control.

SPEAKER_00 0:50

Welcome to the Valiant Warrior Podcast, where we help men overcome life's battle, do it better in the world, and become a valiant warrior for doubt. This is a place where we hear practical energy that will include you on life's journey to help you become the man of quality. Are you ready to overcome your doubt and fulfill your purpose just by giving? If so, let's go.

SPEAKER_01 1:16

Welcome back to the Valiant Forge podcast, where we try to help men go from unstuck to building a lasting legacy. I'm on that journey myself, and what you found is a valiant Monday. Every Thursday we drop an interview on Mondays we do an encouragement. Today I'm going to be talking to you about a fruit of the spirit that can literally change your life, and that's self-control. Not the white knuckle, try hard, I'll do better tomorrow kind of self-control. The kind of self-control that comes from walking with the Holy Spirit. Because willpower is a battery. It drains. It quits. It fails. And then you fail. But the Holy Spirit, it doesn't get tired. It doesn't drain. It never quits. It's always there for you. You just have to call on him. Now I'm going to talk about the verse that I mentioned at the top of the episode. The key part that I want to talk about is the city without walls. I realized when Solomon wrote that proverb, he wasn't being poetic. He was being prophetic. In the ancient world, a city without walls was just open. Back then you were just open for attack. Everybody was trying to attack and overcome everybody else back then. A city without walls was doomed. No protection, no boundaries, no ability to keep the enemies out. And Solomon said that's what a man becomes when he loses self-control. Not because he's weak, not because he's a failure, but because he's unprotected. When your walls are down, anything can walk in. The enemy can walk in. Temptation, anger, lust, laziness, fear, destruction, distraction, numbness, shame, all these things can come into your life if you don't have self-control. And it's not like they need to find a way to weasel in. They can just walk right into your life. It's so easy to just be distracted and let the enemy come in. And here's the thing that I'm talking about when I realized that Solomon wasn't just giving us this simple wise proverb. He experienced it, he faced it. If you look at Solomon's life, the wisest man on earth fell into this same trap. I don't the Bible doesn't really say, but it started with the Queen of Sheba. She came to see Solomon and she heard all about the wise stuff he was doing. And I'm sure she tempted him in some way. And he lost control. This wasn't just a man giving advice. This was a man giving a warning. A wise man, not just a simple man who just lets simple things get in easily. Solomon was wise. He knew better. He built the temple, he led Israel into the golden age, but he ended in ruins. Seven hundred wives, three hundred concubines, alliances that corrupted his heart, idols in the kingdom, a legacy that fell apart the moment he died. Now I've talked about this before. If you go back to any of my Proverbs series, I talk about how Solomon was giving all these wise sayings from things that he learned in his own life to his son, Rhaboam. And if you go back to Kings, you can see that Rahboam did not lead a good life. He obviously didn't apply any of this in his life. So when Solomon says a man without self-control is like a city broken into without walls, he was describing himself. This proverb is not a motivational quote, it's a confession. And like I said, Rahboam did not listen to any of his advice. Rahoboam inherited the kingdom. He inherited all of Solomon's wisdom. He inherited all of Solomon's elders. Yet he still chose arrogance, impulse, and ego. He rejected the elders' advice and listened to his friends. He acted out of pride, without self-control, without restraint. Then the kingdom split. All the tribes walked away. Israel was fractured, and the nation never recovered. Raboam became the embodiment of Proverbs 25 28. No self-control, no restraint, no walls. And the people paid the price, not just Rehoboam. When a man lacks self-control, the people around him suffer. Now I don't do this to say, you know, make yourself better. Have more self-control so you can help yourself. I we're talking about self-control, so I'm saying the word self a lot. If you go back to a few of my podcasts from Mondays, I don't like to talk about the self because this isn't about ourself, but you have to have some self-control. We're going to get into how you can do that. And it does take a little discipline, and you may fail here and there, but when you stop relying on yourself and remembering that you have that power of the Holy Spirit behind you, it becomes less about self-control. And it becomes a fruit of the Spirit. Now, if you think that I'm coming on here talking like I got this all figured out, and I'm this great spiritual man who has control over himself. If I have discipline, no, I struggle. And none of us are perfect. There was only one perfect man in this world, on this that was ever in this world, and that was Jesus. Even Paul, the man who wrote most of the New Testament, struggled. Paul planted churches, he endured shipwrecks, he endured beatings. He had visions of heaven. But in Romans 7, Paul says, The things I want to do, I don't do. The things that I don't want to do, I do. What was Paul talking about there? He was talking about self-control. He never goes into what he struggled with, but he obviously lacked some self-control because he was human, because he was a man just like you and I. That's a man who understands the war inside of each one of us. Paul is saying, I know what's right. I want rights right, but there's something inside of me, something in my flesh that just pulls me off course. I know you've been there, I've been there, I'm sure every man has been there. We try to change our lives, and we get up and we're one day we just we're gonna we're just we're just gonna do this thing. And we get up and do it, two days later we fail. And then we feel defeated. But the man who is transformed by the renewing of your mind, which is in Christ Jesus, he fails and he doesn't give up. He gets back up and does it again and again. Another verse in Proverbs a righteous man falls seven times and gets up and rises again. Each time you fall, you get back up, you get back up, you stop conforming to the world, you realize you're being renewed by the transforming of your mind, which is in Christ Jesus, and you have the Holy Spirit within you helping you through this. You're not doing this on your own. The man who is conformed to this world says, I failed, I can't do this, I give up. But the man who is transformed says, I failed, but I'm getting back up because the Spirit of God lives in me and His grace is sufficient for me. The transformed mind doesn't rely on willpower, it relies on the Holy Spirit. The transformed mind says, His strength is perfect in my weakness. Now here's the thing, if you've heard my story a few times, there was a time in my life where I used to think I was disciplined. I thought I had self control. I thought I could manage my life through grit and effort. And I did okay. I transformed my body, but what I didn't transform was my mind, because what I really was was ego in a suit. And when ego runs the show, eventually everything collapses. I drifted, I got self-consumed. I tried to manage my own life and my own strength. I conformed, I relied on me, and then my walls started cracking, not all at once, but brick by brick, till one day I realized I wasn't being protected anymore. I wasn't protecting anything. I was a city without walls, and it almost destroyed my life. The enemy came in, distracted me, distracted me with another woman who I was talking to online, and it almost destroyed my marriage. And I'm not gonna get into that story again, but if you know, you know. God, in his mercy, didn't shame me, he rebuilt me, not through willpower, but through surrender. Now I don't always want to come on here with some spiritual motivational talk. I want to give some practical takeaways. If you listen to the intro, I'd say it says in the intro, with practical strategies. So you're probably asking yourself, how do I start to renew my mind? And this isn't just going to be spiritual because there are physical aspects you can do to start the journey of self-control now. Before I get into this, I want to say you have to be very careful with this because I've been on this journey. It's so easy to let this become about you. You don't want it to become about you. You want it to be about Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, and the people around you who are under your care because you want to build walls up to protect them. So you need some practical advice, some practical things you can do to start implementing self-control. Again, this isn't about discipline. Because you may try this and you may not make it through, but the righteous man falls and gets back up. Remember that. You start with a wall you can actually touch, your body. Physical discipline is the training ground for spiritual discipline. Well, I didn't realize this when I started my journey because, and I said this when I was going through it, God told me to get in shape. And the thing is, God did tell me to get in shape because it's the right thing to do. And when I say get in shape, I don't mean go out and get a six-pack. It means to take care of your physical self because that's stewardship, taking care of your physical health is the right thing to do. It's biblical, it's spiritual. You again, this isn't about building a six-pack. You have to if you start on this journey to like, oh, I'm gonna get ripped and build a six-pack, you're gonna make it about you, and you don't want that to happen. You just want to be healthy. And you may get a six-pack, you may get ripped. That's all a genetic thing, and I'm not gonna get into all that. But don't do it for that. Do it to take care of yourself because your physical health is honest, it doesn't lie, it doesn't negotiate, it doesn't care about your excuses. I recently had a friend who went through some some health issues that were surprising to him, and it it it was a bit of a wake-up call for him, and he he told everybody that he talked to, like, hey man, I need to start taking care of myself. This this is important. And I'm telling anybody else out there, hey, you need to take care of yourself, it's important. God is telling you to do this. Now, if you can learn to take care of your physical health, you can learn self self-control. If you can learn to take care of your physical health, you can learn self-control in a lot of areas, and taking care of your physical health is actually the lowest hanging fruit of this, and the other things will just line up. It'll take a little bit of time, a little bit of trying, falling, and getting back up, and the Holy Spirit, but it can be done. Now you're thinking, okay, well, now I gotta go out and join a gym. You don't, because I have something for you. If you stayed with me this long, you're definitely gonna be happy that I've given you this. Because I've created a workout plan, and I got a couple of different variations depending on what equipment you have, what you can use, that you can implement three days a week. Start small and a build up. I have a PDF that you can download. Now you do have to join my school to get it. You don't like what you see there, really, on honestly, at this point. So I'm giving you two steps you have to do to get it. You gotta join my school community by clicking on the link in the description, and then at the top of the school community, there is a an introduction post that's pinned at the top. Introduce yourself, say who you are, say what you're struggling with, and then you can go into the classroom tab and you can download this PDF. And if you don't like what you see there, it's totally free, it doesn't cost you anything to join this community. Then leave. It's it's totally fine. There will be no uh animosity towards you whatsoever. I won't ask you why did you leave, what didn't you see? It's totally up to you. It's it's quiet in there right now. My goal is to build a community where men can say, Hey, I'm struggling with this in my life, and other men, including myself, can say, Hey, oh, I've dealt with this in my life, and this is what I did. This is I call it the cave of a dulum. If you listen to my podcast at all, that's like my signature question that I ask every man that comes on the podcast. Because the cave of a dulum is where David was when he was running away from Saul, and in that cave, men of the kingdom came to him, and they ended up becoming David's mighty man. If you want to be a mighty man, join a community like this, and you're gonna get this PDF that you can download that you can use. And again, I have a couple of different variations for whatever equipment you have access to. Now, when you train your body, you're not just practicing discipline, you're not just getting stronger, you're practicing obedience, you're practicing consistency, you're practicing saying no to the flesh and yes to something better. And when you do that, when you start saying no to things the flesh wants, when you stop conforming to what the flesh wants, and you start saying yes to what your spirit wants, that helps you build up your walls. And that's how the spirit grows the fruit of self-control in you. I want to leave you with this. You're not weak, you're not broken, your walls may be down, but you're not too far gone. You're just disconnected. And in order to rebuild those walls, all you have to do is start applying this fruit of the Holy Spirit. Self control. Reconnect to the Spirit, rebuild your walls, rise again, and become the man God has called you to be. Stay strong, stay valiant, keep forging your path, and be blessed.