Stop Playing God For Everyone You Lead

Machine transcribed from the episode audio, lightly cleaned. Timestamps are approximate.

0:00
So this guy, he texted me last week and he was super stressed out. He said that he needed to talk. After a long conversation with him, I was blown away by some of what this Jesus following high performing man had to say. He says, look, I'm in this toxic work environment. The boss, the owner that really I've partnered with, that I'm instrumental in helping to build his business. He is just all over the place. And really more than anything is he just uses people to get what he needs to get. And so he was frustrated with that. And then he said this thing that just like stopped me right in my tracks.

0:45
He said, I've got so many people that's talking about inside the business. I've got so many people relying on me. I cannot let them down. And I told him, I said, look, man, I said, I love, I love to hear the heart behind that. Because really scripture does tell us to pour ourselves out for other people, to bear one another's burdens. There's so much truth and good to what he was saying. But then I asked him a couple of questions to follow that up. And his answers told me everything I needed to know about the spot that he was really in. So he said to me, he said, if I step back and realize that they were fine, meaning if I stepped out of the business completely,

1:37
or just way back from what I was doing, and I recognize that they felt fine, that they actually were pretty good. He said he would feel worthless, not relief that they were out of their situation. He would feel worthless. He also said that as it resulted to who was paying the cost of this. Now, he feels this is his calling. He feels this is something that he needs to do. He feels obligated to step into this role. And so I said, so who is paying the cost of this then? And he said, well, my wife. She carries this pain on my behalf and even in our relationship to some degree every single day.

2:23
And then I asked him this. I said, well, I said, is this producing any peace even in the hard? He said he has no peace at all with it. That he's constantly living from a place of desperation and he's always exhausted. He wakes up super early in the morning and he is just burning it until he goes to bed at the end of every day. I asked him when he took time away, like Jesus did. Hopefully, like getting him to see something important here. And he said he never does. And then I asked him this, and this was maybe the scariest of it all. As I said, would all of that, the people, the business, everything, I said, would it collapse without you?

3:15
And he said 100%. There was no doubt in his mind that everything would collapse if he stepped out. Every single one of his answers trended in the exact same direction. No peace. No rest. The wife that he loves so much, absorbing the pain that was never hers to carry in the first place. And a man, him, being so convinced that the whole thing falls apart without him. If you're starting to resonate with the story already, and trust me, I've got some anecdotes. I have some ideas for you here, but I need you to hear this loud and clear. If you're in a similar situation, feeling all of the pressure of the responsibility that you're involved in, I want you to hear something.

4:08
Because it may be exactly what I told him, and it's this, man. This is not calling. This is a mechanism. And once you can name that mechanism, you're going to start to see it everywhere in your entire life. Okay, so I want to pitch a big idea to you, and then a couple of shifts that I think are going to be really important for you if this resonates with you. So first up is this. Oftentimes, sin, it looks like sacrifice. Now, I am not going to automatically assign his behavior to sin, but there are a lot of indicators for me to believe that he is actually unintentionally living in sin in what he's doing. And this may be you too.

4:54
You see, this is something that nobody is willing to tell guys like him. Successful guys, driven guys, hardworking guys, big Jesus heart guys, doing good things guys. But this is something that you need to hear, that you may actually be in sin, not in your calling. Because sin that looks like sin for guys like this, it gets resisted pretty easily. The pornography, the addictions, the anger, like those things are easy to turn from for a guy like this. But sin that looks like sacrifice gets applauded. And that is exactly what makes this environment so incredibly dangerous.

5:41
It never feels like pride. It always feels like love, like I'm doing the right thing, like I'm living for Jesus. But I'm going to name two things that I think that this really is. I believe it is for him, and it could be for you too. The first one is, he's living with a savior complex. He needs to be needed instead of resting and being loved. You see, without intending to do so, he has become God to the people that need God. But it goes a step further than that. It's not just about living with the savior complex. It's also living with this belief that self-reliance is a key virtue.

6:31
That is the enemy that is underneath the performance trap that I talk about a lot. The performance trap. Remember that one? The one that I've said before is where we assign our worth and value to the titles we have, to the things that we've done, the things that we are doing. Or on the other side, we assign our worth and value to the shortcomings, to the failures, to the wounds, to the struggles. Self-reliance is the enemy underneath that performance trap. Men like this, maybe men like you, you start to carry what only God was meant to carry. Underneath it, it's not a bad heart. But it is an old wound. And it is wearing biblical language.

7:18
Sacrifice. Servant leadership. Dying to self. Those are all true biblical words. And those are all true important characteristics and virtues of a man that follows Jesus. But if a man's identity was never settled before he heard those things, those words don't heal the wound. They actually arm it with far more firepower than he has any idea is coming. And so what does he do? When this typically happens, and so when I confronted him with this, he started to rattle off some potential fixes, which you've probably tried too. Things like, well, I'm just going to set better boundaries. Oh, I'm just going to say no to more things. You know what? I'm just going to push through this because it's just a temporary season I'm in.

8:05
And eventually I'm going to get through it. I don't think I have to tell you this, but I'm going to anyway. None of that works because you're treating a behavior problem when it's actually an identity problem. Behavior modification does not work when our identity is distorted, when it is confused, when it is conflated. We've got to go after the identity. You see, you cannot boundary war your way out of a wound. That's a mechanism. But there is something you can do. There are a few things that you can do, at least that I want to bring before you and suggest that you consider if you find yourself in a similar spot. Because I think this is what it's actually going to take to break this.

8:54
I encouraged him with this and I want to encourage you to it as well. And by the way, this is a lot of what we talk about in our Men of Greatness community. This is what I take all of our guys through in our Aligned Man 12-week cohort. 12 men, 12 weeks. We walk through this very thing to break down all the false identities that they have gathered over the years and help them to finally see the true identity that God has created them with. Anyway, so okay, three shifts. These are not tactics. These have got to be mindset shifts. These have got to be belief shifts, not tactics. These are truths and they are rooted in scripture. So the first one is this.

9:41
We need to understand that right now we're living in a place where we need to be needed when in reality we have been and are being loved. The first shift has got to be where our value is actually coming from. You see, we often believe that our value comes from what we carry. But the truth of the matter is, is that his value and your value was settled before you carried anything at all. You were loved and he was loved before you were useful. You were no good to God. An enemy of his when he died on the cross for you. A man operating from a place of being needed will never rest because resting threatens the only thing that makes him feel valuable.

10:35
You going with me here? Okay. I want to ask you something directly because this is what I asked him directly. And maybe you need to answer this question for yourself. If you stepped back tomorrow from all the business that you're involved in, all of the things that are overwhelming you, and it is likely the business, you get to work, you're overwhelmed, you know, it just continues to pile over and over again. If you stepped back from all of that, would you feel relief or would you feel worthless? Or less valuable, maybe to not go to the extreme. You see, his answer told me everything I needed to know about what he was running on.

11:23
And your answer is probably going to tell you something very similar. That's got to be the first shift. We've got to move. We've got to move from being needed to being loved. This is the first shift. But there's a second one. And this one is going to expose the pride that is hiding underneath or maybe even inside the sacrifice that you are pouring out for other people. You see, because there is a big difference between a man God called into something hard and a man who appointed himself to that place. So this is about calling versus self-appointed. So watch how fast, by the way, this next one is going to flip the whole story.

12:13
So we live with this false belief, men that like to put a lot on our shoulders, that see a need in society and just step into doing everything we can for everybody that we can. We believe that if we leave, if we step out, if we don't do the thing, that everything is going to collapse. Yes, I am the only one holding all of this stuff together is what I often hear. But the truth of the matter is, is that God could call a man into a hard season, but he will never call the man to be the reason why the things that he's being called into survive. And if you believe that, if you believe that God's called you into a place because only you can do that, you're the one that's going to fix it all.

13:05
That is not you being humble. Even if you label that as God's calling, that is pride wearing a servant's coat. It's pride. Look at Jesus himself fed thousands of people. He healed so many, an unnumbered amount of people. And yet he still walked away from the crowds to be alone with the father. Go read it. It's all throughout the gospels. He didn't just keep healing and healing and healing and healing and serving. He took a step back. So if the son of God had limits that he honored, and his were self-imposed limits, by the way, he wasn't limited.

13:53
He chose to be limited. If God himself chose to limit himself, no man should get to claim that he is the exception to that rule, that you're the one that's going to do it, that you and Jesus together, that Jesus is going to fuel you to continue to go and go and go. You believe in a lie. And you're painting it with a pretty gospel picture. So I asked this guy this question, and I want to ask you this question as well. Where in your week, where in your month, where in your quarter, where in your year do you actually step away? That you completely break free. No phone, no laptop, no work.

14:41
To rest, to recharge, to enjoy so much of what you have worked so hard for and God has blessed you with. You see, because if your honest answer is his honest answer, which was never, that is not calling. That is control wearing calling's name. Okay, so that's the second shift. The third one is the hardest one of all because it names who's actually paying for all of this. Because the reality of the matter is, is that if you're married, if you have kids, and really, you know, even if you're leading a business, you're not the only one carrying the cost. And so this shift, this third shift moves from sacrifice to absorption.

15:34
This last shift, this is the one that should stop every single man that's watching or listening to this. The false belief here is, is that I'm the one sacrificing. I'm the one paying the price. Don't worry about it. This isn't hurting anybody else. I can take this on. I can deal with this. Nobody else is going to feel the ramifications of the season that I'm in or the life that I'm living. The truth of the matter is this, is real sacrifice produces peace even in the hard times. You see, what he described to me was not peace. It was desperation. And the person actually absorbing a good majority of the cost of his quote unquote sacrifice was his wife.

16:21
She was carrying the pain. She is carrying the pain every single day for her of something that was not hers to carry. And, you know, I got into an argument with a guy. I posted something about this earlier this week on X. And this guy came back and he's like, you know, a wife is called to partner with her husband. And so when the man is called into something by the Lord, the wife is to go with him. And I'm like, yes, yes, yes. And then he basically said, and I'm just going to paraphrase this. He said, and she's just to shut up and let it all happen. I mean, that's crazy. You guys. First of all, your wife is not called to carry all your burdens. Jesus is. That's number one.

17:07
Number two is we are supposed to die to our wives as Christ died to the church. It doesn't exactly say that going the other way. And so if you're asking your wife to submit to you as unto the Lord, as the Bible calls her to, then you can't be torturing her to do so. You see, the most loving thing that a man can do is stop absorbing the consequences of somebody else's dysfunction. So the truth can finally get to the surface and it can be fixed. Like in this guy's situation, he's bearing all the weight, all the responsibility of this dysfunctional owner. And there are a lot of reasons why that's the case. It's his job. He's got financial, you know, obviously there's implications financially from a career perspective.

17:57
Like there's a lot there. He does care about the people. He should care about the people. But when you are constantly the barrier between the dysfunction and those that are being negatively impacted by the dysfunction, you are preventing oftentimes from those people seeing that dysfunction for themselves and choosing whether or not they want to be a part of it anymore. And so I asked him this directly as it resulted to this. And I want you to ask yourself a similar question. Have you actually tested whether or not the people that you are protecting have another option? Or have you just decided on your behalf that they don't? They're out. It's either with you or they're going to die.

18:43
They're going to be destroyed. Men, these three shifts, needed versus loved, calling versus self-appointed, and sacrifice versus absorption. You've got to consider these things if you're in this season of bearing so much weight and responsibility, not knowing whether or not you're actually doing the right thing. Okay, here is what I want to leave you with. If you're resonating with any of this or all of this, I, and I believe God, would not ask you to abandon anybody. But what God is going to ask of you, and this is clear throughout Scripture, and so this I can confidently say, is you are being asked by God to stop being God for them.

19:38
That is sin. As much as you are doing it with a good heart, you have stepped into the role that only God can fulfill. If you are a man watching or listening to this right now, and something just tightened up inside of you, you're like, maybe you're frustrated with what I just said. I want you to hear me say this. I'm not condemning you. I'm trying to help you recognize the drift that you are currently in so you can turn back and truly fulfill the calling that God has put on your life. You don't need to blow up your life tomorrow. I didn't ask this guy to quit his job and walk away from everything. But I did ask him to consider my questions and to look at them a little bit differently.

20:29
You see, like him, you need—and he didn't just come to me. He ended up coming. He's actually a part of one of our Aligned Man cohorts. And so he brought this to the room. And just like him, just like me, you need a room full of brothers who are going to tell you the truth before you burn out completely, before you wreck your marriage, before you destroy your relationship with your kids, before you get so sick that you start to actually physically feel the effects. This is your opportunity to do something about it. So my question is, what are you going to do? Are you just going to nod your head? Or are you just going to begrudgingly disagree with me because you don't want to hear it because you think you're just the one hero that's going to get through it all?

21:15
I want you to do something about it. And if you feel like, man, right, this is me. Like, I feel this. I feel aspects of this. I feel this whole thing in my life. I've been going through very similar things over and over and over again in my life. Then I want to invite you in to what I'm doing, what we're doing through Men of Greatness. This is one of the main reasons why we created the Aligned Man program. It's 12 guys. And for 12 weeks, we work through our faith, our marriage, our body, and our calling to understand where our lives have drifted and what steps we need to take to close the gap between who we are right now and who God has created us.

22:02
To be. This is for you. If you're resonating with any bit of this message. And so if you're like, yes, Ryan, this is for me. I feel this. Down in the description, you can click the link and you can reach out to me and we can talk about what it would look like for you to apply for our next cohort that we are actually going to be opening up applications for really soon here. You can also find me on Instagram and you can DM me. I'll put that link down as well and we can have a chat there. So there are a couple of different ways that you can inquire and better understand what the Aligned Man looks like, what those 12 weeks are all about, what you get out of it, and what it's going to take for you to be a part of it.

22:48
Just like this man that's now looking at a gap in his life. You too have probably drifted into this place where you now have a gap. Maybe yours is narrow, which praise God if that's the case. Maybe yours is as wide as the Grand Canyon. But one way or another, the most important first thing you can do is name it. Because if you don't name it now, you could end up like I almost did, destroying my life, my marriage, and my family. And all of the things that I now celebrate every single day because I was caught before I went too far.