Intentional Guy

When money got tight, I canceled Covenant Eyes. I told myself I was doing good and didn't need it anymore. And I'm the guy who tells every man at coffee to put it on every device he owns. In this solo episode I get honest about why I dropped it, why God convicted me, and why I signed back up. If you've ever said "I'm fine, I don't need that," this one is for you. About 3 out of 4 Christian men loo...

A man sits in church every Sunday carrying a secret. He sings the songs, shakes the pastor's hand, and believes if anyone knew, he'd be done. So he stays quiet. And the church stays quiet too. Sam Black, Director of Recovery Education at Covenant Eyes, has spent almost 20 years breaking that silence. For his book The Healing Church, he interviewed more than 70 pastors, counselors, and men who foun...

Somebody you love is hurting, and everything in you wants to fix it. Say the right thing. Find the right counselor. Throw out the pills. Search the house one more time. But what if the person you have been trying to fix was never yours to fix? Wanting to help someone you love is not a sin. But somewhere along the way, love turns into control. I know it, because I have done it. Today we talk about...

Steve Rotermund built a life that looked like ministry success. Pastor. Men's ministry leader. Celebrate Recovery director at his own church. Underneath all of it, his first wife's addiction to pain medication had turned him into someone he never saw coming, a man managing chaos instead of loving his family. Fifteen minutes into his first session with a Christian counselor, the counselor stopped h...

I'm No Longer Being Adopted Jason Lyle spent over a decade behind a pulpit telling other men how to walk with God. The whole time, he was living a second life inside a sex addiction that started when he was ten years old, one that eventually cost him his marriage, his job, and nearly his life. His rock bottom was a night spent planning his own suicide. What pulled him back out wasn't another progr...

Since May I've had three surgeries and complications I never told you about. The episodes you've been watching were recorded weeks, sometimes months, before you saw them. This week I'm telling you what was actually happening behind the screen, and where I found solid ground. Timestamps (estimated, confirm against final cut): 0:00 Why I'm asking for your prayers today 0:55 What you didn't know abou...

If your identity is still wrapped around the worst moment of your life, you're carrying something you were never meant to carry. J. Randall Gladden built a life most men would call a win. Then he watched nearly everything visible get stripped away, and had to find out who he was underneath it. This conversation is about what's left of a man's identity when the business, the reputation, and the evi...

Matthew Jenkins had a full ride Army scholarship and his whole future mapped out until a rare cancer diagnosis in college took it away. He carried anger at God over that loss for years without fully knowing it. In March of 2025, that anger collided with chronic pain, job loss, and a marriage he could not save, and he reached the lowest point of his life in his driveway. What he told his mother tha...

I used to think I was a good husband. I showed up, I paid the bills, I never cheated, I never yelled. By every measure I'd been handed, I was fine. My wife would tell you different. She would tell you she was lonely in a house with me in it. Two years ago a job loss knocked something loose in me, and going quiet turned into hours in the garage, a pipe in my hand and the TV loud enough that I didn'...

Fixed and saved. Here's the redo, episode number and title as the last line like we settled on with Brett's: Mark Osborne hosts The Valiant Forge, a podcast for Christian men, and long before he built that platform he watched his own father go from alcoholism to a faith that broke the pattern in their family. We talk about what that turnaround taught him, and about a season years later that looked...

Twenty years ago I went quiet with God. Not angry, just quiet. I kept showing up to church, kept saying amen, kept letting everyone believe I was fine. I wasn't. Today I talk about the kind of doubt that never gets said out loud. The kind with good manners that just sits in a man for years while he keeps doing everything right on the outside. It ties straight back into yesterday's conversation wit...

An idol is not just a statue. It is anything that has power over your life, anything calling the shots. Paul Granger heard that from his spiritual father the morning we recorded this, and he bristled at it. Then he sat with it. Joseph forgotten in that prison. The disciples demanding the storm stop while Jesus slept. The difference between a good Christian and a good Christ follower. And the toe n...

Being punished was easy for me. Accepting grace was almost impossible. I spent years believing grace was the opposite of being a man. Then Brett Knight said something on this show that changed how I see it. In this episode: why men either reject grace as weak or hide behind it as an excuse, what years of self punishment cost me before I got healed, and what changed it. My grace is sufficient for t...

Brett Knight spends his career standing in two rooms most of us never do, a courtroom and a church. He was a prosecutor before he became a defense attorney, and what he saw from both sides changed how he defines justice and grace. We talk about why punishment can change behavior but cannot heal the pain underneath it, why grace and accountability are not opposites, and why shame may be doing more...

I built my entire picture of my Heavenly Father out of my earthly one. If dad was disappointed, God must be disappointed. If dad was embarrassed of me, God must be embarrassed too. I carried that for years before I ever saw it for what it was. My dad's version of the talk lasted about thirty seconds. The birds go tweet tweet. The bees go buzz buzz. That was the whole conversation. What he never sa...

If your son was struggling with pornography, would he tell you? Would he even know he could? Most of us grew up in homes where nobody talked about this — so we learned to hide it. Now our kids carry more temptation in their pocket than we ever had access to. In this episode, Michael Chestnut sits down with Chris Rogers, former teacher and founder of Rebooted Teen, who coaches teens and high-perfor...

For hours at a time, I sat alone in my garage smoking a pipe. No secrets. No shame. Nothing I'd have to hide if you walked in. And that "harmless little hobby" was quietly eating my life. This episode isn't about my struggles — it's about yours. Maybe your garage is a bottle, a game, a phone, the gym, the boat, or the deer stand. Hobbies are good. But there's a difference between a hobby that rest...

What are you planting in the dark? In this episode, Michael sits down with Matthew Wingo — founder of Turn Right Ministry and author of Turn Right: The Pursuit of Noble Things — a man whose story runs so close to Michael's own that he calls him his twin in journey. Matthew was winning in public and losing in private, quietly tending what he calls a "hidden orchard" of buried emotions, isolation, a...

What if the thing that takes a man down isn't his sin — it's his pride in hiding it? In this episode, I sit down with Pastor Timothy Allen — 43 years walking with Christ, 20+ years of pastoral ministry, and a longtime prison chaplain — for a conversation that hit close to home for both of us. Timothy shares how God called a man who'd never been arrested to a ministry behind bars, and tells an unfo...

Most Christian men don't lose the battle in the moment they fall. They lose it five minutes later. The enemy whispers, "You did it again. This is who you are. You might as well keep going." One bad decision becomes a whole night. One night becomes an identity. Before long, shame feels more permanent than hope. In this honest episode of The Intentional Guy Podcast , Michael Chestnut speaks directly...

What happens when you've spent years believing your failures define you? In this powerful conversation on The Intentional Guy Podcast , Michael Chestnut sits down with Eli Brackenbury , author of Finding God at 50 , to discuss how God meets us in our brokenness—not after we've cleaned up our lives, but right in the middle of the mess. After two divorces, years of chasing success, and believing he...

Competency Cancels Fear: From Pulpit to Bureau — An FBI Agent's Guide to Fearless Living What happens when you take a small-town Baptist pastor who's never held a gun and hand him a badge for the FBI? You get 24 years of stories that sound made up — teenage prostitutes, gang members, terrorists, SWAT raids — and a man who never lost sight of the fact that he was still, first and foremost, a shephe...

The conversation delves into the deceptive nature of privacy, the tragic consequences of exposure, the impact of isolation, the truth about incognito mode, the collateral damage of sin, the weight of shame, the choice to walk in the light, and the hope for restoration. It emphasizes the importance of seeking support and refusing to believe the lies of isolation and shame. Takeaways Isolation is a...

What if your biggest battle isn't just temptation... it's a system that's learning your weaknesses? Every day, the algorithm studies what you watch, what you click, when you're most vulnerable, and what keeps you scrolling. But this isn't a new strategy. Long before smartphones and social media, the enemy was already using personalized temptation in the Garden of Eden. In this episode, Mike Chestn...

The conversation delves into the hidden struggles of individuals in the church, particularly the fear of divorce and the isolation experienced in a failing marriage. It emphasizes the importance of safe and supportive relationships, the role of the church, and the path to restoration and reconciliation. The episode concludes with a call to action, encouraging individuals to seek support and not wa...