Demons guard the heart to keep you men
from being fired up, lion hearted,
and full of the spirit in your life.
In Proverbs, we read these words,
the wicked flee when no one pursues,
but the righteous are as bold as a lion.
The series I'm starting over the next few episodes
is about lions, demons, and blood.
I don't wanna talk about being lion hearted
and what it means to be a lion hearted man.
I don't know what it means to be a lion hearted woman
because I'm not a woman.
And so I think it's different though, and I really do.
I think that the way God works in the heart of a man
is different than the way he works in the heart of a woman.
And what motivates that masculine heart of men
is that warrior heart, that worshiper warrior heart.
In my book, Worshipper Warrior,
I talk about the life of David.
And David, in my opinion,
is the epitome of the lion hearted man,
even as a young man, where the story picks up
in 1 Samuel, he's probably 13 or 14 years old.
And David always lived his life as a lion hearted man.
And so what I'm gonna do in this series
is talk about what it means to be lion hearted.
And I may have some different terms
than you're used to hearing.
So I'm gonna talk about the lion that's within the heart.
And I'm gonna tell you about the heart
as being like a sanctuary.
It's a sanctuary where the fire of God
can come into a man's life.
But I'm gonna also speak of these demons.
And I mean that figuratively,
but I also mean that literally,
in that there's true real demons.
And if you've listened to my other broadcast
on the demonic, you understand what I'm talking about.
If you haven't, you should.
But every man has these barriers
to the lion heart within them.
And so some of that is demonic, some of it's not.
But I'm gonna speak of lions, demons, and blood that way,
that demons guard the heart to keep you men
from being fired up, lion hearted,
and full of the spirit in your life.
And then I talk about blood.
And what I mean about blood
in the way I'm speaking of it here
is the effort that it takes to become lion hearted.
In other words, it's bloody.
And what I mean by that is that it just takes
tremendous effort to release this lion within.
So I'm not talking about anything easy here.
If you're looking for some easy little one, two, three,
do this, that's all you need to do kind of series,
this is definitely not for you.
So I'm talking about how do we face difficulties?
How do we face failures?
How do we face shame as men, but being lion hearted?
And so the first thing I think is to get born again.
If you've not given your heart to Christ,
you need to start there.
Can't be lion hearted the way I'm talking
about being lion hearted without a personal, vital,
dynamic, growing, fired up relationship with Jesus Christ.
So when I speak of the heart as a palace of the Lord,
that only happens when you get saved.
That's when you receive Christ.
And I love the way Ezekiel described the new heart,
the new palace of our heart.
He says, I will give you a new heart
and put a new spirit within you.
I'll take the heart of stone out of your flesh
and I'll give you a heart of flesh.
I'll put my spirit within you
and cause you to walk in my statutes
and you will keep my judgments and do them.
So when we give our hearts to Christ,
when we give our lives to Christ, we get a new heart.
We get the Holy Spirit, we get the new spirit within us.
So your old heart is dead
and you now have a new, vital, fired up palace
where your lion, and I'm speaking of the lion within,
can begin to be birthed out of you
to become a lion-hearted man.
But demons guard that heart.
And I mean that they do not want you
to find your lion-hearted, true self
that you were created by God for.
Your destiny, according to God's higher purpose,
is for you to be lion-hearted,
for you to be excited about your life,
to be daily getting up in the morning
with an expectation of miracles,
an expectation that you can reach
your full potential that day.
comes through God, God created you in his image.
So you can't know what it means to be Lionheart.
You can't know what it has to be a fully vibrant,
pumping, dynamic, spiritual heart without knowing Christ.
So it starts there, it starts with knowing him.
And so what I want to talk about here in this first part
is three kinds of men.
So I've been in ministry for 40 years
and I've been in counseling, doing counseling
with guys for 40 years and then coaching,
pastoring, leadership.
And I think you could narrow down men
to about three kinds of men.
And so that's what I'm gonna do today.
So the first is the dead lion.
There's a dead lion of a beaten down man,
a shamed man, a broken man.
And I'll just tell you right now, that's most men.
That's even most Christian men.
They're dead, they're broken, they're ashamed,
they have no anointing, they have no power,
they feel defeated.
Shame has just overwhelmed them, they've lost all nerve.
This is a man who has nothing to offer, they're numb.
They're just numb, they don't even have any feelings.
They want to, I mean, I think they really do,
but there's no real purpose, no real desire for fighting,
for their destiny, and definitely no passion.
And demons just control the palace of their heart
and they're dead, there's a dead lion within.
Man, it needs to be awakened, it needs to be shaken up.
On Tuesday mornings at the road at Chapel Hills,
the church that I pastor here in Colorado Springs,
our goal with Wholehearted Men,
which is a Tuesday morning breakfast, is that.
We're assuming that a lot of these men are dead
when they come, and my message is,
are geared toward shaking them up, waking them up,
and giving them a ferocious, passionate desire
to go after the kingdom of God and to go after Jesus.
So if you feel like I'm speaking to you right now,
that you feel dead inside, you feel numb,
you're not feeling anything at all,
have no desire and very little hope,
then I'm, this series is for you,
because the reality is, is that that can change.
Everybody's been there.
Everybody has been of that place in their heart
where they just feel dead.
That's usually the man who's addicted,
he's hopeless, has nothing to live for.
I wanna challenge you, first of all,
come to know Jesus Christ, give your heart to him.
And even at the end of this broadcast,
if you've not given your heart to Christ,
if you're in your car, if you're in your bedroom,
if you're in a study, wherever you are,
kneel down, just kneel down right where you are
and say, God, I surrender my life to you.
I ask you, Lord, to take my dead lion within
and God, awaken me, awaken my heart,
give me a new heart and a new spirit
and transform me into the man you want me to be.
The second man is the cage lion.
And this is a man of anger, resentment and bitterness.
So this guy's alive in the sense
that he's got a lot of emotion,
but it's anger and it's resentment
and it's built out of bitterness in that person's life.
The cage lion is a man of anger,
very much like a lion at the zoo
who's pacing back and forth,
just looking for the opportunity to have the gate opened
and to attack.
This is somebody who feels out of control.
They feel angry, they've been hurt.
They're gonna exact their revenge.
This is a lion.
This is a person who has a lion within
that feels ripped off, locked up
and they're just looking for someone to pounce upon.
And this is a very, very dangerous person.
And this is the kind of man that leads gangs.
This is the kind of man that beats his wife.
This is the kind of man that beats his kids.
This is the kind of man that's in trouble constantly.
It's the Cain and Abel story all over again,
repeated millions and millions of time
where Cain was angry because God did not acknowledge his gift
like he did Abel and so he killed his brother.
So this lion's dangerous.
This is a dangerous man in a really, really bad way.
This is someone who's very aggressive
and anger controls their life.
This is the lion that's.
pacing back and forth, looking for the opportunity to hurt someone.
He's a very, very dangerous person.
So the third person, though, is the released lion, and this is the righteous man who's
empowered by God and has control over his emotions.
So this is a dangerous man, too.
Both men are dangerous.
There's a dangerous man who has uncontrolled emotions and anger, and then there's the released
lion-hearted man who is pursuing God, who has control over his emotions, he's empowered
by the Holy Spirit, and this is someone who's dangerous against Satan's kingdom.
This is someone who's binding those demons, pushing those demons out because of the fire
within.
This is a lion-hearted man.
The released lion is a man who has control over his emotions but still stokes up the
lion within.
The redeemed lion is the released lion.
He's righteous, he's holy, he's loving, and he's bold.
And this is what Solomon's talking about in Proverbs 28.1, the wicked flee when no one
pursues but the righteous are as bold as the lion.
This is the kind of man that makes a difference in culture.
This is the kind of man that starts a business and flourishes in that business for the kingdom
of God.
This is someone who loves his wife, loves his girlfriend, treats them well, leads them
in godly ways and righteous ways.
This is what, this is the kind of man that Jesus created us to be.
This is someone who's walking in their destiny.
This is a lion-hearted man.
That's what I want.
I want that in my life.
That's what I want in wholehearted men.
That's what I want through this series is for you to have this desire to be a lion-hearted
man.
It was St. Aranus of Lyons who said the glory of God is a man who is fully alive.
So I'm talking about your destiny.
This is the destiny of the kingdom.
This is the destiny of the man of God is that released lion, the lion-hearted man who walks
with humble obedience with God, who's fully alive in the sun by the power of the Holy
Spirit, living with him and fully alive, fully free and fully lion-hearted.
Which man are you?
That's the question because that's what we're after is to become a lion-hearted man.
Are you the dead lion?
Are you the angry, caged-up lion?
Are you lion-hearted?
You're released by the power of the Holy Spirit.
I want to challenge you.
Go after God.
Seek his kingdom.
Become a lion-hearted man.