Welcome to the Lion Within Us, a podcast serving Christian men who are hungry to be the leaders God intends you to be. I'm your host, Chris Granger. Let's jump in. All right, fellas, this is fun Friday time. Let's go, okay? Scripture of the week this week, though, is in the book of Jeremiah. So let's just look at that quickly. Jeremiah 9th chapter, verses 23 and 24. And these are awesome verses, guys. It says, Thus says the Lord, let no wise man boast of his wisdom, and let no mighty man boast of his might, let no rich man boast of his riches, but let the one who boasts boast of this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord who exercises mercy, justice, and righteousness for the earth. For I delight in these things, declares the Lord. Beautiful scripture, guys. Obviously, what we try to do each week on a line within us is give you some scripture, give you some ideas, and then try to give you some ways to simplify and apply it to your life. There's one thing to know scripture, it's another thing to actually put to application, and that's what we try to do with our spiritual kickoff episode. So go back, it'd be two in your podcast feed. Hopefully you get encouragement from that. Again, we do the spiritual kickoffs every day. We call it our daily SKO within our Lion Within Us community. So if you're interested in seeing that, again, we offer this up for free. Head over to the LionWithin.us and start your daily spiritual kickoff experience right now. Okay, get started with that. Maybe even jump into our community, see what that's all about. And if you're super interested and you really want to start diving deep, put in an application for our leadership mastermind. We'll see if you how how things stack up. And if we think there's good alignment, we'll get you plugged into the right group. Okay. So when we had Kurt Avery on, that's in your last, that's the last episode. I didn't know really what to think. He was very much um focused. They presented to me and say he wants to talk a lot about his business. I'm like, that's great, but we want to talk a lot about his faith. And he ended it, he just knocked it out the part. Absolutely enjoyed it, thoroughly enjoyed uh hearing his testimony, how he took this idea that God gave him and turned that into something just absolutely that's changing the world. Absolutely changing the world. So very, very encouraged by him. The thing that he really hit me with at the end, I don't know if it stuck with you guys, was when he talked about tolerance, tolerance being the tool of the evil one, and how tolerance has basically made us soft and and churches soft and and just guys soft in general, because we just are we're we're we're told to put up with, we're told to you just gotta accept it. And I'm just here to tell you, no, you don't, no, you don't, because he he he um compared that with patience, and God did tell us to be patient, but he did not tell us to tolerate, and we gotta make sure we're not mixing those two up, okay? All right, so that's enough on that. But for our fun Friday fell fellows, we always get into a health, wealth, and a self tip. Okay, if you're new listening to the lion, first of all, thank you for checking us out. The way we do this, the health tip is really focused on how do we build stronger minds and bodies. Wealth tip is how do we be better stewards of our finances and our careers? And self is how do we improve as being husbands and fathers? Okay, it's being super intentional and locked in there. Okay, so the health tip, very simple, very straightforward, but guys, we forget to do it. Stretch. Stretch. I found a um a Harvard business article on proper stretching, and I'm having to do this more now. Yeah, again, I broke my ankle. I'm starting PT. I actually start PT tomorrow at the time of this recording. And stretching is something I ignored. Like I just ignored it for the longest time. I'll go to the trail and just take off running. It was like terrible, terrible, particularly as you get older. So Harvard, they talked about warming up first, okay? And they compared your muscles to like taffy. And think about how taffy works. The more you work it, the more you miss you stretch it, the easier it gets, particularly when it gets warm. And it could just be like marching in place or swinging your arms back and forth, or maybe you want to be kind of weird, you could dance, you know. I don't know, no, no picking, but seriously, come on now. But and but then you have other have other ways like heat packs or warm showers. Whatever you need to do, get the most the muscles warm, okay? Now, when you're stretching, you're not supposed to feel any pain. You're supposed to feel to the point of mild tension, but never to the point where you're like you're in agony, right? So if it's hurts, stop. Stop. Then reset your position, okay? Because that may be where you got off. So it takes a little bit of time, a little bit of practice, but your flexibility will improve. And then we have to pay attention to our posture and our form, okay? Because posture matters, whether you're sitting, you're standing, whatever you're full, whatever you're doing, that good form is going to translate to better gains and flexibility, okay? And we need to focus when we're stretching on the right on the muscle that you're being stretched, okay? So you'll you'll notice probably like for me, a lot of times I think my right side's a lot tighter than my left. So we just need to work on that and then balancing it out over time. And a big thing with stretching that we often forget is to breathe. That breathing is giving you that opportunity uh while you're doing that stretch for that blood to flow, right? So just be careful not you're not holding your breath too often, too long. And the last really tip here is just practice it often, man. Like the more you can stretch, like it's it's all about frequency, it's all about reps, just like everything in life, right? So do it as often as you can. And then next thing you know, it's maybe a daily part of your routine, okay? All right, for your wet, your wealth tip, I went back old school, old school for this one, okay. For you guys out there that are struggling with debt, the debt snowball, it works. I mean, Dave Ramsey, when he thought about this and they and they engineered it and and put it out, it's it's it's phenomenal. So I've done I used to do a lot of financial coaching. And if you're struggling with with uh debt right now, it's pretty straightforward. So you say what you do, you line up your debts, smallest to largest, okay? And then you start you pay minimum on everything, but you attack the smallest, okay? I mean attack it with everything you can. And then when that smallest is knocked out, you move to the next smallest, but you keep that same amount that you were paying, then you just throw that onto the next one. And then you see how this works. Next thing you know, you got a little bit of momentum. And momentum's a big deal, particularly when we're trying to get out of debt. And before we know it, you're knocking out some serious debt and some serious uh uh shortened time frames because of the intentionality, and that is a great step towards stewardship. So I just kind of want to bring us back. The debt snowball, a great reference, a great resource. Highly encourage you guys, particularly if you're battling debt, lean into this one, okay? Now, the self-tip got this one from my buddy JD over at Uncomference Uncovering Intimacy. Love what he does. But read with your wife, read together with her. So my wife and I, we started this uh pretty recently, but we read in the evenings. Kids go to bed and she pulls out a book, and she usually does the reading, so she just enjoys that. And we work on books like the books we have right now are all focused on our marriage goals and how can we strengthen our marriage? And it just it's uh it's a great time to connect. Sometimes I rub her shoulders, sometimes I rub her feet, sometimes I'm just there listening. But it's just a great time for just she and I, no TV, no distractions, just to be there and and grow together. And sometimes the books are good, and she's like, What is this guy talking about here? She'll flip through the book, but just that intentional time of reading, and it's pretty special. Highly encourage you guys to do if you've never done it before. I'm not and I'm talking about I'm not talking about you reading, she reads, and you're quiet. No, literally, she's reading out loud. We're sitting there, it's just a great time of intimacy, to be honest. So maybe think about that, consider reading. Maybe you need to be the one who reads to get it going, or you could flip-flop vice versa from night to night. Uh, and maybe you don't need to put a big, hairy, audacious goal reading every night. Maybe you pick one night a week and you just read, okay? So anyway, just want to plant that seed and see if you guys do anything with it. All right. So that's your three tips: your health, wealth, and self. Again, that health tip is stretch. Went through all the different ways of stretching. This the the wealth tip is around a dead snowball and the self tip is reading together. Okay. Now, the book of the week, I want to pull this one up. This saw your thing. This is one from this is from Mr. Kurt Avery. Uh, and he gives you 25 tips to help you really be a disruptor in the market. And again, lots of some some spiritual things here, but really this book is heavily written and geared towards those who are ready to take your business to the next level. Okay. So highly encourage you, if you're a believer, you're in business, you're an entrepreneur, check this book out. You're not gonna be disappointed, okay? All right, now dad joke time. All right, I want to thank my brother Doug for these two dad jokes. He gave me both of them. So dad joke number one is why was the math book so sad? Well, it's because he was full of problems, of course. All right, so that's number one. Number two, did you hear about the chef that died? He passed away. The doctor can only do so much, his legacy will become a pizza history. He ran out of time, and just Doug keeps going and going and going. He's awesome. He is the king of dad jokes. So, anyway, guys, let me know which one you like. Number one or number two. Number one, why was the math book so sad? He was full of problems. Number two, did you hear about the chef that died? He passed away the Dr. Connoli do so much. His legacy will become a pizza history, and he ran out of time. So thank you, Doug, so much for these. You're awesome. Love, love everything that you bring for the lion. Just an encouragement to me. Okay, so let us know which one you like. Number one, number two. And if you have a dad joke that you want to share, like Doug does, hey, you can shoot shoot me an email, support at the lionwithin.us if we use it, we'll give you a shout-out on the show and try to hook you up with some free resources. Okay. So the question of the week: what do you most often boast about in your life? Boasting about something, most likely. So what is it? Hopefully, this week, this reframe, this thinking about God, how God is doing some incredible things in your life will help you get positioned correctly to boast about Him. All right. So thelionWithin.us is where you find all our resources, guys. That's where we're at each and every week. Again, we have our community, love the community. We have our leadership mastermind, we have all the resources we have on the Bible app. Uh, we have our book out, we have live events, guys. We're we're we're trying to serve in many, many ways. All of that can be found at thelionwithin.us. So if you're finding that you're walking through this season of life and you're struggling, maybe you're struggling with loneliness or just in or just don't have any encouragement in your life, head over to thelionwithin.us, check out what we're doing, get plugged in, and let's see how we can come alongside and encourage you along the way, okay? All right, guys, have a great weekend. Give us a rating review if you don't mind. That would be awesome. And other than that, just thank you for listening, for hanging out. Prayerfully, we'll be here with you next week as well. So have a great weekend, guys. Get after it and just keep unleashing the lion within. If you're like me, you don't need another book just sitting around collecting dust. What I enjoy is something to help guide me when my feet hit the ground in the mornings. And that is why we put together Unleashing the Lion Within. It has honest stories, scripture you can apply, and simple steps to help you lead at home, at work, and everywhere in between. So if you've been feeling stuck or scattered lately, you may find this resource encouraging. Read a few pages. Take one step and watch what God does with your obedience. Hey, and if reading's tough for you right now, no problem. The book is also available in Audible version so you can listen on the go. So if this sounds interesting, check out thelionwithin.us slash book or search for unleashing the lion within directly on Amazon. So there's no pressure here, just a resource that many guys are finding helpful. So grab the format that fits and take your next step.