Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] When most men think of King David, they picture the warrior who took down Goliath, like from Sunday school. There's the sling, the stone, and the giant hitting the ground.
[00:00:11] And that's a poster that we put on the wall. We celebrate you remember it clearly. But what if I told you the part of David's masculinity that God praises the most is the part modern men are most embarrassed by? Ain't that crazy?
[00:00:25] Stay with me here for a minute.
[00:00:27] Because David's life exposes how shallow our version of being a man and being a whole person really is.
[00:00:36] And it points to a way of being a man that both is strange to us, but actually yields a stronger and more honest individual.
[00:00:48] But what if I told you again?
[00:00:51] Or if you have ever felt that you're performing instead of actually living out wholeness, this episode is for you. Welcome to Shifts and Ladders. I am your host, Ryan Robinson. Hey, listen, I want to be your integration advisor, all right? I help leaders align who they are with how they lead so you don't have to feel one way on the inside and act a whole another way on the outside.
[00:01:19] And today, we're going to look at David's life through the lens of biblical masculinity, not cultural wars. Red pill, blue pill.
[00:01:26] Not macho characters or not. The alpha male podcast kind of vibe. Now, we are talking about the warrior and the worshiper, sword in one hand, a harp in the other.
[00:01:42] That's David. So by the end of this podcast, in this episode, you will see why your strength often feels fragmented, like you're either on or off, aggressive, shut down, taking territory, or just chilling and being passive. And how David shows us a path of what integration, particularly integrated manhood, looks like, where your courage, your emotions, and your faith actually live in the same body. All right, let me get a little coffee here.
[00:02:15] I'll be like, my mug better pray.
[00:02:19] All right, so let's get started with David that everybody knows. The young shepherd boy shows up on the battlefield delivering doordash bread and cheese for his brothers. Daddy sent him on. He's not even supposed to be there, by the way.
[00:02:33] The real warriors, the soldiers, the trained men, the ones with the experience, are all standing around listening to Goliath talk trash about Israel and about God, and they are frozen.
[00:02:45] Have you been in a room where everybody knew something needed to be done, but nobody's doing anything? Like, you could have been a boardroom. It could have been a kitchen.
[00:02:53] Fill in the blank. You know the scene. All right, And David pulls up here's Goliath mocking God and his people.
[00:03:02] And something in him refuses to accept that.
[00:03:05] He's like, and these are cuss words.
[00:03:08] I call them modern, old school cuss words. Who is this uncircumcised Philistine that he should defy the armies of the living God?
[00:03:18] This is. That's what he said. That's what he pulled up and heard and said. Now I'm going to translate this in Ryan Robinson time. Why are you letting this dude talk like this? And nobody's doing anything about it.
[00:03:30] That's the energy that David was bringing. Courage, risk, responsibility.
[00:03:36] He. He steps out with a sling, five smooth stones.
[00:03:40] Not because he's like the hero, but because he trusts God with who he is in him and that he brought him through a fight with the lion and the bear. Now, let me tell you, lion and bears are pretty aggressive animals. Like, I mean, the big dudes, you know what I'm saying? Like, go to the zoo.
[00:04:00] Lions are pretty aggressive. They, even though they chilling when they hungry, they get to work.
[00:04:06] Bears, when you mess with their babies, they got the claws, and the claws ain't nothing nice.
[00:04:14] So if God delivered him from two of the most treacherous, vicious animals in the wild, clearly he's confident that God will bring him through this. So picture this.
[00:04:27] Every seasoned soldier with armor, swords, and all that are stuck in fear.
[00:04:35] But David is in shepherd clothes, out there in faith with stones, no metal, no nothing. Just stones and a sling, no armor, nothing.
[00:04:47] And he runs for, runs toward this giant.
[00:04:51] He doesn't creep, he doesn't tiptoe. He runs. Now, this is the version of David that we love, right? He's. He's getting it done. He's facing the challenge. He's protecting the people. He's standing up for those who can't stand up for themselves. It's good.
[00:05:06] And it's a good movie, right?
[00:05:09] Like the gladiators or 300 or whatever. Not the ending of 300, but you know what I'm talking about.
[00:05:15] It's biblical masculinity.
[00:05:17] It's masculinity, period. It makes us attracted to him.
[00:05:21] And we're designed to carry responsibility, to confront injustice and to stand in the gap. But later, David leads more mighty men. In fact, the very men that were sitting there chilling promote David to lead them. He, he's successful. Bible says the Lord was with him in every battle. He's the kind of man that other strong men want to follow. So they're like, hey, we want to follow this dude. He's slain a hunt he's slain hundreds. He's standing ground. He's building up his soldiers so they have the confidence that they can have to take over the territory. Um, you know, they even made songs about David. You know, Saul killed his thousands, but David, his tens of thousands. I mean, clearly David is not a soft dude.
[00:06:02] He's not passive, and he's not sitting in the corner journaling while everybody else is fighting. But here's the problem.
[00:06:09] If we stop there with David, we turn David into an action figure instead of a human being. I'm going to say that again for the people in the back so you don't have to rewind this again. If we stop there, we turn David into an action figure instead of a human being.
[00:06:28] We make him this two dimensional Bible hero, sword raised, chest out, no tears, no doubt, no contradiction. But when we look at our own life and we look at the Bible and we look at our fear, our confusion, the moments that we've frozen, the things that we haven't completed, the failures that we've internalized, we feel fake, trying to live up to David. And that version that we read in the Bible, we start to believe like, maybe I'm not a man of God because I don't function like that. I may have not slayed a Goliath like situation in weeks, months, maybe years.
[00:07:14] Am I not a man called by God or a woman called by God?
[00:07:20] Have you been there before?
[00:07:23] Have you been at a point where you felt as if what you read in the Bible is not who you are?
[00:07:31] Can you, can you relate?
[00:07:34] Now, this part is real, y'. All. David the warrior is a necessary. We need him.
[00:07:39] But it's an incomplete story because there's another part of David that we avoid, and that's David the worshiper. Let's talk about that part. And particularly men. We don't like to deal with that.
[00:07:51] The same man who came to run after Goliath with the sling was the same one who wrote worship songs and poetry.
[00:07:59] Yeah, yeah, they're called Psalms.
[00:08:02] This man cried loudly and in public in front of his court. When he became king, he confessed his weaknesses. He admitted to fear. He questioned God. He was frustrated by God. He grieved deeply. He was scared. He did all of these things, wrote them down.
[00:08:22] In the Psalms, David says things like this. My tears have been my food day and night.
[00:08:27] He talks about his soul being downcast and in anguish and depressed. He talks about feeling forgotten, not seen, abandoned, overwhelmed.
[00:08:39] This is not the like, I'm good, bro.
[00:08:42] I'm just tired I need to take a nap, man. I'm good. God, I'm good. No. This is a full embodiment and honest emotional expression unto God.
[00:08:53] This is what we don't talk about.
[00:08:58] This is what we don't do.
[00:09:01] If David had posted some of his psalms on X or Facebook or whatever, a lot of men and even women would jump in the comments and be like, you need to be a man. Stop being so emotional. Where's your faith? A man of God, and yet God looks at that man, David himself, and says, he's a man after my own heart.
[00:09:23] And this is the thing. Let me keep it a buck.
[00:09:26] You cannot be a man after God's own heart if you're not willing to come to him heart to heart.
[00:09:36] Let that sit for a minute. I'm awake.
[00:09:46] Okay.
[00:09:47] The same warrior king who commanded the armies of Israel also dance with all of his might before the Lord in public.
[00:09:58] Nobody dances like that unless it's on Tik Tok these days. Like, you can go out and probably people are still standing on the wall. They were standing on the wall when I was out there.
[00:10:09] They listen.
[00:10:11] This is the thing. David danced so hard that his own wife, Micah looked at him with disgust.
[00:10:18] She's like, you're a king. What are you doing out here?
[00:10:23] Not being the king.
[00:10:26] Being pose. Having poise. Not pose. Yeah, posing with poise.
[00:10:33] She was embarrassed and she thought it made him look foolish and undignified.
[00:10:40] Ain't that crazy?
[00:10:42] Now imagine you're a king, a respected leader, and you're out here out there worshiping like you forgot how important you are supposed to look.
[00:10:54] That's David.
[00:10:56] He didn't edit his worship for people's opinions. He didn't stuff his feelings because he might look weak to people.
[00:11:02] He didn't hide his tears when Saul dies. By the way, Saul tried to kill him.
[00:11:08] Not once, not twice, but a bunch of times. I can't remember the number, but it was a lot.
[00:11:15] A man who threw spears at him while he played the music that actually gave him relief from a tormenting spirit that saw.
[00:11:26] David doesn't hide his pain when his best friend Jonathan gets killed.
[00:11:31] And he doesn't hide his anguish when his son Absalom, by the way, led a coup to become king over his daddy and killed his brother.
[00:11:45] I'm telling you, if you haven't read the Bible, the Bible is juicy.
[00:11:49] You think it's got. It ain't got nothing on some of these novels these days, I'm telling you.
[00:11:56] But all of this happened. David writes it Sings it and embodies it.
[00:12:00] Okay, some of you are listening to me right now.
[00:12:04] Were taught the opposite. You were trained that real men don't cry.
[00:12:08] You're told to keep it together.
[00:12:12] Don't let them see you sweat.
[00:12:15] Handle it alone.
[00:12:17] Don't tell anybody. Stuff it down, ladies. You've probably been told the same thing.
[00:12:24] I can just share from my experience. But you've become experts at emotionally shutting down the thing that you need to address.
[00:12:35] You've learned how to numb out through work, through porn, through scrolling, through achievement, even people who serve God ministry.
[00:12:47] And here's David, a man after God's own heart, putting his journal on display for the whole world to read for generations in the book of Psalms.
[00:12:58] It almost feels offensive to our version of masculinity.
[00:13:03] And what if David's tears were part of what made him strong, though?
[00:13:07] What if his honesty before God is not a threat to his manhood, but actually the source of it?
[00:13:15] David shows up as a full human being capable of deep love, deep grief, deep joy, and deep repentance.
[00:13:28] He's not afraid to dance, weep, or say, I'm not okay, and I need God.
[00:13:35] That's the part of many of us that we have buried, and we call that burial strength.
[00:13:42] All right, so we got David the warrior and David the worshiper.
[00:13:49] And for most men, it feels like they're two different guys. And for most people, it might feel like they're two different guys. So one shows up to work, decisive, aggressive, focused, leading the charge. But the other one, maybe in private when you're alone with God, doesn't really show up, or he shows up when the one version is overwhelmed.
[00:14:10] One version knows how to grind. The other version doesn't know how to exist in public, so he stays hidden.
[00:14:18] Some of the things that tackle and bury most men are the things that we actually don't uncover.
[00:14:25] And the thing that we don't, if we don't bring light to, will actually take us out.
[00:14:31] So the Bible is talking about being whole is not just being a worshiper and. Or a warrior. It's talking about being a worshiper and a warrior. You have to be both.
[00:14:43] And when you have strength without vulnerability, you get control. You can get people who you get people that control. You have anger issues.
[00:14:54] You have what we call task toxic masculinity, where you misuse power and leadership and dominate people with no love and compassion. But if you do it, the other side, you have passivity. If you have vulnerability with no strength, you collapse and you're in touch with Your feelings, but you're afraid to take responsibility. So none of these extremes, if we really get down to the rest of the Bible, they don't look like Jesus. There's a perfect balance, but neither look like David at his best either.
[00:15:23] So integration is where your heart, your head and your hands finally line up. It's alignment. It's where your heart is honest before God and others. Your head is clear about your convictions and your calling, and your hands are courageous and take steps and action aligned with that truth.
[00:15:45] That is where I find that this integration method that I found is, sets the foundation for this. Because most of the time we get stuck in trying to separate and compartmentalize certain things.
[00:16:01] But really what people can trust is a person who shows up as themselves completely.
[00:16:07] You can come together like David does and say, search me, O God, and know my heart. And also say, blessed be the Lord who trains my hands to war. That's integrated.
[00:16:18] You can repent deeply when you mess up and get up and start leaning again.
[00:16:24] David never confused confession and mistakes with disqualification.
[00:16:31] All right, so this is some questions I want to ask you.
[00:16:35] You got to be real with yourself and lead a churchy version of you at home for this. All right, thank you. Or you're at home, but leave the churchy part out.
[00:16:45] Where are you overdeveloped as a warrior, but underdeveloped as a worshiper? Whoop.
[00:16:52] Where do you show up? Strong, decisive and in control, but emotionally unavailable, spiritually dry and shut off from your own heart.
[00:17:00] Bible says out of the heart flow the issues of life. But if you are not addressing what flows out of your heart, then what are you doing?
[00:17:09] All right, so if you like number one, here's number two.
[00:17:13] Where are you emotionally honest with God but cowardly? And I said it in real world, real world responsibility.
[00:17:23] Where do you pray?
[00:17:25] Journal and process, but avoid the hand.
[00:17:30] Conversion.
[00:17:32] The. The. Sorry, the hard conversation.
[00:17:36] The conversion of taking an idea and actually working it unto the Lord. The tough decision you got to make and the boundary that needs to be set with someone or something.
[00:17:48] You don't listen, you don't need to say it all out.
[00:17:51] But what I do need you to do is I need you to name it.
[00:17:54] Because until you name where you're split at, you cannot invite God to mend and integrate you together.
[00:18:04] All right, so I'm going to give you something practical here once a day. Maybe on your drive home before you go to bed, ask yourself this. Did I show up as both courageous and honest?
[00:18:19] Not perfect, but was I courageous and Was I honest?
[00:18:25] And if that answer may be no, because it could be, don't shame yourself, but ask the Holy Spirit, where did I hide myself today? And where did I shrink back in fear today?
[00:18:37] Okay, if you want to live like David, don't just pray for Goliath slaying faith, but pray for a heart that can weep, dance, repent, and still get up and lead.
[00:18:50] That, ladies and gentlemen, is a man or a woman after God's own heart.
[00:18:58] All right, if this stirred up something in you, don't just click away and go back to numbing, please.
[00:19:04] There's three things.
[00:19:06] Three things I need you to do for me, but really is for you.
[00:19:12] Drop a comment.
[00:19:14] Where are you more naturally a warrior or a worshiper? And where do you feel the split is? In your own life.
[00:19:20] Number two. Subscribe and follow. Because what we're going to start doing next is continuing this conversation of David, but also breaking down where we as people are misunderstood and how we can unlock the story of David, to unlock our journey not just as men and women, but as leaders and followers of Jesus. But share this with someone you care about. Number three. A friend. Your mom, your dad, your son, Somebody in your men's group or women's group.
[00:19:49] If you know a man who is wrestling with what it means to be a man and follow Jesus, send this to him, please.
[00:19:57] David's story might be exactly what he needs to hear right now. Okay. All right, y' all be strong, be honest, and let God bring those parts of you back together again.
[00:20:14] God can mend broken things. That's what he does best.
[00:20:17] We'll talk to you soon. And until then, peace.
