452: STOP GASLIGHTING YOURSELF. Toni Collier on Emotional Infidelity, Spiritual Manipulation, and the Prison of Isolation
Win Today: Your Roadmap to Wholeness
Release Date: 08/20/2025
Win Today: Your Roadmap to Wholeness
We live in a moment where spiritual language is everywhere, but formation is rare. Many people claim to be spiritual while rejecting authority, truth, and discipline. Others consume sermons built on slogans rather than Scripture, leaving their faith thin, sentimental, and easily shaken. The result is a generation that feels awakened but remains unformed. This week on Win Today, Lisa Bevere joins me for the final installment of the [Formed.] discipleship series to confront the cost of being spiritual but not anchored in truth. We talk about the rise of tarot and oracle cards, what an exorcist...
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Suffering exposes what we believe about God faster than success ever could. When affliction lingers, disappointment goes unresolved, and growth feels slower than we want, the question isn’t whether God is present—it’s whether our theology can carry the weight of real life. Too many believers inherit a framework that collapses under pressure, leaving them confused, bitter, or quietly disillusioned. This week on Win Today, Dr. Craig Keener joins me to rebuild a theology of suffering that can endure. We talk about why God is not in a hurry to mature us, how pressure actually forms...
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Spiritual drift rarely announces itself. It doesn’t show up as rebellion or collapse. It shows up as subtle disorder, numbed discernment, and a slow loss of fire in the ordinary rhythms of life. Most people don’t abandon discipleship; they simply stop training for it. This week on Win Today, Ian Simkins, lead pastor of The Bridge Church in Tennessee, joins me as part of our Formed discipleship series to expose the quiet ways formation breaks down and to recover the daily practices that restore spiritual clarity, hunger, and endurance. We talk about why the wilderness of everyday...
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Comfort feels kind, but it keeps you immature. The wilderness is where God trains you for weight, yet most of us cheat the process by numbing pain, curating outcomes, and calling it wisdom, while our souls atrophy. This week on Win Today, Dr. Joel Tudman joins me to expose why “finding yourself inside yourself” is a dead end, how the Lord sometimes pulls us apart to make us whole, and how to stay spiritually agile when life is disruptive. If your faith has been built around feelings, not formation. And if you’re tired of circling the same mountain with better language, this...
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There’s a reason your hunger fades when life gets busy and your soul gets loud: boredom becomes a shortcut to numbing, entitlement masquerades as discernment, and self-pity convinces you that endurance is optional. This week on Win Today, Bethel Music’s Kristene DiMarco joins me to confront the quiet habits that starve spiritual hunger and to show us how to train the soul when worship feels flat, prayer drags, and offense stands in the doorway of growth. We talk about the discipline of boredom, the anatomy of hunger, why entitlement and self-pity atrophy endurance, and how to lay down...
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You can admire spiritual maturity from a distance, or you can take your formation journey seriously. Many of us prefer the former. We outsource growth to personalities, call delayed obedience “wisdom,” and bargain with God when surrender would cost too much. This week on Win Today, Dr. Eric Mason joins me to confront the quiet drift that hollows discipleship: the consumer posture that fuels bad teaching, the spiritual immaturity that bargains with God, and the confusion that happens when we make our assignment our purpose. If your faith has been built around sermons more than...
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We’re told to trust God when life falls apart and to cling to hope when we feel abandoned. To pray louder when heaven feels silent. But what if the silence isn’t a punishment…but a pathway straight to His presence? What if the wall you’ve hit isn’t the end, but the beginning of a deeper formation? This week on Win Today, I’m re-airing a raw and timely conversation with Dr. Lee Warren—one that took an unexpected turn moments before we hit record. What followed was one of the most personal and Spirit-led conversations I’ve ever had about wilderness seasons, grief, intrusive...
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This week on Win Today, Jordan Rubin reveals how the body doesn’t lie—and why the ancient wisdom of Scripture contains the keys to healing not just physically, but mentally and emotionally as well. After nearly dying from severe Crohn’s disease, Jordan discovered that health isn’t compartmentalized. Everything is connected—gut to brain, body to soul. And that the Bible had already mapped out the blueprint for healing. If you’ve tried to fix your body but stayed anxious… if you’ve addressed trauma but still feel inflamed… or if you’re wondering why prayer isn’t...
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You love Jesus, and you want to love the Bible, but most days, life crowds it out. And when you do open the text, it can feel confusing, disjointed, even offensive; so you reach for personalities who make it feel easier. The problem is that celebrity clarity often replaces biblical clarity. This week on Win Today, Zach Windahl—creator of The Bible Study and founder of The Brand Sunday—joins me to recover the unified story of Scripture and to challenge a popular church slogan: “belong before you believe.” Belonging matters, but the New Testament’s pattern is belief that forms a...
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There’s a difference between loving the Bible and learning how to read it. For many, study has felt complicated, clinical, or—worst of all—boring. Some of us were discipled by personalities instead of passages; others learned to chase quick application while skipping context. This week on Win Today, Faith Womack, author of No More Boring Bible Study, joins me to rediscover a way of reading Scripture that is honest, thoughtful, and engaging. We wrestle with tension instead of flattening it; we name the mistakes that teachers and pastors often make, and we rebuild a...
info_outlineThere’s a lie you’ve turned into identity—that you must perform vulnerability to earn belonging. This week, Toni Collier joins me to pull the veil off emotional infidelity hidden in silence, the orphan wounds we carry in isolation, and the spiritual manipulation we excuse as authenticity. She’s walked through heartbreaking betrayal, spiritual misuse, and the long deconstruction of self‑worth in ministry circles. And she has found that true vulnerability isn’t performative—it’s sacred, grounded, sacrificial, and healing.
In this episode, we dismantle the theology of emotional scarcity, expose spiritual control disguised as care, and confront the cost of emotional isolation. Toni challenges common assumptions: that therapy alone solves trauma, that forgiveness equals denial, that age or faith automatically heals wounds. This conversation calls you home to integrity, community, and emotional wholeness.
Episode Links
- Show Notes
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