463: Why Life Really Begins at 40. Mark Batterson on The Danger of Half-Present Living, Delayed Obedience, and Why We Need to Fall in Love with Gradual Progress
Win Today: Your Roadmap to Wholeness
Release Date: 11/05/2025
470: I Didn't See THAT Coming: What Happens When We Hit the Wall, Why God’s Silence Isn’t His Absence, and the 4 CRITICAL Words You Must Embody in 2026
Win Today: Your Roadmap to Wholeness
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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469: Your Body Is Telling the Truth. Jordan Rubin on The Food That Kills Your Sex Drive in Minutes, Whether EMFs are Dangerous, How to Get Sick Quickly, and Why Physical Health is Spiritual Health
Win Today: Your Roadmap to Wholeness
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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468: LEVEL UP! Zach Windahl on the Unified Story of Scripture, Why “Belong Before You Believe” Fails, and How to Study Scripture When You’re Bored or Confused
Win Today: Your Roadmap to Wholeness
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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467: Bored with Bible Study? Faith Womack on How to Wrestle with the Tension of Scripture, The Mistakes Pastors and Teachers Make When Teaching the Bible, and Building a Faithful Hermeneutic
Win Today: Your Roadmap to Wholeness
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...
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466: When Pain Gets Wasted. Shawn Johnson on Stewarding the Middle Season of Life, How Bitterness Erodes Trust, and Why We Settle for Temporary Rest Instead of True Peace
Win Today: Your Roadmap to Wholeness
There’s a way to live that squanders pain while your heart hardens and your trust thins. Things like numbing, retelling the wound, and calling it wisdom. This week on Win Today, Shawn Johnson, lead pastor of Red Rocks Church and author of Attacking Anxiety, joins me to explore how people waste pain and how to steward the middle seasons when nothing seems to be moving, but everything inside you is being formed. We draw the line between rest and peace, why bitterness and distrust grow in the same soil, and how to turn waiting into worship without pretending the ache away. If you’re...
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465: Stop Ignoring Your Body! Justin Whitmel Earley on Embodied Discipleship, Resisting Body-Idolatry, and How Sleep Rebuilds Your Soul
Win Today: Your Roadmap to Wholeness
There’s a way to discuss spiritual growth that ignores the body, and a way to treat the body like a god. Both break you. This week on Win Today, Justin Whitmel Earley joins me to recover a practical theology of the body: why your habits, hormones, posture, screens, meals, and sleep are discipling your soul every day. We confront the twin errors of ignoring the body and idolizing it, and we name what happens when we undo created order—when we chronically outrun limits, trade rest for hurry, and expect spiritual vitality while violating how God made us to live. This isn’t theory. It’s a...
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464: When the Marriage Is OVER. Lysa TerKeurst on Narcissistic Abuse 101, Ending Self-Betrayal, and Why Unhealthy People Never Meet a Boundary They Like
Win Today: Your Roadmap to Wholeness
There’s a moment when “endure it” becomes “end it,” not because you stopped believing in God’s power to heal, but because refusing to betray your God-given boundaries is how you stop betraying yourself. This week on Win Today, Lysa TerKeurst joins me to confront the realities so many live in silence: when it’s biblically wise to end a marriage, how we talk ourselves out of our own boundaries, why loneliness is sometimes God’s operating room, and what you must know about narcissistic abuse—gaslighting, trauma bonds, and DARVO—so you can name what’s happening and get...
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463: Why Life Really Begins at 40. Mark Batterson on The Danger of Half-Present Living, Delayed Obedience, and Why We Need to Fall in Love with Gradual Progress
Win Today: Your Roadmap to Wholeness
There’s a way to move through your forties that looks busy but stays small, a way to talk about calling while postponing obedience, and a way to live half-present in the present while telling yourself you’re being “wise.” This week on Win Today, Mark Batterson joins me to reclaim the middle decades as the beginning, not the end, and to confront why delayed obedience is still disobedience and why the slow, daily road of incremental growth produces what hurry never can. We’ll name the subtle drift that fragments attention, why “later” sounds prudent but hollows character, and...
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462: Stop Lying to Yourself! Kevin Boehm on Why Life Happens For Us, Not To Us, Destroying the Self-Help Blueprint, When Fear Looks Like Wisdom, and Why Food Is a Peacemaker
Win Today: Your Roadmap to Wholeness
This week on Win Today, esteemed restaurateur Kevin Boehm joins me to name the subtle drift from hope to heaviness: how fear hides under the guise of practicality, how the self‑help blueprint promises control but delivers unease, and why your plate of food may be less incidental than you think—it could be a peacemaker for your soul. We dismantle the lie that you must always surge forward; sometimes the bravest step is backward. We expose what happens when you stop lying to yourself and start living honestly. If you’ve ever felt stuck in performance, disguised your fear as...
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461: When Fake Faith and Cynicism Collide. Bethel Music’s Paul and Hannah McClure on The Road from a Soft to a Cynical Heart, Healing the Orphan Spirit, Fake Faith, Why Faith Isn’t Certainty, and Dumping Performative Worship
Win Today: Your Roadmap to Wholeness
There’s a kind of faith that performs instead of worships, and eventually, that kind of faith breaks down. This week on Win Today, Paul and Hannah McClure from Bethel Music join me to talk about the slow drift from softness to cynicism in the life of a believer. We talk about the orphan spirit, fake faith that looks right but can’t hold weight, and how disappointment left untreated eventually hardens into disconnection. We also confront the myth that faith equals certainty, and why true worship isn’t just a song; it’s surrender in the absence of clarity. For anyone who’s battled...
info_outlineThere’s a way to move through your forties that looks busy but stays small, a way to talk about calling while postponing obedience, and a way to live half-present in the present while telling yourself you’re being “wise.” This week on Win Today, Mark Batterson joins me to reclaim the middle decades as the beginning, not the end, and to confront why delayed obedience is still disobedience and why the slow, daily road of incremental growth produces what hurry never can. We’ll name the subtle drift that fragments attention, why “later” sounds prudent but hollows character, and how gradual progress—received as a gift and practiced as a rhythm—forms a durable life.
Guest Bio
Mark Batterson is the lead pastor of National Community Church in Washington, D.C., and the New York Times–bestselling author of The Circle Maker and more than twenty books. He writes and teaches about courageous obedience, holy imagination, and the long game of spiritual formation. Today’s conversation isn’t about his résumé—it’s about your next act: recovering presence, refusing delay, and embracing the slow, durable gains that shape a life.
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Episode Links
- Show Notes
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