Win Today: Your Roadmap to Wholeness

Art of Leadership Network

Life is complicated, and quick fixes won't address the deeper challenges you face in your mental, emotional, and spiritual health. "Win Today" provides practical guidance for lasting growth. Each week, you'll hear from trusted leaders and experts who offer wisdom, insights, and a durable plan to help you overcome obstacles and create real, sustainable change. This isn't about temporary solutions—it's about building a foundation for transformation and maturity from the inside out.

  1. You've Put God on Trial for Something He Didn't Do. Ryan Maher Unpacks Blame, Sovereignty, and What Trust Actually Costs.

    3d ago

    You've Put God on Trial for Something He Didn't Do. Ryan Maher Unpacks Blame, Sovereignty, and What Trust Actually Costs.

    There is something underneath the anger you can't quite name. It sounds like disappointment. It feels like betrayal. And it has God's name on it. You prayed. You believed. You held on as long as you could. And then the thing you were afraid of happened anyway. So somewhere in the quiet, you decided — without maybe ever saying it out loud — that He let you down. That He was responsible. That if He were really good, really powerful, really in charge, this would have gone differently. Ryan Maher joins me for a conversation that goes straight to the root of that wound. Ryan is the founder of The Prayer Channel and Trust God Bro, the most-followed Christian channels on Instagram, and the author of The God Worth Trusting — a book born out of losing his mother to addiction, losing his friend Brett, and losing his faith in the version of God he'd been handed. What he discovered in that wreckage was not a tidy theology but something far more durable: a distinction between a God who controls and a God who is sovereign, and why confusing those two things has done more damage to the church's trust than almost anything else. We cover the difference between sovereignty and control, what it actually means that God is good at the level of nature and not just activity, and why the phrase "everything happens for a reason" is not only unhelpful; it's a theological lie. If you have walked through something that feels impossible to reconcile with a good God, this conversation will not give you easy answers. What it will give you is a more honest starting place — and the invitation to build a history with the Lord that holds when the circumstances don't. The question is not whether you can trust Him. The question is whether you are willing to let scripture define who He is rather than letting your worst moment do it. Guest Bio Ryan Maher is a pastor and evangelist who uses every digital tool available to share the Gospel, reaching hundreds of millions of people each month through the ministries he has founded and leads, including The Prayer Channel — the number one most popular broadcast channel on Instagram. He is the author of The God Worth Trusting: Restoring Faith in a Good God, a book he describes as the resource he wished someone had handed him in his own darkest seasons. Ryan and his wife, Brittany, are based in Michigan. Show Partner SafeSleeve designs a phone case that blocks up to 99% of harmful EMF radiation—so I'm not carrying that kind of exposure next to my body all day. It's sleek, durable, and most importantly, lab-tested by third parties. The results aren't hidden—they're published right on their site. And that matters because many so-called EMF blockers on the market either don't work or can't prove they do. We protect our hearts and minds—why wouldn't we protect our bodies too? Head to safesleevecases.com and use the code WINTODAY10 for 10% off your order. Episode Links Show Notes Buy my book "Healing What You Can't Erase" here! Invite me to speak at your church or event. Connect with me @WINTODAYChris on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

    1h 23m
  2. The More You Know, the More Cynical You Become. Carey Nieuwhof on Pattern Recognition, Grief, and Finishing Well.

    5d ago

    The More You Know, the More Cynical You Become. Carey Nieuwhof on Pattern Recognition, Grief, and Finishing Well.

    You have more knowledge than you've ever had, and somehow you're more tired. More guarded. More prone to walk into a room and see everything wrong with it before you see anything right. You used to believe things would get better. Now you believe you've simply seen enough to know they probably won't. You call it wisdom. But it might be something else entirely.   Carey Nieuwhof joins me for a conversation I've been looking forward to for years, and he opens up in a way I did not expect. At 61, in the wake of 29 simultaneous external stressors, a rare blood disorder that nearly took his life, aging parents, the death of a father-in-law, and the loss of the physical sanctuary that had been his refuge, Carey is navigating what grief actually looks like for a leader who spent two decades not grieving anything. The phrase that has stayed with me since this conversation is one his mentor gave him 25 years ago: ministry is a series of ungrieved losses. We cover what that means in practice, why cynicism is not a character flaw but a predictable outcome of accumulated knowledge without adequate grief, how the shift from fluid to crystallized intelligence changes what leadership should ask of you in your 40s and beyond, and what Carey and his wife Toni are actually doing, not just saying, to finish well. There is something here that will not comfort you the way you're hoping to be comforted. Carey is too honest for that, and this episode is too important for that. If you have been running at a pace that leaves no room to feel your losses, this conversation is going to cost you something. Sit with it. Let it do its work. Guest Bio Carey Nieuwhof is a former attorney and pastor who leads one of the most listened-to leadership podcasts in the Christian space, with more than 800 episodes and over 36 million downloads. He is the author of several books, including the bestselling At Your Best, and the founder of the Art of Leadership Academy, a growing community of more than 20,000 leaders. He spent over a decade as a lead pastor north of Toronto before stepping away to focus on helping leaders at scale. He has studied burnout, cynicism, moral failure, and the patterns that separate leaders who finish well from those who don't. He brings to this conversation more than two decades of pattern recognition built at the intersection of personal suffering and serious study. Show Partner SafeSleeve designs a phone case that blocks up to 99% of harmful EMF radiation—so I'm not carrying that kind of exposure next to my body all day. It's sleek, durable, and most importantly, lab-tested by third parties. The results aren't hidden—they're published right on their site. And that matters because many so-called EMF blockers on the market either don't work or can't prove they do. We protect our hearts and minds—why wouldn't we protect our bodies too? Head to safesleevecases.com and use the code WINTODAY10 for 10% off your order. Episode Links Show Notes Buy my book "Healing What You Can't Erase" here! Invite me to speak at your church or event. Connect with me @WINTODAYChris on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

    1h 14m
  3. Christian Self-Help Is Lying to You. Dr. Henry Cloud on What Real Change Actually Requires.

    May 20

    Christian Self-Help Is Lying to You. Dr. Henry Cloud on What Real Change Actually Requires.

    You have tried harder. You have read the books, made the commitments, restarted the plan, and believed — genuinely believed — that this time would be different. And yet, five years later, you are looking at the same patterns, the same walls, the same version of yourself you were trying to leave behind. The failure is not a motivation problem. It is not a willpower problem. It is something deeper, something that the self-help industry cannot name because naming it would dismantle the entire enterprise. Dr. Henry Cloud joins me for his third conversation on Win Today, and what he brings to the table this time is a confrontation with one of the most quietly destructive lies inside Christian growth culture: that knowledge is enough, that effort is enough, that the right tips applied with sufficient sincerity will eventually produce the life you want. Cloud dismantles that lie at the root. He explains why strength always begins in weakness, why your limitations are not obstacles to your growth but the very doorway through it, and why the passage everyone quotes — "the truth shall set you free" — has been systematically separated from the condition that precedes it. We also go deep into the relational patterns that quietly destroy families, churches, and teams: the victim-rescuer-persecutor triangle and how triangulation turns ordinary conflict into a cycle of division no one can escape from the inside. And Cloud offers one of the sharpest cultural diagnoses I have heard in years — on what the word "triggered" has come to mean and why its inflation is itself a sign of something unhealed. If you have been doing the work but not getting anywhere, this conversation will name what is actually going on underneath the surface. But it will not let you stay comfortable in the naming. Something is required of you: not more effort, but a different kind of openness — the kind that begins with admitting you cannot do this alone. Guest Bio Dr. Henry Cloud is a clinical psychologist, leadership consultant, and New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author whose books have sold nearly 20 million copies worldwide. His work integrates psychological science and biblical wisdom to address the deepest patterns that keep people and organizations from genuine growth. He consults with CEOs, Fortune 500 companies, and high-net-worth family offices, and he is the founder of drcloud.com, which hosts his personal growth platform. Show Partner SafeSleeve designs a phone case that blocks up to 99% of harmful EMF radiation—so I'm not carrying that kind of exposure next to my body all day. It's sleek, durable, and most importantly, lab-tested by third parties. The results aren't hidden—they're published right on their site. And that matters because many so-called EMF blockers on the market either don't work or can't prove they do. We protect our hearts and minds—why wouldn't we protect our bodies too? Head to safesleevecases.com and use the code WINTODAY10 for 10% off your order. Episode Links Show Notes Buy my book "Healing What You Can't Erase" here! Invite me to speak at your church or event. Connect with me @WINTODAYChris on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

    1h 1m
  4. Jamie Winship: "You Don't Know What Water You're Swimming In." The Separation Worldview and the Scarcity Lie Running Your Life.

    May 13

    Jamie Winship: "You Don't Know What Water You're Swimming In." The Separation Worldview and the Scarcity Lie Running Your Life.

    You can feel it, even if you have never named it. The tightness around not having enough, not being enough, not doing enough. The reflex to protect what you have before someone takes it. The way your relationships quietly become negotiations, your faith quietly becomes performance, and your inner life quietly becomes a war zone — all while you are calling it prudence, discernment, stewardship, responsibility. You have been living from a worldview. And you probably have no idea which one it is. Jamie Winship returns to Win Today, and this conversation cuts deeper than most Jamie is the founder of Identity Exchange and author of the new book The War of Worldviews, and for decades, he has brought peaceful, identity-rooted solutions into some of the most dangerous conflict zones on earth. What he has learned in war-torn regions, maximum-security prisons, and international diplomacy is this: every conflict, without exception, is a worldview problem before it is a behavior problem. There are only two worldviews. The separation worldview, which is built on scarcity, runs on fear, and always ends in self-protection and self-promotion. And the connection worldview, which is grounded in abundance, operates from love and produces self-emptying, other-focused transformation. We also dig into why identity alone isn't enough if the worldview carrying it is toxic, the staggering difference between influence and production, what Moses was actually warning Israel about through the story of Joseph, and why Daniel's refusal to bow to the empire changed three dynasties while Joseph's compliance led to his own people's bondage. If you have been calling your fear something else — and there is a good chance you have — this conversation is going to name it. You will have to decide what to do with what you hear. That decision will shape everything else. Guest Bio Jamie Winship is the co-founder of Identity Exchange and Identity Impact, training and consulting agencies that have helped leaders across professional sports, government, law enforcement, business, and international diplomacy discover their true identity and operate from it under pressure. After a distinguished career in law enforcement in the Washington DC metro area, Jamie earned a master's in English and spent years working in some of the world's most dangerous conflict zones — Indonesia, Jordan, Iraq, Palestine, and Israel — developing his Identity Method, a process of identity transformation that resolves inner conflict and opens new levels of creativity and resilience. He is the author of Living Fearless and the new book The War of Worldviews. Show Partner SafeSleeve designs a phone case that blocks up to 99% of harmful EMF radiation—so I'm not carrying that kind of exposure next to my body all day. It's sleek, durable, and most importantly, lab-tested by third parties. The results aren't hidden—they're published right on their site. And that matters because many so-called EMF blockers on the market either don't work or can't prove they do. We protect our hearts and minds—why wouldn't we protect our bodies too? Head to safesleevecases.com and use the code WINTODAY10 for 10% off your order. Episode Links Show Notes Buy my book "Healing What You Can't Erase" here! Invite me to speak at your church or event. Connect with me @WINTODAYChris on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

    1h 17m
  5. Some People Like You Better Broken. Tim Ross on Dysregulation, Curated Narratives, and the Peace That Actually Holds.

    May 6

    Some People Like You Better Broken. Tim Ross on Dysregulation, Curated Narratives, and the Peace That Actually Holds.

    You have been managing something for a long time. Maybe you don't call it that. Maybe it shows up as a low-grade restlessness, a reflexive reaching for the phone, a fullness in your chest that never quite resolves. You've done the spiritual things. You've prayed, you've worshipped, you've pressed through. And underneath all of it there is still something unresolved, something unnamed, something you have quietly agreed to just carry. And the most confronting possibility in the world is that the people closest to you have gotten comfortable with you carrying it, because a version of you that is fractured and functional and never-quite-well is a version of you they know how to manage. Tim Ross joins me for a conversation that is equal parts pastoral and surgical. Tim is the host of The Basement podcast and the author of The Missing Peace: How to Be Held Together When You're Falling Apart, and what he brings to this conversation is not theory. In 2019, Tim's life was simultaneously at its most visible and its most misaligned, and what cracked the surface was not a catastrophic failure but something quieter and stranger than that, a spray-paint can and six cans from Home Depot on a Saturday night, and elders kind enough to hold a mirror up. We trace that inflection point all the way to a theology of nervous system regulation grounded not in Polyvagal theory alone but in Mark 4, in John 14, in the peace that Jesus left as a Person and not a feeling. We talk about dysregulation as detachment from peace, about why a regulated person can discern between the agitator and the agitated when a dysregulated one can only rebuke everything, about the narratives we have fallen in love with because the work of changing them is simply too much to want to face. We talk about what it costs to get free, and why some of the people in your life are quietly counting on you not to. The free you will not tolerate what the bound you did. Tim said that near the end of our conversation, and it's the kind of sentence that doesn't settle quietly. This episode will not let you stay comfortable with a curated peace. It will ask whether what you're calling maturity is actually avoidance, whether what you're calling faith is cowardice dressed up, and whether you're ready to throw off the outer garment and run. Guest Bio Tim Ross is the host of The Basement podcast, one of the most widely followed voices at the intersection of faith, mental health, and honest human experience. Tim has spent more than 27 years in the work of formation, and his shift from the pews to podcasting has extended his reach to millions. His newest book, The Missing Peace: How to Be Held Together When You're Falling Apart (Thomas Nelson, 2025), is a theology of peace rooted in the person of the Holy Spirit and grounded in the lived reality of nervous system regulation. He lives in Dallas with his wife, Juliette, and their sons Nathan and Noah. Show Partner SafeSleeve designs a phone case that blocks up to 99% of harmful EMF radiation—so I'm not carrying that kind of exposure next to my body all day. It's sleek, durable, and most importantly, lab-tested by third parties. The results aren't hidden—they're published right on their site. And that matters because many so-called EMF blockers on the market either don't work or can't prove they do. We protect our hearts and minds—why wouldn't we protect our bodies too? Head to safesleevecases.com and use the code WINTODAY10 for 10% off your order. Review the Podcast Click here to read the ratings, or even better, please leave me a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. Your rating will help the podcast get noticed and positioned on Apple Podcasts. Episode Links Show Notes Buy my book "Healing What You Can't Erase" here! Invite me to speak at your church or event. Connect with me @WINTODAYChris on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

    1h 38m
  6. This Is Why You Keep Having the Same Argument. Jason VanRuler on the Wound Behind Every Fight You Can't Escape.

    May 1

    This Is Why You Keep Having the Same Argument. Jason VanRuler on the Wound Behind Every Fight You Can't Escape.

    You have already tried the conversations. You have tried slowing down, choosing better words, waiting for the right moment. And still something derails it — the same wall, the same disconnect, the same feeling that you are speaking into air. What you have probably not tried is understanding why you communicate the way you do, and more importantly, where that pattern came from. Jason VanRuler is a licensed psychotherapist, author, and nationally recognized speaker whose new book, Discovering Your Communication Type, names a truth that changes everything: your communication style was not chosen — it was formed, shaped by the environment you needed to survive as a child. In this conversation, Jason introduces the PATHS model (Peacemaker, Advocate, Thinker, Harbor, Spark), but the framework is only the surface. Beneath it is something more confronting: most heated arguments are not about words. They are about wounds. And the same survival instincts that protected you then are likely the ones sabotaging your closest relationships now. What does it cost a relationship when secrets corrode it slowly, the way carbon monoxide fills a room — undetectable until real damage is done? What happens when you lead with your explanation instead of your apology, and why does that single inversion invalidate everything that follows? If you have been in survival mode so long that dysregulation feels like Tuesday morning, this conversation names the path out — and the grief that comes with it. The question Jason puts to you, whether he says it directly or not, is this: do you actually want connection, or do you want validation for remaining exactly as you are? Only one of those is available here. Guest Bio Jason VanRuler is a licensed psychotherapist, author, and nationally recognized speaker based in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, specializing in communication, attachment, and relationships. He is the author of Discovering Your Communication Type: The 5 Paths to Deeper Connections and Stronger Relationships and founder of a thriving private practice. Jason leads retreats, workshops, and intensives for couples and organizations, and hosts his own podcast, Ok, What's Next? He lives with his wife and three children. Show Partner SafeSleeve designs a phone case that blocks up to 99% of harmful EMF radiation—so I'm not carrying that kind of exposure next to my body all day. It's sleek, durable, and most importantly, lab-tested by third parties. The results aren't hidden—they're published right on their site. And that matters because many so-called EMF blockers on the market either don't work or can't prove they do. We protect our hearts and minds—why wouldn't we protect our bodies too? Head to safesleevecases.com and use the code WINTODAY10 for 10% off your order. Episode Links Show Notes Buy my book "Healing What You Can't Erase" here! Invite me to speak at your church or event. Connect with me @WINTODAYChris on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

    48 min
  7. Your Jesus Is Too Small. Kyle Idleman on the Domestication of Jesus, Weird Subculture Christianity, and Why a Comfortable Savior Can't Save You.

    Apr 29

    Your Jesus Is Too Small. Kyle Idleman on the Domestication of Jesus, Weird Subculture Christianity, and Why a Comfortable Savior Can't Save You.

    You have configured Jesus to fit your life. Not consciously, not maliciously, but you have done it nonetheless. The algorithm of your preferences, your comfort thresholds, your political loyalties, your financial anxieties — they all quietly shape the version of Jesus you bring to church, to prayer, and to your decisions. The result is a Jesus who agrees with you more than he challenges you, who blesses your plans more than he disrupts them, and who functions, if you are honest, more like a life coach than a Lord. Kyle Idleman, Senior Pastor at Southeast Christian Church in Louisville and author of the new book The Missing Messiah, joins me for a conversation that will do exactly what you are afraid this kind of conversation will do: poke the box. Kyle draws a precise and unflinching distinction between Christian culture and kingdom culture, between a transactional faith built around what Jesus can do for you and a transformational discipleship built around following him wherever he goes. We cover the algorithm Jesus keeps breaking, the compartmentalized faith that lets him rummage in your "religion drawer" but not your finances, your politics, or your relationships, and the specific consequence no one wants to name: that a domesticated, comfortable, cushy Jesus is not going to hold you when the hardest seasons of your life arrive. If your faith has never asked you to count the cost, that is not evidence of grace. It is evidence of a missing Messiah. This conversation will not make you feel better about where you are; it will make you want to go further. That is the invitation, and it requires something of you. Episode Links Show Notes Buy my book "Healing What You Can't Erase" here! Invite me to speak at your church or event. Connect with me @WINTODAYChris on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

    58 min
  8. Everyone Is Spiritual. Very Few Are Discerning. Dr. Joel Muddamalle on The Unseen Battle of Deception.

    Apr 22

    Everyone Is Spiritual. Very Few Are Discerning. Dr. Joel Muddamalle on The Unseen Battle of Deception.

    You have a vague, unsettled sense that something is off—in the culture, in the church, maybe even in your own spiritual life—but you cannot quite name it, and so you keep moving, hoping it will clarify on its own. It will not clarify on its own. What you are sensing is real, and there is a name for it: you are living in the middle of a war you have not been trained to see. Dr. Joel Muddamalle, theologian and Director of Theology and Research at Proverbs 31 Ministries, joins me for a conversation that is as theologically rigorous as it is pastorally urgent. Joel makes the case that the church in the West has been slowly desensitized to the spiritual climate it is swimming in—not through a dramatic assault, but through the gradual repositioning of our dependence, our loves, and our identity. We cover the three rebellions embedded in Genesis and what they reveal about the enemy's enduring strategy, why the surge of spirituality in our culture is not an opportunity but a crisis of discernment, and why the doctrine of Christ consciousness—is not an enlightened reading of Scripture but a doctrine of demons that hijacks the name of Jesus while quietly displacing him from his own story. We also walk through what deliverance actually looks like for believers, practically and biblically, without sensationalism and without the misplaced authority of any human administrator. The most important line in this conversation is not about cosmic powers or exorcisms. It is this: the enemy does not gain ground by overpowering you—he gains ground because you are withdrawing. Every time you step back, he steps forward. That truth will require something of you. Come ready to receive it. Episode Links Show Notes Buy my book "Healing What You Can't Erase" here! Invite me to speak at your church or event. Connect with me @WINTODAYChris on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

    1h 11m
4.9
out of 5
519 Ratings

About

Life is complicated, and quick fixes won't address the deeper challenges you face in your mental, emotional, and spiritual health. "Win Today" provides practical guidance for lasting growth. Each week, you'll hear from trusted leaders and experts who offer wisdom, insights, and a durable plan to help you overcome obstacles and create real, sustainable change. This isn't about temporary solutions—it's about building a foundation for transformation and maturity from the inside out.

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