473: [Formed.] Comfort Won't Mature You. Dr. Joel Tudman on How We Cheat Ourselves in the Wilderness, Why "Finding Yourself" is a Waste of Time, The Beauty of Being Pulled Apart by the Lord, and Fighting to Stay Agile in a Disruptive Life
Win Today: Your Roadmap to Wholeness
Christopher Cook
4.9 • 528 Ratings
🗓️ 14 January 2026
⏱️ 70 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
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 conversation will call you back to training for godliness, where it actually happens: in the desert.
Guest Bio
Dr. Joel A. Tudman is a pastor, communicator, and leadership coach who equips people to trade comfort for formation and preference for obedience. Known for clear, high-energy preaching and practical frameworks for spiritual growth, he serves churches and leaders across the country, training teams in character, resilience, and Spirit-led discipline. His work centers on courage, identity, and purpose, calling believers to be formed, not performed.
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Episode Links
- Show Notes
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Art of Leadership Network |
| 0:02.8 | This week on Win Today |
| 0:04.8 | When you're in the wilderness and you don't know who war, |
| 0:07.1 | you have no idea that it's even the wilderness. |
| 0:09.3 | It just seems like life. |
| 0:10.9 | It seems like it's a constant crushing, |
| 0:13.5 | a constant figure out, |
| 0:14.9 | trying to figure out what have I gotten myself into. |
| 0:19.2 | And if I'm sitting in the wilderness, |
| 0:20.6 | it's the perfect place for me |
| 0:22.6 | to discover not only where I am, but where God has taken me because it's nothing there but the |
| 0:28.7 | enemy, him and you. Y'all buckle up. I'm telling you, buckle up. Welcome to the podcast. I'm really |
| 0:35.0 | glad you're here. We're continuing form today. |
| 0:42.0 | If you miss the first two episodes, I want you to go back and listen as soon as you're able. |
| 0:46.1 | We're in this theme of training ourselves for godliness, 1 Timothy 4.7. |
| 0:51.1 | So we're going to zoom in on this today. If there's one key enemy of growth and maturity, |
| 0:56.3 | it's comfort. Comfort won't mature you, my friend, but it will sedate you. |
| 1:05.1 | It'll trick you. It'll lie to you. See, the wilderness exposes whether we will train or hide, |
| 1:13.9 | whether we will engage with the process or disengage, insulate our hearts and get bitter. Whether we will surrender to the process of the Lord or self-curate whatever image and whatever experience we |
| 1:20.7 | think we want or deserve. It's a hard word. It's a necessary word. No cotton candy, no sprinkles today, you guys. |
| 1:29.4 | Today, my friend Dr. Joel Tudman joins me to name how we cheat ourselves in the wilderness, |
| 1:34.2 | how we shortcut this very necessary process of maturity. We're going to discuss why finding |
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