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THE SECRET EXIT · Intentional Guy

• Michael chestnut: He knew she was dangerous. She already sold him out three times. She literally sat in his lap, screamed for his enemies while he slept, and he walked right back through the same door every time. Samson, the strongest man who ever lived, taken down not by an army, not by a weapon, but by a door he refused to close. But here's what I want you to sit with. Samson isn't just an ancient story. Samson was me. I had a secret email account, one that nobody knew about. Not my wife, not my friends, not anyone. It was mine. It was a door I had built in the dark, and I had the only key. I found out how dangerous that door was the morning two unmarked cars pulled up to my house, and two men in suits walked up to my front door, a detective from the Indianapolis Vice Squad and an FBI special agent. And the first thing they said wasn't my name, but it was the name of my secret email account. They knew my secret email. Everything I thought was hidden. The loopholes, the exit, the private routes I had carved out were sitting on a table in front of two men with badges. Now Proverbs twenty eight thirteen says Whosoever conceals their sins does not prosper. But the one who confesses and renounces them finds mercy. I had been concealing. I had been prospering in my secret. And that morning everything came out of the dark. Today we're talking about what it actually takes to close the secret exits in your life, the loopholes you've built. The exits you've protected, the secrets only you know about. Because strategy isn't just for the strong seasons. It's the thing that saves you in the worst ones. Welcome to the Intentional Guy. I'm your host, Michael Chestnut, and this podcast exists for one reason to help men live on purpose, not by accident. If you've been walking with us through the man in the dark and almost honest, you know this show doesn't flinch. We go where most conversations don't, because that's where the real work is. Today I want to give you three keys because if we're talking about closing secret exits, we're going to need them. And I want to use my own story, pulled from my book Exposed, alongside one of the most powerful and overlooked stories in the Bible. To show you what a loophole really cost and more important, what closing one Is worse. Key number one a goal written down as a goal fighting for you. Ixpose I write about the night I was living two lives, standing at a pulpit on Sunday in the dark corner of the internet every other night, serving God with one hand, feeding and an addiction with the other. And the terrifying truth is I thought I had managed. That's what an unwritten, unspoken, unaccountable life does to you. It lies to you. It tells you you're handling it right up until two men in suits are standing at your front door at eight in the morning. Research shows you have a forty five to fifty percent greater chance of success when you write out your goal, not thinking about them, not pray about them. Though that matters deeply. through writing them down. There's something that happens when a decision moves from your head to a page. It stops being negotiable. It stops being something you can quietly walk back in a weak moment at eleven PM. It becomes something you can hold in your hand and look at look at when you don't feel like it. Habakka two says write the vision and make it plain on tablets that he may run who reads it. Write it plain so you can run with it. Your strategy needs to name your triggers. Your high risk windows, your if then plan, not something you figure out in the moment. Something's already decided when you're clear headed and committed. Samson never wrote anything down. He just kept returning to Delilah and hoping it would be different. The man with the most physical strength in history. had no strategy and it cost him everything. Don't run on hope alone. Write the vision. Key number two, accountability doesn't just help, it multiplies your odds. Writing the goal improves your chance significantly. Sharing it with an accountability partner? Research shows your odds climb even higher. Some studies put it above sixty five percent. But here's the part nobody tells you. Accountability only works if it's real. And expose I write down about the moment Mike Collins came into my life. I had just arrived in Pensacola, no luggage, no money, and no dignity. A mutual connection pointed him my way. And within hours of landing a man I had never met took me to Wendy's and just listened. I write this in my book. I remember asking him why are you helping me so much? How can you even trust me? Why would you waste your time on me? I was so disgusted with myself I couldn't understand why anyone would invest in me. But Mike didn't come to shame me. He came to strategize with me. And there's a profound difference. Shame pushes you underground. Strategy pulls you into light. Ecclesiastes four nine says two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor. If either of them fall down, one can help the other up, but pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up. Samson had no one like that. He was surrounded by people who But not one but not one of them could tell him the truth about Delilah. Or if they could, he hadn't let anyone in close enough to matter. You need someone who knows the full map, not the version of you that holds it together. The actual version. Your real triggers. Your real patterns, your real temptations, because the enemy already has that information. Your accounta your accountability partner, they need it too. Key number three name the loopholes, then close them one by one. This is the piece that most recovery conversations never get to. And it may be the most important one. In Expose, I describe what these loopholes look like in my own life. There were specific times, specific devices and specific emotional states loneliness, rejection, exhaustion that I had quietly learned to exploit. Nobody knew that about me. They were mine, my private exits, my secret routes. And here's the thing about secret exits. As long as they stay secret They stay available. Mike Collins taught me something I will never forget. He said when you are strong or even after a crash, you tell your accountability partner about the new loophole, and then you strategize together to close it. Not someday, not when you feel ready, but now. While the shame is still fresh enough to produce honesty rather than hide it. I write about one of these moments and expose, a day when I was about to fall again. I had found a connection online, a hookup, and I knew what I was about to do. I write. I knew what I was about to do was wrong and would make me feel worse afterwards. So I found the strength to pick up my phone and call Mike. But when he answered, I couldn't talk. It was like I was paralyzed. That's how powerful a secret exit becomes. It can silence you, even when you're trying to escape it. I kept reading. He knew this was out of character, but because we had a strategy that if I was ever about to fall and couldn't get the words out, all I needed to do was just call. My silence told him everything, and he was able to guide me to safety. That was a strategy at work. Not a feeling, not willpower, a plan that had already been built for a moment exactly like that one. Now think about Samson. He never confessed his loopholes. He never told anyone. There's a door over there I keep walking through. He gave Delilah three false answers before finally surrendering until The real one. And the moment he did, the exit swallowed him whole. eight says Be sober minded, be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. The enemy is patient. He is strategic. He catalogues your loopholes, some of them before you even know they exist. The one way to overmaneuver him is to find every secret exit yourself. The only way to ob the only way to outmaneuver him is to find every secret exit yourself. Drag it into light and close it before he walks through it again. A strategy with unclosed loophole isn't a strategy. It's a countdown. Samson's story doesn't end in the prison. It ends with his hands on the pillars. His strength returns, his purpose reclaimed. But he lost years. He lost his sight. He paid an enormous price for exits he should have closed long before Delilah ever got near them. In Expose I write, The longer you let it manifest, the more you will believe the lies the enemy is throwing your way. That was true for me for fifteen years. Fifteen years of secret exits, fifteen years of loopholes I never showed anyone, fifteen years before a Wendy's, a man named Mike Collins, and a strategy I finally let someone help me build. You don't have to spend fifteen years finding out what a closed exit could have saved you. Freedom is Isn't just a dis a decision. Freedom isn't just a decision. It's a design. You build it on purpose. You write it down. You share the real vision with someone who won't flinch. And you do the hard, uncomfortable work of naming every loophole. and sealing it shut one exit at a time. There's three things this week. Three things to a challenge. I want to challenge you to three things this week. Key one in action. Write down your strategy, your triggers, your high risk times, your if then plan on paper. Make it real. Key two in action. Tell one person the full version, not the cleaned up version. Hand someone you actually map. Hand someone your actual map and let them help you hold it. Key three in action, name one loophole. Just one. Something only you know about. And this week. Close it, delete it, confess it, block it, destroy it. Whatever it takes to seal that exit. Samson kept one secret too many. You don't have to. Until next time, stay intentional.