How to Trust God When Life Falls Apart in Spiritual Warfare

Trusting God when life falls apart starts with surrender, not with fixing everything yourself. Spiritual warfare rarely looks dramatic. Most of the time it sounds like shame, isolation, and the quiet voice telling a man he is already a failure.

That is exactly where Kirk Kuykendall found himself. Kirk Kuykendall is a longtime energy industry executive, a father of three, and a men's ministry leader who spent years hiding a private collapse behind a public résumé. He sat down with David L. Savage, founder of The Savage Path Ministries Corp, on the Wrestling with the Inner Man podcast to talk about childhood trauma, a painful divorce, crushing anxiety, and the morning he heard God ask him one question.

His story is not a tidy testimony. It is a real look at what it costs to trust God in the middle of spiritual warfare, and what changes when a man finally stops trying to control the outcome. What follows is his path, one honest step at a time.

What Does Divorce Recovery Look Like for a Wounded Boy Turned Man?

Kirk's story of divorce recovery does not start with his own marriage. It starts when he was eight years old, watching his parents' marriage end. He described a split photograph he uses when he speaks: one side shows a smiling boy before the divorce, the other shows the same boy carrying a look of quiet sorrow.

Kirk pictures himself, and every man, as a piece of stained glass. Before wounding, it is whole and beautiful. Divorce, trauma, and the ordinary cruelty of childhood throw rocks at that glass, and cracks spread without ever fully shattering it.

Those cracks became an entry point for what Kirk calls the enemy's best work. Years later, his own marriage began to fail, and the old fragmentation from childhood divorce collapsed in on the new pain of adult divorce recovery. He was not just losing a marriage. He was reliving a wound that had never been named.

If a man reading this is carrying an old fracture from his own parents' divorce, the first honest step is naming it out loud to one person this week, not carrying it silently any longer. David's own story of raising kids through a difficult divorce shaped how he leads men through that same fracture today.

Why Is Surrendering Control to God So Hard for Anxious Men?

Surrendering control to God sounds simple until a man's marriage, career, and sense of self are all cratering at once. Kirk described hearing voices of condemnation: you are a failure as a father, a failure as a husband, your career is a sham. Surrendering control to God felt impossible while he was still trying to manage the outcome himself.

Isolation made it worse. Kirk assumed every other man at church had it together, so he never talked about his own despair. David shared a chilling real-life example: on a recent panel about male loneliness, three of the five men on stage admitted they had considered or attempted suicide.

Surrendering control to God finally began the day Kirk walked into a support group, ashamed and unsure he had anything to offer. He said almost nothing the first meeting. He just cried, and kept going back anyway.

If isolation has convinced a man he is the only one struggling, the honest step today is texting one trusted friend the plain truth: "I am not okay." Kirk did not find surrender in a moment of strength. He found it by showing up weak, over and over, until the weight started to lift.

How Does Faith and Anxiety Collide in the Moment You Finally Trust God?

Faith and anxiety collided for Kirk on an ordinary morning walk. He was power walking before sunrise, headphones on, fifty thousand anxious thoughts running through his head with no good outcomes in sight. In the middle of that noise, he heard a voice that was not audible but unmistakable: "Don't you trust me?"

He paused, unsettled, and kept walking. The voice repeated itself, and this time it stopped him cold. Kirk realized this was God speaking directly into his faith and anxiety, not another desperate prayer bouncing off the ceiling.

That single question became the hinge of his story. He said yes, and the very things he feared, including the divorce itself, still happened. But he stopped trying to manage every outcome and started praying real surrender instead of desperate control.

What followed was not instant peace but steady rebuilding: a Freedom recovery group, a Wild at Heart men's retreat built on John Eldredge's teaching, and eventually Kirk leading twelve of his own groups for other struggling men. Faith and anxiety do not disappear the moment a man surrenders. They simply stop running the show.

The honest step today is asking God one direct question in prayer and then sitting in silence long enough to actually listen for an answer.

What Steps Help a Man Trust God Through the Pit?

David referenced a teaching from fellow Toolbox Ministries leader Bright Edwards, author of Revolution Within, outlining four gifts every man receives when he genuinely surrenders to Christ. These four shifts map closely to what Kirk described living out in real time.

• 1. A New Creation
  What It Means: The old identity, built on failure and shame, is genuinely gone once a man accepts Christ.
  
  How to Practice It: Stop rehearsing old failures as if they still define you today.
• 2. A New Identity
  What It Means: A man moves from simply bearing God's image to actively living as His son.
  
  How to Practice It: Replace one self-condemning thought each day with a truth from Scripture.
• 3. A New Disposition
  What It Means: The desire to help others and do right shifts from obligation to genuine want.
  
  How to Practice It: Look for one person this week who needs the encouragement you once needed.
• 4. The Power of the Holy Spirit
  What It Means: None of the first three gifts hold without the Spirit's ongoing strength.
  
  How to Practice It: Start each morning with five minutes of honest prayer before the day takes over.

Who Walks This Path Alongside Kirk and David?

Men living through divorce recovery, anxiety, and quiet spiritual warfare are not confined to one city or one church building. They are husbands in Ohio, fathers in Colorado, and widowers in Georgia, all wrestling with the same accuser and the same invitation to trust. The brotherhood Kirk describes, built through groups like Freedom and Wild at Heart, exists wherever men are willing to stop hiding and start showing up honestly for each other.

That is the whole idea behind Wrestling with the Inner Man: a national conversation for men who refuse to drift alone, no matter their zip code.

What Is the Next Right Step After the Pit?

Kirk's story is not a formula. It is a picture of a man who tried to control his way out of divorce, trauma, and anxiety, and only found solid ground when he stopped controlling and started trusting. As David closed the episode, he put it simply: it is only through winter that a man can truly appreciate spring, and spring is coming.

Start with the Assessment to see exactly where you may be drifting, and take the next step here.

You do not have to figure this out alone, and David's team genuinely wants to hear your story, so connect here.