Enemy Blueprints

My wife and I love to go to the mountains to hike. All of it is amazing and mind-blowing. But one of my favorite things are gushing rivers and waterfalls. There’s an endless supply of water. There’s more than enough for everyone in the world to be satisfied. Another thing I think about is how every river I come across starts somewhere. The flowing water is evidence of a source. “The world” is a planned system In Watchman Nee’s book Love Not The World, he gives a breakdown of the Greek word used to talk about “the world” (kosmos) used …

The World vs. The Kingdom: 2 Competing Systems Of Order, Stability & ProgressRead More

The Greek word for church is ekklesia.  The meaning of this word goes beyond what you might think.  It doesn’t just mean a bunch of people that get together and worship the common God they believe in.  It means “called-out ones.”  This is significant because it communicates there’s a place to be called out from and another place to be called into.  It means the people who are a part of it have left somewhere and gone somewhere else.  Their location has changed. But their location has changed not because of anything they’ve done or because they themselves have traveled …

Jesus Didn’t Change The World. He Did This Instead.Read More

Do you remember when Christians used to wear the letters W.W.J.D. on bracelets and t-shirts?  This was a popular phrase among Christians back in the 1990s when it was like a personal motto to always be thinking “What would Jesus do?”  The prevailing thought was it was a great tool to get yourself to behave more in line with your beliefs.  The logic was that if you just thought about what Jesus would do in every situation, you’d be able to better execute what Jesus would do in every situation.  If someone made you really mad, you could just look at …

Why W.W.J.D. Is Not The Key To Overcoming The WorldRead More

The world’s system violates the design of God’s creation and is constantly pulling on us to get us to buy in.  It’s set up for us to pursue purpose, significance and belonging with wisdom that is contrary to the wisdom of God.  When we live by the wisdom of the world, we are kept from experiencing how Wisdom designed life to flourish. One of the biggest mistakes that gets repeated over and over and over and over again in churches all around the world is violating God’s relational design of mutuality.  Whether it’s marriage, family, friends or acquaintances; from Genesis …

A Level Of Spiritual Maturity You’ll Never Grow To In This WorldRead More

1. The source that conceived of our ways of operating matters A church’s source of order, stability and progress matters.  It’s the difference between life and death, and between oneness and division.  That is not an exaggeration.  Your ways of operating determine what you’re progressing toward.  Throughout the story of Scripture, we’re shown that the world’s system has a source.  Just like you see the water flowing in the river and know it came from some source upstream, the world’s system came from somewhere.  It’s not just how humans randomly chose to do things after the Fall.  There’s a source …

10 Truths That Help Churches Live Out Christianity In The WorldRead More