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  • Where I'm going with Grounded in the next year

    Where I'm going with Grounded in the next year
    2026/09/08
    I saw a video once where someone said, “You have consumed enough already.” That really struck me hard because I am very much a media person. He said confidently from the Lord that if I never consumed another book, movie, or song, I have seen more in my lifetime than any previous generation. I don’t need to consume any more. It doesn’t help me grow. It just piles more learning on top of old learning. A lot of which we were never actually going to put into practice anyway. What will change you, however, is creating. It’s kind of amazing God math. One of those “Give, and it will be given to you, good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over” kind of things. In real world math, it should say, “TAKE, and you will have more.” But in God’s way, if you create something new with Him, you’ll end up richer than if you consume. No one learns more than a teacher. It has certainly been true in my life concerning the Bible. No one learns more than the teacher, and I thank God for giving me the opportunity to serve in the role of teacher for so many years. Most of the things I have learned have come because I was living inside that position, and I had to create presentations of Bible thought blocks every week as a pastor and seminary leader for 20 years. So now I find myself a pastor without a church for the last 18 years. Thankfully, I have had Medialight. I’m the primary teacher there, but we have many others, and that’s been one of our major goals, creating more teachers. Online is a New Space for MinistryI’ve been doing face-to-face ministry for almost 50 years, but only three years ago did I start treating the online world as a real place that deserves my best effort. That’s when. I started making online content weekly, whether I had time or not. I’m embarrassed to look at my earliest efforts. It’s always like that. You learn by doing, and it’s the only way to learn, so you just have to push through those early stages to learn the workflow and production systems of a TV station, basically. In the last year, I have increased my flow, an episode a week plus a book, and we’re just now in September. It’s been a very demanding load, and it’s starting to feel like about 50% of my ministry. The online space allows you to reach people in different time zones when it’s convenient for them, and I think it has so much to offer beyond just being marketing for people to attend the Sunday service. I want to say how much I thank the people who support us personally through the emergemissions.org website and also as subscribers here on Substack. We are servants of the church, and we have always done our best to put our efforts where we feel they will be the most fruitful and appropriately spent. The online space is one of those places. The time to learn how to use it was made available to us because of the sponsorship of faithful friends, and again, I am so very grateful. Thanks for freeing me so I could create for the Lord. I want to explore the fruitfulness of the 24/7 decentralized online environment, and also I want to share my journey with the next generation of creators and help launch dozens of new voices online. We really need effective, skilled gospel communicators online to combat the flood of antichrist values and pure-out news lies that flood through our phones into our minds every day. Half of what we read is probably not even true or has been done just to create a news story. It’s really crazy. Becoming a public person is scary. Becoming a public person is a very powerful thing. It’s scary, but it yields a harvest of personal development. I would encourage everyone to do it, even if all you do is think seriously and make five-sentence Facebook posts designed to encourage other people. Just stop mindlessly consuming and try to add something of value to the net. Anyway, each week I have really poured my life into careful study of the Bible, and I have done my best to bring credible research to you. ReJesus everything is sort of my manifesto. This year I want to adjust down a little from being a Bible scholar type creator (there are a lot of those already in all our lives) and tune my attention to the real purpose for this platform: Grounded is about forming resilient disciples of Jesus who stand firm while the world shakes. I want to explore what the worldview, practices, commands, and mission of Jesus mean for all of us in the decade we’re entering. I want to try to turn this into an opportunity for a true gathering online of young disciples, and that our discussions can become part of their formation, not just information. The next ten years will be the wildest ride of our lives. I’m pretty certain of that. All the forces of change and destabilization are building up behind the dam, and eventually something’s going to break. I want to push Grounded into action to help a younger generation deal with that. You might sense a change in my tone and my ...
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    9 分
  • The Bible’s Meta-Narrative: Which Story Are You Reading?

    The Bible’s Meta-Narrative: Which Story Are You Reading?
    2026/09/01
    What’s your Meta-Narrative? Every reader of the Bible comes with a lens. A framework. A big story about what the Bible is fundamentally about. And that lens determines everything—how you interpret individual passages, how you understand Jesus, how you live your life.Most of us don’t realize we have a lens. We think we’re just reading the Bible objectively. But we’re not. We’re reading it through a meta-narrative. A spine story that tells us what all the smaller stories are about.The question is: Which meta-narrative are you reading through? And more importantly—have you actually decided for yourself, or have you just accepted what someone else told you the story is?The Responsibility Is On YouAll of us can read. All of us have access to a Bible. The responsibility is on each of us to read that Bible, to study it, to meditate on it until we can step back and see the lines of the big story before us.We need to decide which meta-narrative is the spine of Scripture. We cannot force a narrative into the text or blindly accept what someone else says the narrative is. This choice determines how we interpret every passage we read. It’s crucial.Alternative Meta-NarrativesEach meta-narrative captures something true. Each also obscures something important.The Personal Salvation Meta-Narrative reads the Bible as fundamentally about getting individual souls into heaven. The Fall happened, humanity is sinful, Jesus died to pay the price, and now if you believe in Him, you go to heaven when you die. Everything is interpreted through this lens: Does this passage help me get to heaven? Does this teach me how to live a better personal life?This captures something real. Personal redemption matters. Your individual relationship with God is genuine and significant. But this lens makes the entire cosmic drama secondary. Why would God care so much about the politics of Persia and Greece if it’s all just about getting souls to heaven? Why would He speak so extensively through the prophets about the rise and fall of empires? Why the genealogies, the territorial conflicts, the prophecies about nations and kingdoms?More troubling: if the whole Gospel is about me—my salvation, my happiness, my eternity—then we’ve just baptized selfishness. We’ve made the central message of Scripture an appeal to the most basic human impulse: self-preservation. If one of the main struggles of the human spirit is selfishness, how can this be the whole Gospel? It seems to continue appealing to “me, me, me—my favorite person, me.” I want to be saved. I don’t want to go to hell. I want to live in heaven and be happy forever.If that’s the whole Gospel, it’s self-centered from beginning to end. For me, that’s the problem with it. The Moral Development Meta-Narrative chronicles humanity’s spiritual evolution. We start primitive and gradually grow more enlightened. The Old Testament is harsh because people were barbaric. God has to deal with them in physical ways because they weren’t spiritually developed. The New Testament is gentler because we’ve evolved morally.This sounds sophisticated. It appeals to our modern sensibilities, especially those raised in the age of Darwin, with the sense that we are the pinnacle of human development.But this denies the transcendent, unchanging nature of God’s own character and His Word. Is the God of the Old Testament not the same God who is the Father of Jesus? The Liberation Theology Meta-Narrative focuses on God’s love and priority for the poor and oppressed. This captures genuine biblical truth. God does care about justice. He does defend the vulnerable poor.But when this becomes the primary lens, it can reduce God’s concern to only the human struggle for fairness in society while ignoring the layers of spiritual corruption that fuel these problems. Staying at the individual, physical level, we can completely miss the eternal scope of God’s purposes. On top of that, this view often reduces Jesus to an example of the suffering good people endure at the hands of the rich and powerful—an activist who pays the price for bringing change.Jesus is much more than this according to Scripture.Why the Cosmic Conflict Meta-Narrative Rings True with me. The Divine Council/Cosmic Conflict Worldview doesn’t dismiss these other readings. It includes genuine elements of personal salvation, moral development, and justice. But it places them all within a larger, cosmic story.It rings true for several reasons.First: It takes Genesis 1 seriously. God creates humanity in His image and gives us dominion over the earth. Not incidentally. As the foundational purpose for human existence. We are meant to be God’s vice-regents, exercising His authority in His world. Every other biblical narrative—the Fall, the Flood, the nations, the covenants, the prophets, Jesus Himself—can only be understood in light of this original commission.Second: It explains the patterns that recur ...
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    30 分
  • Enforcing Christ's Victory: You’re Seated with the King

    Enforcing Christ's Victory: You’re Seated with the King
    2026/08/25
    Hi Friend!Let’s dive into the fourth and final installment in our series on understanding the supernatural worldview of the Bible.For most of human history, we’ve been helpless.We didn’t understand why. We just felt it. The weight of it. The impossibility of it. We tried to push back against forces we couldn’t see, couldn’t name, couldn’t comprehend. And we lost. Over and over, we lost.Ancient people understood this instinctively. They saw humans as devolving from greatness—From living as those unexplainable civilizations whose ruins we still marvel at, whose architectural feats we can’t replicate today. They blamed our downfall as humans on the elohim.They blamed the weight of spiritual powers that ruled over human territories and nations. When Daniel prayed, he encountered resistance from the prince of Persia. That wasn’t metaphor. It was the reality of a spiritual realm that occupied the physical world.We’ve rationalized it away. We’ve convinced ourselves that power operates only through politics and economics and human ambition. But the spiritual reality hasn’t changed. The elohim are still here. Evil is intelligent. The domain authorities still occupy territories. They still rule through the systems we navigate every day.What’s changed is our awareness of them. We’re the first generation that doesn’t see them. We pretend they don’t exist. We look at the coordinated manipulation of government, business, education, military, and arts—and we assign it all to human agents.But according to Scripture, the elohim are real and terrifyingly powerful.The Gospel That Changes EverythingHere’s the gospel that changes that reality: Jesus confronted them. He went to war with them. And He won through his sacrifice on the cross, his resurrection from the dead, and his ascension to the right hand of God.He won as a human. He defeated them by perfect faithfulness, by perfect alignment with God’s character. He lived the only human life perfectly aligned with the heart of the Creator. He did what we were created to do—take dominion over our world as humans made in the image of God.Today, Jesus is seated at the right hand of God, a human, ruling as co-regent with the Creator. He holds all authority in heaven and on earth.Jesus Installed YouAnd then He did something almost incomprehensible. He installed you—yes, you—in your designated seat of authority. He gave you the power to take charge of your little world. Your family. Your workplace. Your creativity. The limitless development of your own mind. The sanctity and strength of your own body.You are no longer helpless.As you exercise that authority aligned with Him, you’re not just fixing your own life. You’re contributing to the march of Jesus across the planet.This is the gospel. Not the small version we’ve reduced it to. The massive, cosmic, everything-changes gospel that doesn’t just get you to heaven—it restores the universe itself.What Seated Actually MeansPaul writes in Ephesians 2:6: “God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus.”Present tense. Right now. You are seated. With Christ. In the heavenly realms.This isn’t poetry. This isn’t a future promise. This is your current spiritual reality.Think about where Christ is seated. Far above every rule and authority and power and dominion. Above every elohim that ever ruled a nation. Above the powers that occupy government, business, education, the military, and the arts. Above all of them.And you are seated with Him in that same position.This means you have authority. Not because you earned it. Not because you’re special or particularly spiritual. Because you are united with the one who holds all authority. Your authority is derived—it flows from your alignment with Him, your union with Him, your participation in His victory.An ambassador carries the authority of their nation. But only when they act as a representative of that nation, only when they’re aligned with their sovereign’s interests, only when they operate within their commission.You are an ambassador of the Kingdom of God. Seated with the King far above every power. Carrying His authority into every sphere where you have influence.The question is: will you exercise it?Territory and ExpansionDominion is not domination. It is not aggression. It is not greed. It’s stewardship. It’s the wise, faithful exercise of authority to bring order and flourishing to a specific territory or realm. We have power under the authority of the King.You have dominion over your little world. Your family. Your workplace. Your community. The sphere of influence you actually occupy. And the degree to which you exercise that dominion—the degree to which you enforce Christ’s victory in those spaces—determines the expansion of His kingdom right now.This is not passive. This is active. This requires you to show up. To take a stand. To make decisions based on ...
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    21 分
  • The Real Reason God Didn’t Just Blast the Devil Away

    The Real Reason God Didn’t Just Blast the Devil Away
    2026/08/18
    I know you’ve wondered this. I have too. If the Almighty can speak galaxies into existence, why not just snap His fingers and blast away the devil and all spiritual darkness? Why not open the heavens and incinerate the rebel powers with raw divine force?But the answer isn’t about God’s power. His power was never in question. The answer is about His character—and specifically, about His stubborn, unwavering commitment to His own word.In our last episode, we established that God’s gifts and callings are irrevocable. He built our world by using His voice and speaking commands. Those commands become the fabric of the universe. When He makes a decree, it stands forever. When He gives humans the gift of dominion over the earth in Ge. 1, it remains our dominion, even when the holder of that dominion fails God. If God makes a person a king they may be a great king or a horrible king, but they will be the king for the rest of their life. God’s gifts are permanent. He stands by his word. The universe exists because his word cannot pass away. God governs his world by faithfulness to His word.So although he had the ability, and they surely deserved it, YHWH wouldn’t just swat the rebels like flies. There’s no point building a society of free-willed beings if all of them only obey you because you threaten to nuke them if they don’t. Any successful society on earth must be a true collaboration between God and his higher creations. Secondly, dominion over the earth wasn’t given to Heavenly Beings. It was given to humans. To us. Irrevocably. Therefore, since humans are already the ones in charge of this planet, it was up to the human to defeat the cosmic powers who had seized this power and take back dominion over the earth. That created a cosmic dilemma. A human had to reclaim what humans had lost. But no ordinary human could defeat the host of celestial beings who had seized control. The domain authorities, the territorial powers, the principalities that rule over nations—these aren’t enemies you fight with swords or missiles. A mortal can’t stand against elohim if the battle is going to be power vs power.God could have done it alone, but that would have violated the very structure He established. From the first day of our creation, He declared that humans shall have dominion over all of his creation. Only a human could take back from this occupation army the dominion that already belongs to humans. The solution was the Incarnation—the God-man. Fully divine, fully human. Only a human had the legal standing to reclaim dominion that was given to humanity. Only an unblemished human, operating within the bounds of human limitation, could undo what humanity had lost. But that human also needed divine power, because fighting celestial forces requires power beyond human capability.Into this dark arena steps our champion, Jesus Christ—perfectly human, perfectly divine, wielding both the legal standing to act and the power to enforce the restoration of human dominion on planet earth.This is the strategic brilliance of the Incarnation. Jesus is the Human Champion. The one being in all of creation who could rightly reclaim dominion while possessing the power to pull it off.He was aware of this calling.You see it in the wilderness temptation. Satan didn’t tempt Jesus to do evil in the way we usually imagine. He tempted Him to bypass being bound by the human condition. He tempted him to meet his own human needs and to engage the fallen powers using the supernatural abilities of God. He baited him to reclaim authority without going through the cross.Turn stones to bread. Use divine power to escape hunger. Jesus refused. He limited Himself to what was possible for a human. He stayed hungry.Throw yourself from the temple. Force God’s hand. Demand the miraculous rescue you deserve as the Son of God. Jesus refused. He wouldn’t use His divine power to bypass human limitation. He chose to remain subject to the consequences of His own actions.Show Respect to Satan for all the kingdoms of the world. The ultimate shortcut. The rebel powers offered Jesus the very dominion He came to reclaim—minus the suffering. Just acknowledge that Satan’s authority is legitimate. Take the kingdoms without the cross.Jesus refused absolutely. Every single time, He stayed within the boundaries of the human condition. He chose the hard path of perfect human obedience, perfect trust, even in agony. He would win not through divine force, but through living out a loyal life as a righteous human.That brings us to the pivot point of cosmic history.The cross wasn’t just about personal salvation. It was a legal revolution.The rebel powers had used the law as their weapon. They had a case. Humanity was too sinful, too disloyal to God to exercise dominion on the earth. We had proven ourselves unfit. Every failure was recorded. The Bible uses a specific legal term for this: cheirographon. A handwritten certificate of debt, ...
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    27 分
  • Are Demons Envious of Humans?

    Are Demons Envious of Humans?
    2026/08/10
    When you look at the major systems of our civilization—government, finance, education, the arts—there’s a pervasive sense that something is off. Not just slightly misaligned, but fundamentally bent away from God’s order. Institutions designed to serve justice become instruments of oppression. Systems meant to transmit truth become tools of propaganda. Culture meant to reflect beauty becomes a celebration of darkness.We often blame individual corruption, dysfunctional systems, or that it’s just human nature. And yes, those factors matter. But the Bible offers a more unsettling explanation: we’re living in occupied territory.The Envy That Never DiesImagine you’re one of the elder elohim—a spiritual being who has existed for ages, powerful beyond human comprehension, serving in God’s heavenly court. And then, God creates humans. Fragile. Physical. Temporary. And He crowns them with glory and honor. He gives them dominion over the earth.You might expect the response to be graceful acceptance. These elder beings were assigned to be shepherds, tutors, guardians to help humanity steward the world. A sacred role. A partnership.Instead, according to Scripture, envy festered in many.Psalm 8:5 captures the shock: “You have made them (humans) a little lower than the elohim and crowned them (humans) with glory and honor.”The implication is clear: this was unexpected. Humans—shorter-lived, weaker, more vulnerable—were exalted above the elder spiritual beings in terms of delegated authority regarding planet Earth. The beings who had been closest to the throne, who had served longest, found themselves subordinate on Earth to creatures they might have viewed as inferior.This, it seems, is the birthplace of the cosmic rebellion. Not from ignorance—from wounded pride. From the refusal to accept God’s mysterious choice to place authority for this world in human hands.The Hunger for the PhysicalEven to powerful spirit world beings, according to Genesis chapter 6, humans are beautiful. Part of our attraction is that we are part of the physical reality. We have bodies and experience being alive through our bodies. These spiritual beings don’t just want power—they want physicality. They want bodies. They want to feel.There’s something unique about physical existence that transcends mere utility. To taste. To touch. To experience the weight and texture of the material world. To inhabit a body and feel its sensations. This is not something disembodied spirits possess. And according to the gospels, they want it.The demoniac of Gadara illustrates this graphically. When Jesus confronts a legion of demons, they beg Him with a specific request: “Send us into the herd of pigs.” Not freedom. Not peaceful annihilation. Pigs. They would rather inhabit filthy pigs than remain disembodied. Why? Because physicality itself is the prize.This hunger drove them to something far darker. Genesis 6 describes how the bene elohim—the sons of God—”saw that the daughters of humans were beautiful, and they married (took) any of them they chose.” This wasn’t romance. It was strategy.By interbreeding with humans, these rebel powers sought to do something brilliant and horrifying: they attempted to merge with human bloodline. If they could corrupt the human line, they could seize claim to human dominion. They could make the earth theirs not by stealing it, but by infiltrating it, by becoming part of it.The result, according to the Genesis account, was the Nephilim—hybrid beings trying to rule the physical realm with absolute authority. Giants. Tyrants. The visible manifestation of spiritual rebellion in physical form. Most ancient cultures have stories of superhuman beings that were in the form of humans but were much larger and had impossibly great size and abilities.God’s response was the global flood because this corruption and the ensuing violent downward struggle of human society threatened the very foundation of His irrevocable decree to humanity. Human dominion had to remain human. The bloodline had to be preserved.But the spirit of this rebellion never died. It just adapted.The Parable of the Tenants: A Cosmic StoryJesus tells a parable that speaks directly to this rebellion, though most of us read it as mere social commentary.Matthew 21:33-41: A landowner plants a vineyard, leases it to tenants, and goes away. At harvest time, he sends servants to collect his share. The tenants beat and kill them. Finally, he sends his son. And the tenants say: “This is the heir. Come, let’s kill him and take his inheritance.”On the surface, it’s about corrupt workers. But read in context of the cosmic rebellion, it becomes something else entirely. I think the “tenants” are stand-ins for the rebel elohim—the spiritual beings assigned by God to help steward the earth for humanity. But they decided to squat on the property. To occupy. To claim ownership of what was never theirs to possess.They saw...
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    33 分
  • Is it weird to believe that the gods are real?

    Is it weird to believe that the gods are real?
    2026/08/04
    Many people begin their spiritual journey after answering this question: Is God real?It’s a vital question. Philosophers wrestle with it. Scientists challenge it. We all, in our own quiet moments, feel the weight of it. And rightly so. But after Sherry and I had served for 25 years in the 1040 window, the home of every world faith where millions of gods are named and sacrificed to, I had to face another question:Are the gods also real?I’m not asking if there are idols of wood and stone that sit in temples. We have lived within sight of temples filled with images of deities for the last 18 years. We have sat in Buddhist temples for hours observing and interacting with the worshippers. We have witnessed processions and festivals to deities. The real question is whether the deities that are worshiped around the world are just products of superstition and folklore or actual, intelligent, spiritual beings with real authority, territory, and often malevolent influence over the course of human history. Are the “gods” real or not? I was watching Jordan Peterson’s video series on Genesis and was surprised to hear Dennis Prager of Prager University say that only very recently has he even considered the possibility that there might be a real Satan. That’s how strong his monotheism is. I felt that I had to answer this question of whether the gods are real not because of Asian polytheism, but because of the Bible. The writers of the Bible simply assume it. From Genesis to Revelation, Scripture operates from a foundational worldview that the space around us is populated with intelligent beings we cannot see and that these beings engage human society and are a real factor in developments within our history.If you just ignore dealing with this, you’re reading the Bible with a fundamental blind spot AND you’re going to miss some of the most powerful messages the Bible is trying to transmit to you. The Elohim: A Category of BeingIn Hebrew, these spiritual beings are called elohim—a plural, generic term that appears throughout Scripture without explanation or introduction. The psalmist refers to humans being made “a little lower than the elohim“ (Psalm 8:5). Job describes divine beings gathering in the council of the Lord. Daniel encounters an angelic hierarchy of intelligence and power. And yet, most modern readers treat these references as metaphor or mythology, when the biblical writers intended them as straightforward theology.Elohim isn’t exclusive to God. Yes, it’s used for Yahweh, the uncreated Creator. But it’s also used for members of the divine council, the “gods” of nations, even the spirits of the dead in certain contexts. It’s a category—describing a type of being, specifically those who exist in non-physical form.Think of how we use the word “human.” It can mean a specific person (like me), or it can refer to the entire species of us. The same logic applies to elohim. It’s a classification. And while Yahweh is elohim, He is utterly unique—the uncreated Creator of all other spiritual beings. He’s the Lord of lords, the elohim of elohim. Another way of putting it is that, while Yahweh is an Elohim, no other Elohim is Yahweh. He stands in an uncontested position as Creator of everything that exists. This distinction matters. It’s the difference between monotheism (belief in one God) and the biblical worldview (which acknowledges one Creator and multiple intelligent, created spiritual beings). Some scholars say we would do better to say that the Jews were commanded to monolatry (the worship of only one Elohim, YHWH), not monotheism (the belief that there are no divine beings except one). Opening your mind to allow for the existence of the multiple Elohim mentioned in the opening verses of scriptures reshapes everything that follows in the Bible.God’s Irrevocable Word: The Foundation of EverythingIf the populated cosmos is the backdrop of Scripture, then God’s irrevocable decrees are the framework that makes sense of the entire drama.Romans 11:29 states: “For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.”Most of us skim past this verse. We apply it to individual callings—”God won’t take back the purpose He’s given you.” But Paul’s statement goes far deeper. He’s articulating a principle about God’s fundamental character: When Yahweh assigns authority, grants a gift, or makes a decree, it cannot be revoked. Not because He lacks the power. But because His character demands He keep His word. His faithfulness is absolute. Once His commands are released, they stand in force forever. Consider the implications. If God makes an irrevocable decree, then that decree remains in force regardless of whether the recipient remains faithful. A king appointed by God remains a king—his authority is a real, persistent legal standing—even if he becomes corrupt or rebellious. This isn’t arbitrary. It’s God’s commitment to the stability of His own ...
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    26 分
  • Brothers Know Each Other — Why Jesus Came to Be More Than Your King

    Brothers Know Each Other — Why Jesus Came to Be More Than Your King
    2026/07/28
    (As always, the video version of this is much better, but in case you want to just read it, here’s a 30% version.)Imagine there’s an author and podcaster you genuinely admire. You own all her books. You never miss an episode. You’ve held onto every personal detail she’s ever mentioned — her husband’s name is Victor, she has three kids, she loves glamping, glamorous camping in those rolling houses on wheels, with soft beds and real creature comforts. If there were a quiz about her, you’d win it. You know more about this woman than most of her own relatives do.Then one weekend you’re at a distant friend’s wedding, and by some miracle you’re seated right next to her at the reception. You hit it off immediately. On impulse, she and her family invite you to join them in their RV parked outside, right after the wedding. You go. And it changes you. Their wholeness somehow rubs off on you. Their stability becomes something you carry. One day you’ll probably mention that you’d been a fan for years — but by then it won’t matter, because now you’re a friend. Part of the family.Do you see the difference?On the first level, you knew about her. You knew the details. Her words had shaped you and you respected her deeply. But you didn’t know her. Then you met her. You talked, ate, and traveled together. And from that point on, you could be anywhere in a crowded room, and the moment your eyes met, you’d both smile and start making your way toward each other.There’s actually a dedicated region of the brain for remembering the faces of people you truly know. Everyone else functions as background — never really seen, instantly forgotten as you walk away. The people you truly know are different. Specific. Real. Present.I’ve come to believe this is the single most important distinction in the Christian life, and we don’t talk about it nearly enough.There is an enormous difference between the tangible presence of Jesus and a religion about him — even a religion done perfectly. Religion isn’t just a substitute for knowing Christ. It actually stands in the way of knowing him. That’s the most frightening thing about it. You can go extraordinarily deep into a religion about Jesus — become a raving, devoted, lifelong fan, keep every observance, deny yourself everything fun in life — and still never actually know him.I’m not the one who came up with that. Jesus said it himself, and he said it in the most sobering way imaginable:“Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me.’” (Matthew 7:21–23)Not “you got the doctrine wrong.” Not “you didn’t work hard enough.” I never knew you. Now, these are people with a résumé — prophecy, deliverance, miracles—all of it in his name. It’s like owning the jersey, the signed photos, and the game ball of a sports hero. You might be completely genuine in your devotion. But that doesn’t make you family.Jesus came to be our King — but also our brother. And brothers know each other.So there’s really only one question underneath all of this. Religion or presence — which one do you actually want? Some people, honestly, want religion. They want to keep God in his place. They’re happy to follow a religion about him and they don’t need a backstage pass to meet him personally. That’s a real choice, and it’s available.But other people aren’t that easily satisfied. They want to know their Maker. They want to know why they’re here. If that’s you, I want you to hear that what you’re after is not only possible — it’s the whole point. Jesus wants to live with you. He wants to animate you from within and do his work for others through you. People who encounter you should encounter him. You’ll find yourself in conversations where strangers open up about the deepest things in their hearts without quite knowing why. That’s not an elite spiritual tier. That’s the normal life with Jesus as Lord.If you’ve never had that experience, the way in is embarrassingly simple. Start talking to Jesus about it. Get hungry for it. Silence your feed. Seek it earnestly. You don’t find true north through a rational analysis of whether Christianity is historically valid. You find it through an encounter with a Being who is both otherworldly and your Creator. He gave you the promise himself: “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all of your heart.” (Jeremiah 29:13)We can keep being a fan. Or we can get in the RV.ReJesus Everything is available now on Amazon — a letter to the generation inheriting the Christian movement, about trading a religion about Jesus for the real thing. Grab a copy, and bring a few friends: the free discussion guide on the website is built for exactly this kind of conversation.Every Blessing!Chuck Get ...
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    13 分
  • Jesus brought a wind.

    Jesus brought a wind.
    2026/07/21
    There’s a translation problem at the very beginning of the Bible, and I think it’s been costing us something important for a long time.In Hebrew, the word Ruach means wind. It also means breath. It also means spirit, immaterial intelligence. Not three related concepts — one word, carrying all three at once, whenever it appears.When Genesis 1 says the “Spirit of God” was hovering over the waters — that’s ruach. The Spirit is the breath of God and the wind of God—all three simultaneously. I don’t believe The ancient Hebrew reader had to choose between those meanings; they felt all of them at once.Then in Genesis chapter two, God bends down and breathes ruach into the clay body of the first human. Wind. Breath. Spirit. Entering a body made from the ground, and the man becomes alive. That’s where your life came from. Not just biologically — eternally. The breath of God is the source of human life.And then Jesus comes. He teaches about this wind you cannot control, cannot predict, and cannot contain. He breathes on his disciples and says, receive the Holy Spirit.This is what he came to release. The breath of God. Back into human beings. The way it was always supposed to be.That is your birthright. Not a doctrine about it. Not a religion organized around the memory of it. The actual thing. The ruach of God, alive in you, doing what it has always done — creating, restoring, delivering, bringing life out of death.That is what’s at stake in this conversation. Not church attendance. Not doctrinal correctness. Your birthright. Let’s talk about it.The Oldest Story in the WorldI want to walk you through the biblical thread of ruach, because once you see it, it completely reframes the way you interpret all that Jesus was doing and saying.RUACH begins before day one of creation. Genesis 1:2 — “the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.” That word “hovering” in Hebrew is the same word used later for an eagle hovering over its nest, watching over its young. The ruach of God is intelligently hovering over chaos. Waiting. Present. About to move.Then God with his breath speaks and everything comes into being. Light. Sky. Land. Life. All of it called into existence by the breath of God moving over the chaotic void.Chapter two — God forms a body from the ground. Beautiful, detailed, complete. And then he bends down and breathes ruach directly into the man’s nostrils. And the man becomes a living being. The breath of God entering a human being and making him an embodied life, fully alive. Connected. Known. Animated. Fueled.This is the original human experience. Ruach flowing freely between Creator and creature. No barrier. No intermediary. Direct. Intimate. Alive.Then sin enters, and the connection breaks. Not God’s choice — humanity’s. We chose independence from God, and independence from God means separation from his ruach. And the whole rest of the Old Testament is the story of God working to restore what was lost. The breath keeps moving. The wind keeps blowing.It dries the earth after the flood — ruach. It parts the Red Sea — ruach. It falls on the judges and the prophets and the kings when they need power beyond themselves. Ezekiel stands in a valley of dry bones and God tells him to prophesy to the ruach — to call the breath of God back into what is dead. And the bones come together and stand up and live.The whole Hebrew story is a story about ruach. About the breath of God and what happens when human beings are connected to it — and what happens when they’re not. It is the oldest story in the world.And then John the Baptist appears in the wilderness, and he is burning with urgency, and his whole message is this: someone is coming! Someone who will baptize not with water but with ruach and fire.He is saying: the original thing is returning. The breach is about to be healed. Get ready. God is doing something for you that you cannot do for yourself.Jesus and the WindWhen Jesus arrives, watch how he talks.He doesn’t primarily talk about religion. He doesn’t speak about proper church structure or how to do the rituals properly or how to organize a proper worship service. He talks about the wind.In John 3, a religious leader named Nicodemus comes to him at night — a sincere man, a careful man, someone who has spent his whole life doing religion correctly. And Jesus tells him: you have to be born again. Born of water and ruach. Spirit. Wind. Breath.Nicodemus is confused. How can a man be born again when he is old?And Jesus says: “The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” (John 3:8)He’s not being evasive. He’s being precise. The ruach of God is not something you can systematize. You cannot predict it. You cannot control it. Cannot forbid it. You cannot...
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