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 Dies

Imagine 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.

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 Physical

Even 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 Story

Jesus 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 humanity’s irrevocable gift of dominion and wanted it. They couldn’t take it by force—God’s word is unbreakable. But they could plot. They could scheme. They could be a provisional government that drags on and on. And when the Son came to reclaim the land that was rightfully His, their response was murder. “Kill him and we’ll get it forever!”

This parable reveals the core sin of the angelic rebellion: Coveting. The refusal to accept the order God established. The determination to seize what belongs to others.

The Fingerprints on Society’s Pillars

The rebellion isn’t abstract theology. It’s tangible. If we open our eyes, we can see it woven through the institutions that shape civilization.

Government everywhere consistently wants more and more control. This lust for power always corrupts it absolutely. Instead of justice, it becomes oppression.

Finance could be the stewardship of resources to make sure that everyone flourishes. Instead, the banking system in every nation becomes machinery for exploitation. The love of money drives the system to benefit the few at the expense of the many. Greed becomes structural.

Education that’s meant to transmit truth. Knowledge is a wonderful thing. But once the stewardship of knowledge becomes institutionalized it gets perverted. Young minds are indoctrinated rather than enlightened. The transmission of wisdom becomes the propagation of rebellion against God. Enlightenment is another word for independence from our Creator.

The Arts are designed to reflect beauty and divine creativity. Institutionalized, they become twisted into celebrations of darkness and rebellion. Beauty gets corrupted into obscenity.

This isn’t coincidence. It’s not mere human sinfulness (though that’s present). Ephesians 6:12 names it explicitly: “Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”

These are intelligent, organized entities. They’re not just tempting individuals—they’re occupying entire systems, bending institutions toward their rebellion, marking civilization with their fingerprints.

The Divine Courtroom: Psalm 82

But Scripture doesn’t leave us without hope or clarity. Psalm 82 pulls back the curtain on the divine courtroom.

“God has taken his place in the divine council; in the midst of the elohim he holds judgment.”

Yahweh is presiding over the assembly of spiritual beings. And He speaks an indictment: “How long will you judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked? Give justice to the weak and the orphan; maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute.”

He condemns them for corruption. For defending the unjust. For failing to uphold the cause of the poor. For betraying their original stewardship role.

Then comes the sentence: “Nevertheless, like men you shall die, and fall like any prince.”

This is a legal proclamation—shockingly, it’s their death sentence. Their time is limited. Their authority is revoked. They stand condemned before the highest court in creation.

What This Means for You

If you understand that your world is occupied by intelligent spiritual powers bent on subverting human dominion, you’ll see things differently. The systems you navigate daily aren’t neutral platforms. They’re battlegrounds. They’re occupied territories.

But through Psalms 82 you also understand something crucial: their occupation of the pillars of human society is already judged. The sentence has been pronounced. The rebels know their time is short, and they fight with increasing desperation.

This is the moment we live in. The indictment has been issued. The rightful King is moving to reclaim His vineyard. Our response isn’t to despair at the occupation of our world’s power positions, but to see them clearly. To be discerning. To recognize the anti-God bent in the structures around you—not with paranoia, but with the clarity that comes from biblical realism.

The occupation is real. But it’s also—Praise God!— temporary.

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In Our Next Podcast

The rebellion of the elder sons is the backdrop against which the entire drama of redemption unfolds. In our next episode, we’ll explore how a human—fully human, perfectly human—became the key to cosmic victory. Because only a human could legally reclaim what humans had lost.

Ready to dig deeper into the ancient biblical worldview that reshapes your faith? Get the full series and discover how ReJesus Everything is calling believers back to the Jesus of Scripture—not the domesticated version we’ve inherited, but the King who reclaimed the cosmos. Order here.

Stay grounded. God’s Lamb has conquered. His kingdom is advancing.

Every Blessing,

Chuck

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 Being

In 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 Everything

If 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 established order. To revoke the word would be to make God capricious, His universe unpredictable, His promises fragile.

In the creation narrative of Genesis 1 and 2, God creates the universe by making verbal decrees.

Go back to Genesis 1. What do we witness? Chaos. Formlessness. Darkness. And what imposes order? The voice of Yahweh: “Let there be light.” “Let the waters be gathered.” “Let the earth bring forth.” Each spoken word is a divine decree that brings cosmos out of chaos. These decrees become permanent. They form the architecture of creation itself—the laws governing both physical and spiritual realms.

Isaiah 40:8 reminds us: “The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.”

Jesus Himself says (Matthew 24:35): “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.”

And again (John 10:35): “Scripture cannot be broken.”

This isn’t sentimentality about the Bible as a book. It’s a statement about the nature of God’s spoken commands. They create something in the substance of reality itself. Unbreakable. Eternal. The fabric holding creation together.

The Crown: Human Dominion

Against this backdrop, God makes one of His most consequential declarations—one that sets the stage for everything that follows in Scripture:

Dominion. Authority. Rule. Given not to the elder spiritual beings. Not to the celestial powers who had existed for ages. But to humans—fragile, physical, mortal humans.

Only humans will be the rulers of God’s world. He has installed us as kings over his creation. Humans, not angels or any other celestial power. God’s eternal decree installs humans, with all of their weakness and frailty, as the image of God for planet Earth.

This is the crown jewel of God’s creation: the capacity to exercise authority, to steward, to choose. It’s the power to have true agency: to decide what kind of person you will be and what you will do and not do, and how you will affect the people, animals, and world around you in your little domain assigned by God. Agency is woven into your very identity as someone made in the image of God. Your dominion over creation isn’t incidental. It’s irrevocable. It’s part of what makes you human. Caring and nurturing for all the life on this planet is the reason for which we exist.

Here’s the paradox that drives the entire cosmic drama: genuine dominion cannot be coerced. It’s built on real agency. Real choice. Real consequences. God’s own name means freedom and complete agency—“I am what I am.”

This can only happen if we truly have the ability to follow or not follow God, to be loyal to him or as disloyal as we want to be, to be a positive force in the world, or a true monster.

This is the risk God takes in creating beings in His image. And it’s the reason there can be spiritual rebellion in the cosmos—which we’ll explore in future episodes.

Why This Reshapes Everything

If you understand that heaven is populated with real spiritual beings, and you understand that God’s decrees are irrevocable, then you’re ready to see the biblical narrative as it truly is: not a story about humanity’s moral progress, but a cosmic drama about the reclamation of humanity’s stolen dominion.

You’re ready to understand why the systems of our world—media, government, finance, education, the arts—seem always bent against God’s order.

You’re ready to grasp why Jesus had to become human and live a perfect human life to reclaim what humans had lost. You’re ready to see yourself not as a passive believer waiting to die and go to heaven, but as an active agent of the Kingdom right now, reclaiming lost territory.

Most importantly, you’re ready to understand your own significance. You are not a minor character in a story controlled by cosmic forces. You are a steward of real authority, a carrier of divine image, an agent of restoration in a world under occupation.

This is the foundation. The populated cosmos. A world filled with intelligent beings, both seen and unseen. Two realms overlapping on this one-of-a-kind planet. Our planet as the meeting point between the heavenly and the physical realms, with man as the connection. We are created from the carbon of this planet. Our feet are grounded in the earth, but our head is in the heavens. We have the ability to think and have a vision for the future and the capacity to interact with God and, surprisingly, with the Elohim as well. These pages of scripture tell us. Humans enter into conversation with members of the Elohim. Jacob wrestles with one and has his hip knocked out of a socket. Daniel receives a map of the future rise and fall of empires from a member of God’s inner circle. Humans have the amazing capacity to tend to the animals and speak to God himself.

The irrevocable decrees. Your irrevocable dominion.

In the next episode, we’ll explore the rebellion—how some of these spiritual beings grew jealous of humanity and sought to seize what was never theirs. We’ll see the “fingerprints” of this rebellion on the very pillars of our society. And we’ll begin to understand why the world feels like occupied territory.

But first, sit with this: your purpose is not borrowed. Your authority is not provisional on your being fit for the job. Your calling as God’s king or queen on planet Earth is woven into the cosmos itself.

Do you have a destiny secured by God’s eternal decree. Let’s live like it.

Ready to dig deeper into the ancient biblical worldview that reshapes your faith? Get the full series and discover how ReJesus Everything is calling believers back to the Jesus of Scripture—not the domesticated version we’ve inherited, but the King who reclaimed the cosmos. Order here.

You and I have been taught that the Bible is about getting our life together through Jesus so we can go to heaven when we die.

That’s not what the Bible is about.

The Big G Gospel

The real story—the one Scripture actually tells—is cosmic in scale. It’s about spiritual powers that have taken over our world and now rule territories and human nations. It’s about a war happening in a realm you can’t see that touches everything in the realm you can.

The core story of the Bible is about the victory of Jesus over these powerful beings, what he has restored to all humans, and the authority Jesus has already given you and me to enforce His victory in your corner of the world. Our salvation is part of the liberation of all of the created world. Once we have been set free, we are called to join the Liberation.

For the next four weeks, the Grounded Podcast is diving into the Cosmic conflict Worldview of the Bible—the foundational story of Scripture that most of us have never heard. This isn’t abstract theology. This is the framework that explains the coordinated evil you see in media, government, business, education, the military, and the arts.

What You’ll Discover

Episode 1: The Populated Cosmos

• Why ancient people understood spiritual reality better than we do

• Who the ones known as “the Elohim” are and why it matters

• How the elohim operate in the physical world

• Where the ones Paul calls “principalities and powers” came from and how they gained their power

• How the way God created the world affects humans everywhere.

Episode 2: The Occupation & The Pillars

• How supernatural evil operates through five specific spheres of power

• Why media, government, business, education, military, and the arts are always battlefields

• What it means that we are all living in “occupied territory.”

• How to recognize the occupation in the systems around you

Episode 3: Our Human Champion

• Why humans—not angels—are the centerpiece of God’s plan

• What it means to bear the image of God in a cosmos at war

• Why only a human could defeat the powers of heaven and restore dominion to the human race

• How only Jesus, as the God-man, could defeat these powers and how he did it on the cross

Episode 4: Enforcing the Victory

• It’s important that a human being is sitting at the right hand of God as co-ruler of all creation

• Your position of authority right now, today if Jesus is your Lord

• How to exercise dominion in your sphere

• The cost and the reward of standing aligned with Christ as He expands the reach of God’s Kingdom on Earth

Who This Is For

This series is for who’s sensed that politics and economics can’t explain everything happening around them.

It’s for people who want to understand the Bible not as a self-help book, but as an epic story of cosmic conflict and their personal calling as a child of God.

It’s for people who love Jesus and want to have a bigger and more accurate understanding of His work on our behalf.

Why Now?

We live in a moment when the occupation has never been more visible. The coordinated manipulation of information, the normalization of corruption, the celebration of darkness across every major institution—it’s not random. And it’s not unbeatable. Jesus is Lord of Heaven and Earth.

But you can’t fight what you don’t understand. You can’t exercise authority you don’t know you have.

This series can give you both.

Subscribe & Listen

New episodes drop weekly every Tuesday for the next four weeks. Each one builds on the last. Invite your friends. This may be one of the most interesting studies you’ve ever had.

Subscribe now

Share this with someone you know who’s ready to see the Bible—and their life—differently.

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The war is real. Your authority is real. The victory is already won.

Let’s learn about it together.

Every Blessing,

Chuck

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Every Blessing,

Chuck

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:

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

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 World

I 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.

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 Wind

When 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)

John 7

Then in John 7, on the last day of a great festival, Jesus stands up and raises his voice and says: “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.” (John 7:37-38)

Rivers. Out of the hearts of ordinary people. John tells us he was speaking about the ruach — the Spirit — which those who believed in him were about to receive.

Not a trickle. Not a substance so rare it has to be sprinkled, not a carefully managed flow through approved institutional channels. Rivers. Wild, life-giving, uncontainable rivers.

This is what Jesus is offering you, my friend. This is what he came to restore. The ruach of God flowing freely through human beings the way it was always designed to.

The Fire

And then there is the fire.

John the Baptist didn’t just say ruach. He said ruach and fire. Both. Together. And on the day of Pentecost, both arrived simultaneously.

Acts 2 — they are all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like a rushing violent wind fills the entire house. And what appeared to be tongues of fire rest on each one of them. And they are all filled with the Holy Spirit.

Wind and fire. Together. Exactly as John promised.

I want you to sit with the image of fire for a moment, because fire does specific things. Fire gives light in darkness. Fire gives warmth in cold. Fire purifies what passes through it. Fire spreads — it doesn’t stay contained in one place unless you smother it. And fire, once it is truly roaring, is very difficult to stop.

The disciples who walked out of that upper room were on fire. Not metaphorically — they had flames of holy fire upon them. There is no other explanation for what happened next. Uneducated fishermen stood up and spoke with such authority that thousands of people in a busy crowd, gave them their rapt attention and were cut to the heart.

The lame walked. The dead were raised. The message spread across the known world within one generation. No budget. No institution. No marketing strategy. Just ruach and fire in ordinary human beings.

This is your birthright. Not the memory of that day. Not a doctrine about that day. The same ruach. The same fire. Still available. Still moving. Still looking for human beings who want it badly enough to receive it.

What We Did With It — and Why It Matters

That’s why I do not believe Jesus came to establish a religion of any kind. The thing he brought did not fit in Judaism. It does not fit in Buddhism or Hinduism, and I don’t even think it fits in Christianity. The thing that Jesus brought does not fit into any concept of religion. It is above religion. Religion cannot contain it, although it will always try.

Every time ruach moves powerfully through a community of people, the same thing eventually happens. Institution keepers arise. People who are drawn to order and structure begin to build structure around it. They name it. Organize it. Incorporate it. Create guidelines for it. Establish who is authorized to handle it and who is not.

And slowly, without anyone intending it, the structure begins to replace the thing it claims to protect. The hurricane becomes a ceiling fan. The fearful blast becomes managed by a fireplace.

I have watched this happen in movements in my own lifetime. A community gets genuinely alive — ruach is moving, people are being transformed, there is an unmistakable presence in the room. And within a generation it is an institution. The structure remains. That superhuman energy is gone.

I am not saying structure is the enemy. Jesus himself had structure — he had twelve disciples, he had a clear mission, he moved with intention and purpose. The early church had elders and deacons and real accountability. Structure is not the problem.

The problem is when structure stops serving the ruach and starts regulating it.

And the reason this matters for your generation specifically is this: you are the ones who get to decide what you build. You are the ones who will lead the next movements. You are the ones who will choose, when the ruach moves, whether to follow it freely or immediately begin building a box around it.

Choose the wind. Always choose the wind.

Your Birthright — How to Claim It

So what does this mean practically? How do you actually claim this birthright?

Jesus gave Nicodemus the answer: you have to be born of the ruach. You have to receive it. And receiving it requires wanting it — actually wanting the wind itself, not just the structure built around the memory of it.

In his last week, Jesus gathered his disciples in a small room and simply breathed on them. “Receive the Holy Spirit.” (John 20:22) That’s it. No elaborate ritual. No special qualification required. Just — receive it.

The path to ruach has always been the same. It is direct. Personal. It doesn’t run through an institution. It runs through surrender — Lowering your barriers and laying down your independence from God, trusting him like a child, opening yourself to be filled with what he has always wanted to give you.

Silence your feed. Get hungry for this. Talk to Jesus about it directly. Ask him to breathe on you the way he breathed on those disciples. He has not changed. He is still in the business of releasing ruach into human beings who want it.

And you know from the inside what it is to be carried by that wind — you will never be satisfied with the ceiling fan again.

Jesus did not come to give us a religion. Even a perfect one. A religion is too small a thing. Too containable. Too manageable. Too easily turned into a system that runs on human energy instead of divine breath.

He came to release the ruach of God back into human beings. The same breath that hovered over the chaos waters at the beginning of everything. The same breath that made the first human alive. The same wind that carried the disciples out of that upper room and into the world.

That is what he came to do. That is your birthright. And that is exactly what is at stake.

Don’t settle for a ceiling fan. You were made for the hurricane.

Next episode we’ll go deeper into one of the most important questions this raises: what is the difference between knowing about Jesus and actually knowing him? Because there is a difference, and once you see it, everything changes.

If this episode is stirring something in you, the book ReJesus Everything, go so much deeper. It is available on Amazon. And if you want to sit with these questions in a group, the free discussion guide on the website is built for exactly that.

One more thing: if you sense that God is calling you to something bigger with your creativity and your gifts, Medialight was built for exactly that kind of formation. Real training, real community, a whole team investing in you — and I’m there as one of the main instructors. Go take a look at medialight.network.

The ruach is still moving. Go find it.

See you next time.

Chuck

In forty+ years of ministry I’ve seen a lot of things go wrong inside churches, organizations, and movements. Leadership failures, church splits, burnout, abuse of authority, financial scandals — most of it up close.

And underneath almost all of it is the same root problem. Not bad theology. Not weak leadership. Not a lack of resources or strategy.

Not his absence. His subordination. He’s still in the building. His name is still on the sign. People are still singing songs about him and praying in his name and carrying Bibles with his words printed in red. But somewhere along the way, Jesus stopped being the actual authority. He became the mascot.

He became an advisor we consult when we need wisdom, a therapist we visit when we’re struggling, an emergency contact we call when things fall apart. We rarely treat him as Lord — the one with the final say over everything.

Influence and authority are not the same thing

Influence is the ability to affect someone’s thinking and maybe their behavior. Authority is the right to make decisions and expect obedience. You can have one without the other.

Jesus has enormous influence in Christianity. In practical terms, he often has minimal authority. People talk about him constantly. They study his teachings. They worship him on Sunday. But they don’t necessarily do what he says. He said it himself: “Why do you call me Lord, Lord, and not do what I say?”

A secular historian named Michael Hart wrote a book ranking the hundred most influential people in history. He places Jesus third — behind Mohammed and Isaac Newton — despite Christianity being the world’s largest religion. His reasoning: Jesus’ ethical teachings are among the most remarkable and original ever presented. Then he says — Christians don’t feel the need to obey Christ in order to identify as Christian.

A secular historian just described the central problem of Christianity in one paragraph. We can never truly align with Jesus until we individually, and corporately, accept his authority over everything.

The seminary problem

As someone who worked in seminaries for twenty years, including as a seminary president, I think I’m entitled to an opinion on this one.

If I wanted to reinstall the authority of Jesus in Christianity worldwide, I’d start with the seminary — the place training the next generation of pastors and thinkers. You’d assume the primary curriculum in a seminary would be Jesus. You’d spend three years unpacking his words, his practices, his way of training people, his handling of conflict and power and poverty, how he dealt with the rich and the poor, how he made disciples.

But if you enroll in seminary expecting that, you’ll be disappointed.

In actual seminary, you’ll study a million other things. A dedicated course on Jesus is typically an elective — if offered at all. You get one course called The Gospels, but you’ll spend half the semester on technical arguments about authorship. etc.

Jesus is not even the chief theologian of his own movement. Paul is. You’ll spend two years studying every word Paul wrote.

Just as John the Baptist was the forerunner of Jesus, Jesus might as well be the forerunner of Paul if you judge by who gets the spotlight in the institutions built in his name. Let that sink in.

The authority he simply commanded

I want to talk about the kind of authority we’re actually reinstalling by intentionally placing Jesus not just as the most influential Person in our life, but actually as the central authority in our life.

What bothered the temple authorities most about Jesus was the authority he simply commanded. He held thousands of people on a hillside with no amplification — just his voice, while he sat on a stone. In every recorded conversation he speaks as the Master, never searching for words, never uncertain about what he wants to say.

The Pharisees kept throwing the same question at him: “Who gave you this authority?”

John answers it in the first line of his Gospel. He has it by creation. The Father confirmed it through miracles done by his voice alone — commanding demons, sickness, storms, and death. He now sits at the right hand of God, Lord of Heaven and Earth.

That is the authority we are reinstalling. Not a new ministry strategy. Not a doctrinal revision. This.

Jesus is higher than all the apostles. Higher than any ancient or modern prophet. Higher than Mary and the Pope. Higher than your pastor. Higher than the most brilliant theologians who have ever lived. He is higher than anyone else within the pages of the Bible. He is not a teacher — he is THE Teacher, THE Prophet, THE Messenger of God to us.

See Jesus. Then reJesus everything else.

Reinstalling the authority of Jesus starts with one decision: choose to treat Jesus as if he is actually in charge. Not an advisor. Not an emergency contact. The one with the final say.

That single decision changes what you read in Scripture, how you handle disagreements, and how you conduct yourself every moment of every day.

If you’ve got time to listen to this on video, I think you’ll get a lot more out of the podcast version this time.

Every Blessing! Chuck

ReJesus Everything is available now on Amazon. It’s a letter to the generation inheriting the Christian movement — about how to put Jesus back at the center of a faith that has quietly promoted other things in addition to him. Grab a copy, and if you want to work through it with a group, there’s a free discussion guide coming soon. PS: Please leave a review, even a short one. It’s a powerful way to expand the reach of the book on Amazon, the world’s largest book marketplace. Thanks!!!

Are you good at imagining things? Can you, for example, get an idea about the furnishing of a room so that it comes alive and becomes a place with a purpose? Can you see it before actually dragging furniture into the space?

I think we all have this ability, but some people use it more and so it becomes stronger with them. Anyway, we’re always trying to encourage people to release their creativity because creativity is worship. God is our Creator, and He invites us to create things with Him.

In this video, I want to invite you into the process that is involved in making a video out of a scripture passage. Today I was reading Psalms 148, and it just read like a script. I could see it in my mind. Read it with me in this video, and I think you’ll see it also.

Over the next few months, we want to convert this scripture into a powerful video that lays down the foundation of teaching behind the Old and New Testaments. I hope to have the liberty in the next year to build out some videos that can hopefully gain traction with young audiences online and teach them the big strokes of God’s message in a way that feels the most natural to them.

So, without further ado, let’s open up the Bible to Psalms 148 and start envisioning what a video of those few verses might look like.

Thanks for standing with us as we raise up a generation of content creators who put God’s words into artistic form so they can impact this digital generation.

Every Blessing!

Chuck and Sherry

Support Emerge Missions

There’s a scene at the very end of the Bible that has always amazed me. It’s my new favorite Bible verse, and you’ll find it in the last chapter of Revelation — God’s final word to the world.

You’d expect something tender. Something like, “Please, my children, come back to me. I love you too much to let you go.”

That’s not what happens.

A glorious angel steps forward to deliver the closing message:

No pleading. No last-minute persuasion campaign. Just…

“Hey Humans, Make up your mind.”

I’ve come to believe that whole speech is basically a command to decide who you’re going to be and get on with it. Vote already.

If you want to be crooked, then lie, cheat, and abuse like a gangster. If you want to be lustful, then go roll in the filth. But if you’re going to follow Jesus — wake up, and do it with everything you’ve got.

What strikes me about that passage is that it doesn’t seem to matter to God whether every single person chooses him. He gave us free will. What matters is that everybody votes. He wants us to pick a team.

I’m picking Team Jesus.

The either-or

This is where I think a lot of churched people skip past too quickly. We think we settled it all when we prayed the sinner’s prayer one day so we wouldn’t have to go to hell.

All of us need to intentionally make up our minds about Jesus. Either he is the Creator come in the flesh to save us, or he is not. Either he is the only door to God, or he is not. If he’s none of those things, then he’s just a man — a good teacher, maybe — but not someone you build a life around.

But if he is that Savior, then he must also be Lord.

The early church didn’t have a twelve-point statement of faith. They had one doctrine: Jesus is Lord. That was enough. Everything else fit inside that one conviction. Compare that to what a lot of us grew up with — stacks of doctrinal positions and denominational distinctives layered on top of each other. Somewhere underneath all of it, the actual Lordship of Jesus has often gotten buried instead of being the one thing holding everything else together.

Lordship or nothing

The core of the Gospel message is that Jesus offers to be our Lord. The choice to accept this offer belongs entirely to us from that point on. But he won’t lower his position to make it easier on us. It’s Lordship or nothing.

That sounds like a hard sell, doesn’t it? Who actually wants a lifetime under the authority of a Supreme Lord? Our experience with power, in this life, is that power tends to end up unpleasant, even abusive. We chafe at the thought of someone else having the final say over us, and that’s a completely normal reaction.

But Jesus isn’t like any human leader you’ve ever lived under. The people who actually live under his Lordship discover something that surprises them every time: his yoke is easy, and his burden is light. His authority strengthens and lifts you rather than crushing you. It releases your creativity. It ignites vision instead of shutting you down.

This is not religion. Religion takes what you have and always demands more. What Jesus offers is the exact opposite — he’s offering to become your shield, your provider, your healer, your leader, forever. That’s an unbelievable offer, once you sit with it.

My own conviction

If Jesus is anything less than what he claims to be in the Gospels, I don’t want to follow him. I don’t need another moral teacher. I need a Savior. There’s no middle road. He’s either a liar, a lunatic, or the Lord.

I spent my early years in the spiritual wilderness working through exactly what I believed about Jesus, and why. I looked at the alternatives. I sat with the doubts. And then I made up my mind.

I believe him because of the life he actually lived — he refused to compromise to be popular, wealthy, or to avoid pain. I believe him because five hundred witnesses were willing to face persecution and death to testify that they had personally seen him alive again. But more than any of that, I believe Jesus because I’ve experienced him for myself for fifty years now. He healed my depression as a teenager. He’s answered specific prayers more times than I could count. That’s not theory. That’s my own history with him.

Represent Jesus, not Christianity

Sherry and I have spent over forty years living in Southeast Asia. We have not spent forty years representing Christianity. We represent Jesus — not our denomination, not a nonprofit. Just him.

This Jesus thing has never been doctrine for us. It’s experience. So don’t follow a religion about Jesus, or a creed, or a particular church’s brand of him. Follow him. Know him.

Whatever else you do this week — make up your mind about Jesus. Vote.

If this question is stirring something in you, this is exactly where the book picks up.

ReJesus Everything is built around one conviction: Jesus is the standard, and the Christianities we’ve inherited are just our attempts to represent him — some better than others. This piece you just read is the opening move of a much longer conversation in the book: making up your mind about who Jesus actually is, before we ever get to what’s broken in how the church has tried to follow him, and what it looks like to rebuild from here.

It’s not a book about tearing anything down. It’s a letter to the next generation of leaders, written from fifty years of ministry across dozens of cultures, about how to put Jesus back at the center of a faith that’s drifted. If you’ve ever sensed that gap — between the Jesus you grew up believing in and the Jesus actually described in the Gospels — this book was written for you.

ReJesus Everything is available now on Amazon. Grab a copy, and if you want to work through it with friends, there’s a free discussion guide on the website too. Click here to order.

Please leave us a review on Amazon. It’s more powerful than you could know in causing the algorithm to show the book to other people. Thanks!

One of the concepts we talk about is the need to re-establish the central authority of Jesus and not treat Him just as one voice among many. The Medialight team came up with this diagram, which I share with you now.

Because I know Ross so well, I really think the conversation between us is special, and I hope you will check it out.

The book is available now on Amazon.

Order ReJesus Everything

Every Blessing!
Chuck

Buy the Book

Hey! I have exciting news, the book is finally live! ReJesus Everything is available on Amazon worldwide! We have a Kindle version already up, and we will produce an audiobook within a month or so.

This has been a passion project for many years. In some ways, I feel like I’ve been writing this book all my life because I have been thinking the thoughts that I was finally able to release along the journey of ministry that Sherry and I have been in these 45 years.

There were so many battles involved in bringing this book to its launch day. There were struggles with artists, struggles with the layout designer, and struggles with Amazon over technical parts of the physical construction of the book. Anyway, we expected some resistance anytime we create a new thing, but this one truly took so much grit to bring across the finish line, so please celebrate with us!

The past two years have largely revolved around this project, and now it’s completed. In this video, I talk about what’s inside the book so I won’t go into details on that here.

What I am hoping is that this book will become fuel for discussion in local churches and ministries. We are producing a companion leader’s guide for free that can be downloaded from the book’s website. In this guide, we lay out six to eight sessions that a church can have to create a safe discussion where church leaders and young people can process the dissonance many young people feel between the Jesus of the Bible and the organized version of Christianity around them. Like the book, the majority of this discussion centers around rebuilding our current version of Christianity with Jesus, His words, and the example of His life at the center.

A whole generation of Christian young people are avoiding any idea of serving in church ministry, even though they love Jesus. They just look at current forms of church and say, “That’s not for me.” We’re missing so much buy-in from this generation, and those of us who are mature in the Lord have to put some energy into making certain the baton relay continues.

Over the last two thousand years, if even one generation had failed to pass the baton to the next generation, the Christian movement would have stopped. I don’t want to see things break down in our generation. Sherry and I are spending much energy trying to help this generation pick up the ministry and create their own new version of things so that the powerful Gospel of Jesus continues forward.

We believe this book can be an important resource for the global church, and I want to thank you for supporting us up to this point. Thank you for opening my emails and for participating in this podcast. You have allowed me to work out my thoughts and bring them to a place where they could be published. Sherry and I are so grateful for this.

Can We Ask Two Things Please?

1. Give the book a try.

Here’s the Link to Purchase on Amazon

2. Write a 3 sentence review and give the appropriate numbers of stars in your rating.

If we could get 50 people to buy the book and give it a review, it will trigger an algorithm on Amazon where the book gets promoted to new viewers. This is the great chance for a breakout, but it needs to happen in the first two weeks, so please buy the book today and give us a review. We will be so grateful to you for that.

Thanks again!

Chuck and Sherry

This newsletter says a big thank you to everyone who has stood behind us in the two year project of creating a conversation about the global need to renew the Christian faith among young people. First, the podcast to get the discussion going. Then the social media posts to gather a wider audience.

As of yesterday, we are happy to report that the assets of the book are in the hands of the layout artist. The distribution channels are all set up, and now we are just waiting for the final cover and book-ready page design and layout to be returned to us.

Optimistically, it’ll all be done in a week. I’m hoping by this time next week to announce that the book is live for purchase on Amazon.

Cover Art Winner

One of the most enjoyable parts is after all the writing is done and you get to choose your book cover. It has to allow you to get your message out, but you have to balance that by wrapping it in a look that will appeal to your intended audience. You voted, and this concept narrowly won. It’s not the exact cover we will use, but it’s close. It gave us the general concept to move forward, and we thank you for your participation! This is a team effort.

Youth Turning to Jesus

We’re so happy for encouraging reports about great worship gatherings in Scotland and other countries in Europe, as well as on college campuses worldwide. We pray earnestly that this trend will continue and that young people will come into a new awareness of the beauty of Jesus.

At the same time, we continue to be deeply disturbed by the attrition rate of those under 30 who have been raised in the church. This book is our attempt to do something about it. We have worked with emerging leaders all of our lives. They are amazing, and they have the giftedness needed to reJesus everything and restore a new iteration of Christianity that can reach into the hearts and minds of this generation and give them a chance to meet the Lord face to face.

Team Work

We are so grateful for your feedback over the last year, especially regarding the concepts within this book. We believe it is an important addition to a growing library addressing the need for young people to get a new grip on Jesus.

Thank you for accepting these newsletters, watching the videos, and most importantly for forwarding everything to your friends and family. This is going to be even more important to us as we move forward into the book launch phase. We want to get this book in the hands of as many young people and church leaders and church planters as possible, and we really hope you will help us to do so. We’re going to create a group discussion manual and offer a way for groups to purchase books in bulk and get a sizable discount.

Thanks again for everything. It feels really good to announce that the ReJesus Everything Rocket is on the launch pad and the countdown has begun for its release to the general public.

Every Blessing!

Chuck and Sherry

If you are someone who is totally happy with everything in Christianity as an enterprise, your personal connection with Jesus and your church life this might not be a book for you, but if you ask your children, grandchildren, or friends, you may find that it's just the book they need so they can stop the downward slide of their inner life.

Rebuild a faith that can endure even the crazy times that we are in.

The Cover

We want a cover that will jump out at them and provoke them to pick it up and open it. It can't just be a gentle devotional on the 23rd Psalm kind of book cover.

This is our current art direction. The actual cover in the end may be significantly different, but we need some feedback from different groups of people most likely to win in the battle for their attention. What we really need is for you to vote for the concept you think would get your attention.

Please spread this email as widely as you can to the age group we are trying to connect with. I'm excited to see how you vote. We are doing this together, and I really appreciate your partnership.

Photo one is below

Photo two

Photo Three

Photo Four

Thanks so much!!!

Chuck and Sherry

Sherry and I are out of the country for the next few weeks on an assignment that is part ministry and part Sabbath for the two of us. We run pretty hard on the schedule, some days having six meetings back-to-back, and it’s just important to balance that with some good time of restoration.

What’s coming up?

Today we get three great questions:

1. Is it okay to question things you were taught growing up in church?

2. What do you do when God feels completely silent?

3. How do you maintain personal faith when you’ve seen so much hypocrisy in the church?

4. Bonus: and I talk a bit about how God brings revelation to us through others.

I wanted to highlight the second question because it’s something I have experienced myself, so I can really sympathize with others who are going through it.

Life Can Wear You Out

We all get worn out, sometimes. The most important things in life need sustained effort on our part. It even seems that the more important something is, the harder it is to do because it gets resisted by the darkness.

I mean, nobody stumbles into a great lifetime marriage or launching a bunch of happy, healthy, solid kids. Or building a God-honoring business that balances making profits with being a blessing to people. These things are so resisted in the world that we have to push harder in our efforts to achieve them.

We Meet a Tired Man

Sherry and I just returned from the Pastors Coalition meeting in Tennessee this past weekend. This is a group of excellent pastors who want to go the extra mile and not only run a healthy church but also influence that church to do something powerful in global missions and humanitarian work around the world.

In this group, there was one notable leader, a man I truly admire. A year ago, I felt compelled to drive to his city and have a meeting with him although I did not know why.

When I called to set it up, he didn’t seem too excited about the prospect of me coming to have a talk with him. After I got there it was a little awkward but eventually we got to an amazing fish house, where we ate a lot of shrimp and ended up having a long talk about dryness and the need to take a sabbath rest.

The essence of our conversation was that maybe he wasn’t really burned out, nor was he finished in his calling. He was just tired and exhausted, and he needed to let things idle for a year.

At this week’s meeting, he told me that our conversation probably saved his ministry, because he was, in fact, resisting meeting with me out of the secret knowledge that he was about to leave it all behind.

His wife said, “We were depleted, but our ground was depleted too. We needed to let the land rest.”

Putting Things into Sabbath Mode

He quietly put everything in this big dynamic church into maintenance mode without announcing it to anyone. Every time someone had a great idea, he said, “That’s a great idea. Write it up and email it to me!” but he never did anything new the whole year.

He slowed the busy-ness of his church and focused on health in the church.

Sabbath year. Just let the land rest.

He spent more time on his personal health, and he and his wife logged a lot of missing hours together and renewed their strength and rebuilt themselves on the inside for twelve whole months. The core leaders from the church got a rest too as things got simplified for a whole year.

The end of the story is that they’re both revived and the church with them. This year they’re actually going to start eight micro churches under other leaders. This will have minimal drain on them or the church but will ignite eight new people in their circle to do something visionary with God in a house group or small-sized church setting.

But that’s not even what this episode is about

That part is for free, folks! What I talk about in the video is something totally different. It’s about the reality of a place called the wilderness—a dry, arid, vacant place you end up somehow wandering into even as you faithfully follow Jesus.

You don’t intend to go there.

It just happens.

Things get quiet and you sense that you’re just alone in a desert place, and no matter how loud you cry out to God, you don’t hear anything in response. Maybe this lasts a week or a month.

I felt nothing.

It lasted for three years.

Journeying Through a Spiritual Desert

In Manila, I preached each week, and we had great harvest. Typically, 25 people every Sunday came to Christ over an 8-10-year period. For a long while, I could sing. I could pray. But inside I just felt silence.

(I talk more about it in the video.)

Thank God, the thing about all deserts is that they don’t go on forever. I got out of mine eventually, so I can fully understand what this experience feels like to other people and can assure you that it is not a permanent state.

Actually, this phenomenon is well recorded in Christian history. Many of the people considered spiritual heroes in Christian history report a season in their life where a similar thing took place.

Life with Jesus is so amazing, whether it’s in a desert or on a mountaintop. As long as he’s there, it’s a precious experience.

I think one of the main things Jesus came to teach us was how to be fully human—how to live a life that is fully engaged with God and others in this physical world. I want to taste my food, feel the wind on my face, and enjoy every slobbery kiss from babies.

Sherry and I love our days, and we pray God will help you to love yours also.

ReJesus Everything!

Love,

Chuck and Sherry

What is Private Religion?

Private religion is sort of removing ourselves from a communal basis in our faith journey and choosing just to have what we might call privatism—me keeping my personal ideas about faith and religion private. This is one option, and many people are suggesting it. In this quick video. I give my reasons why I don’t think that’s the best path forward and why I believe it is very much possible to re-JESUS everything on a small and larger level.

This past weekend, I was at the Emerging Leaders Gathering at Lee university, it was really exciting to see young people who were passionate about serving Jesus and wanting to do it in a communal way. Hats off to Mark Swank and others at Church of God World Missions, who have been leading this charge to raise up a new generation of missional young adults in a denomination that is over 100 years old.

Time really is a factor in any organization, whether it’s a family or a faith-based mission. Time allows lots of cultural currents and trends and strong personalities to emerge and change the course of the original group. Sometimes this is healthy evolution and sometimes not so healthy, but what it always is is entropy, because age slows things down, makes them more institutional, and much less likely to bear fruit.

That’s why the story of Abraham is such a miracle: an old man and woman had a baby. It’s just as remarkable for an old church to have a youth movement.

In both cases, this was only accomplished with great intentionality.

God wanted this baby, and Abraham and Sarah had to want this baby and bend their life around having future generations flow from them.

We have to care about things like this, or they’ll never happen.

I really appreciate the work of Dr. Propes, Mark Swank, and many others in generating some momentum among young people regarding global missions.

Hope you enjoy the video. i’d love to hear your ideas too.

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Let’s keep this discussion going. Let’s read Jesus everything in our lives. There’s so much life in Jesus, and we can all have it, and we can all continue to bear fruit even in our mature years.

Every blessing!

Chuck

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Did Jesus Found Christianity?

Most people assume the answer is obvious. Of course he did. His name is in the title. But at the risk of being misunderstood, I still want to make the case that the answer is no — and that this is one of the most liberating thoughts you will ever consider as a devoted follower of Christ.

I say this as a lifetime insider. I believe with everything in me that the life and teaching of Jesus is the most extraordinary gift ever given to this humanity. The principles he embodied are the very foundations of the civilization we inhabit today. The chaos we see in the world now is not caused by those principles. It is caused by our abandonment of them.

But whether Jesus founded a religion called Christianity? That is a different question. Here are three reasons I believe he did not.

Reason #1: History Simply Doesn’t Support It

There is no historical evidence that Jesus founded any form of external religion. What the records show, consistently, is a man pushing against almost every institution of his day — family structures, Roman political arrangements, and most dramatically, the Temple of Judaism itself.

He did not model how to build the best religion. He modeled a new way of living. Everything he said and did was about humans living in a direct, unmediated, loyal relationship with their Creator.

His conclusion, demonstrated over and over, was that religion can actually become a barrier to the very God it claims to represent. When pious performance, priestly clothing, and theological gatekeeping replace direct encounter — Jesus doesn’t just disagree. He despises it.

He was not anti-structure as an ideological position. He was anti-anything-that-comes-between-humans-and-God.

That is not the posture of a man building a new religion. That is the posture of a man tearing down the walls that keep people from the presence they were made for.

Reason #2: His Mission Was a War of Liberation, Not Institutional Formation

Jesus was not building an institution. He was fighting a war.

He believed this planet had come under the influence of an intelligent, malevolent heavenly being whose strategy was hateful and relentless: push the leaders of every major pillar of society toward the accumulation of wealth, the abuse of power, and a fascination with physical pleasure at the expense of everything higher. The result is what we know well: disease, broken relationships, injustice, cruelty, death.

Jesus spent his public ministry tearing down that kingdom piece by piece. He cast out demons. He healed people in the streets. He raised the dead. Every act of human restoration was a declaration of war.

Does that sound like someone primarily concerned with founding a religion with creeds, hymns, ceremonies, temples, rituals, and liturgical practices?

He didn’t build a religion. He didn’t teach his followers how to build one either.

What he did build was people. An inner circle of three. Twelve. An outer network of five hundred. Community? Absolutely essential. A ceremonial structure of institution? Probably not.

In his own words, those systems in Judaism had become tools of the enemy. He said the Pharisees’ determined religious efforts actually produced people who were twice the children of hell they were.

Structure is never satisfied. It always wants more structure.

Over time, the life gets squeezed out by the effort to control. That is why Spirit movements keep arising — hermits in the desert, prophets in the wilderness, reformers nailing documents to cathedral doors.

Jesus himself regularly walked away from civilization into uninhabited places to be alone with God. That is not the behavior of an institution builder.

Reason #3: “Christianity” Doesn’t Exist as One Organization

There simply isn’t one central thing called Christianity. There are more than 47,000 separated Christian groups — each with their own doctrines, mandatory practices, and expectations.

Some believe Jesus is the only way. Others that he’s a noble example but that any sincere path will lead equally to God.

Some believe Jesus was virgin born and raised from the dead. Others believe neither. Some believe in salvation based on works. Others through faith only. Others that it’s through mystical grace flowing through the sacraments.

Some look for an eternity in the clouds. Others doubt there is an afterlife at all.

Which of these did Jesus found? The answer, I believe, is none of them.

The way of Jesus is not something you do alone — it demands community. To follow Jesus we have to build communities that align with his values and mission.

The problem is in the cycle that usually attends movements. Every movement begins with hope, fire, fresh wine in fresh wineskins. But movements are messy and, eventually, have to be organized. Some become so rigid that no life remains. Others stagnate into comfortable fellowship that has forgotten the mission.

The task of disciples is to build our Christian communities in alignment with his value system and for his purposes.

The Kingdom belongs to Him. Building Christianities belongs to us.

Jesus is the standard. Christianities are the attempts.

Why This Matters

This is not an attack on institutional Christianity. It is a safety measure.

When a leader starts to believe their church was founded by Jesus himself, they become significantly less accountable. They can come to believe themselves as the special “anointed ones” largely above question.

The downward slide of is not a rare fringe case. It is the almost inevitable trajectory of all religious institutions that confuse themselves with the Kingdom of God.

But when we accept — truly accept, in our bones — that our churches are our feeble human attempts to imitate Jesus in an organized way, something shifts in a vital way. We become accountable.

We hold our structures humbly, knowing they are ours, not his, and that we will constantly need to revisit and correct them. The church is not the kingdom. The minute we confuse the two, we are on dangerous ground.

I AM saying that every one of our forms of Christianity is a minority position, and that each of us treating them like ours is the correct one, the only one truly established by Jesus and that all the others are false Christians is one of the most toxic aspects of global Christianity.

Three Things I’m Asking You to Consider Doing

First: Stop defending your version Christianity as if Jesus founded it. Humans launched yours and we generally know their names whether it’s Wesleyan, Lutheran, Moravians, etc. Sincere humans founded our tribes, not Jesus himself. Just own that. It will make all of us more humble, more open, and consequently more dangerous to the enemy.

Second: Ask honestly whether your Christianity is actually producing disciples — people growing in loyalty to God in how they handle money and power, how they treat others, and how quickly they apologize when they are wrong. That is the fruit Jesus was after. Healthy churches produce it.

Third: If you have allowed any institution to stand between you and direct access to your Creator — if you have outsourced your relationship with God to a pastor, a doctrine, a ritual, or a sacred building — today is the day to walk back toward the wilderness a bit to find the quiet place. Go there and speak to your Father without an intermediary.

Because that is what Jesus came to give you.

Not a religion. A relationship. Not a Christianity. Himself — leading you into deep, direct communion with the God who made you.

Let’s pursue that together and build faithful communities in the process.

Every Blessing!

Chuck

PS: I’m not trying to give answers, and I’m really not trying to destabilize anyone’s faith. I just hope that we can have an honest, respectful conversation about the nature of the thing we’ve built all over this planet. That is called collectively Christianity. My solution to everything is a ruthless return to Jesus over every form of institutional religion, so that we can rebuild communities that reflect him more perfectly. I hope you feel my heart in this. I would love to hear what you have to say.

Chuck Quinley is President of Emerge Missions and author of ReJesus Everything.

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Hi! Hope you’re having a great week!

Since our last episode, we’ve got more great questions. I will answer three of them in this episode.

The first one is: “What if someone has suffered so deeply in abuse from a church that they have difficulty separating Jesus from the abuse?”

I will address this directly and offer to anyone wounded by their experience in a church or Christian organization the only path to healing I have ever discovered.

We’re into a really great discussion, and I hope you’ll join us inside this week’s grounded podcast question and response session.

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If you send me your questions and comments, I will do my best to respond to each of them.

Every Blessing!

Chuck

PS: I don’t know if you’ve noticed it, but our Substack has this really cool feature so that if there’s even a sentence or paragraph that you like in a newsletter like this, you can highlight it and then right-click to share. It will create a really cool looking way for your friend to receive your message. Please help us grow the reach of this newsletter. No algorithm pushes it out. It depends on the people who read it to share it with their friends. Thanks so much!

Writer’s note: I want to give my personal thanks to the 20 of you who recently signed up as paid subscribers. I really appreciate your support. It’s encouraging to know that people find value in the work, and it helps me build the team I need to continue and grow the podcast. Thanks again!

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Hi Friend!

The hardest thing in discussing how to fix dysfunctional elements within Christianity is simply determining what Christianity even is today.

What even is Christianity?

It’s a question that sounds simple until you try to answer it. Most people assume the answer is straightforward. “Christianity is the religion about Jesus.” That seems clear enough.

But when you begin to look closely at the actual landscape of Christianity, the answer becomes far more complicated.

Christianity today is not just a religion, it’s also a cultural identity, a global movement, a massive institutional network, a political influence, and a sprawling economic ecosystem. It contains sincere discipleship movements, centuries-old traditions, humanitarian organizations, political activism, and millions of business ventures, to name a few elements. Let’s unpack this.

The Warehouse

In my upcoming book ReJesus Everything, I describe Christianity as a giant warehouse.

Picture the largest warehouse on earth — a building stretching miles in every direction. Inside are countless aisles, stacked floor to ceiling with everything associated with Christianity.

Yes, Christianity is a Family of Religions

If you walk into the section labeled Religions, you will find an astonishing number of shelves. Scholars estimate that there are roughly 47,000 distinct Christianities around the world.

Walk the aisles and you’ll pass

• Roman Catholicism

• Eastern Orthodoxy

• Greek Orthodoxy

• Ethiopian Orthodoxy

• Coptic Christianity

• Lutheranism

• Calvinism

• Methodism

• Presbyterianism

• The Mennonites

• Baptist denominations in every variety

• Pentecostalism

• non-denominational Christianity

• Prosperity gospel churches

• Liberation theology

• Christian nationalism

• Progressive Christianity

• House church movements

• Emerging church movements, and many more

Then you hit the fringe religion section (which grows every year): Mormonism, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Christian Science, Seventh-day Adventism, Christian UFOlogy, and hundreds of radical cult groups that claim Jesus while holding beliefs most traditional Christians would flatly reject. (Heaven’s Gate and Jonestown mass suicide cults had a Christian theology as their base).

And if you keep walking, you’ll run into ancient Christian spiritual systems like Gnosticism, which portrayed Jesus as a messenger from the gods revealing a radically different version of the biblical story where the serpent is the good guy, the creator is not to be trusted, and Jesus is sent by the gods to be the one who reveals all this to us and delivers secret knowledge that helps us ascend to join the sky gods as spirit beings freed from our human shell. This group almost took over early Christianity. It’s still out there.

All of this sits inside one section of the warehouse labeled Religions where

• Every group claims the name of Jesus.

• They read the same Bible.

• All believe their understanding is correct.

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Christianity as a National Identity

Christianity is more than a religion. For hundreds of millions of people, Christianity is a national and cultural identity that has nothing to do with personal faith. This is the case in Europe.

Those with a Christian cultural identity may have never prayed directly to God and only attend church for funerals and weddings. But they live in a historically Christian nation, and that makes them Christian in the same way it makes someone Iranian or Greek.

Many nations enshrine this idea in their constitutions with the naming of a state religion. The King of Great Britain is authorized to rule by the Anglican Church. This is Christianity as ethnicity and civilization.

To draw a parallel from largely agnostic modern Israel, Naor Narkis says, “What defines us (Jews) is our language, and our heritage, but doesn’t involve faith in a god.”

3.5 Million Parachurch Organizations

Then there’s the parachurch universe. According to research from Gordon-Conwell University, there are 3.5 million Christian agencies worldwide — organizations addressing everything from lack of access to the gospel, to clean water, to inclusion of LGBTQ in clergy, to homelessness, drug addiction, human trafficking, orphan care, right to life, legal reform, and political action.

It’s an industry.

It’s hard to know where to draw the line on what is and is not part of Christianity. For example, is an orphanage run by Christians part of Christianity? Sure.

How about the non-profit that runs the fundraising that runs the orphanage? Okay, that also.

How about the Christian credit card processor that serves churches and non-profits so they can receive donations? Is that Christianity?

How about the Christian investment company that oversees the retirement fund for the missionaries who run the orphanage?

How about the funds they invest in?

It’s hard to see the exact line.

Then, There’s Christianity, Inc.

There are millions of corporations and profit-driven businesses generating billions of dollars in revenue directly or indirectly attached to Christianity.

The fish sticker business alone is a blood sport.

There’s big bucks in fish stickers. Millions have been sold. It’s a contact sport. When Evolution Designs released “the Darwin fish” with feet (as a mockery of those who don’t believe in evolution), 3D Witness Enterprises responded with their Jesus fish eating the Darwin fish. Glorious.

Add to that hundreds of universities, publishing houses, retreat centers, music labels, television networks, hospital systems, Christian law firms, sound and lights companies, church security companies, and companies making those tiny communion wafer packets that are generally impossible to open.

You want more?

• Christian safari companies in South Africa. You can do a mission trip and also bag a rhino.

• Clerical clothing manufacturers (You won’t find backward collars at Macy’s)

• Companies making hand-cranked transistor radios for underground churches.

• And of course, Chick-fil-A — which some call, “God’s fast food”. (Shout out to Chick-fil-A—how about some gift cards?)

We’ve got

• Christian T-shirt companies

• Agents handling only Christian comedians & ventriloquists

• Christian Greeting Card companies like Precious Moments

• Christian dating sites

• Christian cruises with the Gaithers, etc. etc.

There’s Christian Tourism: Branson, MO, the “Christian Las Vegas”. Entire industries revolve around pilgrimage destinations in Israel, Turkey, and other historically significant locations, with busses, tour guides, olive-wood carving companies, relic makers, anointing oil bottlers, museums, etc.

The best analogy I have is this: imagine McDonald’s with no rules. Anyone, anywhere in the world can put up the golden arches and call it McDonald’s — and they can do whatever they want inside the building. Make it a skating rink, a day spa, a hardware store, or serve food of any type. No quality control. No governing body. No one to call for permission. Anyone anywhere in the world can start any enterprise they want and attach it to the Christian cause through their branding and activities.

That’s Christianity today.

Some parts of the Christian Enterprise are sincere and beautiful. Some have gone badly off track. Some started faithfully but then unraveled as they went along, maybe at the peak of their visible success.

This is not a new problem. The church has wrestled with the tension between the institutional and the spiritual since its earliest days. But the scale of it today is genuinely unprecedented.

Humans Organize Things

Over the centuries, human beings did what human beings always do. We organized the movement. First, it was a movement, and then it was a governmentally empowered church system which spawned those trades that were attached to supporting Christian causes like builders, stone masons, weavers, candle-makers, etc. Over the past two millennia things just kept mushrooming in every direction as people got one great idea after another.

None of this was malicious. Organizing is simply how humans handle ideas they care about deeply. But over time the headless structure grew unbounded and lost its focus.

And today Christianity has long overwhelmed the boundaries of any known religion.

My Working Definition of Christianity

So here is my honest, eyes-open definition of Christianity:

“Religion, culture, businesses, initiatives, and assorted enterprises somehow related to the story and person of Jesus of Nazareth.”

Not inspiring, I know. I’m just trying to be accurate so we can begin to discuss Christianity intelligently.

Now you might think that all this crazy human chaos is rubbish and we should all repudiate it and walk away, but here’s what’s ironic….

Astonishingly, through these ungoverned, unplanned, random, and sometimes corrupt human creations — God has done extraordinary things anyway.

Do you think I’m overstating?

I’m not just talking about small good deeds scattered around the edges of history. I mean that there’s a mystery in this mess.

Yes, mistakes have been made, and people within this enterprise have gotten a million miles off course. Yet somehow this headless enterprise has created things that fundamentally reshaped life on this planet for everyone, including people who want nothing to do with Jesus.

Here are just a few.

The concept of universal human dignity — the idea that every person, regardless of race, gender, class, or ability, bears the image of God and deserves to be treated with dignity — that is a Christian idea. It is not found in ancient Greek philosophy or Roman law. It was Christianity that first insisted that slaves were full human beings made in God’s image. It was Christianity that built the first hospitals, the first orphanages, the first universities.

The abolition of slavery in the Western world was driven overwhelmingly by Christians — William Wilberforce in England, the evangelical abolitionists in America. The civil rights movement was led by a Baptist preacher whose entire vision was drawn from the Sermon on the Mount.

Modern science was largely developed by Christians who believed that a rational God had created a rational universe that could be understood through rational inquiry. The rule of law, limited government, individual conscience — all deeply shaped by Christian thought.

I say this after 45 years in ministry, having seen the church at its absolute best and its absolute worst. Yes, you can travel the world and find people who have been deeply, genuinely wounded in churches and Christian organizations. That is real and it matters. That’s what this podcast is about.

But you can also find millions — I mean millions — who are now free from an unbreakable bondage because of the actions of people within Christianity. They are free from addiction, rescued from trafficking. They’ve been cared for after war took everything from them. Like so many, they have found a local community that consistently held them up while they the hard work of living out their lives.

All because— somehow—our amazing Jesus does his work even through this ungoverned, imperfect enterprise. Sit with that for a moment.

That alone is a miracle.

Unlike a franchise system such as McDonald’s — where a central authority controls how each location operates — Christianity has no global governing structure, and yet….the mystery and the mess.

The Paradox

There is always this deep paradox at the heart of Christianity.

On one hand, the Christian world itself is fragmented, disorganized, and sometimes so deeply flawed and contrary to the very values of Jesus. On the other hand, through this very imperfect system, extraordinary good has somehow been accomplished.

It’s like a tile mosaic of life. The individual pieces might not actually match the project but step back from the tiny broken pieces and look at the whole mosaic created by Christianity, and something remarkable appears.

Despite its flaws, Christianity has often been a powerful force for compassion, justice, and human flourishing. I find that so amazing.

But here’s the thought I’ll leave you with today.

The early church had no buildings. No banks. No benefactors. No publishing houses. No political action committees. No fish stickers.

They had one thing: a living connection to Jesus. He held all authority. He was the magnetic north around which everything else oriented.

With that single center, a small group of fishermen and tax collectors spread a faith across the entire Roman Empire within 300 years.

The power was not in the complexity of their enterprise. The power was in the centrality of Jesus, which may be the most important lesson for the modern church.

That’s the only way forward. And that’s exactly what ReJesus Everything is about. That is the challenge before us today:

If the first Christians turned the world upside down with nothing but a living connection to Jesus, what might happen if the modern church found its way back to that center again?

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Here’s our discussion question for today:

“The early church had no buildings, banks, or institutions — just a living connection to Jesus — and turned the world upside down.

What do you think the modern church would have to give up to get back to that kind of center?”

Drop your answer in the comments. I read every one, and I’d love to hear your story.

Thanks for joining me on Grounded. Let’s ReJesus Everything!

Send me your questions and I’ll respond.

The Next Episode

Which brings us to the question that this whole season is building toward: Did Jesus establish Christianity? And can it be saved?

I’m going to tackle that question fully in the next episode.

Please help us share the Grounded podcast with your friends. There’s no algorithm driving the expansion of our audience, only you sharing the value you find in this discussion with your friends.

One of our main objectives is to create a context for a healthy discussion about where we’re at as Christian people and how we can take our movement into greater alignment with Jesus. An aligned church is a healthy church, and that’s what we all want. I hope you enjoy this episode. Please share it with your friends.

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Please send me your comments and questions. I really want to know what you’re thinking about and how I could be helpful to you in your own journey with Jesus.

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Thanks again for everything, and thanks to all of you who have converted from free members to paid members. You are helping fuel this initiative, and we thank you deeply. If anyone wants to know more about Emerge Missions, you can check our website at emergemissions.org.

Every Blessing,

Chuck & Sherry

As I mentioned last time, the newsletter version of this podcast will no longer be a straight transcript. I will summarize it in about a thousand words for those who prefer to read. There’s a lot more content in the video, so I hope you’ll enjoy that version also.

We are gaining traction, but we still have not broken the thousand subscriber mark, so please share this episode with your friends to help us reach a broader audience. Thanks!!!

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From Lord to logo

When I was a child growing up in Georgia (the state, not the country), our family had a Bible that sat on the coffee table more as symbol than book. It was a way of declaring that we were a Christian family. On the cover was a romanticized painting of Jesus — The colors were muted and earth tone. Jesus was tanned, lovely, serene, and glowing with golden light.

If I had grown up in Africa, the cover would have shown a different Jesus. Latin America or China, yet another. Jesus, you see, is customizable in Christianity.

The problem is so extreme that a few years ago, MacLean’s magazine ran a cover story showing a traditional image of Christ surrounded by labels ranging from “revolutionary” to “”a mad priest” to vengeful prophet” to “ordinary guy.” (These are the various ways different forms of Christianity and scholarly coverage characterize Jesus.) The headline declared, “Jesus has an identity crisis.”

That headline captures something real. Because across 2,000 years of Christian history, in every culture and every century, the very person of Jesus has been edited so he will match our cultural expectation.

A History of Customization

After Emperor Constantine converted in 312 AD and the Roman church stepped into the power vacuum left by a crumbling empire, Jesus appeared in paintings wearing ecclesiastical robes, his hand raised in the pose of priestly benediction. He was the divine endorser of hierarchy — the one whose authority legitimized bishops, kings, and popes. That Jesus served the system. He didn’t challenge it.

During the colonial era, Jesus was presented to enslaved Africans as the one who taught, “Slaves, obey your masters.” But something remarkable happened: when those same enslaved people learned to read the Gospels for themselves, they found a completely different Jesus. They found the brown liberator, the fulfillment of the Exodus story, the one who came to set captives free. Same Gospels. Same person. Two opposite Jesuses — because each group encountered him through the lens of what they desperately needed him to be.

In Latin America, Jesus became the face of Communist liberation theology in some places and a pro-establishment, anti-communist figure in others — sometimes within the same country.

In America, he’s been recruited by both political parties. For one side, he’s pro-military, anti-abortion and anti-tax. For the other, he’s woke, empathetic, pro-environment, and pro-immigration. How can the same person endorse completely contradictory agendas?

Honestly, he can’t. But a logo can. Somewhere along the way, in culture after culture, Jesus as become more logo than Lord.

A Lineup of Compromised Customized Christs

Every version of Jesus that Christianity has produced contains something real, a genuine aspect of who he is. That’s what makes each one so convincing. The problem isn’t that people found something true about him. The problem is that they stopped there, and in stopping there, lost the rest of him.

Prosperity Jesus is wealthy and wants you to be wealthy too. He preaches abundant life and his most devoted representatives fly private jets to demonstrate the blessings available to the faithful. Is it true that Jesus cares about our wellbeing? Yes. Does he promise abundant life? He does. But the abundant life he describes in the Gospels looks nothing like a private jet. It looks like a cross. That part gets quietly left out.

Warrior Jesus is fierce and powerful, commanding authority over darkness and promising socioeconomic victory to those who follow him. Jesus is the one who will fight the devil so you can rise in society. Is it true that Jesus has authority over evil? Absolutely, but Jesus used his power to deliver others, not just to win a position on the top of the pile for himself.

Friendly Neighbor Jesus wears jeans and a hoodie and drops by with golden nuggets of wisdom to make your week a little better. He’s warm, encouraging, and never says anything uncomfortable for more than thirty seconds. Is it true that Jesus is approachable? Yes — children ran to him. But this is also the man who took a whip to the bankers and kicked their tables over in the temple yard. That part tends to get softened.

Therapeutic Jesus is your personal life coach and heavenly encourager. He meets you right where you are and never asks you to go anywhere else. He validates your feelings, affirms your worth, and ensures you leave every encounter feeling good. Is it true that Jesus heals and restores? Deeply. But Bible Jesus also said, “Forgive everyone for everything they’ve ever done to you. Move on past it and start obeying God.” Emotional healing was never the destination, just a step along the way to being strong and mature. The Bible’s Jesus makes us grow up.

Political Jesus is as liberal or conservative as the situation demands. He endorses whatever power structure invites him in. Is it true that Jesus has something to say about justice and governmental power? Profoundly. But the Jesus of the Gospels made both sides of the political aisle deeply uncomfortable. He still does — when we actually let him.

That we dare to edit the very person of Jesus in these ways is an indication of how little authority we truly give Christ over our cultures, our nations, and our local versions of Christianity.

What We Lose When We Edit Jesus

The problem with these customized Christs is that they are, in their own way, much more comfortable than the real one. OK, comfort is not nothing. We all need a Jesus who meets us in our exhaustion and fear and pain. But when we edit him down to only the comfortable parts we lose the sharp edge of God that shapes us into everything we were made to become.

Jesus is Our Sculptor—let him cut

A sculptor doesn’t just caress the marble — he cuts it. He removes what doesn’t belong. He works against the resistance of the stone to reveal the form hidden inside all along. The cutting isn’t cruelty. It’s the whole point. Without it, there is no way for the hidden destiny of the statue to rise forth. Otherwise, a block of marble that never becomes what it was meant to be.

Jesus is Our Husbandman—let him prune us

Jesus described the Father as a vine dresser who prunes the branches — not to harm them, but so they bear more fruit. He said he came to earth to start a refiner’s fire. He’s the Word of God and the Bible says that the word of God is sharper than a double-edged sword, penetrating to the division of soul and spirit.

The true Jesus of the Gospels is not a Jesus who exists just to make us feel better about ourselves. He is a Jesus who loves us too much to leave us as broken as we are. He is bringing “many sons and daughters to glory.” Moving from glory to glory is exhilarating but it’s a strenuous, challenging, paradigm-smashing process too. The heart of the gospel is the premise of change.

And that is the real cost of the Malleable Messiah — not just theological inaccuracy, but forfeiting our transformation and the chance to fulfill our purpose in life.

Back to the Source: The Jesus of the Gospels

The real Jesus has the integrity to challenge us. He’s tender enough to receive and heal us, and powerful enough to transform us. You will find him in original form in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

I made a decision during our time in the Philippines that I would study and preach from the Gospels alone for 10 years. This decision was one of the most important things to ever happen in my life as a disciple. I encourage you to also follow this practice. Master Jesuses’ words.

I determined to build my core doctrine upon his words alone and to let him explain himself and not make his words fit into some other doctrine that just needed his endorsement. “Jesus is Lord” was the core doctrine of the New Testament church and I want it to be that way in my life also.

And that is worth everything.

Let’s ReJesus everything this year!

Every Blessing,

Chuck

PS: Thanks again for all those who converted from free to paid memberships. Your support helps us continue this ministry. We’re grateful!

Discussion Question:

Which customized Christ hits closest to home? Prosperity Jesus, Warrior Jesus, Friendly Neighbor Jesus, Therapeutic Jesus, Political Jesus — which version have you been most tempted to settle for, and why is it so appealing?

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