This book has been decades in the making though its foundations go back much further, woven
into the fabric of my entire life. For the last twenty years, I've been jotting down
notes, dreams, and inspirations. Impressions that God has placed on my heart, moments when
the Holy Spirit is spoken, and insights that might seem to arrive out of nowhere, but clearly
came from Him. Consequently, a pen and a notebook have rarely been far from reach wherever I've
gone. Experience has taught me that God's voice doesn't always follow a schedule. In
fact, it usually doesn't. The Spirit speaks when He wills, often in the moments when we
least expect but most need. Over the years, I've collected countless words of knowledge,
revelations, and glimpses into the heart of God, pieces of a puzzle I didn't have the
clarity to arrange and compile until now. There is a divine order and timing to all
things. The ancient Greek word for this is kairos, meaning the right or critical moment.
I refer to a God-appointed time when events align perfectly with His purpose. Writing this book was
no exception. Though I struggled for a long time to bring these thoughts together in a clear,
cohesive manner, I've come to realize that the timing wasn't about me. It was about you,
dear reader. God prepared this message not just for me to share, but for you to receive.
And this moment, right here, right now, is the moment He intended for you to encounter it.
So, however you've come across this book, whether by chance, recommendation,
or perhaps even skepticism, it's no accident. God has been preparing you for these truths
just as He prepared me to write them. I pray that as you read or listen to this audiobook,
the Spirit of God will speak to your spirit, guide you, inspire you, and bless you abundantly.
May these words ignite your faith, deepen your understanding, and draw you into a vibrant,
transformative relationship with God that you were created to experience and participate in.
Introduction
For too many believers, church has become a place of frustration rather than fulfillment.
Week after week, they attend services, try to engage and participate in programs,
but walk away feeling oddly empty and discouraged. If you've ever felt like this,
if you've experienced the disillusionment that comes from discovering that the institution
you trusted for your spiritual growth has left you wounded, burned out, or spiritually stagnated,
if you've invested your time, energy, and heart into church life only to find yourself wondering,
is this all there is? Well, you're not alone. Countless others have wrestled with the same
question, felt the sting of being judged or dismissed, and found themselves saddled with
a burden of unrealistic expectations. They've walked a hollow routine of rituals that seem
disconnected from the kind of vibrant faith they'd hoped to have. Many have walked away
from church altogether, unable to reconcile the God they've longed for in their hearts
with the rigid structures that often bear His name. Others remain, quietly struggling,
searching for something deeper but unsure how to find it. Chances are you've sensed that there must
be more, more to faith, more to life, more to knowing God, and I'm here to tell you that you're
absolutely right, there is more, much more. No professed Christian should be living a life
marked by powerlessness, frustration, and a lingering sense of unfulfillment.
But a great number of them do. Though they've accepted Christ and have the promise of salvation,
the might and strength of God in their personal lives is small and distant. They believe,
but fail to fully grasp the magnitude of what Christ has accomplished for them, and they don't
realize that He's already begun to bring victory and purpose to their lives now, even as they
await His return. If the heart of their struggle is a misunderstanding, or a lack of understanding
about the Spirit-led life, many believers have yet to recognize the importance of living by
the Spirit of God, much less how to do so. They approach faith as a matter of obligation or of
ritual, rather than as a transformative journey fueled by a personal, intimate relationship with
God. They miss out on
the abundant life Christ promised because they rely on their own strength and understanding
rather than allowing the Spirit to guide them, empower them, and sustain them.
Here's the truth that so many have yet to embrace. God has a life plan for you,
a plan that satisfies your deepest desires and leads to an abundant, fulfilling life.
This isn't some generic roadmap. It's not a one-size-fits-all approach. Because God knows
you intimately, He knew you before you were born, His plan is uniquely tailored to your strengths,
tolerance, and purpose. Within that defined plan, you find the true meaning of success,
not as the world defines it, but as it is defined by heaven. You will find the fulfillment your
heart has been longing for both in this life and in the life to come. But God doesn't just show
you, He claims you personally, individually. He called you by name and He set His love upon you
long before you ever heard of Him or turned your heart towards Him. He's been pursuing you with
relentless love since before you were born, orchestrating every step of your journey to
bring you closer to Him. And His love for you is beyond comprehension. It is not conditional,
it is not transactional, it is not based on anything you have done or ever could do. It
simply is. God's love for you is infinite, eternal, and unshakeable. And because of that love, He has
a plan for your life that is so good, so profound, and so perfectly aligned with who you are,
that it exceeds anything you could ever imagine. It's more than enough. It will never leave you
wanting. So why then do so many Christians live outside of the fullness of Christ's promises?
Why do they settle for mere survival when God has called them to thrive? These are questions that
this book will answer in detail, but the short answer is found in your direct relationship with
God. Your life is not supposed to be one of striving in your own strength, but abiding and
resting in God's provision, listening for His voice, and walking in the purpose He's laid out
for you. It's a life of abundance, fulfillment, and peace, not of your own efforts, but through
the transformative work of the Spirit within you. God is ready to equip you with His strength and
guide you every step of the way. What He asks is that you trust Him and allow His Spirit to move
through you. When you do, you will discover a life so rich, so full of joy and purpose,
that it surpasses anything you ever thought possible. Because that is who God is, a loving
Father who withholds no good thing from His children. Now that's hard for many people to
believe for a myriad of reasons I'm about to explain. We've been poorly taught. What if the
rituals and routines you've been told are essential to faith were actually keeping you
from experiencing the fullness of what God desires for your life? There is more to God than what most
people experience within the walls of institutionalized religion. What if the key to unlocking
a vibrant, transformational relationship with Him has been within your reach all along and you
didn't know it? This book is about discovering that key. It's about understanding the constraints
of religion, finding your way past the barriers and obstacles that have held you back, moving
beyond the limitations of institutionalized faith, and stepping into the boundless freedom and joy
of a direct, personal relationship with Him. You aren't created to live in the shadow of
tradition or to measure your spiritual worth by how well you follow religious rules. God created
you for divine intimacy, a dynamic, life-changing relationship that goes far beyond what most of us
have been taught about in church. Through Christ, He has made Himself fully accessible to you,
not through intermediaries, hierarchies, or man-made institutions, but through His Spirit
who lives in you. See Romans 8 verse 9. I want to be clear that this book is not
an attack on church. It's not about forsaking the community or rejecting the value of fellowship,
but it is about putting church in its proper place as a tool for growth and encouragement
rather than the foundation of your faith. Most importantly, it's about helping you discover
the God who desires to meet you where you are, who wants to speak directly to your heart,
and who has a plan to transform your life from the inside out. My prayer for you,
as you listen to this book, is that you will come to understand the incredible freedom
love, and purpose that come from knowing God, not just personally but intimately.
I want to give you the knowledge and the inspiration to break free from the weight
of religious expectations. What you need is a conversational encounter, a conversational
relationship with the One who's been pursuing you all along. That means stepping boldly into
the vibrant, dynamic relationship He designed you to have with Him, a relationship that
leads to an exuberant life of joy, peace, and meaning. I'm not talking about abandoning your
faith. This is about reclaiming and realigning it properly. It's about stepping out of rituals
or traditions and into relationship, cultivating a faith that honors God not just with your lips
but with your heart, your mind, and your life. What you need to know about me.
Before we delve any deeper, I should tell you a bit about myself, my relationship with God,
and what I believe is my God-given mission. I want you to see how the principles I'll present
have been woven into my own life story. My hope is that through understanding my background,
you'll be encouraged to reflect on your own journey and be inspired to cultivate a deeper,
direct connection with the God who desires to walk with you.
I was quite literally attending church before I was born. My mother was a devout churchgoer,
attending services every week without fail, and while she was pregnant with me, that was no
exception. Now, this pattern continued throughout my childhood as I was raised in a fundamentalist
church tradition. By the time I was old enough to read, I'd already internalized most of the
Bible stories. They weren't just tales to me. They were alive, vivid, and compelling. God wasn't some
distant, abstract figure. He was someone I knew, someone I spoke to, even as a young child.
I was five years old when God revealed Himself to me as a loving Heavenly Father. Even at that
young age, I somehow knew that He loved me, not in a conditional way tied to my behavior or actions,
but with a love that simply was. I didn't earn it. I couldn't lose it. His love wasn't based
on whether I was a good or bad child. It was steadfast and unchanging even as I made mistakes
or did things that I knew wouldn't please Him. Though I may not have fully understood the depth
of it back then, I accepted His love in simple, childlike faith, and that truth became a foundational
part of who I am. There is a divine strength that comes from knowing you are loved, a strength that
can't be replicated by anything else. It's not just a source of comfort or reassurance.
It brings a genuine desire to do better, and more importantly, the power to be better.
God's love doesn't just inspire change. It equips you for it. For as long as I can remember,
I've had a personal relationship with my Heavenly Father. Some might consider that unusual for a
child, but I don't think it is. Children are naturally more open, free from the cynicism,
distractions, and wounds that adulthood tends to bring. What made my relationship with God unique
wasn't that it began so early. It was that I never grew out of it. As I grew older, that
relationship didn't fade or get pushed aside by the demands of life. Instead, it deepened and
matured, just as I did. My conversations with Him evolved from the simple, trusting prayers of a
child into an ongoing, meaningful dialogue, a genuine relationship rooted in love and a desire
to walk in alignment with His will. But from my adolescence into my teenage years, something
unsettling began to emerge. The God I knew intimately, the loving Heavenly Father I spoke to
daily, was often not the God I encountered in church. In the denomination I grew up in,
Lord God Almighty was frequently portrayed as a stern taskmaster, a deity who demanded perfection
and obedience to a long list of rules and rituals. He was someone you had to earn approval from,
someone who was perpetually disappointed in your humanity. This image clashed with the God I knew
as the loving Heavenly Father. My Heavenly Father was not distant or unapproachable. He was loving,
compassionate, and ever-present. The contrast between my personal experience with Him and what
I was being taught in church created what I call a religious schism in my life. It wasn't
a spiritual crisis. I never doubted God's existence or His love for me. Instead, it was a rebellion
against the portrayal of Him. I never doubted His existence. I never doubted His love for me.
God that I felt was inaccurate. In my frustration, I turned to the only source I trusted implicitly,
God Himself. I prayed a simple yet profound prayer inviting the Holy Spirit to guide and
teach me directly. Lord, I prayed, these things they're trying to teach me seem ridiculous to me.
I need you to show me who you really are and convict me of what you want me to know.
If I need to believe it, it has to come through you. You have to convict my heart directly.
I didn't realize it then, but I'd echoed something similar to the words of David.
In Psalms 25 verses 4 and 5, David wrote, Show me your ways, O Lord, teach me your paths,
guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my Savior and my hope is in you all day long.
In doing so, I surrendered myself to the direct tutelage of the Holy Spirit,
just as Christ had promised us in John 14 verse 26. But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit,
whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything
I have said to you. Again, at the time, I didn't fully grasp the significance of what I was asking,
but God honored that prayer in ways I could never have anticipated.
From that moment on, I couldn't open the Scriptures without waves of depth
and understanding of the Word as it applied to my life, jumping out at me. It wasn't just
intellectual comprehension, it was revelation. The Word of God became alive and real in a way
that transcended anything I had experienced before. The Holy Spirit became my teacher,
and the lessons He imparted weren't about theology per se. They were about life and how
to live in alignment with the Kingdom of Heaven for me. I learned from personal experience that
the mysteries of God are only revealed through the power of the Holy Spirit and on His terms.
He is fully exposed and discovered through faith, and only those in whom the Spirit abides
can truly understand and accept them. The Apostle Paul confirms this in the
second chapter of 1 Corinthians, starting in verse 9. However, as it is written,
No eye has seen, nor ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love
Him. But God has revealed it to us by His Spirit. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep
things of God. We have not received the Spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God,
that we may understand what God has freely given us. This is what we speak, not in words taught
us by human wisdom, but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual
words. The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God,
for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them because they are spiritually
discerned. The gift I received that day led me to serve many roles within the church,
Bible teacher, worship leader, minister, and more. In the years that followed, I served in
various denominations, each with its own traditions and doctrines. I went wherever God sent me,
striving to share the insights and the revelations I had received.
And for the longest time, I thought my life was to be about teaching biblical knowledge and those
things I had come to understand in Scripture, but it was never about what I knew. It was about
something deeper, helping others cultivate intimate relationships with God themselves.
When it comes to the Lord and the nature of His kingdom, it is your personal relationship with Him
that makes the difference because knowledge also comes from God.
Divine wisdom and understanding I've learned are born out of intimacy with God. Knowledge
doesn't transform people's lives, divine relationship does. In our churches, we've
intellectualized things to the point where we believe that it's all about getting the doctrine
right. That's a big mistake. God isn't judging you by how well you figure out His Word. What He
wants is for you to learn to recognize, listen to, trust His voice, and follow His direction.
I spent decades learning what it really means to get personal with God,
releasing my own expectations and growing to the point where God needed me to be
in order to fully embrace His purpose for me. What took a long time to get through my thick skull
was that because I was willing and opened my heart, the Holy Spirit instructed me despite
all my inherent shortcomings and insufficiencies.
God is in the business of transformation. Eventually, I realized what was most important
for me to share with others is the fact that each and every one of us was created to have
a much closer relationship with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit than we can imagine.
My mission, I now see clearly, is to help believers, especially those who are wounded,
disillusioned, or stuck in cycles of religious routine, help them break free from the constraints
of institutions and step into the vibrant, transformative relationship with God that
they were created to have. Intimacy with God matters.
Although I am one, I don't always refer to myself as a Christian. Not because I don't identify with
or am ashamed of the term, but because the noun has been so misused and abused by so many people
and institutions. People have preconceived notions of what a Christian is, and many who claim the
title have very little idea of what it truly means. I understand completely why Gandhi once said,
I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.
Given the opportunity, I prefer to call myself an Ecclesian, a term derived from the Greek word
ekklesia, which is the word Jesus used to describe His followers. When Jesus said to Simon Peter,
upon this rock I will build my church, as we read in Matthew 16-18, the word he used wasn't church
at all. It was ekklesia, literally translated as the called-out ones. He wasn't talking about
institutions, hierarchies, or buildings. The word itself denotes a people, a purpose,
or an assembly convened for a particular purpose. Christ was referring to an assembly of people,
each and every one uniquely gifted and called, united under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
A gathering of believers united in shared purpose, mutual love, and devotion to God.
Unfortunately, when King James commissioned the King James Version of the Bible,
he mandated the use of the word church instead of ekklesia. Now, this was a deliberate effort
to support the hierarchical structure of the Church of England and reinforce His authority
as King and as the Church's Supreme Governor, as He called Himself. The result is that the
true meaning of ekklesia, a called-out assembly with no earthly hierarchy,
well, that meaning was obscured and demoted. Instead, we got the word church, a term that
has come to represent institutions, denominations, human authority, structures, and buildings.
But Jesus' purpose wasn't to establish an institution. He came to gather a people.
The great commission He gave us in Matthew 28 verses 18-20 was not to create converts to fill
pews, but to make disciples, followers who would be empowered by the Holy Spirit and led by the
Holy Spirit to impact the world. The mission wasn't limited to clergy or religious professionals.
It was and is a calling to every believer. My good friend John Ashcraft sums up the
situation concisely in his book, Becoming a Second Mile Leader.
Many Christians have either forgotten their assignment or have never been informed of their
duty as believers. In most cases, our churches are filled with people who have never been taught
what the Bible actually says regarding their role in the army of God. Most of this can be traced
back to the state church being established in Rome. Until that time, the early church understood
their responsibilities as believers. They were soldiers in God's army, assigned the task of
advancing the kingdom of God against the gates of hell. Jesus called the church the ekklesia,
agents of change that would destroy hell's government. Jesus knew hell would stand no
chance against a people who understood that they are soldiers in the army of God when they are
trained and willing to perform their duties. Simply put, the ekklesia are otherwise ordinary
people. Think of the type of peoples Jesus surrounded himself with, whose passion, desire,
and goal is to be one of the many that God can and does entrust with the world for the cause of
Christ. Far too many believers do not understand the purpose of their faith. They think that going
to church and striving to be good satisfies what the Lord wants from them. They have little
conception of God's true purpose for their lives.