In this second Thursday Unfolded episode, I come back to one word from Session 2 that has stayed with me all week, and that word is source. Because from the very beginning, the question in the garden was always about where life would come from, and who we would be joined to. Two trees stood before humanity, representing two sources, two life systems, and two outcomes, and that same question still stands before us today as believers.

In this episode, I share some very personal processing, including how God used Toxic Love by Malcolm Smith to expose just how much of my life and relationships were still being lived from the wrong source. What became clear is that fruit always reveals source, and it is entirely possible to believe all the right things and still live from independence, separation, and counterfeit love. This conversation is about recognising where life is really coming from, and what changes when Jesus truly becomes the only source of life.

'Toxic Love’ by Malcolm Smith

https://amzn.eu/d/cheJyZC

About Alex

Alex is from the UK and he teaches and disciples across nations after years serving in Poland. His heart is the maturing of sons, believers growing into the fullness of Christ and revealing His life on earth. He serves within Firm Foundation, a work the Father is unfolding, joining partners who carry the same call. Through the Firm Foundation Focus podcast, Alex helps sons mature in Christ, discover the Father’s eternal purpose, and live Their way of life.

Check out the Firm Foundation website for more information ffdiscipleship.co.uk

In this second session of Firm Foundation Lite, we turn our attention to what actually went wrong when humanity entered the story. Rather than beginning with behaviour, mistakes, or moral failure, this session takes us deeper, exposing the inherited condition Scripture presents — a change of source that took place in Adam, where separation from God became the governing reality of human life. As the teaching unfolds, we see why the human problem cannot be reduced to what we do, and why forgiveness alone, while essential, was never designed to address the full depth of what happened to man. The issue is revealed as sin, not merely sins — a power shaping identity, direction, and the way life is lived.

Session 2 unpacks the difference between sins and sin, showing why behaviour-focused Christianity repeatedly fails to bring lasting change, and why humanity cannot fix what it has inherited. By revisiting human design — spirit, soul, and body — we see what died in Adam, why the soul assumed control, and how life became organised around independence rather than shared life with God. This session brings clarity to why everything went wrong, and prepares the ground for the gospel’s true answer, as we move next into how the Father dealt fully and decisively with both problems through Christ.

Participant Guide

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1CghKe2NP9ZMslL3fq12ijjq6DhciUFuh?usp=sharing

Feature Episode: ‘Do we have a weak gospel?’

Listen on Spotify here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/71E4GC4a7C193RxRrIJglD?si=Kvq6ilZDRlChbEF5hxS21Q

Listen on Youtube here: 

https://youtu.be/EJQhiIIqRks

About Alex

Alex is from the UK and he teaches and disciples across nations after years serving in Poland. His heart is the maturing of sons, believers growing into the fullness of Christ and revealing His life on earth. He serves within Firm Foundation, a work the Father is unfolding, joining partners who carry the same call. Through the Firm Foundation Focus podcast, Alex helps sons mature in Christ, discover the Father’s eternal purpose, and live Their way of life.

Check out the Firm Foundation website for more information ffdiscipleship.co.uk

In this first Unfolded episode, I come back to one of the images from Session 1 the picture of a rocket missing the moon because it began just one degree out and talk it through more personally, sharing how that illustration has stayed with me.

Using that image, I talk about the phrase “I’m a sinner saved,” something I sang for years, and how believing statements like this keep us wildly off course, because the Father never calls us this, because you can’t be a sinner and a son it’s impossible! This episode flows directly out of Monday’s session, and the Participant Guide for Session 1 is available alongside this episode.

Participant Guide

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1CghKe2NP9ZMslL3fq12ijjq6DhciUFuh?usp=sharing

Feature Episode: ‘Do we have a weak gospel?’

Listen on Spotify here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/71E4GC4a7C193RxRrIJglD?si=Kvq6ilZDRlChbEF5hxS21Q

Listen on Youtube here: 

https://youtu.be/EJQhiIIqRks

About Alex

Alex is from the UK and he teaches and disciples across nations after years serving in Poland. His heart is the maturing of sons, believers growing into the fullness of Christ and revealing His life on earth. He serves within Firm Foundation, a work the Father is unfolding, joining partners who carry the same call. Through the Firm Foundation Focus podcast, Alex helps sons mature in Christ, discover the Father’s eternal purpose, and live Their way of life.

Check out the Firm Foundation website for more information ffdiscipleship.co.uk

In this opening session of Firm Foundation Lite, we begin with the Father’s Eternal Purpose — not with sin, failure, or human need, but with what was in the heart of the Father before creation itself. This session establishes why starting points determine everything, and why a man-centred beginning inevitably reshapes the gospel into something it was never meant to be. As the teaching states plainly, “IT HAS ALWAYS BEEN HIS STORY; FOR TOO LONG, IT HAS BEEN MAN’S STORY.” From this vantage point, the gospel is no longer framed around what went wrong, but around what the Father always desired — sons who live in and from the Son.

Session 1 exposes how beginning with man produces a gospel centred on behaviour, effort, and improvement, and instead reorients us to seeing everything from Their perspective. We are reminded that “We do not fit Him into our lives – we fit into His life, His purposes, His plan,” and we are introduced to the shared desires of the Father, the Son, and Holy Spirit — a family of sons, oneness in Christ, and a permanent dwelling place in a people. This opening session lays the foundation for the six weeks that follow, restoring the gospel to a God-centred starting point that reshapes how we understand salvation, discipleship, and life in Christ.

Participant Guide

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1CghKe2NP9ZMslL3fq12ijjq6DhciUFuh?usp=sharing

Feature Episode: ‘Do we have a weak gospel?’

https://open.spotify.com/episode/71E4GC4a7C193RxRrIJglD?si=Kvq6ilZDRlChbEF5hxS21Q

https://youtu.be/EJQhiIIqRks

About Alex

Alex is from the UK and he teaches and disciples across nations after years serving in Poland. His heart is the maturing of sons, believers growing into the fullness of Christ and revealing His life on earth. He serves within Firm Foundation, a work the Father is unfolding, joining partners who carry the same call. Through the Firm Foundation Focus podcast, Alex helps sons mature in Christ, discover the Father’s eternal purpose, and live Their way of life.

Check out the Firm Foundation website for more information ffdiscipleship.co.uk

This final episode of the New Things series brings us to the place where everything either shifts or stays the same. Many of us have tried to change our lives through resolve, promises, and renewed determination, only to discover that nothing at the root ever moves. What the Father brings His sons into is not a stronger will, but a different way of seeing.

As the series closes, we return to the work Holy Spirit does in changing perception. When perception changes, life begins to move differently without self-management or effort. What once required constant resolve gives way to alignment, because life is no longer originating in self. This episode gathers the thread of new humanity, freedom, and sonship, and leaves us with the understanding that change does not begin with what we decide, but with what we see.

Monday 5 January - the new series 'Firm Foundation Lite' begins, dropping each Monday for 6 weeks, so be sure to join us for this, especially if you are new to the Focus podcast.

About Alex

Alex is from the UK and he teaches and disciples across nations after severla years living and serving in Poland. His heart is the maturing of sons, believers growing into the fullness of Christ and revealing His life on earth. He serves within Firm Foundation, a work the Father is unfolding, joining partners who carry the same call. Through the Firm Foundation Focus podcast, Alex helps sons mature in Christ, discover the Father’s eternal purpose, and live Their way of life.

Check out the Firm Foundation website for more information ffdiscipleship.co.uk

FOCUS REVISITED

For the first time, I am re-releasing a previous episode from 3 May 2025, because I sense there is something strategic in the timing.

I strongly encourage you to take some time to listen to this episode before we start the 'Firm Foundation Lite' series on Monday 5 January!

*EXTENDED FEATURE EPISODE*

Grab a drink, a notebook and a pen and get ready for a deep dive!

The weak gospel found in much of outreach and evangelism stops at forgiveness but never brings believers into union with Christ in His death, burial, and resurrection.

It leaves the old man untouched and the new man unborn. In the New Testament, the Apostle Paul preached a very different gospel — one of union, death to the old creation, and the birth of a new man — nothing like the diluted message so common today.

In this episode, we expose the fatal gap in the "ABC gospel" and proclaim the true gospel: not just forgiven, but crucified with Christ, raised in Him, and made entirely new.

Listener's Guide available ⁠https://drive.google.com/file/d/15xRYEjuW0VL1_J2AJ4befaUHqmDIoLVx/view?usp=drive_link

In today’s episode we stay with Isaiah 9:6 and move beyond “a child is born” and “a Son is given” to the next phrase in the same verse: “and the government shall be upon his shoulder.” Having followed the life of Jesus from birth through His hidden years and into His baptism, we now turn our attention to what this reveals about responsibility and maturity within the new humanity the Father is bringing forth.

Using the life of Jesus as our reference point, we see that government rests on a person, not a system, and that responsibility follows growth. What was always true of Him by calling was only lived out publicly when it had been worked into Him through alignment with the Father. This episode brings that pattern into our own lives as sons, helping us see what it means to live under a new government where life no longer begins with self, but with the Father.

About Alex

Alex is from the UK and he teaches and disciples across nations after years serving in Poland. His heart is the maturing of sons, believers growing into the fullness of Christ and revealing His life on earth. He serves within Firm Foundation, a work the Father is unfolding, joining partners who carry the same call. Through the Firm Foundation Focus podcast, Alex helps sons mature in Christ, discover the Father’s eternal purpose, and live Their way of life.

Check out the Firm Foundation website for more information ffdiscipleship.co.uk

In today’s episode we return to Isaiah’s announcement that a child is born and a Son is given, and we follow how the Father begins His new humanity through the life of Jesus. From His birth, to His hidden years, to His baptism, we see that everything the Father wanted for His family was first placed in Him, the Firstborn Son who now shares His life with us.

We look at the seed the Father planted into the world, the maturity Jesus grew into, and the adoption that publicly revealed Him as the Father’s Son. All of this becomes a roadmap for us as sons who now carry His life in the new man. The new humanity begins in Him, continues through Him, and grows within all who belong to Him.

Listener's Guide Here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1CghKe2NP9ZMslL3fq12ijjq6DhciUFuh?usp=sharing

About Alex

Alex is from the UK and he teaches and disciples across nations after years serving in Poland. His heart is the maturing of sons, believers growing into the fullness of Christ and revealing His life on earth. He serves within Firm Foundation, a work the Father is unfolding, joining partners who carry the same call. Through the Firm Foundation Focus podcast, Alex helps sons mature in Christ, discover the Father’s eternal purpose, and live Their way of life.

Check out the Firm Foundation website for more information ffdiscipleship.co.uk

In today’s episode we look at the life that now flows from the new heart and the new spirit the Father has placed within us. Isaiah announced the new thing. Ezekiel showed how the Father would establish it. Now we begin to see how the new man actually lives — and why words like surrender, sacrifice, and obedience take on a completely different meaning when they emerge from the life of the Son rather than the self-life.

We explore the distinction between intention and life, Peter’s vows and his collapse, and the clarity Watchman Nee brings to these three words. This series is called New Things because we are the new thing Isaiah saw, learning a new way of living with a new vocabulary. And the real question before us is simple: which life is expressing these words in us?

Listener's Guide Here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1CghKe2NP9ZMslL3fq12ijjq6DhciUFuh?usp=sharing

About Alex

Alex is from the UK and he teaches and disciples across nations after years serving in Poland. His heart is the maturing of sons, believers growing into the fullness of Christ and revealing His life on earth. He serves within Firm Foundation, a work the Father is unfolding, joining partners who carry the same call. Through the Firm Foundation Focus podcast, Alex helps sons mature in Christ, discover the Father’s eternal purpose, and live Their way of life.

Check out the Firm Foundation website for more information ffdiscipleship.co.uk

In today’s episode we turn from Isaiah’s announcement of the new thing to Ezekiel’s revelation of how the Father brings it to pass. Ezekiel 36 shows that the Father Himself gives us a new heart and a new spirit and places His Spirit within us so that everything He desires now flows from within. Nothing rests on Adam or anything inherited from him, because the Father, the Son, and Holy Spirit act together to establish Their life in our spirit.

We walk through these scriptures alongside Jesus’ words in John 14 to 16, and we begin to see that indwelling has always been the direction of God’s purpose. If Holy Spirit is now within us forming the life of the Son, then the real question becomes how we live from what He has already finished. This is where today’s episode leads as we continue this unfolding series.

Listener's Guide Here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1CghKe2NP9ZMslL3fq12ijjq6DhciUFuh?usp=sharing

About Alex

Alex is from the UK and he teaches and disciples across nations after years serving in Poland. His heart is the maturing of sons, believers growing into the fullness of Christ and revealing His life on earth. He serves within Firm Foundation, a work the Father is unfolding, joining partners who carry the same call. Through the Firm Foundation Focus podcast, Alex helps sons mature in Christ, discover the Father’s eternal purpose, and live Their way of life.

Check out the Firm Foundation website for more information ffdiscipleship.co.uk