Firm Foundation Focus

In this third episode of A Different Breed of Encouragement, we ask three questions. Who determines the people in our lives? What should our encouragement strengthen? And why has the Father given us one another? As we answer those questions, we discover a completely different way of relating to one another, where Christ stands between us, the Father determines every relationship, and every word we speak is there to strengthen what He is already accomplishing in another person's life.

As Christ is being more fully formed in us, we begin seeing people from the Father's point of view, learning to agree with the Father's words because we don't want to say anything He isn't saying and hinder what He is already doing in another son. We also discover why the Father has given us one another, so that He can speak His living Word through us, giving courage to continue with Him and leaving every son more firmly established 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 this second episode of A Different Breed of Encouragement, we expose why flattery is so attractive to the flesh, and why Paul immediately recognised what was happening in the churches of Galatia. Beginning in the Garden of Eden, we trace the origin of flattery through the nature of Adam, discovering how it changes the way we speak, reveals the genuine needs the flesh is still trying to meet, is driven by self interest and ultimately works ruin. We discover why counterfeit encouragement creates unhealthy dependency, toxic relationships and a life that looks to people for what the Father has always intended to give Himself.

Are you in the early days of sonship, where the Father is beginning to expose the flesh and you are just starting to wake up as a son and see it as He sees it? Is there somebody whose approval you long for? Do you find yourself looking for their validation, hoping they will notice you, encourage you or affirm you? Do their words have the power to lift you up or leave you discouraged? Do you find yourself going back to them because there is something in you that still needs what they are giving?

Or are you further along the spectrum of sonship, where the Father has already brought many of these things into the light, and now you are finding that flattery is coming after you in a different way? Are you beginning to recognise when somebody has a hidden agenda? Can you discern the difference between someone who is strengthening what the Father is already doing in your life and someone who is trying to win you over? When somebody encourages you, do you find yourself looking more to the Father than to the person who spoke? Does that encouragement simply confirm what the Father has already been saying and doing in your life?

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

Paul warns the Galatians about people who were making much of them, paying court to them and trying to dazzle them. But why did he react so strongly? What did he see that they couldn't yet see? As we place Galatians 4:17 back into its setting, we discover that Paul wasn't simply listening to flattering words. He could see where these teachers were leading people. They wanted to draw these young believers away from the freedom they had found in Christ and back towards themselves.

In this opening episode of A Different Breed of Encouragement, we begin by asking what it really means to "make much of people," why flattery and encouragement are not the same thing, why flattery so often comes after sons who are awakening to who they are in Christ, and how Jesus immediately recognised the same hidden motives when the religious leaders came to flatter Him in Luke chapter 20.

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

As we come to the final episode of Walking in the Spirit, we return to one of the most life-changing truths in The Normal Christian Life: God has only one answer to every human need, His Son. Through the gospel, we have been taken out of Adam and placed into Christ, receiving His life, His nature, and His indwelling presence. Looking back over the themes of this series, Watchman Nee brings us to the practical outworking of that reality and asks a simple question: do we know Holy Spirit as a living Person, and do we know Him as Boss?

Through Nee’s story of a newly converted couple in China, we explore the confidence that both Nee and the apostles had in the indwelling Christ and the resident Holy Spirit. The early church did not depend upon constant supervision, endless teaching programmes, or human oversight. They trusted that Holy Spirit would teach, guide, sustain, and mature the sons of God. Along the way, we consider the difference between the apostolic gospel and much of what passes for gospel preaching today, and why the greatest need of the church remains exactly what it was in the first century: a fresh revelation of the indwelling Christ.

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 episode of Walking in the Spirit, we begin the final section of Chapter 10 of The Normal Christian Life by Watchman Nee and spend some time looking at a word that Paul uses repeatedly in Romans 8: walk. Nee draws attention to the fact that Paul tells us to walk after the Spirit, and that immediately raises a question. Why walk? Why not work, strive, achieve, accomplish, or produce?

As we work through the passage, we look at the difference between a walk and a work, between trying to do something for God and learning to live in dependence upon Holy Spirit. Romans 8 presents the Christian life as something very different from self-improvement, religious effort, or personal determination. The life of a son begins with dependence and continues in dependence. The Father never intended us to produce the Christian life for Him. He gave us Christ as our life, and Holy Spirit is committed to bringing that life into expression as we learn to walk with Him.

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

What does Watchman Nee mean by hypocrisy and playacting?

In this episode of Walking in the Spirit, Alex continues through Chapter 10 of The Normal Christian Life and opens up a conversation around two words that have stayed with him since first reading this section: hypocrisy and playacting. They are words we usually associate with religion, pretence, and putting on a show for others, but Nee uses them in a way that reaches much deeper than that.

As the conversation unfolds, Alex reflects on the difference between trying to live the Christian life and allowing the life of Christ to be expressed through us. Drawing from Colossians 3, personal experience, and Nee's teaching on the law of life, he explores why so much of Christian living can become an effort to maintain an appearance, and why the Father's intention has always been something far greater than behaviour management. The issue is never whether we can imitate Christ well enough, but whether we are trusting the life that He has already placed within us.

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

What does it mean to be harnessed by Holy Spirit?

In this episode of Walking in the Spirit, Alex opens up a conversation around a picture that has become increasingly real in his own life over recent months. Drawing from Watchman Nee, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and personal experience, he reflects on the tendency to become involved in situations simply because we care about people, have an opinion, or believe we can help. Yet Holy Spirit is already at work, already dealing with hearts, already arranging circumstances, and already accomplishing what He intends to accomplish.

As the conversation unfolds, Alex considers Bonhoeffer's observation that Christ stands between every believer, and why there are places in another person's walk with the Father that do not belong to us. The challenge is learning to recognise what Holy Spirit is doing, identify with Him, and remain within the measure He has given, rather than stepping beyond it with the very best of intentions.

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

Habakkuk declared that the earth would be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.

Here's my question: what if much of our talk about the glory of God, and much of our pursuit of the glory of God, has never been preceded by a clear understanding of what, or rather who, the glory of God actually is?"

There is certainly no shortage of teaching on glory. There is no shortage of pursuit of glory. We sing about it, pray for it, preach about it, and long to see it. Yet over the last few years, as the Father has been teaching me to live as a son, He has also been showing me Who His glory is.

In this Feature Episode, I want to challenge some deeply held assumptions and ask whether we have built our understanding from the substance, or from the shadows that pointed towards it. When Paul talks about the glory of God, who is he talking about? When John talks about the glory of God, who is he talking about? When the writer of Hebrews talks about the glory of God, who is he talking about?

And if the New Testament writers are all pointing to the same answer, what does that do to our understanding of Habakkuk's prophecy that the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea?

Download the 'Companion Workbook' here

Part One: Who Is The Glory Of God? (00:28)

Part Two: How Is That Glory Revealed Throughout The Scriptures? (13:54)

Part Three: Where Is The Glory Now? (29:06)

Part Four: How Does The Knowledge Of His Glory Fill The Earth? (41:18)

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 more conversational and slightly messy episode of Walking in the Spirit, Alex shares some personal reflections after reading another section from Chapter 10 of Watchman Nee's The Normal Christian Life. What begins with Nee's comments about Bible reading soon opens up a much bigger conversation about consistency, why so many of us start things and never finish them, and why determination always seems to run out eventually.

Using his own experiences with Bible reading plans, unfinished projects, and the constant cycle of enthusiasm followed by exhaustion, Alex reflects on a simple but challenging question: if there is no consistency in the self life, where does true consistency come from? This episode is an honest and unscripted conversation about spiritual hunger, the life of Christ within us, and learning to trust the One who remains consistent when we are not.

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

We genuinely want to please God, and because we genuinely want to please Him, we have spent years believing that the answer must somehow be found in becoming a better version of ourselves. So we watch our behaviour, analyse our failures, measure our progress, make fresh commitments when we fall short, and then wonder why the Christian life feels exhausting. In this episode, we continue through Chapter 10 of The Normal Christian Life as Watchman Nee exposes the role of will-power in the Christian life and shows why so many sincere believers remain trapped in repeated failure, discouragement and self-condemnation.

Nee reminds us that the law of the Spirit of life is not something new that God is waiting to give us. It is a fresh unveiling of what has already been given through Christ. Together we explore why self-management interferes with the law of life, why so much of church culture keeps turning our attention back onto ourselves, and why the Father's answer is remarkably simple: let go of confidence in self and trust the life that already dwells within through our oneness with Holy Spirit.

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