Firm Foundation Focus

We begin Chapter 1 by reading the opening sections, The Importance of Brokenness and The Inward Man and the Outward Man. As this unfolds, Watchman Nee exposes how much can be done outwardly, even with sincerity, and yet still come from the outer man, leaving the spirit shut in. I share some reflections on how much of our zeal, worship, and activity can come from that place, including the tendency to gather around people and giftings, and why we continue to look for something external when the reality of His indwelling life has already been given.

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 episode opens a new series working through The Release of the Spirit by Watchman Nee. I introduce where we’re heading, and then read the book’s introduction, which brings us straight into the central theme—why the outer man must be broken for the spirit to be released, and how much of what we call Christian activity can still come from the wrong source.

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 third episode of His Nature, My Nature, Alex takes us into one of the most revealing places of all—what actually comes out of us when pressure hits. Opening with Romans 8:35–39, the focus shifts from the idea of pressure to its purpose: not to separate us from the Father, but to expose the source we are living from. As Paul declares his deep persuasion, formed by revelation, we begin to see that pressure does not create something new—it reveals what is already within. And so the question becomes clear: when the moment comes, when there is no time to manage behaviour or present something polished, what is it that comes out?

Through the contrast of Peter and Jesus, this episode brings sharp clarity to the difference between the nature of Adam and the nature of Christ under pressure. Peter speaks with certainty before the moment comes, yet denies when the cost becomes real. Jesus, fully settled in the Father, walks through the same kind of pressure in quiet agreement, with nothing to defend and nothing to protect. And then we see the turning point—Peter in Acts 2, no longer reacting from self, but speaking from a completely new source. This episode draws the line clearly: pressure reveals the nature, and the life of Christ within is the only life that can stand, discern, and go with the Father, whatever comes.

Participant Guide

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 this episode, Alex continues the series His Nature, My Nature, building on birth determines identity.

In John 2, Jesus makes it clear that He knows what is in human nature. Many believed when they saw the signs, yet no change had taken place at the level of nature. What is in man is exposed, not by behaviour alone, but by the source within. From Cain to the Pharisees to Paul, both the evil and the good sides of the same nature lead to the same outcome, because the source remains the same.

This episode draws a clear line between the two natures. The old, hostile nature formed in Adam, shaped by the power of sin, and the new nature in Christ, received through new birth. The Cross did not come to improve what was already there, but to bring it to an end and establish an entirely new man.

Participant Guide

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 this opening episode of a brand new series, Alex introduces the central reality: birth determines identity. If you are born again, then you have received a new origin, a new source, and therefore a completely new nature. Alex traces what happened in Adam, where humanity shifted into independence, self-consciousness, and separation, and contrasts that with what it means to be in Christ—where His life, His nature, and His relationship with the Father have become yours by new birth. This episode brings clarity to identity at its source, showing that what you are comes through birth, and that a new birth introduces an entirely different nature.

From there, Alex sets the direction for the series. If His nature is now your nature, then the focus becomes discovering what is already within you and how that life is expressed. This episode establishes that discipleship is the development of what is already present in the new man—the life of Christ being brought into maturity and expression. As the series unfolds, Alex will look closely at Jesus—His relationship with the Father, His responses to people, pressure, and opposition—so that in seeing Him clearly, you begin to recognise what is already true of you and what Holy Spirit is bringing into full expression.

Listener Guide

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 this Conversation episode of the Focus Podcast, Alex reflects on John 14:23 and the extraordinary promise that the Father and the Son make their home within those who belong to Christ. Sharing from a recent Firm Foundation gathering and drawing on the New Covenant reality of being in Christ, the episode challenges familiar worship language that speaks of inviting God to come and visit His people. Instead, Alex explores the miracle of sonship—that through new birth we share in the Son’s own relationship with the Father and have become the very dwelling place of the Godhead. If the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit already live within and among His people, what does it mean for the way we understand His presence when we gather together? 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 ‘In the Field’ episode from Poland, we confront what happens when self is exposed. Luke 18 shows us that self can justify, self can condemn, and self can stay at the centre in both success and failure. Bonhoeffer calls it a “wish dream,” and he warns that the one who clings to it “stands adamant, a living reproach to all others in the circle of brethren.” When self refuses exposure, it blames, it accuses, and it hardens.

Sons who have awakened to their sonship do something different. They recognise their flesh patterns. They see when silence is judgment and when distance is accusation. They stop pushing responsibility onto people, circumstances, or the Father, and they own what came out of them. This episode draws a clear line: will you stand adamant as a living reproach — or will you take responsibility as a son?

Quote from Life Together (Dietrich Bonhoeffer) 

“Innumerable times a whole Christian community has broken down because it had sprung from a wish dream. The serious Christian, set down for the first time in a Christian community, is likely to bring with him a very definite idea of what Christian life together should be and to try to realize it. But God's grace speedily shatters such dreams. Just as surely as God desires to lead us to a knowledge of genuine Christian fellowship, so surely must we be overwhelmed by a great disillusionment with others, with Christians in general, and, if we are fortunate, with ourselves.

“By sheer grace, God will not permit us to live even for a brief period in a dream world. He does not abandon us to those rapturous experiences and lofty moods that come over u s like a dream. God is not a God of the emotions but the God of truth. Only that fellowship which faces such dis illusionment, with all its unhappy and ugly aspects, begins to be what it should be in God's sight, begins to grasp in faith the promise that is given to it. The sooner this shock of disillusionment comes to an individual and to a community the better for both. A community which cannot bear and cannot survive such a crisis, which insists upon keeping its illusion when it should be shattered, permanently loses in that moment the promise of Christian community. Sooner or later it will collapse. Every human wish dream that is injected into the Christian community is a hindrance to genuine community and must be banished if genuine community is to survive. He who loves his dream of a community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial.

God hates visionary dreaming; it makes the dreamer proud and pretentious. The man who fashions a visionary ideal of community demands that it be realized by God, by others, and by himself. He enters the community of Christians with his demands, sets up his own law, and judges the brethren and God Himself accordingly. He stands adamant, a living reproach to all others in the circle of brethren. He  acts as if he is the creator of the Christian community, as if his dream binds men together. When things do not go his way, he calls the effort a failure. When his ideal picture is destroyed, he sees the community going to smash. So he becomes, first an accuser of his brethren, then an accuser of God, and finally the despairing accuser of himself.”

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 ‘In the Field’ episode, I read an entry from Oswald Chambers that exposes something many believers have never questioned — how humility can actually be the voice of good self. We have been taught to admire the tax collector in Luke 18, to stay low, to stay conscious of our unworthiness, and to speak carefully about ourselves, and yet if that posture becomes your defining identity after you are in Christ, then self is still at the centre.

Sons live from assurance before assignment. Sons agree with the Father about who they are in the Son. And when someone actually speaks from that place of belonging, certainty, and shared sonship, it sounds like arrogance to those still trying to be good. In this episode we expose the difference between religious humility and agreement with the Father, and we ask the question — who is really defining you?

My Utmost for His Highest - https://utmost.org/updated/getting-there-2/

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 final Unfolded episode of Firm Foundation Lite, I stay with one thread from Monday’s session — the call to impossible living, and what it actually means to live by the life of Another. Many believers are still trying to live the Christian life from the same source that shaped life in Adam, unaware that self was never designed to carry this life. The frustration many feel is the exposure of independence, the realisation that self was never capable of living the Christian life in the first place.

We look at what it means to be called by name for Himself, and why the Father never intended to help self live this life. The Christian life is not improved self, it is exchanged life. Christ as life, or self. There are only two sources. Everything else is shown to be self.Participant Guide

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 this final session of Firm Foundation Lite, we gather up everything that has been opened across these weeks and bring it into the question that eventually faces every believer: how do we actually live this life we have received. From the beginning this series has pulled us back to the Father’s original desire, away from a man-centred starting point, and into His intention for sons who share in the life of His Son. Now the focus turns to the indwelling Holy Spirit, given as the One who makes Their shared life real within us, leading us beyond effort, beyond self-management, and into a life sourced in Christ Himself.

This episode brings together the threads of new birth, identity, the Cross, and oneness, and places the spotlight on the life, the love, and the faith of Another lived within ordinary people who belong to the Father. The call here reaches further than activity, gifting, or outward Christianity, and brings us into a way of life where sons learn to live from the One who dwells in them. Firm Foundation Lite may be coming to a close, yet what has been opened here serves as a doorway into a lifelong maturing where the Father gains what He has always desired: sons who live unto Him, by the life of His Son, through Holy Spirit.

Participant Guide

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