Unedited Life: you guys, I have book coming out in May. ⁓ And I'm, ⁓ I know. ⁓ It's been a bit of journey because was challenged to actually work with a publisher and ⁓ I don't walk away from challenges. So I put out there ⁓ and ⁓ it's just, it ⁓ wasn't going to out. It was ⁓ a publisher. ⁓ and they wanted $7,600 to work with them. And I know full well, I don't have the kind of, ⁓ how shall we say, following to even yield that kind of return on a book. Now, I am not taking away from what God can do. Please don't at me. I understand that God can do things that I cannot do on my own, and that is fine. But I just felt like it was also another way that I had to pay an entry fee into a group and it just didn't sit right. Do you have those moments where it's like, oh, there's just not peace in this? And so I actually, because somebody who I respect was like, hey, negotiate. And I'm like, oh, jeez, I don't do that either. And so I put myself out there again and I responded and I was like, Thank you so much. And it was, I'm grateful for the experience because I learned a lot. And so I was like, hey, I don't actually have $7,000. And so I was negotiating saying, this is the most that I could potentially come up with to be able to work with you. And I really did want to work with them. They're a fine group of people. And ⁓ it took three weeks to hear back from them. So I just kind of assumed that I offended them. And so I was like, after about two and a half weeks, I was like, okay, I've got to do something. I've got to get this thing in motion. so I, John has to listen to all of my rambling and all of my decision making. And so he gets to, so kind. He's such a good pastor's And so I was like, I think that I just need to push this forward. and go the same route that ⁓ I've done before. And so I put a deadline out there. It will be released on May 18th. And ⁓ I'm excited about it. So anyway, I was going to pull from a chapter in there for a. ⁓ okay, that's the funny part. So after I did all the work myself, they responded. And they were like, yeah, we can do that. It's like, too late. Like I've already invested so many hours in this and more money. So I just was like, thank you, but no thank you. Bless you. And so, ⁓ ⁓ gosh, maybe I should just, should I just, I'll just say the thing. So it wasn't just the traditional path that I have taken. This is gonna apply and you're gonna see how this applies. I'm going to put myself out here and tell you about my experience over the last week. I felt like Jesus was like, yeah, self-published, but don't do it as you've done. And I was like, what does that mean? And so I really felt very challenged by God to actually follow through on one of the big dreams within my heart. And so all in one day, do you know that in the Bible it actually says that God can birth a nation in a single day? All in one day, I birthed a publishing company. super quiet about it because I'm almost like, ⁓ my gosh, like, I know, listen, my book is registered with the Library of Congress. We'll see. telling you, listen, I have my own EIN. I am like... ⁓ So I mean, was just like, I mean, really all in one day and what? ⁓ listen, and that's just it. can because listen, and this is why it's so important that I'm telling you this. I'm not telling you this to prop myself up. Please, I wouldn't. I'm very private, which is why none of you know that this is what was going on. mean, Jeff and Robin don't even know that this was going on. I see them on a regular basis, but I'm telling you this because we do things to blaze a path. so we can bring others along. So if you want to write a book, please see me. I will help you. If you want to start a business, please see me. I did it in one day. In me, in me. So anyway, I said all of that to say that I was going to pull the content from my book and Jesus was like, Angie, why don't you just read it? And so story time. Can I just read a chapter two out of my book? Robin's gonna be like, that was not in there. You're right, it wasn't. This is the problem, like if I hold onto this book and don't do anything with it, it will become like 500,000 pages and nobody will want to read it because it's too big. Because I just keep adding to it. Because there's so much, there's so much you could include. It's true, I could do that too. ⁓ I don't know if we should get into that. What'd you say? Yeah. Yes. Yeah. So the name of the book is called Pardon Me My Ontology is Showing. Yes! Pardon me, my ontology is showing. And there is a story behind it, but we are not getting into that right now. And the subtitle is realizing that you're already on the porch, even if you brought your legal briefs. And so the whole concept is unfolding our ontology, which means our original being, who we are in Christ. Yeah, and so there's all of these tactics. Usually most of us carry along our legal briefs with us to try and prove we're in. rather than just pointing to Jesus, right? And so that's what the book is about. And so this chapter is chapter nine. It's called The High Cost of Tribalism. Are you ready? Okay, I'll try not to speed read. The Nicodemus trap and the resonance of the lamb. The air in the sanctuary was thick, but it wasn't the weight of the glory. It was the stagnant pressurized humidity of a good Christian recruitment drive. I sat in the crowd as the guest speaker paced the stage, wielding a slideshow of orphans like a collection of legal briefs. The subtext wasn't a celebration of life. It was an audit of our sincerity. The pitch was a clinical maneuver. If you were truly a follower of Christ, your home would be open. If you were a good Christian, you would bridge this gap. It was a do-gooder ploy that turned a sovereign movement of the heart into a high stakes audition for moral standing. But as the guilt rose in the room, I felt that familiar localized burn in my own chest, the one I had carried for years as a children's pastor. It was the physical protest of a tribal instinct that knew deep down that religious ideation is a dangerously fragile bridge to build over the complexities of a human heart. The tribal wall and the DNA ease. I'll be the first to admit that I've sat in that crowd carrying my own version of tribal arrogance. Back when my own six children were young and the days were a blur of constant demand, I lived under the assumption that because my heart was full, my capacity was infinite. Many thought my mother heart was a bridge strong enough to carry any load. They were wrong. In the middle of my own exhaustion, I discovered a hard jagged border within my own biology. I had little tolerance for noise that wasn't of my own flesh. There's a reality that many families with both biological and adoptive children are terrified to face, the DNA ease. With your own flesh and blood, there is a subconscious rhythm, a shared frequency that requires no translation. You understand their cries, you anticipate their moods, and your nervous system tunes into theirs with a natural fluidity. But when a child enters the home who doesn't share the DNA echo, bringing a different temperamental static or the jagged edge of trauma, the ease vanishes. The atom flesh, this otherness, triggers a sympathetic spike. Your heart rate climbs, your chest tightens, and the child's presence becomes a biological friction. We are biologically wired for limbic resonance, the subconscious way our nervous systems tune into the internal states of those we recognize as our very own. When that resonance is absent, the nervous system sees threat, where the Sunday school lesson says neighbor. This is the vagus nerve in reverse. Instead of calming you, the otherness triggers an alarm. The innocence of ignorance. I have read the devastating news articles of parents who find themselves locking a child in a room, reacting with a coldness that borders on neglect, or simply drowning in a silent mutual resentment. I have seen the cringe of an adoptive father who hears the word daddy from a child whose DNA isn't resonant with their own. A sound that, instead of bringing joy, triggers an internal biological alarm. We want to call these parents monsters, but I see the innocence of ignorance. They're responding from a nervous system that hasn't learned the language of a new source. They're trying to run a merged family on a tribal operating system, and they are being shredded by the friction. They are trying to solve a union deficit with religious effort. The child is caught in the same loop. I've looked into the eyes of adopted children whose only language is a narrative of rejection. Because their biology is wired for the other, they will subconsciously force everyone into scenarios that require them to be rejected. They will agitate and sabotage until you confirm their deepest, atom-flesh fear. I do not belong here. This analysis isn't a rant. It is a diagnostic. Until we address the reality of oneness, We will always attempt to legislate the symptoms of a sleeping humanity. The Mirror of the Other. We must see that the friction in the adoptive home is not an isolated crisis. It's a localized x-ray of the global tribal heart. We reject each other for the exact same reasons that adoption proves difficult outside of union. In the atom delusion, we are convinced that our safety lies in our separation. If a child doesn't share my DNA, my system flags them as a stranger. If a neighbor doesn't share my doctrine, my system flags them as an enemy. If a nation doesn't share my borders, my system flags them as a threat. This is the high cost of tribalism, a life spent defending a fortress of self against the world of other. The spirit of adoption as the global cure. This is why the spirit of adoption is the only functional answer for the nations. It isn't a warm sentiment. It is the ontological collapse of otherness. When we awaken to union, we realize that the noise we were trying to reject in the child or the neighbor or the nation is actually the sound of our own life source in a different frequency. We stop trying to tolerate the stranger and begin to recognize the sibling. The Abba cry is the sound of the tribal wall falling down, proving that when we are cut into the sun, the hardware of rejection is replaced by the resonance of the lamb. The Nicodemus trap, the womb of effort. This biological friction creates the Nicodemus trap. Nicodemus was the elite of the elite, a PhD in the machinery of the flesh. But he came to Jesus by night. because he had reached the end of what that hardware could produce. He wasn't looking for a new rule. He was looking for a new origin. We fall into the same trap when we attempt to fix the cringe or the burn by crawling back into a womb of trying harder. We ask, how can I be more inclusive? While the father is standing on the porch asking, do you know who you are? Whether the crisis is the orphan, the unborn, or the incarcerated, These issues remain unsolvable outside of union. We treat the act of abortion or the act of crime as the root, but the root is the thought of separation. The belief that we are separate from our source and therefore separate from our brother. As Ephesians 2, 14 declares, Christ has broken down the middle wall of partition between us. The trail of evidence, the co-inclusion. To understand how we move past the tribal wall, We have to look at the trail of evidence left by the Father. The victory wasn't a reaction to our failure. It was the pre-temporal blueprint. Revelation 13 tells us Christ is the lamb slain from the foundation of the world. The co-incision was the plan before the first breath was taken. When Christ's flesh was torn, he wasn't just a man bleeding. He was the last atom gathering the entire human genome into his own body. In Colossians 2, 11, and 12, we see the circumcision made without hands. This was the species level co incision. Every tribe, tongue, and nation was legally and ontologically cut into his death so they could be exhaled into his life. You aren't recruiting strangers to a cause. You are announcing a shared DNA to a family that has forgotten its name. Under the influence. the resurrection coup. The answer to tribalism isn't a better agency. It is the incarnation. When Christ took on flesh, he hijacked the human genome and recorded the frequent, recoded the frequency of what it means to be human. On Good Friday, the it is finished was a biometrical signature. Christ dissolved the walls of the counting house and gathered every fragment in frequency into his own body. In this new reality, Our ability to cry Abba Father is not a religious duty. It is the visceral reflex dependent on our awakening to union. The spirit of adoption is the ontological realization that there is no stranger. You cannot truly cry Abba for a child who is other. And that child cannot find their Abba until you realize you are sharing the exact same life source. We move from taking someone in to recognizing a sibling who was always meant for the porch. The paschal exhale, every tribe, every tongue. This is the wow of the new creation. We are raised to life under the total saturating influence of resurrection power. I see a vision of Jesus walking out of the tomb, and as he steps into the morning air, he releases a single cosmic exhale. From that breath emerges a people who are colorful, vibrant and possessed by the knowledge of his image. They aren't standing around the graveyard clinging to his feet. They land and they run. Within the resurrection of Paschal Sunday, the era of striving, earning and sacrificing was incinerated. In its place, he installed dunamis life. This is the fifth gospel reality. If revelation is our map, then the bowing of the knee isn't a future threat. It is a current underlying reality of the new creation. What if we've been waiting for a day that has already occurred in the spirit? What if in the split second of the co incision, the knees of every tribe and tongue didn't just bend out of duty, but buckled under the weight of a love that finally recognized as their own source. Our tongues are already confessing to the nations that Jesus Christ is Lord, because the victory is objective. And the species has been reclaimed. Priests and Kings, legislating love. As priests and kings, we don't try to love, we legislate love. We are an ambassadorial people. We no longer fight over semantically charged labels. This is an underdog approach. We stand as resurrection life and refuse to allow verbiage to be an irritant. We aren't legislating form, morality, or semantics. We are legislating a life altering union. We see the king standing with the keys of death in Hades firmly in his hands. But the mystery is this. While the keys remain in his hands, the dominion over creation has been placed in ours. The audit is over. The tribal walls have been incinerated by liquid love. Now, release the resounding cry of Abba and go make disciples of the nations. The 12 tribes are home. The hardware of rejection has been deleted. And the earth is waiting for the frequency of the suns. I know there's language in it that you're probably like, what does that mean? We'll get into it in the days ahead. But for right now, I just want us to really like sit under the weight of the reality that we have so missed. We have made Christianity about some kind of game of going after and striving and putting some kind of announcement out into the cosmos fear. But Jesus already did it. We are the epic. We're the echo. Our job is to disciple the nations. We have to stop the us and them mentality. If you see a social abnormality, that in itself is a nation. And it better only be an abnormality by Jesus's definition, not just your preference. Because if we go and we begin to finagle with nations that he has put in place, we're working for the wrong savior. We hear what he has to say and we do it. We do not respond by what we think we know. Because all of us have prejudices. And the only way we're going to allow this tribalistic identity that we've walked in to fall is to allow his voice to guide us. It cannot be by knowledge alone because it's highly probable that your knowledge has some air and see to it. Take a minute. and look around the room. Seriously, look around the room. Notice the people in it. What do you see? I'm not asking you what you know. I want you to see with the eyes of Christ. What do you see? I know a lot of your stories, but that's not what I see. What do you see? What can you call forth in one another? What needs to be awakened in the people around you? the essence of the Christ that will drown out the knowledge of the atom. I am not going to ask anyone if they want to live a Christian life or if anybody even wants to make a decision for salvation, because that's not my job. Jesus did that. He didn't ask you. Did you get to weigh in on your birth? I was there, you didn't get to weigh in. We don't weigh in on our birth. We don't weigh in on our existence. Nobody asked me if I wanted to be alive. It's the same way with salvation. He didn't interview you asking you if you wanted to be enfolded into Christ. He did it because he knew you weren't capable of making a good decision. He has brought all humanity into himself. And I understand why people reject Christianity. Trust me. I have been in circumstances and times in my life where I have wanted to reject Christianity, but not because of Jesus. Because he's the same yesterday, today, and forever. His goodness goes on and on and on. His people get it a little wrong. There's no rejection in that. He has received all humanity into himself. You're not gonna find rejection in him. And you're not gonna find a fickle father either. He's 100 % for you. He's never had a different opinion of you. Because when he looks at you, he sees nothing but greatness. I repeat it all the time, but David's Psalm, I think it's Psalm 16 or 18, when he says that God is stooped low to make me great. God has stooped low to make you great. That should do something inside of us. It should provoke something. So I'm not going to ask you if you want to be saved today on Resurrection Sunday. But I am going to ask you, what are you going to do about the knowledge that you now have? What are you gonna do with this information? Are you going to continue to live a subpar life? You're going to continue to sit around waiting for the thing to happen? Are you going to chase it down? What do you want? Do you know who you are? You guys, there's nothing that you cannot accomplish. And that's not me just wanting to encourage you. With Jesus, nothing is impossible. So whatever your grandiose dream is, guess what? You didn't come up with it, he did. You can't outdream him. Anything that you ask or think. He goes beyond that expectation. I don't care what you've done. It's not an excuse. It matters not under the weight of the gospel. It doesn't matter because you are new creation. Bottom line. You are not what you've done. You're a child of God made in his image. You're an image bearer walking the earth. Wow. Out of the tomb you came running. I could have come at you this morning with the traditional Easter message, but we all know he came out of the tomb. What I think we're confused on is that we did too. I had an encounter years ago where I was in a tomb, and it was a crowded tomb. And the people in there were so stagnant, and they were just complacent. They wanted to be there. They liked it there. It was dark, gloomy, doom was surrounding them. It was death, right? That's what's in a tomb, is death. it was so crowded. It was like all of humanity crammed into this little tomb. And we were so content in the space of death. And then over the top of all of the chatter that was going on in this tomb was the voice of God that said, you are no longer there for you have risen. And it did something in me. It made me realize that we can sit around and we can make up excuses for why this happened, why that happened, why we were at a standstill, why, why, why, bad happens to us where we're the what's the the book the no good very bad day Alex, what is it? something like that, yeah, you know the book I'm talking about. But that's how we're acting, we're so apathetic that we're like, I'm just having a no good very bad day for 10 years. I am not suggesting that you pretend like life isn't hard. Look it in the face and keep moving. Fail forward, at least you're taking ground. Yell timber and fall forward. We cannot continue to let failure dictate what we're going to do with the rest of our lives. We were raised in resurrection life. Do you know what that means? Like. Resurrection life is teeming through your body right now. You might not be fully awakened to it, I'm not either, but I'm growing in it. I'm playing with it. I'm learning. I'm experimenting. And I think that this is where we get so off because we think before I'm gonna take my first move I need to be the professional. Who cares what it looks like? If Jesus seeded it, go after it. He will provide everything that's needed. When I started chasing down this dream, I didn't know how any of it was going to come about. I didn't know how I was going to have all the money to do what I was going to do. I did not know how to even do all that I was going to do. All the information just kept coming. Because it was Jesus. He put it in motion. I just kept moving. It really doesn't take a whole lot of smarts. You just have to be smart enough to listen and take the first step. Is this OK? Are we OK? So like the chalkboard said, he is alive and so are you. And you're way more alive than you think you are. There's a depth of living that we have yet to explore. And it's ours. We have been given dominion over all creation. So let's get out there and disciple the nations. Father God, we're so thankful for who you are. ⁓ I don't know how you thought all this up. But it is so fun to revel in. Holy Spirit, I am asking that you would excite your people. that you would cause our hearts to burn within us. that we would not be okay sitting idly by. that we would be fools for Christ. people who just don't care what it looks like. I'm going all in. Jesus, we love you. Amen.