Firm Foundation Focus

In today’s episode of What Is He Building?, we’re going to see how the Father has always wanted a vast family of sons, the Son has always wanted a counterpart, a Bride, and Holy Spirit has always wanted a permanent dwelling place — and how each member of the Godhead finds Their desire in you and in me. We follow the story from Israel, His firstborn son, to Jesus Christ, the Last Adam and the First...

“I cannot produce anything.” In this episode of What Is He Building?, we come to the tyranny of self-production and the breaking that exposes our inability to manufacture what the Father is after. Self can produce an enormous amount of Christian activity and even build something that appears successful, but the fire reveals what it was built with and where it came from. Following Israel, His son,...

Moses is dead, the season is over, and Israel is standing at the Jordan ready to move with God into a land they have never walked in before. In this episode of What Is He Building?, we follow His firstborn son across the Jordan and into the land, where the manna stops, giants and fortified cities remain, and Israel must learn to possess what God has already given them by staying with Him and recei...

In this fifth episode of What Is He Building?, we come to Israel, the nation God calls “My son, My firstborn,” and follow His son out from under Pharaoh and into the wilderness, where generations of slavery are exposed in the way Israel still thinks, responds and reaches towards another source when dependence upon God becomes difficult. We follow Israel’s longing for Egypt, the unbelief and rebell...

In this fourth episode of What Is He Building?, we move from Babel into the story of Abraham, where humanity’s “Let us make a name for ourselves” is followed by God saying, “I will make of you a great nation.” Abram leaves what is familiar and goes to a land God will show him, while God continues to tell him more about the promise: a son, offspring as numerous as the stars, a multitude of nations...

In this episode of What Is He Building? , we follow the story from Cain’s city to Babel and see what humanity bearing Adam’s nature is capable of building while living independently from God. Cain’s descendants raise livestock, make music and work with metal, Nimrod establishes a kingdom, and at Babel humanity brings its knowledge, skill and ability together in its own version of oneness, building...

In this second episode of What Is He Building? , we go back to Adam, whom Luke calls “the son of God,” and ask what it means that he was created in Their image and likeness. We look at image as representation, likeness as resemblance, and why understanding ourselves as spirit, soul and body helps us see where Their image is borne in us. We look at the Tree of Life in Genesis and what it reveals ab...

In this opening episode of What Is He Building? , we begin to open up many of the things I talked about in the Feature Episode, ' An Ox in the Ford ,' beginning where I believe we always have to begin: before the foundation of the world, with the question you have heard me ask many times on Focus, what have They always wanted? We look at the purpose that was already in the Father, in Chris...

In this special Feature Episode of Focus, I’m sharing the message I gave at Oasis Church in Portsmouth on Sunday 9 August 2026, An Ox in the Ford. Over recent months, the Father has been developing my understanding of building, and I’ve found myself returning again to the words of Jesus, “I will build My church.” What did He actually mean? And what kind of people is He preparing through whom He ca...

In the final episode of our In Christ series, we come to the question at the end of Watchman Nee’s chapter: How are we actually in Christ? We discover the significance of believing INTO Christ , being baptised INTO Christ , and Paul’s extraordinary statement that it is from God that we have our life in Christ Jesus . We also look at unbelief as the resistance of self to what the Father has already...

What kind of love is Paul talking about when he says that nothing can separate us from the love of God? In this episode, we continue reading chapter two of The Messenger of the Cross as we explore the difference between agape and eros, why so many believers still live from the wrong source, and how the Father has brought us into the very relationship that His Son has always enjoyed with Him. This...

What if everything the Father has ever desired to give you is already found in Christ? In this episode, we continue reading chapter two of The Messenger of the Cross as Watchman Nee shows us that redemption, forgiveness, justification and sanctification are all found in one place: in Him . This series draws from Chapter 2, “In Christ,” in Watchman Nee's The Messenger of the Cross , published b...

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, but what does that really mean? Continuing through chapter two of The Messenger of the Cross , we discover that the Father's verdict over the old man has never changed. Self remains under the same sentence, yet the new man, born from above and one with Christ, has never stood under condemnation because the Father has alr...

For many believers, the words in Christ are very familiar, yet few have stopped to consider what they really mean. In this episode, we begin reading chapter two of The Messenger of the Cross by Watchman Nee and discover the Father's solution to the problem of Adam. Rather than improving what belonged to Adam, the Father placed us into His Son, where everything He intended to do for us has alre...

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 w...

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...

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...

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 t...

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 w...

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...

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 b...

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 glor...

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 determ...

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 Cha...

In this episode, we continue through Watchman Nee's teaching on the law of the Spirit of life and begin looking more closely at the law of sin and death. Nee shows that our problem reaches much deeper than individual failures. The law of sin and death continually finds expression through the flesh, through all those familiar patterns by which we learned to meet our own needs independently from...