About Zoweh
Pillar 1: Intimacy, Oneness, and Connectedness with God
We believe this is the foundation of the Kingdom and therefore the fundamental pursuit of every image bearer. Intimacy, oneness, and connectedness are what we are made for, and therefore they are what we most desperately long for. Where we take this longing and core desire matters. Other image-bearers cannot handle our need for love, though they are great secondary sources. God is the only one who can repair what was severed in the Fall and fulfill that hope we carry within us to be seen and known. The entire story of Christianity, the work of redemption, salvation, justification, and sanctification serve to restore us to a place of intimacy, oneness, and connectedness with God (John 17 and John 13:34). This intimacy is violently opposed by the one who would rather we not experience it, much less live to tell about it.
How is the Trinity pursuing you, meeting this core longing and desire of your heart?
How is God showing you His affection and validating you as a beloved son or daughter?
Pillar 2: Who You Are, Where You Are, and the Good God is Up To In Your Life
The Christian life is a journey of the heart to becoming Oriented to the Kingdom way. An oriented person is one who holds fast to his or her identity as a son or daughter of God (Galatians 4:7), who understands the gravity of the spiritual battle between the Kingdom of God and the kingdom of darkness, and who is aware that God is always up to something good in our lives, no matter the external circumstances. Not everything that happens to us is God's will ... people sin every day, and sin isn't God's will. But where His will isn't being done, His way is. Romans 8:28 says ...
And we know [with great confidence] that God [who is deeply concerned about us] causes all things to work together [as a plan] for good for those who love God, to those who are called according to His plan and purpose. (AMP)
There is a false-self (what the Bible calls "the flesh" or "the old self") that dwells within every believer. The enemy has long been at work forming this little anti-christ, and is committed to keeping believers disoriented - unsure of who we are, unclear on what is going on in us and around us and making sure we question whether or not God is good.
At Zoweh, we try to hold fast to this belief: If it isn't good yet ... then God isn't done yet.
Pillar 3: Nothing to Hide, Nothing to Prove, and Nothing to Fear
The fruit, the result of an oriented life, is a man or woman who lives with nothing to hide, prove, or fear. That is a man or woman who lives like Jesus. One of the greatest promises to a Kingdom Life as a Christ-apprentice is that God is restoring us into who we truly are. As image-bearers, we are made for Him to inhabit our hearts. Once there through our invitation, God sets to work, redeeming, restoring, and setting us free. "The Good God is up to" is re-making us into who we are, how each of us uniquely bears His image. The more we are transformed, the more we can release our need to (1) hide who we "think" we are; (2) prove we have what it takes or that we can control people and circumstances; and (3) fear that someone will ultimately see through our façade and deliver packages of judgment, condescension, or love that based on conditions. Jesus lived with such freedom. He knew who he was, where he was, and the good that the Father was up to in His life, and walked with the Father having nothing to hide, nothing to prove, and nothing to fear.
Pillar 4: More Love, More Life, and More Freedom
We were made for more than just trying not to sin. The Larger Gospel (the full work of God to restore and rescue humanity) is just that ... larger. The smaller gospel is one that never goes further than the cross, sin and forgiveness. Certainly the cross, sin and forgiveness are a critically important part of the gospel, thank goodness for the cross! But staying there leads to a smaller kingdom life, usually just trying not to sin and somehow giving more, doing more and serving more. This is not the Life we were promised and it is not the Life God is offering (John 10:10). There is more. The Larger Gospel invites us to experience the love of God that transforms us, elements of the full work of Christ - the cross, yes, but also the resurrection and ascension. When we become believers, we are given Christ's power and authority, and we are going to need it. We are the beloved sons and daughters, and are invited to live as such in freedom, deployed into the Larger Story to invite others to experience the same! More Love, Life, and Freedom are the delightful results of an Oriented Life: an increasing awareness and enjoyment of God’s love, God’s constant goodness and generous grace, and the incredible freedom that comes to a life lived in intimacy with Jesus – freedom from fear, shame, insecurity, and isolation; and freedom to live and love wholeheartedly, to be courageous, and to remove the masks and fig leaves we’ve hidden behind.
Listen to the Exploring More Podcast series on The Four Pillars of Zoweh
Mission
We believe that people were made for more than just trying to keep it all together and trying not to sin. We want to help people find a more rich and abundant life by experiencing intimacy and healing with God and authentic connection with others.
Vision
Our vision is to see men, women, and marriages around the world experience the healing and recovery of their hearts and live in redemptive community with one another.
Strategy
The strategy to see our vision come true is …
- To create tools, resources, and environments that aid people on the journey of recovering their hearts
- To connect with men and women and offer them love and encouragement on their journey
- To connect men and women with each other for the formation and growth of their redemptive communities
Values
We value the full work of Christ as revealed in His life, ministry, and gift of healing, restoration, freedom, and life. We love to share with others the full work of Christ—His death, resurrection, and ascension—so they can experience the freedom and abundant life Jesus promised.
Ministry
We believe that it is critical that we experience intimacy, oneness, and connectedness with God for ourselves first, before offering it to others. Only then, when our own hearts are cared for, will we be able to invite and affect healing, restoration, and joy in the lives of others. Ministry will be the fruit of lives that have been transformed, not the goal or objective of a workplace.
How you live will truly be an expression of what you believe. Belief is central to life. Oswald Chambers once wrote,
The sermon on the mount is a statement of the life we will live when the Holy Spirit is getting his way with us.
In his book, The Spirit of the Disciplines, Dallas Willard wrote,
So, if we wish to follow Christ—and to walk in the easy yoke with Him—we really need to accept his overall way of life as our way of life totally. Then, and only then, we may reasonably expect to know by experience how easy is the yoke and how light the burden.
The core of what we believe, live, and teach at Zoweh is best captured in a Daily Prayer that we pray often as a team, as well as in our own personal day-to-day walks with God. This prayer has been adapted from Ed Murphy’s book, A Handbook on Spiritual Warfare, and we thank our friends at Wild at Heart for introducing us to it.
- We believe the Bible to be the inspired, only, infallible, inerrant, authoritative Word of God.
- We believe in the One True God, The Sovereign, eternal Creator of all that exists, both seen and unseen. God is eternally existent in three persons, yet one God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
- We believe In the deity of our Lord Jesus Christ, in His virgin birth, in His sinless life, in His miracles, in His vicarious and atoning death through His shed blood, in His bodily resurrection, in His ascension to the right hand of the Father and in His personal return in power and glory.
- We believe God created mankind in His image. Adam and Eve, the first human beings, chose to rebel against God and go their own way. As a result, all of mankind became separated from God, the image of God in man distorted, he became subject to the power of the devil, and the sinful nature passed on to all their progeny. Because of original sin unregenerate human beings are incapable of pleasing or commending themselves to God. The only remedy for mankind’s pitiful predicament is redemption through faith in Jesus Christ.
- We believe that when a person exercises saving faith in Christ he passes immediately out of spiritual death into spiritual life, and from the old creation into the new, a new nature and a new heart imparted; being justified freely by grace, accepted before the Father according as Christ His Son is accepted, loved as Christ is loved, having his place and portion as linked to Him and one with Him forever.
- We believe in the present ministry of the Holy Spirit by whose indwelling the Christian is enabled to live a godly life.
- We believe in the resurrection of both the saved and the lost for the dispensing of God’s judgement and grace.
- We believe in the spiritual unity of believers in our Lord Jesus Christ.