Design with the Spirit, not with spreadsheets.
Faithfulness isn’t a framework.
Jesus once said that those born of the Spirit are like the wind: “You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going.”
He didn’t say that the Spirit is like the wind; He said, “Those born of the Spirit are like the wind.”1 You cannot tell where they are coming from or where they are going.
Let that sink in.
So much about the way we build our lives isn’t like that. So much about the way we build our organizations isn’t like that. So much about the way we manage people within our organizations isn’t like that. Much of management is about minimizing the impact of such individuals.2
This is the most organization-disrupting thing Jesus ever said.
We crave predictability. We manage our businesses, our ministries, our organizations through systems, processes, strategies, forecasts, frameworks, and five-year plans. We plan, we administer, we count, we control, because the alternative—unpredictability—feels reckless, unsafe, chaotic. So we build structures, hire expensive consultants to build structures, buy expensive systems that enforce structures, award administrators that optimize structures, all to protect us from the unknown, particularly the unknown behaviors of people.
But Jesus didn’t say that Spirit-born lives are predictable or that they ought to be predictable. He said the opposite.
And yet, in our work we cling to predictability. We build our teams, our operations, our management practices around what we can explain, measure, and control. We’ve inherited secular logic, baptized it, and called it wisdom.3
And in doing so, we’ve muted the voice of the Spirit in our organizations.4
Control has become our functional savior.
We don’t call it idolatry. We call it “best practice.” We don’t say we’ve placed our trust in the system. We say we’re being “wise stewards.”
How does control5 become the fundamental organizing principle of a ministry or a business, and in it, we are confident that we’re hearing the Spirit’s voice and following the Spirit’s lead? How is it that we discern the difference between Spirit and spreadsheet?
If we claim to be Kingdom people, is it okay to live as system people?
The tragedy? That way of living produces measurable, sustainable, scalable, predictable, data-driven, repeatable, performance-based, goal-aligned, resource-efficient results. It even produces great success—in all the ways our secular counterparts measure it. But it does not produce Spirit-born living. It replaces it.6
In particular, it doesn’t produce Spirit-breathed innovation, Christ-centered design, or business transformation anchored in divine wisdom.
Creativity by communion, not control.
Design, innovation, and transformation are each about the emergence of something new—something not yet seen, not fully knowable in advance. This alone makes them spiritually significant. In Scripture, it is God who makes all things new—not us. When something truly new emerges, it does not arise from human ingenuity alone, but rather as a response to divine initiative.
These acts of creation, then, are not merely technical achievements or strategic outputs. At their best, they are born from communion with a God who is always speaking, always redeeming, and always bringing forth new life. That is why Spirit-led creativity defies linear logic.7 Its path doesn’t begin in market data, and its endpoint cannot be guaranteed by a strategic plan—because its origin is not within us, but within the movement of Christ through the Spirit.
Redemptive creativity does not begin with data analytics, but with encounter. All data is retrospective—it tells us what has been, not what is to come.8 And logic is bound to prior givens. It can rearrange or extend what already exists, but cannot yield the radically new.
Knowledge that opens truly new horizons doesn’t come from theorizing (logic) or system-building (data). It doesn’t emerge from analyzing the past or projecting trends. It comes from a different kind of knowing—one that begins in communion. Not encounter with ideas, but with a Person.9
In Christ, God reveals Himself to us. And it is through this lived, relational divine unveiling that something truly new begins. So it is with Christ-centered design: it is not merely inventive; it is responsive. The Spirit breathes, and something new is born—not from frameworks of control, but from communion with the living Christ.
What we make carries a trace of who we’ve encountered.
Jesus’ words about being born of the Spirit are not a metaphor for design. They are a description of what happens to people who encounter Him. And in Christ-centered design, those very people—born of the Spirit, indwelt by Christ, participating in the life of God—become the agents of innovation.10
Their work carries the marks of those who are moved by the Spirit. If the Spirit births them, then the things they make will bear that same DNA: unpredictable, redemptive, resistant to control, and reflective of a Kingdom not built by human hands.11 Christ-centered design is the fruit of Spirit-born people creating in the Spirit’s power. Moved by the Spirit, we create work that moves others—not emotionally, but redemptively.
The unpredictability of those born by the Spirit carries into the things they create. Their design work flows from the communion that the Spirit of Christ has drawn them into with the Father. Spirit-born people do not operate within systems of control—and so, the work of their hands resists domestication as well. It flows from a different center.
When they design from that communion, their creativity bears the same signature: untraceable in origin because their source is divine; faithful in direction because the Spirit of Christ is the One who moves them; and impossible to reverse-engineer, because the creativity emerges from communion—not from technique or formula.12
The Kingdom doesn’t run on strategic planning.
The Kingdom is not a well-oiled machine. It’s not a closed-loop system established on predictive analytics. It’s not the product of best-practiced, optimized, market-tested processes. It is the inbreaking of Christ’s reign—unfolding in ways we do not control, disorienting to the logic of this world, and so, unpredictable by design.13
What often comes from people moved by the Spirit refuses to fit our project management expectations—not because those people are unruly, but because the fruit of their lives originates from a source other than our expectations. Spirit-born work doesn’t cleanly align with timelines, forecasts, KPIs, and strategic roadmaps.14 It arrives out of season, grows unpredictably, stretches past deadlines, and refuses to color within the lines of efficiency, challenging our frameworks for performance evaluation.
So we treat them as disruptions, not gifts. We disqualify what they produce because it doesn’t match the kind of work we’re used to managing—work that is measurable, in scope, efficient, and easily slotted into our pre-approved metrics. As a result, we quietly disqualify the innovators themselves, the very people through whom God is doing meaningful work. Not on paper, but in posture.
But then eventually on paper, because their output doesn’t match our hiring profile: consistent, predictable, timeline-aligned, and easy to manage. But Spirit-led creativity was never meant to meet those criteria. It’s meant to follow Christ. The Spirit doesn’t operate on HR criteria. The Kingdom doesn’t run on Gantt charts.
Spirit-born people are hard to manage with conventional methods.
And that’s the point. Spirit-led people aren’t managed. They’re moved—by the breath of the Spirit, into places strategy can’t chart and systems can’t predict.
We cannot know God through systems of thought or institutional structures. We only know Him through Christ—mediated by the Spirit, made real in community.15 Any form of design that intends to be Christ-centered that doesn’t begin there is already off course.
When we attempt to organize the Kingdom with business logic, we are engaging in religion, not faith. We’re substituting divine initiative for human ingenuity. We’ve turned the unpredictable movement of the Spirit into a manageable brand campaign.16
And in doing so, we have lost the wind.
What this means for Kingdom-oriented innovation.
If Christ-centered design and Kingdom innovation are to mean anything, they must resist the gravitational pull of worldly logic. They must be driven not by the fear of chaos—but by the joy of communion, communion with the Father through the Spirit.17
Too often, that fear dresses itself up as wisdom: we call it strategic planning, but it’s anxiety in a blazer. We manage risk like it’s faithfulness. We build financial models, forecast scenarios, optimize for margins, and enshrine best practices—not because the Spirit led us there, but because uncertainty terrifies us. We hide behind spreadsheets, governance, risk mitigation strategies, contingency frameworks, and market analysis—believing these things make us responsible, mature, discerning. But in truth, they often serve as insulation against dependence on a God who transcends all of it—all of the stuff we’ve instead put all our faith in.18
All these business tools aren’t rooted in rebellion. We’ve formed them in sincerity. The spreadsheets, the protocols, the careful frameworks—they have been offerings, thoughtful, diligent, sacrificial offerings, shaped by the belief that faithfulness means stewardship, order, and wise leadership. And it does mean these things. It certainly doesn’t mean anarchy.
But living out of communion with the Triune God—who is wholly other, who transcends all categories of created thought—is not the same as living from within our models. We are creatures; our minds, our capacities, even our language, are finite and contingent—shaped by the created order itself. And God is not part of that order. He is not one data point among the many. He is not an input we can integrate into our frameworks.19 He is the source of all being, the ground of all possibility, utterly inaccessible on our terms. It’s not that our data is insufficient—it’s that our entire mode of knowing is creaturely. His essence is not a feature of the system we’re trying to optimize. He is not a variable in our logic.
Recently, I sat across from the Chief Strategist of a global top-10 firm in its category. He was a brilliant, Christ-following leader with a sharp mind and a sincere desire to do good in the world. I had just finished sharing the vision of Christ-centered design: how it begins in repentance and communion, not calculation; how it listens to and discerns the voice of God; how it prioritizes faithfulness over feasibility.
He was kind. Thoughtful. He nodded, and then said something I’ll never forget: “I like it. I do. But I’d need to know that it can produce real business outcomes.”
There was no arrogance in his voice—just honesty. And I appreciated it. But in that moment, I realized something more profound. Even for those of us who claim Christ, our reflex is to evaluate spiritual wisdom through the lens of strategic utility.20 We need to know it works. We need to know it scales. We need to know it delivers.
And I get it. I’ve been there. I still wrestle with it. But if we justify the logic of our faith by the logic of our business frameworks—then it’s not faith that’s leading us. It’s our business frameworks.
Communion with God is not an analytic business posture. It is a surrendered one. Faithfulness doesn’t mean maximizing control—it means we yield to the One who cannot be controlled, who reveals Himself in grace if He is to be known at all.
No wonder when we are born of His Spirit, nobody knows where we are coming from or where we are going. Absolutely nothing of the Spirit of Christ is accessible, discernible, and predictable by the tools and methods and models we’ve built in our business frame of reference. He is qualitatively other, outside of all human frames of reference.
The Spirit of Christ has drawn us deeper—beyond our human frames of reference—into communion with the Father. He is not rebuking our efforts; but to the extent that we depend on them and place our faith in them, He is refining our allegiance. Even what we create out of faithfulness will, in time, become too safe.21 Even what we have built to honor Him will begin to insulate us from Him.
Why? Because nothing we conceive, design, or steward—no matter how faithful—can ever contain the fullness of who God is. All our frameworks are partial. All our offerings are finite. The danger is not that they are unfaithful, but that we begin to treat them as ultimate. When we cling too tightly to what once revealed Him, we risk closing ourselves off to what He still desires to reveal. And He will be revealing Himself for all eternity.
The call is not to abandon stewardship, but to submit it. To hold every framework, every plan, every system loosely—subject not to the logic of control, but to the lordship of Christ.
He honors the gifts he’s given to us when we’ve used them in good faith—but when what we’ve crafted with them becomes our faith, He asks: “Will you trust Me? Will you follow even when the spreadsheet says stop, even when the model says no, even when the data says it’s too risky? Will you let the wind of the Spirit lead?”
Christ-centered design and innovation must begin in prayer, move in discernment, and flow from divine revelation22—not from fear disguised as foresight offered by tools that have become a surrogate for our faith. Instead, we must organize design, innovation, and transformation around a single, seismic reality: God is present, He is speaking, He is leading. Our role is not to control that movement. It’s to join it.
This is not anarchy. It is faithfulness over frameworks.
This does not mean systems, strategies, or processes are evil. But they are not ultimate. It is easy to give conceptual consent to that truth. It is nearly impossible in today’s business world to practice it.
Our frameworks and systems and structures must be designed humbly, held loosely—very loosely—and submitted to the rule of Christ.23
I was reminded of this, unusually so, but often enough.
I joined a global consulting firm, and worked under the leader of its most high-impact, fastest-growing business unit. He was brilliant, seasoned, widely respected—and yet for some reason, he brought me in to build a culture-changing design lab.
Every so often, just as I was about to kick off some workshop—before I’d even say a word—he’d pull out his phone, connect to the speaker, and blast the Sex Pistols’ Anarchy in the U.K. At some point, the chaos of punk rock would give way to a whiteboard full of post-it notes.
It was a joke, of course. But also not a joke.
He knew that what we were doing didn’t fit the mold. He knew that creativity can feel like disorder when you’re used to hierarchy, frameworks, and tight agendas.
And I knew that when I let the Spirit lead—when I lived out of communion with the Father and made space for discernment and holy disruption—it looked a little like anarchy to the system.24
But it wasn’t anarchy. I was trusting—trusting in a God whose ways aren’t chaotic, but are also not mine. Trusting that when we hold our systems loosely, something new might break in.
We still had spreadsheets. We still had project plans. But underneath it all, I knew something else was fundamentally at work, and I gave myself to it. And in rooms filled with risk managers, system analysts, and accountants, the only appropriate soundtrack for that... was the Sex Pistols.
In a Christ-centered framework, strategy becomes a tool—not a compass.25 Planning becomes an act of worship, not a guarantee of outcomes. And “best practices” are measured not by market performance, but by Spirit-led obedience. But even when Spirit-led, these are never final. They are provisional responses to God’s present leading—not templates to be enshrined. What is faithful today may not be what faithfulness demands tomorrow. Christ remains our center—not the methods that once served Him well.
The Spirit is not chaotic, and neither are those born of the Spirit. Scripture is clear: God is not a God of confusion but of peace (1 Cor. 14:33), and we should do all things decently and in order (1 Cor. 14:40). But the Apostle Paul’s idea of order was never modern project management. It wasn’t a risk management framework. It wasn’t established best practices. It wasn’t organizational change management. It’s not bureaucracy baptized. It’s order rooted in Christ’s character: peaceable, honoring, edifying. True order flows not from strategic clarity but from relational communion with the Father, in Christ, through the Spirit.26
What seems unpredictable or unmanageable to us may in fact be the higher logic of grace. God’s Spirit does not bring disorder, but neither does He conform to any of our systems of control.27 He brings the order of love. The order of self-giving. The order of resurrection. And that kind of order is disorienting—because it originates not in us, not in any business framework, not in all the ways we seek to manage others, but in the life of the Triune God.
Let the wind blow.
So what does this mean for us—builders, innovators, designers, transformation leaders? It means we must let go of the logic of control. We must be willing to release what worked last time. We must resist the temptation to define “faithfulness” as “efficiency.”28
It means we must begin on our knees: not in assumption, but in repentance29—turning from our own brilliance and asking what God sees, what God desires, what God is already doing.
We must enter the lives of those we serve not as researchers or strategists, but as participants—bearing burdens, making space, loving deeply. We must design as Christ did: from within, at cost, by grace.30
We must listen together—not just to users or stakeholders, but to the Spirit speaking through Scripture, through the body of Christ, through the cries of the world.31 We must discern. Together. In communion.
And we must trust that the Spirit of Christ is indeed leading—often in places we do not expect, through people we do not understand, in ways we cannot systematize, predict, or control.
This is not comfortable. But it is faithful.
Because those born of the Spirit are like the wind—untraceable, unmanageable, and free.
Exactly as He intended.
Spirit-born people are led by God, not by systems."The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” —John 3:8. Those born of the Spirit are not merely influenced by God—they are carried by Him. Their movements are not self-directed or predictable by institutional logic. Just as the wind cannot be traced to a single source or destination, Spirit-born people confound the categories of linear planning. Their lives echo the freedom, unpredictability, and divine origin of the Spirit who gives them new birth.
The Kingdom confounds systems of control. "The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone." —Psalm 118:22 (cf. Luke 20:17). Human systems tend to protect themselves against unpredictability—even when that unpredictability is divine. Spirit-born people often don’t “fit” institutional frameworks. But in the Kingdom, it is often the unexpected, uncredentialed, or disruptive one whom God raises up. As with Christ himself—rejected by the builders—those who do not conform to worldly norms of control may be the very ones through whom God builds His new foundation.
God’s wisdom is foolishness to the world. "For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength." —1 Corinthians 1:25. Many organizational practices reflect the logic of efficiency, scalability, and control. These may appear wise, but if not submitted to Christ, they can obscure the very movement of the Spirit. True wisdom begins with the fear of the Lord—not with optimization. When we baptize secular logic, we risk silencing the divine logic that upends human schemes.
The Spirit can be grieved, resisted, and quenched. "Do not quench the Spirit." —1 Thessalonians 5:19 "You stiff-necked people... You always resist the Holy Spirit!" —Acts 7:51. God is not absent from organizational life—but He can be resisted. When systems are designed around control and predictability, they often leave no room for the spontaneity and disruption of the Spirit. Scripture warns that it is possible to quench the Spirit’s fire by clinging to human priorities and refusing divine interruption.
Control is a poor substitute for the sovereign grace of Christ. "Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God." —Psalm 20:7. The gospel of grace does not coexist easily with control. What begins as responsible planning can subtly become a form of unbelief: a refusal to entrust ourselves, our work, and our future to the living God. When we substitute systemic control for communion with the Triune God, we trade divine agency for human autonomy. Control is not a neutral tool; it becomes idolatrous when it functionally replaces our dependence on Christ.
Spirit-born fruit cannot be manufactured by performance systems. "Apart from me, you can do nothing." —John 15:5. Success is not the same as faithfulness. The fruits of the Spirit are not outcomes to be engineered; they arise from union with Christ. True knowledge of God—and by extension, true action—is participatory, not mechanistic. When business logic replaces communion with Christ, the result may look successful by worldly standards but remains spiritually hollow. Spirit-born living arises not from systems, but from abiding.
The Spirit disrupts linearity with personal presence. "The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going." —John 3:8. The work of the Spirit resists capture by rational systems or predictable causality. Knowledge of God, and by extension any action that is truly redemptive, emerges from participation in a divine movement—not from logical progression. Spirit-driven creativity reflects this dynamic: it follows the rhythms of communion, not calculation.
Data may inform, but it cannot reveal what only God can unveil. "See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?" —Isaiah 43:19. Human systems of knowledge are inherently limited by time and finitude. While data helps us observe patterns, it cannot anticipate the newness that flows from the freedom of God. The future belongs not to predictive models but to divine initiative. The new thing is not deduced—it is revealed.
True knowing begins in Christ, who makes God known. "No one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him." —Matthew 11:27. Revelation is not propositional but personal. God is not an object of study but a Subject who reveals Himself in Jesus Christ. Therefore, knowing—and designing—rightly begins not in human initiative but in divine encounter. Christ is both the content and the context of true knowledge. Every faithful act of creativity must flow from this incarnational center.
Innovation as participation in the Triune life. "Through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit." —Ephesians 2:18. Believers do not relate to God from a distance, but are drawn into the very life of the Trinity through their union with Christ. This means that all faithful work—including design—is not merely informed by Christian principles but emerges from shared communion with God. In Christ, we are not simply inspired; we are included. Innovation, then, becomes a response to grace, not a performance of our own brilliance.
The Kingdom resists domestication. "But the Jerusalem that is above is free, and she is our mother." —Galatians 4:26. Spirit-born creation does not mimic the patterns of worldly production. Works shaped by God’s redemptive purposes will resist standardization and commodification. They reflect a Kingdom that is “not built by human hands”—a new order breaking into the present. What is redemptive cannot be optimized. It is given, not produced.
Faithful creativity is not technique-driven but communion-born. "Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine." —John 15:4. All forms of rationalism that seek to control outcomes apart from participation in Christ ought to be rejected. True knowing—and therefore true making—arises in the context of abiding relationship. Creativity rooted in technique yields innovation constrained by its premises. But creativity that flows from communion is free, responsive, and faithful to the One who moves through us.
The Kingdom disrupts worldly logic. "The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed... For, in fact, the kingdom of God is among you." —Luke 17:20–21. The Kingdom of God does not emerge from human systems but breaks in through the incarnate Christ. Its movement cannot be grasped through sociological insight or strategic models—it is the sovereign unfolding of God’s redemptive will. The Kingdom is not extrapolated from trends; it is received through revelation. That is why it resists prediction and disorients human logic—it reveals what only grace could.
Redemptive creativity resists reduction. "Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine..." —Ephesians 3:20. The movement of the Spirit cannot be domesticated by operational benchmarks. Spirit-born work often exceeds the categories we have for evaluating success. When we attempt to constrain creativity within pre-structured KPIs, we risk misidentifying the fruit of God’s work. Redemptive creativity is not measurable because it originates in a divine logic not subject to human parameters.
Revelation is personal, not propositional. "No one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him." —Matthew 11:27. The knowledge of God is never abstract or systemic. We do not arrive at God through conceptual structures but through the concrete self-revelation of God in Jesus Christ. Theology is personal before it is doctrinal. Any attempt to design, lead, or innovate apart from that relational encounter is already off course.
Religion replaces revelation when we domesticate the Spirit. "They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator." —Romans 1:25. Institutional religion often replaces divine revelation with human constructs. What begins as Spirit-led can calcify into performative management. The risk is that we no longer follow Christ—we follow a strategy that uses His name. When we brand the Kingdom, we cease to witness to it.
Communion is the epistemic center. "No one comes to the Father except through me." —John 14:6. True knowledge of God arises not from abstraction or speculation, but from actual participation in the life of God through Christ and by the Spirit. Communion is not a metaphor—it is the only true basis for epistemology. We know God only through God, from within the circle of His own self-knowing. Knowledge begins in participation, not cognition.
Faith misplaced becomes idolatry. "Cursed is the one who trusts in man, who draws strength from mere flesh..." —Jeremiah 17:5. Even well-intentioned faith, when placed in human constructs rather than God’s revelation, becomes idolatrous. When risk models become a surrogate for trust in God, we’ve inverted the posture of faith. Faith does not rest on empirical validation but on God’s act of unveiling. Our systems cannot bear the weight of trust intended only for the Triune God.
God cannot be systematized. "For who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?" —1 Corinthians 2:16. Any theological model that treats God as an object among objects, a variable in a cosmic equation, is to be rejected. God is not the highest being in a category of beings—He is Being itself. To integrate Him as a “factor” in our logic is to dethrone Him from His ontological primacy. God is not a concept. He is the living Lord.
Utility is not a test of truth. "The world through its wisdom did not know God..." —1 Corinthians 1:21. The truth of God’s revelation cannot be judged by its apparent usefulness. Revelation is not validated by results—it is validated by the self-authenticating presence of Christ. The moment we require that God's Word "work" according to human metrics, we abandon divine wisdom for a baptized pragmatism.
What once revealed can begin to conceal. "You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe your own traditions!" —Mark 7:9. The Church often fossilizes past moments of revelation into rigid structures, mistaking them for the eternal form of God’s will. The Spirit is dynamic, not static. What began as obedience can become obstruction if we refuse to let go when God moves on. This is not a dismissal of faithfulness—but a reminder that faithfulness requires openness to fresh revelation.
Prayer, discernment, and revelation form the architecture of faithful innovation. "Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know." —Jeremiah 33:3. Theology—and by extension, any faithful practice—is an act of listening. Prayer is the posture, discernment the practice, and revelation the source. True innovation is not driven by ingenuity but drawn forth by participation in the Triune life. Anything less risks becoming a form of strategic idolatry.
Christ is not one authority among many. "He is before all things, and in him all things hold together." —Colossians 1:17. Christian thinking must always be Christologically conditioned. Systems can be useful, but when they’re not submitted to the living Christ, they quickly become totalizing. We don’t fit Jesus into our governance model. We yield the model to His living Lordship—and that means holding it loosely, in openness to disruption.
The Spirit offends our systems, not because He is chaotic—but because He is free. "The wind blows where it wishes... you do not know where it comes from or where it is going." —John 3:8. The Holy Spirit cannot be controlled or mapped. Divine grace is not the irrational opposite of order; it is the free and sovereign self-giving of God that shatters all attempts to manage Him. Christ-centered design, then, is not rebellious—it is yielded. And such yielding will always seem unruly to control-based systems.
Christ alone orients. "Fix your eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith." —Hebrews 12:2. Christ is the Alpha and Omega not only of salvation but of knowing, acting, and being. Tools like strategy may help us navigate, but only Christ defines the destination. Christ is not a starting point within a larger frame; He is the frame.
Order is personal, not procedural. "Let all things be done decently and in order." —1 Corinthians 14:40. “Order” is not a rigid structure but the harmony of being rightly aligned in Christ. The New Testament’s concept of order (τάξις) is not bureaucratic—it’s deeply relational. It means doing things in a way that reflects the character and peace of God. The Spirit brings order, not because He supports control, but because He brings communion.
Grace resists domestication. "You stiff-necked people...you always resist the Holy Spirit!" —Acts 7:51. We cannot domesticate the gospel. We want the Spirit to move—but within our limits. The Spirit’s movement is not additive—it is disruptive. His order is not simply “higher.” It is other. It cannot be anticipated by best practices—it must be received through surrender.
Faithfulness is covenantal, not commercial. “Now it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful.” —1 Corinthians 4:2. Faithfulness, in Scripture, is not the reliable execution of tasks but covenantal fidelity to a Person. It is relational loyalty grounded in God’s trustworthiness. Efficiency is not the enemy, but it is not the measure. Faithfulness is not a metric—it is a mode of being rooted in God’s faithfulness to us. It does not guarantee success by worldly standards. It walks in obedience regardless of outcomes.
All knowledge of God begins in repentance. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.” —Proverbs 9:10. Repentance is not merely moral; it is epistemological. To repent is to lay down the illusion that we can understand or solve without God. This is “epistemological repentance”—a radical reorientation of mind and method away from autonomy and toward divine self-disclosure. All true innovation in Christ begins by relinquishing self-confidence and living from the self-disclosure of God.
Christ designed redemption from within. “Though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich.” —2 Corinthians 8:9. Christ did not save from above or afar. He entered into the fabric of our existence, designing the new creation from within the brokenness of the old. This is incarnational penetration—the redemptive logic of becoming what He seeks to heal. Any design that claims to be Christ-centered must likewise take on the cost, proximity, and grace of incarnation.
Discernment happens in communion. “Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace.” —Colossians 3:15. We do not discern in isolation. The Spirit speaks through the community of believers, through Scripture rightly handled, and even through the groaning of the world (Rom. 8:22–27). The Church is the interpretive community in which Christ’s voice becomes intelligible. Design discernment is not merely user research; it is shared spiritual attention to what God is already revealing.