Have you ever wondered how it's possible to explore the depths of faith, find the kingdom, and yet overlook the role of the Holy Spirit? This episode of Seek Go Create challenges common assumptions about religion, correction, and the true center of the Christian life. The discussion explores how visible structures, traditions, and politics can distract from the transforming presence of the Spirit—and asks what it really means to live as a Spirit-filled people. If you've ever felt like something central is missing in your spiritual journey, this episode will invite you to look again.

“Correction is not the center. Jesus Christ is the center.” - Tim Winders

Access all show and episode resources HERE

Episode Resources:

NT90 Hub – This is the central website for the 90-day New Testament reading plan, with downloadable, printable plans, background information, and links to all episodes and resources.

Episode Highlights:

00:00 Correction Is Not Center

00:45 NT90 Series Setup

02:33 Kingdom Beyond Structures

04:21 Limits of Correction

07:10 Spirit Holds Story

09:52 Threads of the Spirit

11:48 Familiar Spirit Overlooked

13:56 Unseen Reality vs Substitutes

16:45 Spirit Filled People

18:25 Spirit for Daily Life

19:50 Look Again Next Steps

20:56 Download Plan Farewell

I was reading the Bible for correction, rapture theory, church systems,

political religion, assumptions I had carried into the text.

That work mattered, but correction is not the center.

At some point, a better question showed up.

How did I find the kingdom and still say so little about the Holy Spirit?

Maybe I did not miss the Spirit because the Spirit was absent.

Maybe I missed the Spirit because the Spirit was holding

the whole story together

hello, everyone.

Welcome back to SeekGo Creator.

Welcome to SeekGo Create if this is your first time here.

This is Tim Winders, and, I'm in the midst of this massive series, standalone

topics, but things are are kinda tying together because I have recently gone

through the entire New Testament.

I did it, a few months back.

I did it in 90 days, and I did it in the order it was written, not the

order that's in most of our Bibles.

I did the order it was written.

I was attempting to read through the New Testament in the best context possible.

I wanted to study the first century and just try to get it in order, and

it's just really been a lot of cool stuff that's come from it And, this

episode and kind of the next few that come with it are something that I'm

concerned that I may have missed out on

And so, uh, I'm just kinda sharing stuff in these episodes, so

I'm hopeful you're enjoying it.

I'm hopeful you're getting something from it.

And I'm hopeful that it's driving you to wanna do similar study yourself.

Not just listen to me, but dig in and study yourself.

And I'd recommend you do that.

You can get the reading plan that I designed and developed at K2M, the

number-- or the letter K, the number two, and the letter M, .foundation.

So it's not .com, it's .foundation,

and then /NT90.

That's for New Testament 90.

So K2M.foundation/NT90, and you can go download the plan.

It's free, and you could get it.

And there's a long version that's pretty detailed with a lot of historical

references and context, and then I think there's a shorter, condensed version.

I encourage you to do that.

See what you find.

The link should be down in the show notes.

Last episode, it got long, but it was good, had a lot of great stuff in it.

We talked about religion and Rome.

Religion is not God's kingdom, and Rome is not God's kingdom.

That's what we identified.

The kingdom does not become more real because a building gets larger,

a platform gets louder, a candidate wins, or a government passes a law.

That could be good, it could be fine, but it really-- that's

not a kingdom type of result.

A lot of us have been trained to read the kingdom through visible structures.

If our side wins, God is moving.

If our side loses, the devil is winning.

If our candidate wins, the country has been saved, hallelujah.

If our candidate loses, the country is doomed, and that old devil is winning,

and oh no, what's gonna happen now?

But the New Testament doesn't teach us to think that way.

That's not what it says.

The first Christians could not control Rome.

They couldn't elect Caesar.

Nobody elected Caesar.

They could not appoint judges.

They could not pass laws.

And yet the kingdom grew.

That leaves us then with a harder question.

If the kingdom, if the kingdom does not depend on those visible structures,

how does it live in the world?

The New Testament answer is not better branding.

It's not better political access.

It's not a cleaner church machine or a bigger, more awesome new building.

It's not a, an incredible parking lot ministry and a bigger parking lot and

multiple services and online presence.

It's none of that.

The answer is the Spirit the Holy Spirit.

And I wanna be careful here because when I started at the beginning and did our,

our hook, I talked about correction.

Correction isn't bad.

Correction can be an act of love, and many of us, myself, you, all of us,

there are times when we need correction.

When a teaching harms people, correction matters.

When a system hides Jesus, correction matters.

When there is abuse and things going on, and we've seen a lot of that in our

world today, correction is important.

When a tradition makes the text say something it does

not say, correction matters.

Some things need to be named, and they need to be corrected.

In this series, I've done that a lot, and my natural tendency is to

go towards what's wrong and trying to identify what's wrong and naming it,

and we've named a lot in this series.

we've looked at rapture theory and asked whether the New Testament

was really teaching an escape plan.

We've looked at the end-of-the-world teaching and asked whether Jesus was

talking about our generation when he said in his generation or his.

We looked at the church systems and asked whether the New Testament actually

centers buildings, programs, and religious machinery We looked at political religion

and asked whether Rome can ever become the kingdom by borrowing Christian language

or putting a scripture on, or the sign of the fish on their marketing materials.

Those questions really weren't distractions.

I think they're important.

I think we do have to do those from time to time.

They mattered.

But there is a danger in reading only for correction.

This is me calling myself out here.

If all you do is look for what got added, you can miss what was always there.

If all you do is expose the substitute or look for the problems or the

issues, you can miss the source.

If all you do is tear down false centers, you can forget to ask

what the true center actually is.

And that's where I'm at right now.

I don't regret the correction.

I needed it.

I think others may have needed it too, but the correction is not the center.

Jesus Christ is the center.

The resurrection is the turning point of all of history.

The kingdom is the announcement that came with Jesus and with what

happened at the cross, and the Holy Spirit is the presence that makes the

kingdom real among the people of God.

That is the message that I wanna get across in this episode.

Back during all that we've done with the NT90 series, I was

really tracking major movements.

I was seeing the big arcs that were going on with the New Testament, the

storylines, what was happening, maybe what was missing, things like that.

Jesus and the kingdom, resurrection and the new creation, the old system

and the new, the temple, priesthood, sacrifice, access, Jew and Gentile

becoming one people, salvation as rescue and restoration, not just afterlife.

Those are foundational theological principles that we, as followers

of Christ, need to understand.

The kingdom was larger than I'd been taught originally.

The old system was more complete and done than I had realized.

The temple language is more important than I had noticed.

The Jew and Gentile story was not a side issue.

It was central to the New Testament.

Salvation was not smaller than just personal rescue, but it was bigger

than the way I had often heard it taught And we've talked about a lot

of those in episodes that have led up to what, what I'm doing here.

Those discoveries changed, in many ways, how I read and understood the New

Testament and the scripture and the text.

But as I look back And something came to me recently, and I have

to kinda consider these nudges.

The Holy Spirit was moving through all of them.

If Jesus ascends, how does he remain present?

If the temple system passes away, where does God dwell?

If the kingdom arrives without becoming Rome, how does it move?

Where does it get its power?

If Jew and Gentile become one people, who confirms that?

If the people of God are no longer centered around one building in

Jerusalem, what holds them together?

The answer is the Holy Spirit.

The Spirit was not hiding.

The Spirit was everywhere.

I may have been so focused on what needed correction that I did

not notice the presence quietly holding the story together.

The Spirit was not a side topic.

It was there from the start.

And as I've looked back on my notes, I'm like, "Lord, did I forget something?"

And the Lord has gently said, "No, but it's time to talk about the Holy Spirit."

So let's look at some of the threads that went throughout the New Testament.

Jesus is conceived by the Spirit.

Jesus is anointed by the Spirit.

Jesus is led by the Spirit.

Jesus promises the Helper, the Spirit.

Jesus tells the disciples they will receive power.

Pentecost comes.

Peter preaches.

The Gentiles receive the Spirit before the system even knows what to do with it.

Paul does not describe Christian life as a better set of rules.

He describes life in the Spirit.

The Spirit gives life.

The Spirit bears witness.

The Spirit forms one body.

The Spirit gives gifts.

The Spirit produces fruit.

The Spirit makes the people of God the temple of God.

That is not a side topic.

That is the living presence of God among his people,

Maybe it's why we get off track in some of the political and religious

weeds that we've discussed.

Some of us reduce the Spirit to dramatic moments, tongues, prophecy,

healing, emotion, worship intensity.

I felt, I felt the Spirit.

The Spirit was really moving today.

We narrow it down to that, a certain kind of church service I used to joke during

the '90s, we went to a church and we had electric guitars and we had drums, and I

would joke that the Spirit's really moving today 'cause those drums were rocking.

Hey, I do love drums and I do love guitars.

Others will often reduce the Spirit to a doctrine.

We affirm the Holy Spirit.

We believe in the Trinity.

We have a statement of faith.

We know the right words, and we state it that way.

But the New Testament does not treat the Spirit as either

a spectacle or a footnote.

The Spirit is God present with His people after the resurrection of Jesus.

That changes everything I think the Spirit did not jump out to me as I was

doing the reading, my 90 days of reading.

I don't think it jumped out to me because I already really had a pretty

firm belief in the Spirit going way back to some of those church

services that I just mentioned.

I know that sounds strange, but I think it's true.

The rapture theory that I talked about, it challenged

something that I had been taught.

Church system challenged something that I had practiced, and so I was looking for

something that just didn't feel right in the scriptures, and I was led to that.

Political religion challenged something I had lived near and knew something

was weird or different about that.

Temple language challenged how I read the Bible.

Those felt sort of disruptive.

The Holy Spirit felt familiar, so maybe I accepted the Spirit as

true without tracing how central the Spirit was, that strength,

that power was to the whole story.

That's worth paying attention to.

Familiar things, this is huge.

Think about this, especially as we do our studies and read the scripture.

Familiar things can unfortunately become invisible, and they can get pushed aside.

We can affirm something so quickly that we stop seeing it.

We can say, "Of course, the Spirit matters," and then build systems that

do not need the Spirit to function.

Or we try to force the Spirit to do things that maybe the Spirit, I don't want to say

doesn't want to do or shouldn't be doing.

We can say, "Of course, the Spirit leads," and then organize everything

as if the Spirit can't do it, but we have to do it ourselves.

We can't leave it to God and the Spirit.

We've got to become the Spirit.

Everything around control.

Control, control, control.

We can say, "Of course, the Spirit produces fruit," and then try to

manufacture that fruit through pressure, guilt, politics, branding, or performance.

And that is not just a theological issue.

That is a life issue.

If the Spirit is central to the New Testament, then the Spirit cannot be

peripheral in the life of the church The most powerful realities in the New

Testament are not always easy to measure.

The risen Christ reigns, but not from a visible throne in Jerusalem.

The kingdom is here, but not as a government people can point to.

The Holy Spirit is given, but not as a building party,

denomination, brand, or platform.

That may be why we keep building visible substitutes, buildings,

systems, titles, programs, political movements, legal boundaries, end-time

charts, explanations, doctrinal tests.

Some visible things can serve the kingdom.

A building can serve people.

A program can organize care.

A leader can help shepherd.

A law can restrain things that harm people.

A doctrine can protect truth.

But visible things become dangerous when they replace the unseen

reality they were meant to serve.

A building is not the temple where God resides.

A program is not life.

A leader is not the mediator between you and your Creator.

A law is not the transformation and the healing and the protection

that we can have A doctrine is not the same as walking in the Spirit.

The New Testament keeps pushing us back to the living reality.

Christ is risen.

The kingdom is here.

The Spirit has been gifted to us.

That is not less than the structures we built.

That is stronger than anything we have built and ever can build.

So here's the honest confession that I will make, and probably

many of us need to make.

I don't want to spend the next season only arguing, only

arguing against what God added.

That may be needed, but it's not enough.

If all I do is prove what the kingdom is not, I may still miss the better question.

What did the New Testament actually give us?

It gave us the risen Christ.

It gave us the present kingdom of God.

It gave us the Holy Spirit.

It gave us a people formed by presence, not by pressure.

A people who could live inside Rome without becoming Rome.

A people who could gather without making the building the center.

A people who could cross ethnic, social, and religious boundaries

because God had given the same Spirit.

That is not an abstract idea.

That is the life of the kingdom So what is, what did this mean then?

And then we'll look at what it means for us.

The first followers of Jesus were not being handed a new religious brand.

They were becoming the Spirit-filled people of God

after the resurrection of Jesus.

For the followers of Jesus, the temple was no longer the center.

Rome was not the center.

Jesus was Lord, and the Spirit made His presence real among His people.

That mattered in their world.

They were not powerful people.

They were not protected people.

They were not building a new empire with Christian language.

They were learning how to live as the people of God by the Spirit of God.

Where does the modern misread break?

Where do we mess up?

We often reduce the Spirit to emotion, gifts, worship style, personal

guidance, or denominational identity, or really just church identity.

I go to this church.

My preacher is blank.

We only preach the Word of God or whatever.

That often becomes the identity.

Then other Christians reduce the Spirit to a doctrine that

they affirm but rarely notice.

Both readings, both actions, both realities can miss the story.

The Spirit is not an add-on to the gospel.

The Spirit is how the risen Christ remains present with His people, with us.

What does it still mean for us today?

Specifically, how we treat people.

And we know this, we say this, we repeat this, but the spirit forms love,

patience, kindness, and self-control where arguments and fighting and hatred cannot.

How we do religion in church, the building can serve the people,

but the people are the temple.

When they walk into the building, they're the temple.

When they walk out of the building, they're still the temple.

It determines and impacts how we do politics.

Government can restrain behavior, but it cannot grow the fruit of the spirit.

It also impacts how we do business and work.

The spirit forms integrity when nobody is watching.

It's that little something that says, that's not the way you operate.

That's not what you do with the money that's not yours.

That's the spirit.

The spirit shapes how we treat people, how we do church, how we engage

politics, and how we work when no visible structure, no laws, no guidelines

can create those things for us.

I do not think I missed the Holy Spirit because the Spirit was missing.

I think I may have missed the Spirit because I was looking so hard at

the things that needed correction.

Like I said earlier, that correction mattered, but

correction is not the center.

Jesus Christ is the center.

The resurrection is that turning point of all time.

The kingdom is the announcement.

The Holy Spirit is the presence that makes the kingdom real among the people of God.

So maybe the next step is not to argue harder.

Maybe the next step is to look again.

The Holy Spirit was there the whole time.

Next time, we're gonna walk through that story, the story of the Holy

Spirit, from the Gospels to Acts to Paul, and we'll ask what the New

Testament actually says the Spirit does.

I hope you join us.

We're gonna do that over the next few episodes, next episode specifically.

I do want to encourage you to grab this reading plan.

Everything that I'm doing now is spinning off from me taking the time, number one,

to build this reading plan, and number two, to then go through it myself.

And my desire, my strongest desire, is for those that are interested, those that are

listening in, to do this study yourself.

Don't piggyback on someone else's reading and someone else's study, mine included.

Not your preacher, teachers, not somebody on YouTube like me or something else.

Do it yourself.

You can go get this plan.

I developed it for someone like you that wants to have it handed to you

so that you can open your Bible and start reading it in order and context.

Go to k2m.foundation/nt90.

Download it.

Just get started.

Try to do it in 90 days.

If you can't, if you miss a few days, just stay on track and keep going.

You could catch up.

If what you're taught doesn't match what you read, my

recommendation is trust the text.

This is Tim Winders.

Keep seeking.

That's why we call this Seek Go Create.

Keep seeking, keep digging.

See you on the next one.