Sample Chapter from a New Book

Draft From The Whole Dove: The Spirit of Power, Love, and Mental Health

My wife, Terri, and I are crafting a new book about the Person and Ministry of the Holy Spirit. We hope to help present a more well-rounded understanding of what He is really like. One working title is The Whole Dove: The Spirit of Power, Love, and Mental Health.

Here is a draft of one of the chapters. We’d love to hear your feedback!

Chapter 13 — Doing from Done: Begin Again A Devotional Reflection on Missional Rest and Relational Rebirth

Terri: Most of us were trained to believe that fruitfulness comes from misguided effort. Effort to earn God’s favor. To stay useful. To keep God interested in using us.

Michael: I lived like that for decades — even after knowing liberty in Christ. But recently, God has been rewiring something deep in the foundation of the Church. He is shifting His people away from the exhaustion of performance and anchoring us in two profound, liberating realities: Done and Begin Again. Together, these truths are shaping how we see calling, community, and the future of our faith.

The DONE Empowers the Doing

Michael: When we look at the world around us, the barriers keeping people from Jesus seem monumental. We face complex questions about sexual identity, hypocrisy in the Church, political idolatry, the reality of evil, addiction, and deep disillusionment with power. Many carry a quiet fear that perhaps none of this faith is real anymore.

But we cannot address these profound struggles with dry theological arguments, religious jargon, or hostile debates. The Kingdom of God advances through incarnational beauty, alive with truth. We are called to offer a Spirit-breathed apologetic—one that does not strain or strive with frantic energy.

Terri: This kind of steady, joyful work only happens when we look up and realize that the work is already DONE. When Jesus declared on the cross, “It is finished,” He meant it. We aren’t scrambling to earn anything or to manufacture a revival in our own strength. We are simply living out what Christ has already completed.

Michael: This is the power source of the Church: the finished work of Jesus. We don’t need to try harder. We are invited to go back 2,000 years to bring forward the reality of His victory. The DONE empowers the doing.

When believers live from this place of restful authority, people begin to flee the grip of the hell in which they have been imprisoned. They don’t flee because they are driven by fear-based sermons, but because love has found them. They finally know where home is. When the Church lives out the finished work of Jesus authentically, the grip of hell literally shrinks.

Reconfiguration, Not Just Deconstruction

Terri: Because we live from a place that is already DONE, we have the freedom to BEGIN AGAIN. Across the global Church right now, God is doing a sacred work. He is gently removing what no longer serves. We see outdated buildings, systems, and structures of the past fading away, and believers are quietly sorting through what remains: What do we carry forward? What must we leave behind?

Michael: Many have called this cultural moment “deconstruction,” but the Spirit is actually leading us into reconfiguration. It is as if the standard, noisy lines of communication have been temporarily taken down so that the Body of Christ can find its true “cells” again.

We are being reshaped into small, authentic communities of belonging. We are discovering how to be a true spiritual family—forming tribes without the ugly superiority of tribalism that so often corrupts religious cultures.

Not Counting and the Holy Boldness of Hebrews

Terri: At the center of this reconfiguration is an ancient, beautiful song of the Spirit. It is the truth of 2 Corinthians 5:19: “God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself, not counting people’s sins against them.”

Michael: When that phrase—not counting—echoes in our hearts, it reframes everything. Sin loses center stage. The Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world, becomes our total focus. It isn’t the erasing of truth; it is the reframing of it. The emphasis shifts entirely from what we must do to what He has already done.

Hebrews 9 comes alive here—Christ’s once-for-all sacrifice stands as the eternal YES of God. And out of that flows a holy boldness found in Hebrews 10 that many believers have never tasted: “Therefore, brothers and sisters, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus… let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith.”

Confidence. Full assurance. These are not emotional highs—they are covenant privileges.

Terri: Under the old covenant, access was restricted, mediated, and distant. But now, the veil has been torn not just historically but relationally. The distance has been removed from God’s side completely. Yet many still approach Him as if the veil were intact—hesitant, self-conscious, unsure.

Michael: Why? Because we feel a barrier and assume it is divine reluctance, when in reality, it is our own internalized accusation. Practically, living from the DONE means you can come to God without editing yourself. No spiritual performance. No careful wording to appear acceptable. You are already welcomed.

Draw near—not as a guest hoping to be received, but as a son or daughter already brought near by blood that spoke once and still speaks.

Terri: This restores the true meaning of repentance. It is no longer a weapon in the mouths of angry preachers. Repentance becomes a softening. A turning toward love. A profound, joyful change of mind that simply becomes obvious to those who encounter God’s goodness.

The Return to Apostolic Presence

Terri: The Spirit isn’t forming us into celebrity Christians. He’s forming a Body — quiet, radiant, available. People who are not shaped by fear, outrage, or exhaustion. But who are deeply rooted in joy.

Michael: And we are sent, just as Jesus prayed in John 17:18: “As You sent Me into the world, so I have sent them”. We are sent not to conquer the culture, and not to escape it, but to inhabit it. Embedded in our neighborhoods. Rooted in Presence. Living at the speed of love.

Terri: The future of the Church is ancient. It is Acts without nostalgia. Genesis without the curse. John 17 in the flesh.

Michael: A people not panicked — because they live from DONE. A people not paralyzed — because they’re free to BEGIN AGAIN.

Terri: You can’t manipulate someone who lives from done. You can’t shame someone who knows how to begin again.

Michael: These people won’t be flashy. But they’ll be faithful. They won’t be afraid of the dark. Because they’ve seen the dawn.

Rehumanizing Practice — Live One Moment From Done

Terri: Pause right now and ask: What would shift in your posture, your pace, your presence… if you really believed it’s already finished?

Michael: How would you parent? Create? Rest? Speak truth? Say yes — or no? Live one moment today… not as a performance, but as a prayer. From Done. And ready to Begin Again.