Design Theology

The Architect Behind the Architecture

The Gospel of John begins by taking us back to creation. John tells us that all things were made through the Word, and then reveals that the Word became flesh.

He's talking about Jesus.

Most people know Jesus as Savior, Lord, or Teacher. But there's something important about recognizing Him as the One through whom all things were created.

He's the Architect behind the design.

And if Jesus is the Architect, His words reveal more than instructions about how we should live. They reveal how life was designed to work.

That changes the questions we bring to Scripture.

Instead of asking only what a passage tells us to believe or do, we can also ask what it reveals about how God designed us to function.

• What does creation reveal about the original design?
• What do Jesus' teachings reveal about our inner life?
• And what can we discover about that design by examining what He came to restore?

Those questions have opened up relationships and patterns in Scripture that I had never recognized before.

A Discovery I Wasn't Looking For

For decades, I had been studying Scripture and discovering patterns that helped me understand life differently.

But while writing the original draft of Breath of Life, I encountered what seemed like a simple question.

What is the soul?

I couldn't reconcile the explanations I'd inherited with what I was finding in Scripture.

So I kept investigating.

For months, I developed possible explanations, examined relationships, and tested different models against the Design Text.

Many of those models failed. Some looked promising until I examined how they fit with other parts of Scripture. Then I'd recognize a contradiction and have to go back and start again.

Eventually, I was about ready to give up.

I began wondering whether this was simply one of those things God hadn't intended us to fully understand, something we were meant to embrace by faith.

And I was prepared to leave it there.

But then a single conversation, followed by a fresh insight into Genesis 2:7, changed everything.

Suddenly, relationships I had struggled to reconcile began fitting together.

I started recognizing how different parts of human spirit life functioned in relation to one another.

I hadn't set out to develop an architecture. I was trying to answer a question so I could finish writing a book.

But what emerged was far more than an explanation of the soul.

I began recognizing a coherent structure underlying human spirit life.

I eventually called that developing understanding Inner Man Architecture.

That breakthrough didn't mean every question was answered or that the investigation was finished. There were still relationships to examine, conclusions to test, and discoveries to refine.

That work continues today.

From Understanding the Design to Living by It

For me, the most important discoveries have never been merely intellectual.

Recognizing my identity as a spirit man has opened my eyes to the practical application of the Word more than anything else I've learned.

I am spirit, expressing life through a physical body. And through spiritual birth, the Holy Spirit comes to abide within us.

That means I wasn't designed to depend on the people or circumstances around me for the Love, Peace, and Joy God intended me to experience.

I was designed to be led by His Spirit.

And being led by the Spirit is a complete reorientation of how we govern our lives.

Instead of allowing what someone says or does, or what happens around us, to determine what's happening within us, we can learn to give greater weight to the Holy Spirit's abiding presence.

That doesn't mean life's challenges disappear. It means they no longer have to determine how we respond or what other people experience through us.

This discovery has changed more than what I'm able to receive from God.

It's changing how I express His Love, Peace, and Joy in my relationships and everyday life.

And that's where the architecture becomes practical.