From Ashes to Crowns

What does it mean for the church to be truly dangerous? Not dangerous in a harmful way, but dangerous to darkness, dangerous to systems that keep people from knowing God, dangerous to the forces that hold people captive to sin and despair.
The reality is simple yet profound: a church operating according to God's Word becomes a threat to everything that opposes His kingdom. Jesus Himself was a constant challenge to religious culture and worldly systems. His very existence threatened the status quo so much that religious leaders conspired to put Him on the cross.
Today, we face a similar call—not to blend in with culture or make Christianity palatable to the masses, but to walk authentically with God in a way that brings light into darkness, one life at a time.

The Battle Against Strongholds
Second Corinthians 10:3-5 reveals a critical truth about spiritual warfare: "We are human, but we don't wage war as humans do. We use God's mighty weapons, not worldly weapons, to knock down the strongholds of human reasoning and to destroy false arguments. We destroy every proud obstacle that keeps people from knowing God."
This passage illuminates our primary mission. We're not battling flesh and blood—we're battling supernatural strongholds that have been erected to keep people from truly knowing God. These strongholds exist not just "out there" in the world, but sometimes within church culture itself.
When people know God—really know Him—everything changes. If we understand His righteousness, we grasp our need for a Savior. If we comprehend His power, our faith transforms. If we recognize His love, our identity crisis ends.
The identity struggles plaguing our generation stem largely from not knowing God. We cannot know who we are until we know the One who made us. When Jesus asked His disciples, "Who do you say that I am?" and Peter answered, "You are the Christ," Jesus could then tell Peter who he was. Revelation of God precedes revelation of self.

The Greatest News Ever Told
What we carry isn't just good news—it's the greatest news in all of history and eternity.
Isaiah 61:1-3 declares: "The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners... to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair."
These aren't empty words or poetic exaggerations. This is the transformative power available to every person who encounters Christ.
Consider the imagery: ashes represent total devastation—what remains after everything meaningful has been destroyed. Yet God exchanges those ashes for a crown of beauty, signifying sonship and daughterhood in His kingdom. This isn't about making bad people slightly better. This is about raising the dead to life, about taking broken souls imprisoned by sin and making them "oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of His splendor."
The world is filled with people living in ashes—broken families, addiction, purposelessness, despair. God wants to exchange every ash heap for royal identity. That's the privilege of evangelism: watching lives forever transformed as they encounter the living God.

From Consumers to Disciples
Somewhere along the journey, the church exchanged disciple-making for member-recruiting. We've settled for converts when Jesus commanded us to make disciples.
Matthew 28:18-20 records Jesus' final instructions: "I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth. Therefore go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you."
Discipleship requires investment. It's not a "see you in heaven" transaction but a journey of transformation. True disciples don't just attend—they participate. They move from consuming to distributing, from childish demands to sacrificial service, from easily swayed to grounded in conviction.
This shift matters enormously. The greatest harvest field for false religions isn't the unchurched—it's Christians who know just enough to be dangerous to themselves but not enough to stand firm. We must be people grounded in what we believe and in the One we believe in.
Discipleship transforms spectators into world-changers. It moves us from "my life, my will" to "new life, His will." From secondhand knowledge to authentic relationship with God. From religious practices to faith-filled convictions.

Living Trophies of Grace
The woman at the well provides a powerful picture of evangelism's potential. An outcast, an adulteress, someone who avoided her own community—she encountered Jesus at the hottest part of the day when no one else would be around.
Jesus didn't avoid her. He revealed who He was and what He knew about her life. That encounter transformed her so completely that she ran back to the very people she'd been avoiding and told them about Jesus. Because of her testimony, an entire town came out to meet Him.
One trophy of grace, passionate about Jesus, can change cities and nations, workplaces and schools.
1 Timothy 1:16 captures this beautifully: "God had mercy on me so that Christ Jesus could use me as a prime example of His great patience with even the worst of sinners. Then others will realize that they too can believe in Him and receive eternal life."
Every believer is a trophy of God's grace. Our transformed lives become evidence that He can save anyone, change anyone, use anyone.

The Call to Action
2 Corinthians 5:14-15 declares: "Christ's love compels us. Since we believe that Christ died for all, we also believe that we have all died to our old life. He died for everyone so that those who receive His new life will no longer live for themselves. Instead, they will live for Christ who died and was raised for them."
We're not making bad people good—we're making dead people alive in Christ. And God has given us "this task of reconciling people to Him" (v. 18). We are Christ's ambassadors, and God makes His appeal through us.
Our message isn't "try harder and be better." Our message is "come back to God." Reconciliation means restoring a broken relationship. God isn't looking for drones or an ant farm—He's looking for His sons and daughters to come home, reconciled through Christ.
There's a world waking up today in the midst of their sin—in hangovers, in empty pursuits, in despair despite having everything the world offers. They're still destined for hell without Christ. We're not better than them, but by God's grace, we've been saved so they can hear about Him.

The time has come for the church to wreak havoc on darkness, to be dangerously passionate about the Jesus who lives within us. When we're truly passionate about what we believe, it makes sense. To be apathetic about it is confusing.
If He is who He says He is—and He is—we need to be set on fire with the privilege of pointing others to Him.