Justin just got back from the trip of a lifetime: walking the seven churches of Revelation, all the way to Patmos, with his dad. Dave and Scott grabbed him while it was still fresh, and this one's a tangent worth taking.

Start with the dad. Lloyd Stice grew up a sharecropper's son outside Wellington, Texas, in a four-room house with eight people, no electricity until second or third grade, no running water, and everybody out picking cotton. He's about to turn eighty, has two knee replacements, and averaged thirteen thousand steps a day on this trip without complaining once. Justin will tell you he's not sure he got that kind of grit.

Then there's the story Lloyd told the tour group in Laodicea. Twenty years in as a top paint salesman, he'd been fighting a call into ministry. The morning he finally surrendered, he felt the Lord say neither hot nor cold. That night, a revival preacher opened Revelation 3, the letter to Laodicea. Lloyd traded a big house in Amarillo for a two-bedroom apartment in Wilmore, Kentucky.

Here's what standing in that place changed. Justin grew up hearing that lukewarm means not on fire enough for Jesus. But Laodicea sat between hot spring water piped in from Hierapolis and cold, refreshing water from Colossae. Lukewarm isn't a mood. It's a useless faith. It was never about volume. It was about being so rich, so self-sufficient, and so comfortable that you don't need God for anything.

That's why the trip landed where it did. Justin had been running on mission fatigue, asking what are we even doing. Then he read what John wrote to churches under real pressure and saw that Revelation isn't mainly a timeline of what's coming. It's a call to live the kingdom now, in the middle of Babylon, as a different kind of people. Same problems as the first century. Same idols, new names.

So here's the question to carry out of this one. Where are you still keeping a foot in the guild, the job, the paycheck, the identity you'd have to loosen your grip on if you fully trusted Him? Know what it meant before you decide what it means for you.

This one's not a teaching episode. It's an invitation.

On October 22nd, Kingdom CO-OP is hosting its first ever fundraiser gala: Harvest of Hope.
And if you've ever wondered what Kingdom CO-OP actually does beyond the parts you've personally run into, a meal, some clothes, this conversation is the fullest picture we've ever put into one place.

Justin gets honest about it: fundraising used to scare him. He didn't want to ask people for money. But somewhere along the way that shifted. "God's not short on cash," he says now, and watching people steward what they've been given, generously, without being asked twice, has changed how he thinks about the whole thing.

Here's what your ticket actually funds. A Sunday night meal that feeds about 125 people, no charge, no strings. Hope Clothes, which gives away more than 25,000 items of clothing a year. And Hope for the Hub, a job training and placement program that's been paused since funding fell through, the one Justin's most eager to get back online, because it doesn't just feed somebody for a night. It changes the trajectory of their whole life.

All of it runs out of a building that's almost a hundred years old, gifted to Kingdom CO-OP after Asbury Methodist Church closed its doors. When they got the keys, there were snacks from the eighties still in the cabinets. Now it houses fifteen different ministries who need a place to work out of, not somebody to run their operation for them, just a room, some resources, and someone saying, "What do you need? How can we help?"

That's the whole idea behind the name, actually. Kingdom CO-OP, like a small-town farmers' co-op. Nobody's lording over anybody. Everybody just pools what they've got so the whole harvest goes further.

So here's the invitation: come out to Adelphos Wine Cellars on October 22nd at 6:30. Wear your pearl snaps, wear your pearls, it's West Texas, not a tuxedo required. Eat some Cast Iron Grill, listen to Junior and Micah Vasquez play, and see with your own eyes what God's actually doing in this city. Then decide what part you want to play in it.

https://harvestofhope.kingdomco-op.com/landing-page#about

Justin, Dave, and Scott read the whole thing out loud this week: the actual Beatitudes, Matthew 5, verses 3 through 12.

Not a preview. Not a paraphrase. Just Jesus' own words.

And here's the first honest reaction most people have reading them: I suck. I'm not poor in spirit. I'm not mourning. I'm not meek. I could never live up to this.

Good news: that was never the assignment. There's not a single verb of command anywhere in the Beatitudes. Jesus never says "go be this." He's doing something else entirely. As one of the guys puts it, if you've ever wondered what Jesus looked like, go read the Beatitudes. That's his self-portrait, and he's inviting you into it, not grading you against it.

Even better: this was never written to you alone. Theologian Stanley Hauerwas calls the Sermon on the Mount "the constitution of a people," not a heroic ethic for isolated individuals. You can't live it out solo. That's not a flaw in the plan. That's the plan. Somewhere in your community, someone is poor in spirit. Somewhere, someone is mourning. Somewhere, someone is showing mercy. Together, you're the self-portrait.

Justin gets honest about the first time he read this list as a brand new believer, decided it was impossible, and landed on "blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness." He didn't try to manufacture that hunger himself. He just prayed, "Lord, make me hungry." That prayer's been getting answered ever since.

So here's what's true whether you feel it yet or not: an inheritance, a comfort, a kingdom, these aren't rewards for the people who figure it out. They're promises for the people who show up broken and let Jesus form something in them they couldn't build on their own.

Read the Beatitudes yourself this week before we come back and go through them one at a time. Come honest. Come as you are. That's apparently the whole point.

Justin, Dave, and Scott spent thirty minutes on one word this episode. One word. And by the end, you'll understand why.

The word is blessed, the very first word of the Beatitudes, the doorway into the whole Sermon on the Mount. Ask most people in West Texas what blessed means and you'll get the same answer: I got the parking spot. I got the raise. Hashtag blessed. It's commodity language. It's about what you've acquired.

That's not what Jesus meant.

The Greek word is makarios, and in its original context it described the life of the gods. Not what the gods had. What the gods were.

So when Jesus opens his most famous sermon with "blessed are the poor in spirit," he's not describing a transaction.

He's painting a self-portrait, and inviting you into it.

It's not about what you acquire. It's about who you're becoming.

There's a woman who used to work the counter at a McDonald's Dave frequented years ago. Every single time you asked how she was doing, she said the same thing: blessed. Older in life, working a register, and she said it like she meant it. That's a woman speaking a different kingdom into existence with one word, regardless of her circumstances.

Here's the line worth sitting with: the kingdom has to be cultivated within us before it can be cultivated through us.

Before there's any doing, there's becoming.

Before there's any output, there's an identity Jesus is remaking in you, whether you've noticed or not.

So here's your assignment this week: two columns.

On one side, write down what your culture, your bank account, your Instagram feed has taught you blessed looks like.

On the other, write down what blessed looks like in the Beatitudes. Be honest about the gap. That's where the unlearning starts

Kinsey Tolley spent years building a career in fashion design. What she didn't expect was for God to ask her to use it.

She prayed for a sign, and told God, “If this is your will for me, put a butterfly in my path.” He did. More than once. That's the kind of confirmation that's hard to explain away, and it's exactly the kind of thing that turns a good idea into an act of obedience.

That obedience became Clothed in Grace, a clothing ministry that isn't really about clothes. It's about confidence. Identity. Women hearing, in a fitting room instead of a sermon, that they're seen and loved by God.

Kinsey talks about what it actually took to get there: patience, obedience, and community, in that order, and how none of it moved on her timeline. “God uses girl math in the sense that He makes it work,” she says, and if you've ever tried to build something on faith instead of a spreadsheet, you know exactly what she means.

At the center of it is one line that could be the whole episode by itself: “Women need these clothes, and God told me to help.” No five-year plan. No perfect strategy. Just obedience, one step at a time.

So here's the question worth carrying into your week: what's the ordinary thing you're good at that you've never once considered God might want to use? Kinsey didn't either, until He made it obvious.

Justin and the guys spend this one in the Sermon on the Mount, which might be the most quoted scripture in the whole Book.

Here's the question underneath the whole conversation: are you in the crowd, or are you a disciple? Jesus preached to both. He fed the crowd. He formed the disciples. The difference was never how much they heard. It was whether they built anything on it.

Because that's the whole point of the sermon: "You gotta be the wise builder." Two guys hear the same words, build two different houses, and only one is left standing when the storm hits. The information was identical. The application wasn't.

That's the tension the guys keep circling: the kingdom of God is a present reality and a future hope at the same time, and understanding it means unlearning almost everything culture has taught you about power, ownership, and who wins. The Beatitudes aren't a checklist. They're a description of what that unlearning actually looks like on a person.

"Information doesn't equal transformation." You can know the Sermon on the Mount by heart and still be building on sand. "Knowing it is not enough; practice it."

So here's the question to sit with after this one: what's one line from the Sermon on the Mount you've heard a hundred times and never actually built your life on? Start there.

Justin and Dave sit down with three guys who've spent their lives thinking hard about what it means to actually live as a citizen of the kingdom: Hugh Halter, Taylor McCall, and Lance Ford.

Here's what they keep circling back to: the kingdom isn't a future hope you're waiting on. It's a present reality you're already standing in, whether you've noticed or not.

That changes how you hear a word like repent.

As one of them puts it, "Repent is an invitation, not a warning."

An invitation into a kingdom that's already breaking into your business, your boardroom, your ordinary Tuesday.

Because discipleship was never supposed to stay inside a church building. It happens on the job, at the dinner table, in a community project like the park at Alton. "All things created are good and sacred," which means there's no part of your life too small or too secular for God to be at work in.

Here's the part that should stop you: whether you know it or not, you are already discipling someone. The only real question is what you're teaching them.

Come for the theology. Stay for the reminder: "Following Jesus has become our obsession."

Takeaways

• Kingdom cultivation involves awareness, intimacy with the Father, dependency on the Spirit, and sacrificial love.
• Living as a kingdom cultivator requires a daily focus on intimacy, dependency, and sacrificial love.
• The conversation provides practical insights into living a kingdom-focused life and making a kingdom difference in everyday activities.

Chapters

• 00:00 Introduction and Recap
• 01:09 The Legends of Missional Church Movement
• 02:07 Relationship with Hugh, Taylor, and Lance
• 07:55 The Kingdom Economy and Identity
• 10:14 The Nuance of Building the Kingdom
• 13:08 The Sacred and the Secular
• 14:27 Life on Life Discipleship
• 18:45 The Messiness of Kingdom Cultivation
• 23:07 The Breadth of the Ecosystem
• 26:46 Practical Application and Conclusion

What do you do when the life you planned falls apart, and the life you didn't plan for turns out to be the one God actually wanted to use?

That's the question underneath this conversation with Kerry and Lynn Miller.

They didn't set out to start a nonprofit. They set out to raise their son.

This episode is their story: the unexpected turns, the hard adjustments, the years spent navigating school systems and special education without knowing where any of it was headed.

A family that kept showing up, kept asking God what came next, and kept getting answered in ways they didn't expect.

That's what led to Turnrow Artisans, a nonprofit where adults with special needs aren't handed busywork.

They're handed purpose. Skills. Work. Dignity.

We talk about uncovering the kingdom in the middle of an ordinary, exhausting, unplanned life. We talk about what it costs to keep showing up when the path isn't clear. We talk about what it means to build something, not because you had it all figured out, but because you refused to stop looking for purpose in the middle of the hard part.

If your own story feels unfinished and unclear right now, this one's for you. Maybe it's the soil.

This episode, Justin sits down with Mitch Rambo.

Guitarist, music teacher, and the brains behind The Stained Glass Society, a venue for local up-and-coming Lubbock musicians to share their original creative work.

Come for the guitar talk, touring stories, and the laughs.

Stay for the reminder that hosting a room full of people is its own kind of ministry.

Together they break down the phrase at the center of it all:

"We exist to cultivate healthy and whole everyday people in Christ who make a Kingdom difference where they live, work, learn, and play."

What does it actually mean to be "healthy and whole"?
Who are "everyday people"?

Join us as we figure it out together.

In this first episode, Tatum, Justin's eldest daughter, joins him as they introduce Cultivator to the neighborhood.

They go on to tell the family's story: why they do what they do, and why the Heart of Lubbock is where it's rooted.

🎧 Listen now and follow along:
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YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@KingdomCo_Op
Web: https://kingdomco-op.com/