This new year, I was seeking the Lord as usual to get a sense of particulars related to my assignment, and I was shocked because I did not sense God was interested in speaking to me about this.

As I continued to pray, I sensed the Lord showing me that His main objective for me the next several years is to grace me to conform more to the image of His Son (see Rom. 8:29,30); that He wanted to continue to deconstruct my American value system and enable me to see the world the way Jesus does.

By "deconstruct," I am referring to analyzing all I do, believe and say, in light of the implications of the life of the Lord Jesus Christ. This process exposes hidden internal unbiblical assumptions and contradictions for the purpose of subverting, reducing and reinterpreting them. In other words, this new year, God wants me to unpack everything I do in light of being Christ-centric and Christ-focused—so that Jesus is everything to me in all I do, say and practice.

Based on my assignment, this also means developing a Christocentric ecclesiology that will continue to frame my view of the local church to reflect the life and works of Jesus. (After all, the church is supposed to be nothing more or less than a "Jesus Movement," since we are supposed to function as His body—with Jesus as our head. This is why Paul exhorts the saints to have the mind of Christ [see Eph. 1:22-23, 1 Cor. 2:16]).

In order for the above to happen, we as believers need to "deconstruct" many of our un-Christlike assumptions (that we received either from American pop culture or a local church). read more