Blog

I was watching one of my favorite movies a few months ago. One that had a big impact on me years ago, but this time felt like a 2.0 version of it. It’s the story of the racehorse Secretariat. I remember watching it with my spiritual father, Jack Taylor, years ago. And we actually wept when we watched it together. 

Secretariat is still the greatest horse that has ever lived. His whole journey looked like an underdog story. There were more gifted and more powerful horses. So how did he become the world’s fastest and the world’s best?

I learned the secret. When Secretariat died, they did an autopsy. The average horse’s heart weighs about nine pounds. Secretariat’s heart weighed twenty-two pounds. The secret of his greatness was his heart.

That’s why we guard our hearts above everything else. Because all the issues of life flow from it. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. And Jesus himself is our example for living and loving in every aspect of life.

I was reading my friend Heidi Baker’s foreword to my new book, The Heart of Roaring Lambs. She brought up something closely tied to this: the idea of kenosis and theosis. You don’t have to be a theologian to get it. Kenosis is self-emptying – the choice Jesus willingly made to lay down His heavenly privileges, His divine wealth, His royal glory, in order to be born into the humblest circumstances and live a life of total service and obedience. So much of His glory was hidden that many didn’t even recognize Him as the Son of God. Just as He submitted even to the cross, we have to pick up our cross and follow Him if we want theosis.

Theosis is being united to our infinite, glorious God forever through the grace of His Son. 2 Peter 1:3-4 tells us His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through the knowledge of Him who called us by His glory and goodness, and through these He’s given us very great and precious promises, so that we may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption caused by evil desire.

I have to be honest with you. We’re living in a culture of cover-ups, where one superstar after another is falling. And I’ve realized something about our own training in the School of Supernatural Ministry: we’ve celebrated the lion. We’ve celebrated theosis. And we’ve helped people get theosis without kenosis. That is very, very dangerous.

Kenosis is the lamb aspect of Jesus. Without it, you can train someone to be a powerful lion—bold, courageous, gifted, anointed—but without humility, without vulnerability, without meekness, without purity. And that’s when the messes start in marriages, in families, and behind the pulpit.

I desire for all of us to develop the heart of Jesus and live and love from that heart. Something has to happen first in us, then to us, then through us,  so that when we speak, we carry authority, not just power. A lot of powerful people are falling right now. But God is raising up people with authority. People who will be listened to because it comes from the heart of the Lamb.

I’m looking for some lay-down lovers who would wash the feet of their enemies, just like Jesus did.

Want to learn more about this topic? Read or listen to my newest book, The Heart of Roaring Lambs, HERE.

I recently had the privilege of being back at Freedom City Church in Los Angeles—a city I fell in love with 41 years ago, as a 19-year-old Norwegian who arrived not knowing how strong the California sun really was (I found that out the hard way, with a second-degree sunburn and a trip to the hospital after my very first Saturday at Venice Beach). I’ve loved this city, and this country, ever since.

This time, I brought three ordinary chairs up onto the platform with me. Nothing fancy. But I wanted to give this precious church family what I call a 12-hour teaching in less than 20 minutes—because I believe every person on earth is living their life in one of these three chairs, and which one you’re sitting in determines almost everything else.

Three Chairs, Three Lives

Chair One is the Kingdom of God. It’s simple, really: you’re seeking first His kingdom and His righteousness, and everything else gets added. This is the spirit-filled life—the fruit is righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit. It was never about conquering the flesh through sheer willpower. It’s about learning to walk in the Spirit so the flesh loses its grip. When you’re in this chair, you know who you are. You don’t have to prove anything, because you already have your Father’s approval.

Chair Two is the Kingdom of Self. This is the “me, me, me” chair—give me, bless me, fill me. It’s what I call the soulish life: you’re genuinely saved, genuinely heaven-bound, but you haven’t yet learned how to bring heaven down into today. In this chair, shame will tell you that you are what you do. Fear and guilt and weariness set in. And here’s the truth I keep coming back to, because I believe it with everything in me:

“It is not what you do that makes you who you are. It is who you are that makes you do what you do.”

Chair Three is the Kingdom of the World. This is the chair of the lost—the billions who have never had an encounter with the God who looks like Jesus. My heart breaks and burns for the unreached. In a little over a week I’ll be in Turkey, then Pakistan, then a region of Kashmir where 5.4 million people have never once heard the gospel. The gospel is only good news if it gets there in time. While we wait for the second coming of Jesus, they’ve never even heard of the first.

Sons and Daughters, Not Orphans

The difference between Chair One and Chair Two was never about behavior; it’s about identity. Chair Two operates like an orphan: earning approval, competing instead of completing one another, living for love instead of from it. Chair One operates like a beloved son or daughter, resting in a love that was already spoken over Jesus before He’d performed a single miracle: “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”

I told the church a story from the Philippines, where I was asked to speak in front of the nation’s senators, governors, and eventually the president himself. I felt the pressure building, and I realized that pressure meant I had quietly slid from Chair One into Chair Two. In a vision that followed, I saw myself in a basketball game against a team called the Kingdom of Darkness. We were down two points, seconds on the clock, the crowd roaring, the enemy jeering. Then a man stood up in the stands and shouted, “That’s my boy. That’s my son, Leif.” In that moment, it didn’t matter anymore whether I made the shot or missed it. My Father was there. There is no failure where there is a Father.

An Invitation, Not a Condemnation

I want you to hear this: all of us end up in Chair Two in moments, and some of us live there for whole seasons. That’s not a condemnation—it’s an invitation. Jesus said it Himself in Matthew 11:28-30: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” Sick, ashamed, addicted, afraid. All of it qualifies you for the invitation. None of it disqualifies you.

So, which chair are you sitting in today? Whichever one it is, I want you to know there’s a chair waiting for you where the supernatural becomes natural, where rest becomes your weapon, and where you finally stop asking what you have to do and start resting in who you already are.

Read more about the three chairs in my book Called to Reign. 

Have you ever thought about where love comes from? If you have, you probably assume it comes from God. And you’d be right. It does. But God has never been a lonely being who existed by Himself before He created anything. For one thing, He is eternal, which means He is outside of time. Technically, there is no “before” with God.

But there’s another reason God has never been by Himself. In the beginning, there was (and still is) a family: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And this family is not only the perfect expression of love. This family is love.1 So when we think about where love originally came from, it isn’t from the heart of a God that lives by Himself. It’s from the heart of a divine relationship, even from the start. It’s a family kind of love that is more perfect than we can possibly imagine.

When we understand this perfect family love, the whole idea of an angry, critical God that so many people have begins to fall apart. 

I spent much of my life thinking of God as very stern and authoritative, as though He was always focused on my faults. No matter how hard I tried, I assumed that His priority for me was to improve me in whatever areas I was falling short. I always felt like I needed to get cleaned up and put everything in order before He could really use me and relate to me. In my mind, He always seemed a little frustrated with His people—and specifically with me.

But love doesn’t focus on those flaws and shortcomings. 

God wants the best for us, but the best begins with delight and adoration. Anger doesn’t produce the best in people. Kindness and compassion do.

So this family is not angry by nature. The Father, Son, and Spirit are not frustrated. They don’t sit around talking about how bad things are or how disappointed they are. There has never been any jealousy or competition in this family. No striving for rights, no complaints about injustice, no bickering about who gets what.

No member of this family has ever wondered, “Why don’t I get to be like Him? Why do You give Him more than You give Me? When do I get My turn?” Can you imagine what would happen if you asked the Father, the Son, or the Spirit which one of them was most important? How would they answer? I can’t imagine any of them stepping up and claiming to be in first place. I think they would all point to one another.

None of these family members has ever felt disconnected or distant from another, simply because They are one. You can’t have disconnection and distance in a three-in-one person.

Because of this perfect unity, no member of this family has ever felt insecure or needed more attention or affirmation. No one has tried to pose as someone He isn’t in order to make Himself feel better. None has ever had to develop coping skills or needed healing from emotional wounds. None has ever worried that love will run out.

The Father, Son, and Spirit are an eternal family with an eternal love. But beings with eternal love can’t be content to keep it to themselves. The beauty of love is always realized in its expression and demonstration. It doesn’t sit still. It looks for someone who can receive all its wonderful blessings.

The perfect love of this divine family is expressed and celebrated. It is always perfect and always flowing freely. It is always unbreakable but always determined to fulfill one another’s desires and purposes, which are in complete harmony. It’s constant but always moving, never seasonal but always looking for seasons of opportunity and growth, fully satisfied but always hungry for more.

And in all those truths—those paradoxes of perfect love—it longs for expression. Love seeks manifestations, looking for ways to bring others in. If perfect love is selfless, it will find a way to turn toward other selves. That’s the nature of our triune God. His Kingdom exists because of love and for love because He is love. The culture of this Kingdom is thoroughly shaped by the unbreakable union of the divine family, the perfect environment. And everything in His Kingdom, whether visible or invisible, eternal or temporal, overwhelmingly beautiful or ordinary and mundane, exists because of love.

Every good thing finds its source in love.

Every good thing is sustained by love, or more specifically, by the One who is love, the Father who loves perfectly.

And all of His attributes find their fullness and perfection in love. That tells us a lot about ourselves. If every good thing is sourced by and sustained by love, and we are a “very good” thing (Genesis 1:31), then we find our source, our sustenance, and our reason for being in this foundation of love.

We’ll talk more about creation soon, but just think for a moment about the fact that human beings exist because of love. The first verse of the Bible says, “In the beginning God…” (Genesis 1:1), and if God is love, we are justified in reading that verse as, “In the beginning love….”

Many Christians are still very focused on sin and brokenness, even though these are exactly the problems Jesus came to heal us from. And I know from experience that when you are

focused on sin and brokenness, you have a tendency to see God as angry and authoritative, maybe with His arms crossed or His head shaking in disapproval. I did, so I understand what that’s like. You see a God who is hard to please.

That is not the picture of God that the Bible gives us. This is not the heart behind creation. This was no part of the heavenly family’s love. Before the foundation of the world, there was love. And if you read Scripture carefully, you’ll see that this is when the remedy for sin was already planned. God chose us “before the foundation of the world” to be holy and blameless in Jesus (Ephesians 1:4). Looking ahead over all the rebellion in the world into each of our lives, even before it all happened, God said yes to love.

This is what our Father’s heart looks like. This is the picture He gives us. Before the world was made, it was already in God’s mind to bring created beings into the fellowship of the divine family. He was motivated to express His true nature—not only within the Trinity but far beyond it. So love went to work to create a beautiful, harmonious, joyful expression of His goodness. In other words, this world exists because God wanted to make His love visible.

This blog is an excerpt from The Love Awakening book. Learn more about the book HERE. 

Over 50 million people. One of history’s most unconquered peoples. And still, largely unreached.

The Pashtuns span Afghanistan and Pakistan, united by language, Islamic faith, and a fierce code of honor called Pashtunwali. They have outlasted every empire that ever tried to subdue them—the British, the Soviets, and others before them. Entire armies have broken against these mountains and gone home defeated. And for centuries, the gospel has faced the same extraordinary resistance in their lands.

So why? Why has one of the largest unreached people groups in the world remained so resistant to the gospel for so long? I shared six reasons recently with my weekly email list, and I want to unpack them more fully here because understanding the why is the first step toward becoming part of the how.

1. Intense Spiritual Warfare

This is not primarily a strategy problem or a resources problem. The enemy fights harder to keep the Pashtun in darkness than almost any other people group I’ve encountered, and I believe it’s because he knows what’s at stake. A move of God among the Pashtun would send ripples across the entire Muslim world. That’s worth fighting for. Which means it’s also worth contending for in prayer.

2. Honor and Shame Culture

In the West, we tend to think of conversion as a private, internal decision. Among the Pashtun, it’s never private, and it’s rarely just individual. To leave the Islamic faith is to leave your family, your tribe, and your generational identity in one motion. The decision not only leads to a change of belief, but it could also mean total displacement. A Pashtun who follows Jesus risks losing the very fabric of who they are in the eyes of everyone they’ve ever known. We have to reckon honestly with the weight of what we’re asking people to carry, and build the kind of relationships that can hold that weight with them.

3. A Western Gospel That Doesn’t Connect

Much of our evangelism was shaped in cultures wired around guilt and innocence. We lead with sin, guilt, and personal forgiveness. But Pashtun culture, like much of the honor-shame world, is wired differently. The driving questions aren’t “Am I guilty or innocent?” but “Am I honored or shamed? Do I belong, or am I cast out?” Here’s the beautiful truth: Jesus covers both. The cross deals with our guilt and restores our honor. But when we only preach half the gospel, we’re offering people an answer to a question they’re not asking while leaving unanswered the one that actually haunts them. We need a fuller gospel for a fuller need.

4. Broken Trust with the West

History doesn’t disappear just because we’d like it to. Five world powers have attempted to subdue the Pashtun people, and every single one has failed. That legacy of invasion, occupation, and broken promises means that Western missionaries, however well-intentioned, often begin the relationship already in debt. Trust isn’t given here. It’s earned, slowly, and it starts with humility about what our nations have represented in this region long before we ever arrived.

5. Event-Based vs. Generational Thinking

We in the West love a campaign. A conference. A short-term trip with measurable outcomes we can report on when we get home. But the Pashtun don’t measure relationships in weeks or months, they measure them in generations. A short-term project, however sincere, can look to a Pashtun observer like it’s hiding an agenda—because in a culture where committed presence is everything, a quick exit signals that the relationship was never the real point. If we want to be trusted, we have to be willing to stay. Reaching this people group isn’t a project to complete. It’s a relationship to build over decades.

6. Geography and a Hostile Environment

On top of all of this, there is the sheer physical difficulty of the terrain. Pashtun regions are remote, mountainous, difficult to access, and genuinely high-risk. Sustained, long-term presence requires more than good intentions. It requires people willing to endure real hardship, real danger, and real isolation for the sake of a people who have rarely, if ever, had someone stay.

Understanding the Region: Azad Kashmir and Pakistan

Azad Kashmir sits on the western edge of the broader, long-disputed Kashmir region—territory that has been contested between Pakistan and India since partition in 1947. Administered by Pakistan, it is mountainous, remote, and shaped by decades of political tension along a militarized line of control. That geography alone makes it one of the harder places in South Asia for sustained ministry presence to take root.

Layered onto that geography is a religious and social landscape that is overwhelmingly conservative and Islamic, with very little historical exposure to the gospel. Christians in the wider Pakistan, including Azad Kashmir, make up a small minority, often concentrated in lower economic tiers of society, and they live daily with realities most Western believers never have to consider.

Challenges Christians Face in Pakistan and Azad Kashmir

A few of the realities facing the Christian minority in this region:

Blasphemy laws. Pakistan’s blasphemy statutes carry severe penalties, including the death penalty, for perceived insults to Islam or the Prophet Muhammad. These laws are frequently used—sometimes on flimsy or fabricated grounds—to target Christians, settle personal disputes, or seize property, leaving the accused with little legal protection and, often, no safe way to defend themselves.

Mob violence and attacks on churches. Accusations of blasphemy have repeatedly sparked mob violence against entire Christian communities. In our personal network in Pakistan, there have been homes burned, churches destroyed, and families displaced overnight based on unproven allegations. These are not isolated incidents; they are a recurring pattern that keeps Christian communities living under a constant, low-grade fear.

Forced conversion and marriage. Christian and other minority girls and young women are at heightened risk of abduction, forced conversion to Islam, and forced marriage—crimes that are widely under-reported and rarely prosecuted.

Social and economic marginalization. Christians in Pakistan are frequently relegated to the lowest-status jobs in society, facing discrimination in employment, education, and everyday civic life. Poverty and lack of access to legal recourse compound the vulnerability created by the other factors above.

Political and legal vulnerability. In a region already strained by the Kashmir conflict, religious minorities have even less political capital and even fewer avenues for protection or justice than Christians elsewhere in Pakistan.

Taken together, these realities mean that Christians in Azad Kashmir and across Pakistan don’t simply face spiritual resistance, they face structural, legal, and physical risk simply for identifying with Jesus. Any lasting gospel movement here has to reckon honestly with what it costs local believers to stand firm and has to be built by outsiders willing to walk alongside that cost rather than around it.

Partner with Global Mission Awareness to reach the unreached HERE.

I traveled to Pakistan in 2019 for an assignment in an area where the gospel had not been preached for centuries. I had spent six months planning for the trip, and our ministry put a six-figure investment into all the preparations. Then I and my team began to get hit. Conflict between Pakistan and India broke out, and flights were cancelled due to the threat of violence. Our venue looked like it was in the middle of a war zone. I also had ongoing health issues, and I kept hearing the enemy’s lies that I wasn’t going to make it—to Pakistan or even to survival. It is hard to describe all the warfare that went on, but I got very discouraged. I felt beaten up.

When all the flights were cancelled, I was told by airlines and travel agencies that there was no way to get to Pakistan. But I still felt I was supposed to go. I knew it was a divine assignment, and I knew that opposition is not a sign of God’s will. When God wants to redirect us, He doesn’t do it by beating us up, depressing us, or empowering our adversaries. I was sure this trip was His will.

I eventually found a creative (and very expensive) way to get there by flying into another country, where I would wait and try to purchase tickets for Pakistan from that airport. But in the days leading up to the trip, and even on the way to the airport, people would ask: “Are you sure you’re supposed to go?” I arrived in the nearby country and waited until a flight opened up, and I was very grateful when it did. I was at least going to get into Pakistan. But a storm followed me into the country. When I landed in Islamabad, I had slept very little in the past four days and was exhausted. As my hosts drove me to the cricket stadium we had rented, our vehicle broke down in the middle of nowhere as rain pounded down on us. We eventually got to the stadium and found that it was flooded. We never got to have that meeting. All of the planning seemed wasted. All of our investment was lost. I was devastated.

My mind was filled with questions. Were all those warnings from other people right? Did I misunderstand God’s direction? Did the enemy thwart a divine purpose, and if so, why was he allowed to do that? I had no explanation for what had happened. I went to my hotel room very discouraged, and the environment didn’t make me feel any better. The room felt like a dungeon—damp, dark, and cold. I was tired and sick. There was so much warfare in these circumstances, much of it swirling around in my mind, that I thought I might die alone in the middle of an unreached area.  

I had seen a mosque next to the hotel when I checked in, and as I lay in my room that night, I thought I saw an imam appear and then disappear. Was it a vision, or was my room being invaded? I thought I was losing my mind. But at some point I remembered the Lamb, and He filled that room with His presence. He reminded me of the time He entered a closed room and imparted peace to His disciples (John 20:19-23). He reassured them by demonstrating His presence, declaring peace, pointing out His provision through the wounds in His hands and side, presenting evidence that He was everything they would ever need, and giving them a purpose: to go out as the Father had sent Him. In other words, to go into the world as lambs among wolves. He promised His presence and power to help them, which filled them with renewed passion.

Presence, peace, provision, proof, power, purpose, and passion.

My encounter with the Lamb did not change the circumstances right away—I still felt tired and sick in a cold, damp room. That cricket stadium with 60,000 seats was still flooded, and my vision for that region seemed dead. But my perspective changed. I heard the Lamb saying, “Whatever you need, Leif, I am.” And I felt His peace. The next day I was invited to a wedding between two people prominent in Pakistan society. I had come out of a spiritual storm and was seeing with new eyes, so I was looking forward to the event. But the physical storm still followed us, and it threatened to blow the huge wedding tent down and ruin the day for this important family. As we arrived at the wedding site, our vehicle was surrounded by people saying “Allahu akbar” (God is great). “The ambassador of love has come, and the rain has stopped!”  

The ambassador of love has come? That was their nickname for me. I have a reputation in that country for being an ambassador of love. And apparently, the rain had stopped just as I arrived. The people were amazed at what had happened. They could still see the storm clouds surrounding the wedding site, but the clouds would not come closer. I knew I could not take credit for that; it was something only God could accomplish. But I realized that by having His peace in the midst of the storm, His presence in me had authority over the storm itself. That miraculous event gave me great favor among the people. When I was asked in an interview how I had even gotten into the country and why I had come, I told them that I had come because I love Pakistan. “If you are getting attacked,” I said with tears in my eyes, “then I need to be attacked too, because we are family.” 

Those words spread very quickly. I met with a governor of Punjab, which led to a meeting with the president. I was invited to speak at a mosque, where I met generals, imams, and other Muslim leaders and talked about love. That meeting was on the news, and about forty to fifty million people saw it. It opened up even greater favor for me in that country. I had been devastated over losing the event that we had spent months planning for, but instead I received a national platform. That crisis turned into an opportunity. My loss of an audience of sixty thousand gave me an audience of fifty million. My peace in the storm became authority over the storm. My brokenness became a breakthrough in the hands of the Lamb.

This blog is an excerpt from The Heart of Roaring Lambs book. Learn more about the book HERE. 

A Kingdom Family Talks Conversation with Leif Hetland and Paul Yadao.

We live in a world that moves at lightning speed. From the moment we wake, our minds are pulled into emails, texts, deadlines, and the relentless hum of productivity. But what if, in our rush to accomplish more, we’re actually falling behind? Not in our work, but in our walk with God?

In my latest podcast episode, I sit down with Pastor Paul Yadao to unpack a profound truth: sometimes, the only way to catch up with God is to slow down.

“Hurry is not just a schedule problem; it’s a spiritual problem.” — Paul Yadao

Hurry doesn’t just steal our peace; it quietly robs us of intimacy with the Father. When we live in a constant state of motion, we stop listening deeply. We react instead of discerning. We drift from the gentle rhythm of grace and start moving at a pace God never asked us to maintain.

“There’s a difference between doing things for God and doing things with God. If I lose the ‘with,’ I’ve lost the heart of it all.” — Leif Hetland

Slowing down isn’t laziness. It’s intentionality. It’s creating margin for what matters most. Paul describes it as making space for God to speak, lead, and restore.

Two spiritual practices stand out:

1. Silence: Stillness helps us quiet external and internal noise, opening our hearts to God’s presence.

2. Sabbath:  More than a day off, Sabbath is a rhythm of life that realigns us with God and refreshes our souls.

“The Sabbath is not a rule to follow—it’s an invitation to be fully present with God and fully alive in your own soul.” — Paul Yadao

Slowing down is about alignment. Just like a musician must pause to tune their instrument, we must regularly stop to let God tune our hearts. Over the years, I’ve learned to view rest as a strategic move in the Kingdom. Not as lost time, but as invested time.

This conversation isn’t a guilt trip for the overworked. It’s a lifeline for the soul. Whether you’re a ministry leader, business owner, parent, or student, the message is clear: God moves at the pace of relationship, not production.

So take a breath. Schedule that Sabbath. Take a break from the noise for a while. Let your heart beat in rhythm with His again.

🎧 Listen Now: Slow Down to Catch Up – Kingdom Family Talks Ep. 185