May 2025 /// Culture of Heaven – Building and Cultivating Trust
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“Trust is first about safety, and less about who’s right.”
~ Bobby Haaby
Lesson Overview:
Trust is the foundation of every healthy relationship, whether in the church, family, or team. It allows people to be vulnerable without fear of judgment and creates an environment where learning, growth, and transformation happen. True fathers and mothers cultivate trust by removing shame—whether in success or in need—and leading people into a deeper union with Christ rather than to themselves. Without trust, people operate from an orphan spirit, living in survival mode instead of resting in their identity as sons and daughters. The culture of heaven is built on trust, love, and the supernatural provision of the Father.
Questions to Consider:
- In what areas of your life do you struggle to trust others with your weaknesses, and how does that impact your relationships?
- How does the presence (or absence) of spiritual mothers and fathers shape the culture of a church or community?
Digging Deeper:
Journal this week about whether you live more like a son/daughter or an orphan. Ask the Holy Spirit to show you where you need to trust Him as your Father and how you can bring a culture of trust to those around you.
Culture of Heaven
Session 4
Building and Cultivating Trust
Trust is the foundation for doing anything significant with someone else. Trust in the Lord, trust in yourself, and trust in each other is paramount to functioning in a body, in a team, or in a family. Trust is developed as we discern that we can give the best and the worst parts of us without fear of judgement. Trust is established by watching how others handle your truth. Trust is first about safety and less about who is right. In other words, someone will trust you to speak into their life, even if it means confronting what they think is true, if they know that your goal is their wellbeing, if they can feel that you are safe. QUOTE: “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care”.
When you have high levels of trust, you have vulnerability. The people around us are able to be truthful about their strengths and weaknesses knowing that you won’t hold the information that you have about them against them when you're in tension with them. Where there is low levels of trust, you will have low levels of vulnerability where everyone holds their cards close to their chest.
One of the signs of low levels of trust is that healthy debate is absent. Healthy accolades can also be absent in a low trust environment. People can become concerned that if I recognize a strength in you then you will somehow try to use that strength to change me or tell me that I am wrong. So it's easier for me not to reveal my weaknesses so they are not used against me. And we can cultivate an environment where there is little to no authenticity or team work.
Fathers and Mothers
A huge part of the Culture of Heaven is family and a healthy family begins with healthy Fathers and Mothers.
Fathers and Mothers can only do their best work in an environment where they have created the reality that there is no shame. No shame in being amazing and NO SHAME in needing instruction.
1 Corinthians 4:14-16 (NKJV)
14 I do not write these things to shame you, but as my beloved children I warn you. 15 For though you might have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet you do not have many fathers; for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the gospel. 16 Therefore I urge you, imitate me.
1 Corinthians 4:14-16 (TPT)
14 I’m not writing this to embarrass you or to shame you, but to correct you as the children I love. 15 For although you could have countless babysitters in Christ telling you what you’re doing wrong, you don’t have many fathers who correct you in love. But I’m a true father to you, for I became your father when I gave you the gospel and brought you into union with Jesus, the Anointed One. 16 So I encourage you, my children, to follow the example that I live before you.
True Fathers and Mothers aren’t in competition with the ones they influence. They don’t lead as an “instructor” but as one who has cultivated an atmosphere where people absolutely love to learn because they feel LOVED and SAFE enough to be humble and teachable. They have been close enough to a leader, mentor, or parent that has modeled vulnerability in a healthy way.
One of the ways that you know you have a true Father or Mother in the Church is that people will serve alongside you no matter what the ministry is. They will not care if they are cleaning toilets as long as they can do it with you.
Notice: that Paul said “I became your father when I brought you into UNION with Jesus...”
Healthy fathers and mothers don’t lead us to themselves. They bring us into union with Jesus, the Anointed One.
A Supernatural Environment
One of the great things about the Fathers and Mothers that are emerging is that they recognize that leading people into union with Christ means that they are introducing people to a Supernatural Father who is willing and excited to be the God of BREAKTHROUGH for us.
See, when you cut off a supernatural environment from the church as a way of cultivating church, or even home life, there is then no way to get what God can only give. Hope for breakthrough is diminished. This actually creates a seed bed for an “Orphan Spirit” because people learn that they are on their own and that they have to SURVIVE this environment. They learn to carry an orphan spirit and a sense of abandonment and that they cannot get what they need from this environment.
This kind of “Orphan” environment is mostly about teaching people to suffer well and enduring to the end. It’s not a supernatural filled environment where people are introduced to the Father who can supply every need according to His riches in glory. It’s an environment where there is no supernatural invasion and therefore they must manipulate to get their needs met.
Orphan Spirit:
Let’s compare Orphans and Sons/Daughters
Abandoned Chosen
Alone Grafted In
Survivor Secure
Afraid Safe
Not the Beloved Beloved
Consumer Source of blessing
Why is the revelation that I am LOVED such shocking news to the Church? Why is it weird that I can crawl up into my daddy’s lap? Much of the Church is Orphans who are learning to become Sons and Daughters. Orphans are consumers, they have relationships or come to Church so they can get something.
Fathers Supply
Identity Dreams or limitations
Protection Safety or powerlessness
Provision Inheritance or orphaned
Freedom Choices or fate
Love Courage or fear
Let’s say that the Kingdom of Heaven is the exact opposite of the earth
Church is not a business, it’s a family. It’s not an organization, it's an organism.
The Spirit of Adoption:
Introduces into society the idea that there are fathers who give their lives to establish heaven on earth.
Fathers and Mothers are shifting their paradigm and teaching their sons and daughters to grow up to be Apostolic in nature, which means that the Church lives a lifestyle that we are not HUMAN BEINGS having a spiritual experience on earth, but the we are first SPIRIT BEINGS having a human experience.
With the reality of a supernatural father who is bringing Heaven to Earth and who answers when we call on His name, we are not afraid to dream, we are not afraid to ask, we are not afraid to give extravagantly, and we are not afraid to TRUST.