A Church Without Fences

There is a moment on the road to Sodom that most of us have read backwards our whole lives. The Lord pauses and says, almost to Himself, “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am doing?” Then He lets one man in on what heaven is about to do.

We usually read what follows as Abraham talking God out of destroying a city — fifty righteous, forty-five, forty, thirty, twenty, all the way down to ten. And notice, Abraham does not walk away when the men turn toward Sodom; he keeps standing before the Lord, and he keeps coming near. But look at the exchange again. This is not a man bending God’s arm. This is God teaching a man His own heart, and forming, in Abraham’s own household, the first of what I want to call a revival cell.

What a revival cell is

Revival is simply people re-awakening to who God is and to the ways of God. It is not noise and it is not hype; it is hearts coming alive to Him. A revival cell, then, is a cluster — a family, a small group, a local assembly — where that awakening is actually happening in the lives of real people.

Why call it a cell and not a group or a club? Because of mitosis. In biology a cell reproduces by splitting: one mother cell becomes two daughter cells that carry the exact same DNA, the same genes, the same life. That is the picture. God has said He will make us revival cells — our homes, our friendships, our small groups — and that through us the world will fill with more of the same, each one carrying the same life we first received.

So this is not a program you attend; it is a life that reproduces. A home where God is real gives rise to another home where God is real. One awakened friendship awakens another. That is how He means to fill the earth with the knowledge of Himself — cell by cell, not campaign by campaign. And it means the aim is never just your own awakening; it is that what happened in you would carry, unchanged, into the people around you.

And on the very day God came to tell Abraham that the revival cell of his own family was about to be born, He drew a picture of what He wants to do with us. Three things stand out.

A people who know the way of God

Shall I hide from Abraham what I am doing... For I have known him, in order that he may command his children and his household after him, that they keep the way of the LORD, to do righteousness and justice.

Genesis 18:17, 19 (NKJV)

Do you hear God’s reason? He chose Abraham so that the way of the Lord would be handed down through a household — so a people would form who actually live the way God lives. Election here is not a trophy; it is an assignment. God said, in effect, “I chose you so that you would know My way.” And the way of God is the opposite of the way of man. God does not kill. God does not destroy. God does not steal. God does not traffic in lies. God gives life. God gives joy. In His economy, to rule is to serve, to have is to give, to live is to sacrifice.

How can I be sure that is His way? Because Jesus is God, and Jesus is the way of God made visible. This is where the whole mystery of godliness begins — with the understanding that Jesus is God, the most complete and comprehensive presentation of the Father we will ever be given.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God... And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory.

John 1:1, 14 (NKJV)

...who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person...

Hebrews 1:3 (NKJV)

Jesus is the exact image of God, the exactness of God. Nothing about the Father was left unrevealed in Him. If you have seen Jesus, you have seen God; if you do not see something in Jesus, it is not in God. Beside Him there is no other God to appeal to. So before you attribute anything to the Father — any cruelty, any harshness, any hidden motive — hold it up against Jesus first. If you cannot find it in Him, it is not in God.

This is the first mark of a revival cell: a settled commitment to the way of God. Do you want to belong to one? Then commit to the way of Jesus. Learn, deliberately, to live like Him — and teach your children to do the same, so that the way of the Lord actually gets kept in your house after you.

A people who live to serve

God told Abraham he would become a great and mighty nation, and immediately our minds run to the wrong pictures — weapons, wealth, superpower status, being feared. But that is not what God had in mind. When God calls a nation great and mighty, He is measuring the size of the crowd that nation will bless. Greatness, to Him, is counted in the number of people and peoples who are better off because you exist.

That single reframing changes your whole ambition. If you want to become a revival cell, start serving. Make the blessing of other people your real goal in life, and teach your friends and your children to live the same way. Until we truly see that God wants us to live not for ourselves but for others, we will never become the kind of people He can awaken a street, a family, or a city through. The measure of your greatness is simply the reach of your blessing.

A people with a rescue heart

Here is the part of the story that so many of us — myself included — have misread for years. We assume God was marching down to destroy Sodom while Abraham pleaded with Him to hold back. But read it the other way. Abraham assumed destruction was the plan; God kept showing him He was on a rescue mission.

God does not pretend the evil isn’t real. He says plainly that the outcry against Sodom is great and its sin very grave. He is not naive about the city. And still, listen to His own words: “I will go down now and see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry... and if not, I will know.” That is not a God itching to destroy. That is a God going down to look for any reason to save.

Because Abraham could only imagine destruction, he kept framing his questions around it — “Would You also destroy the righteous with the wicked?” — and God kept answering, “I will not destroy.” But the real point was never who does the destroying. The focus of the whole scene is that God was more interested in rescuing the entire city than in condemning it. Through that long back-and-forth, God was showing Abraham that anyone He can use to save the world must carry the same heart for people that He has — no matter how bad those people have become.

So we cannot be people who are quick to pronounce judgment and damnation on others — not if we mean to be revival cells. Remember Stephen. As the stones fell, he prayed, “Do not charge them with this sin.” One man, praying like that, and Saul — the young man standing there guarding the coats of the killers — became Paul. That is the arithmetic of a rescue heart: one intercession can turn a persecutor into an apostle. Remember Jesus on the cross, praying it first: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do.”

Start at your own front door

So this is what I see God doing: raising revival cells, and starting them at home. Begin there. Push the way of God — which is love — right into your own household. Treat one another the way God has treated you: forgiving, kind, refusing the tit-for-tat of “you did me, so I’ll do you.” Let your home be the first place where the way of the Lord is kept.

Then turn outward. Position yourself to serve the people around you, to be a blessing, to actually pursue their happiness. And for the ones who are not like you — even the ones who feel like enemies — begin to carry a heart to love them and to see them rescued. Look for ways to reach them, ways to deliver them.

That is a church without fences. Because when God wanted to deliver Sodom and Gomorrah, He did not wait behind a wall for the city to come to Him. He went down to them. Will you let Him make your home a place He goes out from?