Fake has shortcuts but real takes time, and the fruit of your life reveals the truth of your worship. A conversation on authenticity, anointing, and what genuine growth actually looks like.
Fake has shortcuts. Real takes time. That single observation sits at the center of everything Pastor Todd and his wife talk through in this conversation, and it cuts across worship, ministry, social media, family life, and spiritual growth alike. The argument is simple but uncomfortable: the fruit of your life reveals the truth of your worship, no matter how high you raise your hands on Sunday.
The conversation opens with a story about a woman at their church who got into a screaming fight with her roommate in the hallway after a service. Same woman later told them she'd believed God had called her to Tulsa to be Pastor Todd's "surrogate wife" — and since he was now engaged, she'd be moving on. The point of the story isn't the drama. The point is that someone can occupy a pew, worship loudly, claim a divine assignment, and still be operating entirely out of flesh. The outburst in the hallway was the fruit. You don't judge the heart, because as they note, we don't even have accurate knowledge of our own hearts apart from God showing us. But you can inspect fruit. A good tree bears good fruit. A bad tree cannot.
The real sticks. The real is sustained. It endures.
The enemy, they argue, is entirely comfortable with fake. He will accommodate the false because it's his native territory. What he cannot accommodate is the genuine power of God moving through a life that's actually surrendered. So if you're building something that requires no faith, something you've pulled entirely into your own hands and are running on personality and promotion, you've already drifted somewhere the anointing won't follow.
This extends to how people present themselves online. Social media has built an entire infrastructure for the curated self: the reel you want people to see, the profile you've constructed, the followers who like what you produce but don't know how you live. They like your reels, they want to follow you, but they don't know you. God, by contrast, looks on the heart. You can fake people. In ministry, you can fake people for a long time. But God will reveal the truth in time, and whatever a man sows, that's what he will reap.
"If you're living a propped up life and speaking what you think people want to hear, you better change — or everything's getting ready to be exposed."
The prescription is daily: lay your heart on the altar, let the fire of God burn out anything that isn't of him. Not as a one-time event, but as a practice that has to be renewed every morning, including the willingness to be shown where you're wrong.
One of the sharper exchanges in this conversation is about promotion in ministry. People come wanting a platform — can you promote my books, give me a leg up, talk about my ministry? The answer is consistent: show me the fire of God first. Not grandiose ideas. Not a self-reported calling. Consistent fruit. Show up for prayer. Show up for soul winning. Do the one small thing you're asked to do before you ask for a stage.
Let God publicize you. You make him great, and stop trying to do the promoting yourself.
Natural fire has a drawing effect. If a building is burning, people will pull over to watch even if they've never been inside it. The anointing works the same way. When they started their church in Johnson City, nobody knew who they were. Still don't have famous names, and they're not looking for that. What drew people from across the region was the power of God, consistently present, consistently moving. That's the only kind of publicity that compounds.
Spiritual growth isn't optional equipment for the mature Christian — it's the baseline expectation. The command to "study to show yourself approved unto God" doesn't have a time limit attached to it. There's no verse that says "do this for your first three years." The assumption of scripture is that a believer is always going higher, always producing more fruit, always being changed.
Oranges start out green. They're not ready green. You can pull them off the vine early and spray them with something to make them look right, but that's not the same as being ready. The shortcut produces something that looks like fruit and isn't. The real thing requires staying attached until the process is complete.
As long as you're a part of the vine, there will be growth.
The same logic applies to personal encounters with God. Church attendance is a starting point, not a destination. If you're going to services to get a fix, to be entertained, to pick up someone else's overflow, you're missing the thing that makes the overflow possible. The basis of everything is personal, daily time with the Lord — not borrowed anointing, not secondhand revelation. You have to allow God to hold a mirror up to your own motives, your own attitudes, the way you've treated people this week.
They're clear that they believe we're in the final stretch of history, and that the assignment on the church right now is correspondingly serious. The best players go in at the end of the game to close it out. But too many people who know they're called aren't doing anything to further themselves in that call. They can't attend church regularly. They can't be found faithful in small things. They claim a calling and then wonder why nothing is moving.
The answer isn't more self-promotion. The answer is connection — to a local body, to fire-filled people who believe the same way, to a community that actually refines you. You cannot execute a kingdom assignment in isolation. And you cannot build anything lasting on a floor with no supporting beams beneath it. The veneer looks fine right up until it doesn't hold weight.
What this moment calls for isn't hiding. Ministers have been exposed, fakes have been revealed, and the enemy would love for genuine believers to shrink back out of guilt by association. The opposite is the move: step up, because the world desperately needs a pure example. People can tell the difference between the real thing and a performance. They've tasted both.
Let God be glorified in your words, your actions, your attitudes. Stay humble. Keep growing. And if you've been running on personality and good ideas, now is the time to throw everything back on the altar and ask God what actually needs to change.
