Video – Two Ways to Fill the Myth Gap: Manipulation vs. Co-Laboring

Understanding Sachs’ Framework – Jonah Sachs’ book Story Wars identifies a crucial cultural dynamic. Myth Gap is his term for an old cultural story or norm being replaced by a new one… the stress and division we feel during change. Myth gaps create enormous opportunity for those who can craft compelling narratives. When society’s myths fail to keep pace with rapid change, whoever fills that gap with the most resonant story will “rule the future” (Sounds a bit like a temptation, Mt 4:9). Sachs reveals how secular marketers—from Edward Bernays to modern brand strategists—have become society’s mythmakers, identifying myth gaps and exploiting them to sell products, ideas, and sometimes propaganda.

The question is: Will we fill myth gaps through manipulation or through Kingdom purpose?

The Secular Marketing Approach: Exploitation

Identify the Gap
Master marketers scan culture for places where existing myths have broken down. They find people confused, anxious, or searching for meaning. The New Thought movement, for instance, filled a gap left by declining traditional religion. Bernays filled gaps created by shifting gender roles. Modern marketers exploit the purpose void left by materialism’s failure.
Awaken Unconscious Emotion
Using Freudian psychology, marketers tap into hidden desires, fears, wounds, and insecurities. They don’t address real needs—they awaken emotions that can be attached to their product. As Sachs documents, this is “inadequacy marketing”: “You suck, but this brand can make you better.”
Attach Emotion to Symbol
The marketer connects the awakened emotion to their product or idea. Cigarettes become “torches of freedom” (Bernays for women’s liberation). Cars become status symbols. Political candidates become salvation figures. The product is sold as the cure—when in reality, the transaction benefits the seller, not the buyer.
Scale Through Story
The most successful marketers craft hero’s journeys where their product is the magic sword, their brand is the wise guide, and the customer achieves transformation through purchase. They create “enemy narratives” (you vs. the outdated/oppressed/uninformed) and “collapsitarianism” (doom without this solution).

The Result: Billions in revenue, cultural movements launched, political victories won—but people left with purchased products, unfulfilled promises, and the same existential void they started with. The myth gap was filled temporarily with a story that served the seller’s agenda, not the buyer’s actual flourishing.

The Dark Side:

This isn’t always benign. Sachs shows how the same techniques sold cigarettes, launched political propaganda (Goebbels used Freud/Bernays methods), manipulated public opinion, and created consumerism as religion. It’s myth-making as control mechanism. Fill the gap with stories that benefit those in power, keep masses consuming, and prevent genuine transformation.

The Kingdom Business Approach: Co-Laboring

Understanding John’s Framework – John Garfield’s book Sonship, Ascension, and Reformation is a progression into Kingdom business premised on doing What Father is doing (Jn 5:19-20). Sons are fluent in Heaven’s Courts and Council to navigate spiritual warfare and get clarity on Father’s purpose so they can bring it to Earth in a Reformation of People, Businesses, Cities, and Nations. Their seat in Heaven at Father’s Council engages conversations around Father’s purpose with Jesus, Holy Spirit, Wisdom, Understanding, Counsel, Might, Knowledge, and Fear of the Lord. The Living Words they bring back from Heaven translate to Greater Works in Business.

Discover Purpose in Council
Instead of identifying gaps to exploit, sons ascend to Council to hear what Father is already doing. They discover their Kingdom purpose—not invented to fill market opportunity, but revealed as their divine assignment. This purpose addresses real human needs because it comes from the One who created humans.
Create Authentic Value
Kingdom business starts with: “How does my Father-given purpose create actual value that blesses people?” Not “How do I manipulate emotions to sell something?” The business genuinely helps customer dreams come true. The product or service meets real needs, creates actual transformation, and leaves people better off.
Tell True Stories that Reveal Kingdom Purpose
Marketing becomes “blowing the trumpet on what God is doing in our business.” The story is true—not manufactured to manipulate. “People buy our why” not because we’ve exploited their insecurities, but because our Kingdom purpose resonates with the purpose Father wrote in their hearts. It’s prophetically correct, not psychologically manipulative.
Build for Reformation
The goal isn’t just profit—it’s bringing heaven to earth through business. Success is measured by: employees awakened to calling, industry reformed by Kingdom values, communities blessed, sons multiplied. Cash flow matters, but as fruit of faithfulness, not as extraction from manipulation.
Co-Labor with Father
The competitive advantage isn’t better manipulation—it’s Father’s anointing. “It is God who works in you to will and to act according to His good purpose” (Philippians 2:13). “Father underwrites His own initiatives.” Put Kingdom first, and Father adds all these things (Matthew 6:33).

The Result: Profitable businesses that transforms lives, reforms industries, and builds Kingdom culture. People encounter authentic purpose, experience genuine transformation, and become sons themselves. The myth gap is filled with higher Kingdom purpose, not just the seller’s agenda.

The Practical Difference:

Secular Marketing: Manufactured story → Psychological manipulation → Transaction → Customer left unchanged
Kingdom Business: Council-revealed purpose → Holy Spirit confirmation → Transformation → Customer awakened to Living Purpose with Living Words

The secular marketer must continuously manufacture desire. The Kingdom business owner reveal what Father is doing, and the Holy Spirit confirms it in buyers’ hearts. One exhausts. The other multiplies.

What Father Adds to Kingdom Business

Miraculous Breakthrough

Kingdom Business operates with supernatural momentum—breakthroughs that defy logic, contracts appearing from nowhere, impossible problems solved, doors opening supernaturally. “It’s obvious that Father is multiplying the result. It feels like we’re soaring on eagle’s wings” (Isaiah 40:31).

His Presence and Power

God actively engages in Kingdom Business, creating an atmosphere you can feel and see in tangible results. It’s Ecclessia around Father’s shared purpose. Angel armies are released by decrees we heard in the council and released on Earth. Heaven backs earthly initiatives with literal spiritual resources that secular marketing cannot access.

Divine Multiplication

Father’s favor leads to prosperity—not from clever tactics, but divine multiplication. “God underwrites His own initiatives. If you put wealth first, your business will lag; Kingdom first, Father will add.” Vision becomes “immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us” (Ephesians 3:20).

Prophetic Authority

“When purpose is present, He is Present.” Father adds spiritual leadership—courageous creativity, prophetic authority, signs following. Ideas emerge beyond human capacity. Strategy defies conventional wisdom. Authority moves obstacles.

The Holy Spirit’s Confirmation

Here’s what secular marketing can never replicate: The Holy Spirit prophetically confirms your Kingdom purpose in buyers’ hearts.

When your business purpose comes from Council conversations—when it’s prophetically correct—it resonates at levels marketing psychology cannot explain. People feel “seen” by God and loved. The Spirit witnesses to them: “This aligns with what I wrote in your heart.”

The Holy Spirit prepares hearts before you ever market. Your offer doesn’t convince—it confirms what Father is already saying to them. Buyers aren’t just purchasing products; they’re experiencing alignment with their divine purpose.

Natural Marketing

“People can sense when you’re not convicted… But when you have conviction and you’re focused, everything else falls away.” Ultra-clear purpose creates authentic focus.

Marketing becomes organic when everyone is ignited by Father’s vision. Employees invite friends. Creative types initiate innovations. The Holy Spirit creates natural evangelism around Kingdom purpose.

Eternal Fruit

While secular marketing creates temporary transactions, Kingdom business stores treasures in heaven—sons awakened, lives transformed, culture reformed. These treasures don’t decay; they compound forever.

“It’s the feeling of outside energy; Kingdom has flow and not everything is the result of my works. We work, but it’s obvious Father is multiplying the result.”

The Contrast: Manipulation vs. Co-Laboring

The Synergism: Where They Meet

Here’s what’s fascinating: Both approaches recognize the power of myth gaps and storytelling. The difference is purpose, not technique or marketing process.

Kingdom business can learn from Sachs’ insights:

Understand your market’s myth gaps: Where are people confused, anxious, searching? What myths have failed them?
Tell compelling stories: Use hero’s journey, create narrative momentum, make customers the heroes
Build community: Create “tribes” around shared values (Ecclesia in business)
Communicate value clearly: Help people “get your why” and “see the cause”

But Kingdom business transforms these tools:

Fill gaps with purpose, not Stories and Psyops: Address real needs with authentic purpose
Make customers heroes through sonship: Not through product purchase, but through awakening to calling, alignment with Father’s purpose, present in their seat in heaven
Build community (Ecclesia) around Kingdom purpose: Not brand loyalty, but shared purpose
Communicate Father’s purpose: Not manufactured positioning, but prophetically correct story. Invite people to do what Father is doing (Jn 5:19), say what Father is saying (Jn 12:49).

The Practical Application

For Kingdom Business Leaders:

Go to Council first: Hear Father’s purpose for your business before crafting marketing
Identify authentic gaps: Where does your Kingdom purpose address real voids in people’s lives? What is the Spirit of Truth saying about this myth gap?
Tell true stories: Your marketing should be trumpet-blowing, not manipulation
Create real value: Product/service should genuinely bless people and meet needs
Build Ecclesia: Staff and customers drawn to shared Kingdom purpose, not psychological tricks
Measure reformation: Are people’s lives transformed? Is culture reformed?
KPI: How has alignment with Kingdom Purpose released what Father can add to your biz?

The Competitive Advantage:

When your marketing comes from Council conversations rather than manipulation techniques, Father underwrites His own initiatives. When your story is true rather than manufactured, the Holy Spirit confirms it prophetically in buyers’ hearts. When your value is authentic rather than inflated, Father adds presence, anointing, favor, and multiplication.

People are exhausted by manipulation. They’re hungry for authentic purpose. Kingdom business that fills myth gaps with Father’s truth—and operates in what He miraculously adds—will not only build profitable businesses, it will reform entire industries.

The Evidence

This isn’t theoretical. Kingdom business leaders are reporting:

Contracts appearing “from nowhere” after Council sessions
Creative and innovative solutions to difficult problems
(Kingdom Purpose sparks creativity and innovation in sons/staff)
There is a sense of Ecclesia in the business around shared Kingdom Purpose
Staff experiencing awakening to their personal purpose & calling
Customers feeling “seen” in ways that create lifetime loyalty
Businesses multiplying beyond what human effort could achieve
“Unexpected progress” that defies market conditions
The sense that “outside energy” is flowing through higher purpose

The Principle: “It’s obvious that Father is multiplying the result.”

The Choice

Every business leader faces the question: Will I fill cultural myth gaps through manipulation (awakening insecurity to sell products) or through co-laboring (revealing purpose to create reformation)?

One builds revenue on exploitation. The other builds Kingdom on truth.
One leaves customers with purchased products and continued void. The other leaves sons with discovered purpose and lasting transformation.
One serves the seller’s agenda. The other serves Father’s Kingdom.
Sachs is right: Those who tell the best stories will rule the future. The question is: Whose story are you telling—yours or Father’s?

The myth gaps are real. The opportunity is enormous. The choice is ours: manipulation or co-laboring.

Kingdom business chooses co-laboring. And that makes all the difference.

Take the Next Step:

Progression to Sonship – Your Kingdom Purpose and redemptive stories form the basis for your personal identity, purpose, value creation, and your business offer. Becoming your authentic self is the practical key to flow and fruit in business and life. We offer a practical and prophetic approach to help you get there, flowing with your Father (co-laboring) instead of fighting circumstances and resistance alone. Click the graphic for live links to examples of our business coaching deliverables.

We’ve written prior blogs on marketing in this same vein. The AI Marketing Diagnostic is a favorite.

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