What if we stopped trying to be so-and-so down the street? What if we stopped striving to be something we aren’t? What if we could quit trying to mimic what we see on Facebook or Instagram and, instead, focused on being faithful…and smart?

What do we do when things don’t go according to plan? What do we do with regret?

The way we conduct ourselves in this world is our prophetic witness which leads to God being glorified. As you engage in this world you must always do so with dignity and honor, being careful not to do so like everyone else.

(This gets just a smidge political.)

There is nothing wrong with disagreements. They are natural. But how we conduct ourselves in those disagreements says everything about what we really believe about God.

Pastor Wayne Drain joins us again from Russellville, Arkansas on this Pentecost Sunday with some timely encouragement.

Dan Kent, author of Confident Humility, visits from St. Paul, Minnesota to teach us about becoming our full selves without becoming full of ourselves.

Jesus asks us to love each other, to love our neighbors, and to love our enemies, and this is the most powerful evidence the world will have that He exists and offers them eternal life.

If we start from any other theological point than the simplicity of “God is love” – without the usual “buts” which may sometimes accompany this truth – we are bound to wind up with a theological system and/or church which may justify some pretty heinous things in the name of Jesus, as even a cursory reading of church history can demonstrate.

Following our model, Jesus the Good Shepherd, we can lay it all down for the sake of those Jesus loves — for the sake of those we are learning to love — as we are being formed into the kinds of people who make up this new kind of community Jesus is still forming.

Jesus the Stranger, hidden in plain sight but revealed as we gather together to tell the story and the breaking of bread, showing himself in inexplicable ways in our darkest and most solemn moments, and opening our minds to help us keep pressing forward to carry this candle of hope forward into the unknown.