In this message we looked at New Testament Scriptures that reference Jesus' tears and how His tears reveal His tender and grieving heart. Knowing that grief will be a part of life until we reach the fullness of God's presence in Heaven, we are invited to embrace and navigate our own grief.

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Jesus lived a life that was patterned after his sermon on the mount. It was a life that showed us that loving one’s neighbor was the way of ending the cycles of violence throughout human history. Jesus tells us that praying a blessing rather than a curse is key to the way of God’s kingdom. 

In living like Jesus, how can we adopt a Godly sense of dependence when our culture emphasizes individualism and self-reliance? We must actively pursue an intimate connection/relationship with Christ thru consistent communication (prayer/bible reading/community with each other), even during times of pruning to produce good “fruit” (good works stemmed from Christlike character). It’s only through living a life connected to the SOURCE, we glorify God through Christlike character in service to each other.

Jesus is necessarily and consistently disappointing IF I believe He is accountable to my expectations or demands. We can also find reassurance in looking at his own human experience of disappointment, abandonment, and pain that he refuses to retreat into divinity, even in his and our darkest moments.

Jesus' baptism and subsequent time and temptation in the wilderness give each of us a glimpse into what it means to be human and the risk of holding on to who God is and who God says we are even at our most vulnerable.

In scripture, gentleness is always talked about as a positive thing. We are called to face our own fears of weakness by releasing judgment and vengeance to God as we live in mercy with each other.

Christian joy is knowing the truest things about you are untouchable. Christian joy is honesty, intimacy, and freedom.

Even though Jesus was always focused on his mission, he lived a life that was unhurried which enabled him to not be swayed by the urgent. This message explores what that means in the way we learn to live like Jesus.

As we look to Christ we see that humility is not just a periodic action, but is essential in the very nature of the incarnation. We see Christ setting down His divine place to be eye to eye with us and how that calls us to set down whatever we might hold as a reason to look down on anyone else.

In our first week of the "Living like Jesus" series, we look at one of the overlooked realities about what it means to live like Jesus - which is to be human. The divine makes his home with the stuff of life, the material, the embodied, the soil becomes holy ground. When we look at how to live like Jesus we pause to push back against the temptations to be purely theoretical or philosophical and remember we are created human, and it is good.