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Jesus was not what most folks expected. When you think about God, adjectives like powerful, majestic, and almighty tend to come to mind. But Jesus did not come to the earth with any air of worldly wealth or majestic power. On the contrary, everything about Jesus’ life stood in stark contrast to worldly priorities and values. He arrived on the scene not in strength but in weakness. He was born a Palestinian Jew, into a community of marginalized, oppressed people, spending his early years as a refuge in Africa, eluding political genocide. His formative years were spent in a nondescript village, as a member of an ordinary working-class family. 

As a man, he lived in tension with the organized religious system. He resisted the world’s obsessions with wealth, pleasure, power, and recognition. He identified with the weak and powerless, the widow, and the orphan. He did not condemn but defended the sinner. So what does God look like? Like Jesus! Jesus was the embodiment of God’s values and priorities. He is Immanuel, “God with us.” In Jesus we see not only the face of God but also the fullness of his humanity, who you and I are created to be. I can believe in a God who looks like Jesus!

Mike Slaughter, pastor emeritus and global church ambassador for Ginghamsburg Church, served for nearly four decades as the lead pastor and chief dreamer of Ginghamsburg and the spiritual entrepreneur of ministry marketplace innovations. Mike is also the founder and chief strategist of Passionate Churches, LLC, which specializes in developing pastors, church staff and church lay leaders through coaching, training, consulting, and facilitation services. Mike’s call to “afflict the comfortable” challenges Christians to wrestle with God and their God-destinies. Mike’s latest book is Revolutionary Kingdom: following the Rebel Jesus, available on Amazon and Cokesbury.