Behind the Scenes

A Daily Guide to Living Loved, Free and Full

34 Comments / Behind the Scenes, Encouragement / November 16, 2020

The world bombards us with its anxieties and distractions while religion often draws us onto the performance treadmill of doing our best for God. With all of that, how will we ever sustain a journey that leans into Father’s love and faces every circumstance in the growing confidence that we can know his ways and follow his lead?

Live Loved Free Full, is my newest book and will come hot off the presses at the end of this year. I never thought I’d do a devotional, but a number of years ago a college intern working at Lifestream culled some of the best insights I’d put into my past articles and blogs over the last twenty-five years of learning to live loved. She formatted them into 365 daily thoughts that could help people lean into more relational space each day with God and with his love for the people around them. This is a book people can revisit year after year to call their hearts back to his reality.

I had taken a cursory look at it years ago but was so busy with other projects I didn’t have time to go through it all. So, it has rested on my computer for the past few years. Recently, however, I got thinking about it after a conversation with my publisher at Blue Sheep Media. I sent them the rough copy, and they expressed a real passion to print it. Surprised at their enthusiasm, I started reading through it and got captured by it. Some of these, I don’t remember writing, but I found myself inspired by some of my own long-forgotten words. How weird is that?

So, I have spent the last few months going through it and working in some of my more recent blogs to put together a book that can either be read as a daily devotional or even read straight through if someone prefers. Many of daily reflections feed off the ones before and continue in the ones following, so some themes carry through for a few days at a time. This book will be in a smaller hardback edition, a convenient companion size for your Bible or journal, if you keep one. My prayer is that it will be a daily reminder to lean into God’s perspective for you year after year.

Now, we’ve been busy getting it ready for a December 22 release date. Yes, I know that doesn’t give you a lot of time, especially for those of you who want to get it as a Christmas gift for someone you love. However, if you want to pre-order it, we’ll ship it out directly from the publisher as soon as they arrive. If we cannot provide that by Christmas, we’ll have a downloadable card you print up at home and wrap to give to your family member or friend that let them know their gift will be arriving hot off the presses soon.

These daily insights are designed to draw your heart into God’s reality with a focus that will open a doorway so you can see your world through his eyes, including the wisdom he has to help navigate your day and the people in it.

This book will help you . . .

Gain confidence in how deeply loved by God you are.
Recognize how he nudges you with spiritual insight.
Lean into a growing trust in the way God is working in you.
Enjoy sharing his love with others in ways that will transform the world around you.
Rest from your own efforts and learn to cooperate with what he is doing.
Find the freedom to follow him, especially when it isn’t easy.

You can pre-order your copy today of Live Loved Free Full, right here and we’ll give you $2.00 off the cover price. I hope it gives you a thought every day that will help your mind and heart recognize how Father is making himself known to you and how you can think through your day with his perspective.

If you pre-order this book along with other products from Lifestream, they will all be sent when the new book is ready to be shipped. If you’d prefer the other books to be shipped sooner, please make a separate order. Thank you.

Hardback with dust jacket, 320 pages, $16.99

For International orders: Since this is being published by Blue Sheep Media, an independent publisher, distributing options outside the U.S. are incredibly limited. We are happy to ship books to International destinations, but the cost is expensive. We don’t profit from shipping, but it is often way more than the cost of the book. If you’d like us to ship one to another country, please email Jess to get a quote for the number of books you want and where you want it shipped. Keep in mind the shipping cost is usually the same for one book as it is for two. We’ll let you know how much it will cost to fulfill that order, then you can decide whether to do it or not. We will have an e-book version that will be easier to distribute overseas.

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Putting Some Encouragement Into Your Day

3 Comments / Behind the Scenes / October 8, 2020

I’ve never had so much fun recycling. We do it, of course. We live in California, and you can’t take everything to landfills. We recycle everything we can, including banana peels, which go back to making compost for Sara’s garden.

But my own writings? It really hadn’t occurred to me even a few weeks ago until a series of God-ordained events and conversations helped me discover a way to do that. A few weeks ago, we debuted A Breath of Fresh Air, taking short quotes from my past articles, blogs, books, and podcasts and mailing them out three times a week to those who wanted a bit of encouragement. The response has been overwhelming, not just with people subscribing but with the timeliness of those quotes with events in many of your lives. If you’re not on our email list, you can sign up here.

Last week we began posting different quotes on my Instagram account on three different days of the week. The same woman who has been selecting quotes for A Breath of Fresh Air has been putting some art to them as another way to put some wonderful things into the air. You can see three examples in the graphic above. We’re trying to work out the process to have them cross-post on my Facebook Author page but haven’t fully sorted that out yet. Hopefully, it will do so tomorrow. If not, you can subscribe to my Instagram feed here or find me there as wayneatlifestream.

Finally, I’m just completing a daily devotional we hope to fast-track for the end of the year. We’re calling it Live Loved, Full & Free. A college person we had worked for me a few years back went through my Living Loved articles and my blog posts and put them into 365 short, daily readings. I love how she broke those down into individual thoughts and tied them together in a way that can enhance the daily trajectory of a life wanting to follow Jesus.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been working through that material, updating it and adding some new insights in hopes of getting it in print by the end of the year. I’ve had this in my files for a few years, but I haven’t moved on them because I didn’t have a sense that the time was right. Now, I know that it is, just by how much re-reading some of them has refocused and reinvigorated my own journey.

Some of my best thoughts over the past couple of decades have gone into my semi-regular blog posts, but I’ve always lamented how quickly blog posts vanish into the ether. Blogs have no endurance; books do. I can’t wait to share some of these re-purposed encouragements to a more vibrant journey.

I’m really grateful that others have encouraged me to cull through the vast content on this website and find ways to let it live again in the hearts of people who will find it valuable.

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Did You Enjoy Your Breath of Fresh Air This Week?

10 Comments / Behind the Scenes, Encouragement / September 27, 2020

Last week we began a new service here at Lifestream. We started a three-day-a-week email to encourage people to take a beat and reflect on some aspect of God’s work in them and the world around them.

A lady in Pennsylvania is selecting quotations from my various books, podcasts, blog posts, and articles I’ve written over the years that can encourage your journey today. Honestly, many of those quotes I don’t remember writing or saying and I’ve enjoyed having them in my inbox as well.

If you received the email pictured above in your email today, then you are all set to receive them. Please feel free to share them with others by email, blogs, or social media. You do not need our permission. We want them to be windblown as far across the world as Father desires.

We sent them to everyone for the first week with the option to add them to your account. However, if you didn’t click on the link to update your preferences to include A Breath of Fresh Air, you would not have received one today. Instead, you would have received a final notice to sign up for A Breath of Fresh Air, if you want. Click on the link and follow the instructions to update your preferences. Find the “A Breath of Fresh Air” box and click on it. That’s it! You can, of course, change your preferences any time by clicking on the link at the very bottom of those emails.

I’m sorry for the extra hassle. We did it this way so we wouldn’t fill up the inbox of anyone who did not want them. If you’re on our Lifestream Update list and did NOT sign up for this new service, you received an email today with a link to help you update your preferences. I wish I could provide that link here, but you have to respond from that email.

If you didn’t receive any last week, then you’re not on our mailing list. If you’d like to be, you can sign up here and check the box for A Breath of Fresh Air. (Regretfully, this list of blog subscribers is not the same as our Lifestream Update list. I wish we could combine them, but they are managed in two different ways.)

If you want to subscribe to this blog, make sure you include your email address in the box at the upper right of any blog post at Lifestream.org.

And if you’re not sure what we’re talking about, here are the emails we sent out this past week:

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A Breath of Fresh Air

4 Comments / Behind the Scenes, Encouragement / September 17, 2020

From the smokey haze of California, a breath of fresh air sounds pretty awesome. To draw a deep, clean breath can clear the mind, and exhaling can refocus our spirit.

“I can’t breathe,” has become a too-often used refrain this year whether it’s black men under the knee of a racist police officer, a patient gasping for air with the COVID-19 pandemic, or the horrible fires and resulting smoke we’ve had recently on our West Coast. There is nothing more powerless than the feeling that you can’t get a breath and are suffocating in the overwhelming circumstances of life. I’ve had bouts of asthma, been in smoke-filled rooms, and had the wind knocked out of me several times. There’s nothing like being able to take a deep breath when you haven’t been able to for a while.

When people write to me, that’s how they often refer to something they have read or heard me say. Others, from warmer climates, will refer to it as a cup of cold water. I love hearing how something I’ve put out there has invited someone into a more refreshing place spiritually and allows them to catch their breath again inside their own relationship with Jesus. So, we’re making some changes here at Lifestream to help people have access to that kind of information.

First, we’re going to send out email encouragements three times a week from the resources here and at the God Journey, just like the one above. We’re calling them A Breath of Fresh Air. They won’t always be as artistic, but on Sunday, Tuesday, and Wednesday mornings, you will find one in your inbox if you want. They’ll be brief, just a chance to pause a beat and be encouraged in your journey. I’m going to send them to everyone on our Lifestream Update list for the first week, so people can decide if they would like to get them. If that’s too much email for you, do nothing. They will stop after next Thursday. If you want it, however, you will need to add it to your email preferences at MailChimp. There will be a link in those three emails to make it easy for you to do that.

If you aren’t already subscribed to Lifestream updates, sign up here. That is a different list than those who subscribe to my blog and are receiving this email. How do you know if you’re on the other list too? If you get one this Sunday, use the link above to sign up.

Embracing His Glory - Audio Series Second, we have put the Embracing His Glory recordings from the God Journey on its own Lifestream page. Like Transitions and The Jesus Lens, this will be a major tool to help people explore their own journey. Specifically, Embracing His Glory gives people language and perspective to recognize how Jesus shapes his glory in us. We’ve released them on the podcast for the past 14 weeks, but are now including them here. It describes in better terms than I’ve had before how learning to live in the Father’s affection has been transforming me and allowing me to live more deeply in his reality. This has been my journey for the past 26 years—letting Jesus poke holes in my illusions and finding the confidence in his love to walk away from them and to embrace what’s really true—about him, ourselves, the circumstances we’re in, and with people around us. So many people who have heard them have written to tell me how much they have been a blessing to them.

Finally, we’re adding a whole new section to the Lifestream website. I was talking to a friend recently about Lifestream and, knowing she is a branding expert, I asked her if there were any glaring weaknesses to this site that we could improve on. She had read and listened to almost everything at Lifestream and told me how deeply it had impacted her. “Your site is a gold mine, with so much free stuff to access.” But she added that it was difficult to access. “I’m probably one of only about twelve people on the planet that would take the time to drill down through everything you have there.”

So, she asked me to consider arranging that material into five key questions that I’m asked a lot and point people to the best resources that would help them answer those questions. I will share more about this feature in the future, but if you go to Lifestream.org, you’ll notice the new banner at the top of the page, helping people find the resources here that most interests them.

Here are the five new Lifestreams that people can use to help them mine the content on this website. Under each heading, you’ll find the articles, books, podcasts, and recordings that we think will most help people answer those questions in their own journey.

Each of these pages will offer you a host of resources to help you and Jesus sort through these questions in ways that can enhance your journey. You can quickly get some things to think about or dive deeper into an extensive study that could change the trajectory of your life. There are months and months of resources here that can help you find the fullness of his life and freedom. That’s my hope and prayer for all of it.

Check it out. Let me know if it is helpful to you.

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Coming Home to the Sierras

4 Comments / Behind the Scenes / August 10, 2020

I look forward every year to our time in the Sierras where my 95-year-old father lives. I love everything about this area—the pines and cedars, granite boulders, the blue water of an alpine lake, a starry night sky clear enough to see the Milky Way with ease, wild lupin, the crunching of dirt, pine needles, and sticks underfoot, and the scent of buckbrush wafting on a gentle breeze. My dad and I saw a deer with a young fawn the other day scurry into the trees.

No place on earth beckons my heart as much as the High Sierras. For me, this is one of those “thin places”, where the distance between the temporal and the eternal doesn’t seem so distant, and it’s a bit easier to sense God’s presence in the Creation and my own heart. I think clearer here, listen better here, and I’m sure that’s aided by trying not to do too much “work” here. These are our days of vacation and restoration.

We also have a lot of fun with family—long walks with Sara, a conversation with my dad, or enjoying my daughter and her family as they come up to spend a chunk of time with us. We enjoy playing in the lake, enjoying games in the cabin, and swapping stories over dinner.

That’s why things have been quiet here and why I’m backlogged on answering emails. I’ve got little time or inclination to spend lots of time on a computer here. I did, however, just finish a re-reading of Ruth and how God does such good work out of the messes we make. God didn’t want Israel to intermarry with nonJewish people in their area. Nonetheless, they do. One man moves to Moab and his sons marry Moabite women. After a number of years, the father and both sons tragically die. Because of the faithfulness of one of those wives, Ruth, to her widowed mother-in-law, God graciously opens a new door for her. She marries Boaz, a wealthy Israelite, and then she becomes part of the lineage of David, and ultimately of Jesus. I love that about God. He is able to work amazing triumph out of great tragedy, even those of our own making.

Here are some other things that might be of interest to you:

Language of Healing Live graphic with book cover

Tomorrow (Tuesday), I will be joining a live Zoom session tomorrow at 2:00 pm PDT with my coauthors of A Language of Healing for a Polarized Nation, Bob Prater and Arnita Taylor. You won’t want to miss this one. Lisa Vitello, an actress and facilitator of CultureBrave will guide us through a conversation about Chapter 13, Sharing the Table. Lisa hosted a release event for our new book in Los Angeles when it came out last November. What was planned as a two-hour session went on for almost six. She asked us some of the most incisive questions we’ve encountered to date. It will be a joy to speak with her again.

Language of Healing Live is a continuing series of bi-weekly video conversations to help people learn to live more generously in this divided world. You can view previous ones here. We will be streaming live at the Language of Healing Discussion Group on Facebook, and I will attempt to post that feed on my Wayne Jacobsen Page there as well. Join us there live, or watch the video after, which I’ll post here when we’ve finished.

Just a reminder that Part 10 of Embracing His Glory will drop tomorrow over at The God Journey. This is a continuing series about learning to live loved and transformed by the work of Christ. If you haven’t been in on it, start at the beginning. It will make more sense. That will be the last new podcast at The God Journey until I get back to the office. I hope it is helpful for you.

Finally, we are still needing some help with Kenya. The hope is to drill two more wells for two neighboring tribes to the ones we helped over the last five years. A couple of weeks ago, I wrote in more detail about the need and why we want to help to protect the resources we’ve already provided to other tribes in the area. The picture at left shows some of them the aid we were able to immediately send them for food, medicine, and protection from the coronavirus. We have taken in about $34,000 of the $71,000 we need to provide aid and drill the two wells there. As is our custom, Lifestream does not take out any administrative or money transfer fees. Every dollar you send us gets to Kenya, and all contributions are tax-deductible in the U.S. Please see our Donation Page at Lifestream. You can either donate with a credit card there, mail a check to Lifestream Ministries • 1560 Newbury Rd Ste 1 • Newbury Park, CA 91320, or phone us at (805) 498-7774.

We never take for granted the people who read these posts and carry us on their hearts as we continue to do what God asks of us in the world. We are blessed by your love, sustained by your prayers, and grateful for your generosity.

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We’re Taking a Bit of a Break

19 Comments / Behind the Scenes / June 10, 2020

This morning we head off in our rented RV to visit our son in Denver. Road Trip! We are doing this instead of flying so we have our own little coronavirus protective bubble as we traverse four states. So, we have a few miles to cover and a chance to visit with him. Thus, things will be mostly quiet here at Lifestream, though we have new podcasts already set up for The God Journey.

Tuesday, I began a new series I’m really excited about. It is called “Embracing His Glory.” These will be a series of 15-20 minute audio presentations of something I’ve been wanting to share for some time. About six to eight months ago in a fresh read through the book of John, I felt like something had shifted in my heart and I was reading John’s book with fresh eyes, revealing more clearly the process by which Jesus shares with us the Father’s glory. The first one went up yesterday and more will follow in the Tuesdays ahead. I anticipate 12-13 of these. This is something I first shared publicly in Tulsa on my last stop before the coronavirus hit.

The reason I’m so excited about this is not that I finally figured something out. It’s actually just a fresh way to express what has been going on in my life the last twenty-five years as I’m learning to live loved in the world and the transformation that happens in us as we do. It’s exactly what Paul wrote about in 2 Corinthians 3—

Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.

That Scripture has always intrigued me, even in the old days when I felt the journey was not so much from glory to glory, but from pit to pit—one bad experience after another with long gaps between where God’s glory would be revealed. But the last twenty-five years has been different, not that all my circumstances have been easy, far from it, but through it all the glory of God continues to unfold in my life. It wasn’t what I expected with all the bells and whistles of signs and wonders, but something deeper and far more transformative in the way I engage the world around me. I thought I’d let you know here, in case you want to follow with me over there.

Sara and I are really looking forward to some time together on the road (sixteen hours each way) and even more so our time with Andy. If you’ll keep the email load light for the next week, I’ll be grateful. If not, you’ll have to be patient. I’m not sure when I’ll get caught up. When I get back, my dad is having a surgical procedure, so I will be with him through that. But we’ll get back… someday!

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Language of Healing Goes Live!

Behind the Scenes / April 30, 2020

God was opening what could have been some incredible doors for A Language of Healing for a Polarized Nation before the pandemic shut everything down. People were planning book groups, we had an opening to get this message onto college campuses, and we were asked to do workshops in churches and communities to help people explore a more generous way. So, since those opportunities are on hold and people are limited in building new relationships especially with people in their out-groups, we are taking the message on-line in a series of live conversations to explore a language of healing. Starting this Tuesday, we’ll begin an every-other-week schedule of inviting fifteen people into a conversation about some specific aspect of this book and stream it live as we do.

We have a list of guest-moderators who will put us through our paces as we explore various aspects or applications of the book. Language of Healing Live will begin at 2:00 pm Pacific Daylight Time this Tuesday, May 5. People will be able to watch the recorded version after. Watch this page and my Facebook Author page for details as to how you can listen in live.

Our first topic will be aimed specifically at people in their late teens, twenties, and thirties and the challenges they face in navigating a polarized world. Kyle Rice of Blue Sheep Media will be our moderator and all three authors—Bob, Arnita and I—will help answer their questions. We are still looking for a few young people to join us in the Zoom room, so if you’re between the ages of 15 and 39 and who have read the book, please let me know if you’d like to apply to be on our panel.

A few other notes:

The Jesus Story just posted video #7 as we talk about The journey of Abraham to begin a process of redemption for fallen humanity.
I’ll be a guest Monday morning in a live conversation for “Grieving Parents Sharing Hope Together.” The topic will be Anger and Grief and I’ll be hosted by Laura Deihl who helps families deal with death. We will go live at 11 am PDT/2 pm EDT. You can get more information at their website, and find the show at http://www.youtube.com/gpshope.
Finally, tomorrow (May 1) I will air a unique podcast at The God Journey, with a woman who cheated on her husband and found the grace to own up to it and walk out of that betrayal to a journey of hope and healing for herself and the marriage. It’s a beautiful picture of how God can reach into our darkest moments and bring redemption and lead us to compassion for others. You won’t want to miss it.

Finally:

I was listening to a podcast the other day and heard this nugget: “Love does not require agreement; it only requires understanding.” Understanding someone else is where compassion grows. You don’t have to see things the same way to care about people especially those who are still groping in the darkness.

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Zooming Through the Pandemic

7 Comments / Behind the Scenes / April 23, 2020

We certainly live in interesting times. We are experiencing a worldwide event that will shape our planet in ways we can’t even conceive yet. This pandemic has sent most of us to our homes, restricted our travel and extended family time, and put many jobs and businesses in jeopardy. The economic fall-out from this pandemic may last for decades to come.

Going into this season, I thought that self-isolation might be a time of rest for me. Not able to travel and being home here with Sara would give me time to rest and see what’s next for me. But almost immediately, other opportunities began to open up through Zoom. I had become familiar with it while we were writing A Language of Healing for a Polarized Nation with Bob and Arnita, but had not had time to explore all it could do. When my grandchildren’s schools were closed, I discussed doing a workshop for them, helping them learn to appreciate and interpret the Scriptures. Before we could even start, I couldn’t be in the same room with them, so I turned to Zoom for The Jesus Story. Now we have quite a few other families going through that conversation with us.

That helped me explore it even more, mainly because I had to use it for ongoing episodes of The God Journey. I know it’s not a perfect platform. Still, it has opened new doors for communicating with people around the world, not only for podcasts but also just to help and encourage individuals on their journeys like I did when personal visits were allowed. Now groups are asking me to meet with them on Zoom so they can ask questions and process their own journeys. We even started to experiment with an After-Show for The God Journey so that listeners could interact about a recent podcast. We had almost forty people join the last one. I am more engaged with more people than before the pandemic. Who would have thought?

Here are some of the conversations I’ve had recently that you can participate in if you like:

A FaceBook Live event with Rod Tucker, a pastor in an urban setting in Michigan, looking to help a group of people live and love in a needy part of town.
A podcast with The Fields Brothers about the transitions in my life that happened as God unhooked me from religious obligation and drew me into a greater connection with him.
Last week’s podcast at The God Journey was called Why Won’t God Love Me? It was a conversation I had with someone in the UK who had little sense of God’s love for them, even though they saw him love others through them. Many people related to his struggle, and last Sunday afternoon, I hosted my second God Journey After-Show. We had over 35 people join us from all over the world to share their observations and experiences. You can listen to that After-Show here.
And, The Jesus Story #6 aired this week, covering the Creation and Fall of humanity.

I’m sure your life has changed, too, and will continue to in ways you cannot yet conceive. I am asked a lot how I see this pandemic shaping the church or if it portends the end of this age. I don’t have a clue, and honestly, I don’t even find myself curious. The best way to be ready for anything is simply to follow the nudges he has for you today and to love the people he puts in your path. I find myself increasingly suspicious of those who prophesy apocalyptic outcomes from this pandemic with such certainty, especially when it fits so neatly into their desired outcomes. We just don’t know. Rather than try to figure it out, perhaps we could just let it unfold, finding our comfort in the God who is with us, rather than any imagined outcome we’d prefer.

God has got this. He’s got you. He’s been through this before and knows how best to help us through it. I find it far better to draw close to him each day, follow him as best I see him, and err on the side of loving others as I am loved by him. His glory will unfold even out of pain and tragedy. He continues to bring order out of the chaos of a broken world. If you start expecting a specific outcome, though, you may miss what he’s actually doing.

I pray that you, too, will find greater freedom in this season. Look for the unique ways Jesus might be guiding you in this season where your regular routines have been disrupted.

You just might discover him in new and profound ways.

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The Visible Becomes Invisible Again

1 Comment / Behind the Scenes / April 3, 2020

As Jesus’s body ascends to the Father, the disciples could no longer see him as they did before. But it wasn’t long until they discovered that Jesus had come to live in them by his Spirit and now they would be the vessels through whom Jesus would make himself known in the world. Then the message spread throughout the known world and invited us all into a new adventure, learning to walk with Jesus.

The Jesus Story is an adaption of The Jesus Lens for my grandchildren (ages 9-15) and anyone else that cares to look over my shoulder. I want to give them an appreciation for the Bible, that has been the most valuable book I know to help me learn to live inside the Father through the work of Jesus. There will be thirteen episodes in this season as we cover the whole story of Scripture, which is really a story about Jesus.

You can join us live if you like on the Facebook Group we created for this little venture or follow each new video as they appear on The Jesus Story Page here on Lifestream.

(If you don’t see the video above, please click here.)

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When the Invisible Became Visible

4 Comments / Behind the Scenes / April 2, 2020

“The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory…”

Reading about Jesus in The Gospels can help you learn to recognize the voice and the work of the Risen Jesus as he draws you into a relationship with him today. That’s the theme of the second episode of The Jesus Story, now available online.