Weekend @ The Beach '26: 4 Chairs

This powerful teaching challenges us to examine where we sit in our faith journey through a vivid four-chair illustration. We're confronted with an uncomfortable truth: many of us occupy the second chair—the seat of hypocrisy—where Sunday morning faith never translates into Monday morning commitment. The central theme revolves around pride and the three essential steps to move from lukewarm Christianity into passionate devotion: recognizing the 'I' in pride, maintaining a healthy spiritual diet, and embracing genuine repentance. Through the remarkable story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in Daniel 3, we discover what an 'even if' mindset looks like—a faith so radical that it declares allegiance to God regardless of outcomes. These three young men faced a furnace heated seven times hotter than normal, yet their conviction never wavered. The fourth person in the fire reminds us that when we take bold stands for Christ, we never stand alone. This teaching also introduces the GIGO principle—garbage in, garbage out—forcing us to evaluate what we're feeding our souls. Are our phones, friendships, and entertainment pulling us toward holiness or hypocrisy? The challenge is clear: dead fish go with the flow, but those truly alive in Christ swim against the current, unashamed and unafraid to look foolish for the One who died for them.