Bono Talks About Faith

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I love it when celebrities share their faith in the Lord boldly in a world that would mock them for it.  Thank you, Bono, for not backing down.  (And here is Chris Pratt taking a stand for faith.)

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List of Calvinist Preachers, Authors, Theologians, Websites, etc.

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I  found a lot more names to add to my list of known Calvinists (found in my various  "How to Tell if a Church, Pastor, or Website is Calvinist"  posts).  But instead of adding this huge list to all those posts, I am going to put it here, and I'll just provide a link on those posts to this one.  [FYI: I added a note at the bottom of this post on May 5, 2021.] So here it is, a "master list" of known Calvinists to help you be careful and discerning about who you listen to and where you get your theology from.  There are plenty more Calvinists out there, but these are just the names that I ran across the most.   These are either definite, self-professed Calvinists or "most likely Calvinist," in my estimation.  (I haven't heard of most of them, but it's good to know their theology before I do.)   After finding these names in various places online, I looked up each person to see if they are Calvinist.  If they did not self-identify ...
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It is a dreadful thing ...

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"Then [Jesus] said to them: 'Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.  There will be great earthquakes, famines, and pestilences in various places, and fearful events and great signs from heaven."   Luke 21:10-11 Any of this sound familiar, kinda like newspaper headlines? I'm not sure how much time we have left, but I wouldn't wait too long. "Seek the Lord while he may be found; call on him while he is near."  Isaiah 55:6 "But wait," you say, "isn't God all soft and squishy, all about making us happy and giving us what we want?" “I gave you empty stomachs in every city and lack of bread in every town, yet you have not returned to me,” declares the Lord...  "I also withheld rain from you when the harvest was still three months away... People staggered from town to town for water but did not get enough to drink, yet you have not returned to me,” declares the Lord...  "Many times I struck your gardens a...
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I So Needed This Today - "Strength In Your Struggles"

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I desperately needed this sermon today: Tony Evans Speaks on Strength in Your Struggles .  Such a great one! Last week sometime, I made a very deliberate effort to decide to not believe that everything goes wrong all the time, to have hope that things were going to be okay and that I'd make it through the crushing trials .  Generally, I wake up with a feeling of anxiety (and I have for over 3 years now), but that morning I had decided "No more!  I can't keep living like this.  I'm just going to trust that God's got it in His hands and that it's going to be okay.  I am just too tired to be anxious anymore."  And I felt rather relaxed for the day, in a way I hadn't in a long time.  And it felt good! And then ... that very night ... the night I felt like I had finally turned a new leaf ... one of my young sons comes to me sobbing for the first time ever about the anxiety he feels about life.  I had no idea that was going on inside of him....
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Things My Calvinist Pastor Said #8: Man Is Oblivious To Sin, Lydia Was Not A Believer

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(This "Things My Calvinist Pastor Said" series is a breakdown on this much longer post:  "We Left Our Church Because of Calvinism,"  which was written last year but updated July 2020.  They are almost exact quotes.  All memes were created with  imgflip .) 8.   "Man is oblivious to his sin.... People have tried over the years to make up for their sins in their own way, giving sacrifices to gods, following laws, etc..... God is not pleased with our attempts to make up for our sins on our own. "             Question: If "unregenerated" men (as Calvinists define it) are so oblivious to their sin, how on earth could unsaved people try to make up for their sins on their own, when they are supposedly completely unaware of their sins to begin with?  (Calvinism is a self-defeating, contradictory theology!)             And Calvinism believes that God causes everything that happens ... for Hi...
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Saying a prayer for Demi Lovato

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When I hear reports of celebrities who are hurting, who have hit rock bottom, who are desperately searching for healing from the demons that torment them, I say a prayer for them. The latest one is Demi Lovato .  I'm sure there are a lot of people who envy celebrities, who think they live a glamorous life. I don't envy them at all.  I think living in the public eye is a terrible burden to bear.  Being followed by the paparazzi, having pictures of everything you do published for the pleasure of a voyeuristic society.  Being picked apart by every trash magazine.  Having every detail of your life examined by people who think they have a right to comment on everything you do, to judge every outfit you wear, every choice you make, every thing you say, every pound you gain. I think it's a torturous way to live.  I don't think the fame and money they get makes up for the lack of privacy.  And my heart goes out to the celebrities who want more than what ...
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I do hereby apologize ...

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After constantly hearing how gracious Leighton Flowers ( Soteriology 101 ) is to everyone, even Calvinists whom he severely disagrees with, I feel convicted about something... And so right now, I do hereby apologize to James White for constantly referring to him as "weasely" whenever I quoted him saying that God had to  decree child-rape  or else it would be a meaningless and purposeless evil.   I mean, of course, Jesus had a few choice ways of describing people (particularly religious, high-and-mighty, false teachers who led others astray): dogs, pigs, hypocrites, wolves, wicked, adulterous, prideful, glory-seeking, whitewashed tombs full of dead men's bones, blind guides, sons of hell, snakes, brood of vipers, internally-dirty cups, greedy, self-indulgent, etc.  [And here's some good advice from White himself: "Jesus did not seem to believe that you should soften hard words."😆]*   But Jesus never called anyone "weasely". And so as I said, I apol...
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A Moment Of Silence, Please!

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I lost something today that was very precious to me.  And I don't know if I'll get it back anytime soon ... My weekly, all-alone, just-me quiet time! (I could have just called it "my sanity.") For the past so many years, my four sons and husband have gone to church on Wednesday nights during the school year for Awanas or youth group.  And I got the house all to myself for two-and-a-half precious hours.  (When you homeschool - when you're an introvert who loves the quiet and you're home all day long with four boys in a house that seems to be shrinking as the years go by - those are precious, precious hours.) But for the past summer, while my older ones have gone to youth group, my youngest has been home with me and my husband because Awanas doesn't run through the summer.  And I was really looking forward to when we got back to the normal "everyone else is out of the house but me" time.  (I only get out by myself to do fun things about once...
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An Angel and a Wink

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I try not to think too much about the death of my 30-year-old sister-in-law last week (she left behind 3 kids under age 6 for my brother to raise alone now).  I'm afraid if I think about it too much, I'll start crying.  And if I start crying, I might not stop.   In fact, I couldn't even go into the room where her body was during the funeral because there were so many pictures around of her and my brother and their happy, smiling children.  My goodness, to see the happy family in the pictures - the children who have no mother now - absolutely breaks my heart.  So I watched the children in the kitchen while the funeral happened. Thankfully, the children seem too young to really understand.  When I first got there, my 5-year-old nephew told me, "Come on and see my mom.  Come see my mom."  And he dragged me up to the casket.  And as he said, "There's my mom," his voice cracked ever-so-slightly with sadness.  But then he skipped out ...
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Update to "Letter To Our Elders," About Teaching Predestination in the Kids' Classes

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I added this update to the post  "Letter To Our Elders Regarding Calvinism That's Growing In Our Church,"  but I wanted to put it in it's own post too.  Just because.   (FYI, Our ex-church is an Evangelical Free Church, and these churches are being taken over by Calvinism all over the place.  Nearly 40% of EVFree churches are Calvinist, and I believe that number will grow.  See  this post  for more on that.)    In that letter, I didn't have any real requests for the elders other than that they try to reel in the pastor about how dogmatic he is about his Calvinism ... and that they did not teach predestination (the Calvinist version) in the kids' classes without at least notifying the parents or asking their permission first.  Because this is a highly debatable issue.  And so the parents should be able to decide what they want their kids to hear about it, especially since it strongly affects people's faith and view of God....
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"Secret Ambition" by Michael W. Smith

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I have always, always loved this song:  Secret Ambition by Michael W. Smith I don't know why we don't hear it more often! If we have a Lord and Savior who is big enough, good enough, and loving enough to face torture and death on a cross so that He Himself could pay the penalty that we owe for our sins so that we could be forgiven and spend eternity with Him, then we can trust that He is big enough, good enough, and loving enough to handle any fear or concern or trial we might be going through right now! And personally, I like the way that the Jesus in this video gets really angry and aggressively overturns the tables of the people who turned God's house into a marketplace.  It reminds me that we don't have a wimpy God.  We have a strong, powerful, holy, righteousness-loving God.   And so in a world where we few faithful Christians can feel so helpless in the face of growing evil and corruption, we can take comfort in knowing that we have a big, powerful God w...
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