Christmas in July #1

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This is one of the most beautiful Christmas songs out there.  And it deserves to be played all year.  It's so beautiful, it brings me to tears.  And I imagine that this is how heaven will sound ...

Christmas Canon by Trans-Siberian Orchestra. 

 (And for the equally-great, more rockin' version - Christmas Canon Rock. Oh my goodness, it makes my heart want to burst! Too much beauty!) 

Most Popular Posts of the Week:

Updated: Alana L.: 5O (author vs author)

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[I redid Point #5 and #6 in the Alana L. series on my other blog (and re-lettered the posts).  But instead of going back and changing the already-posted points on this blog, I'll just add the posts in their own little "series."]   Point #5 still :   O:  "Sovereign, sovereign, sovereign, sovereign."       This is not technically a conflation (or maybe it is), but it's a sidenote triggered by this sentence in the last post: "[Calvinism]  truly makes God the author*/cause of all sin and evil, despite a Calvinist's insistence that it doesn't." *Bonus Note: Author vs Author When confronted by the fact that their theology makes God the author of all evil, the cause of all sin, Calvinists will inevitably refer to the Westminster Confession:  " God from all eternity, did, by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will, freely, and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass:  yet so, as thereby neither is God the author of sin ." [...
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Pray for Kanye and Kim

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First off, let me say that I have never been a fan of the Kardashians or of Kanye.  I have never watched an episode of the Kardashians, nor could I identify even one Kanye song.  So this isn’t coming from a super-fan of either of these people.  This is coming from the heart of a Christian who knows how strong the spiritual battle is and how much we need prayer. I am asking other Christians out there to pray for Kanye and Kim. I know that there are a lot of Christians who mock Kanye’s conversion.  But I don’t.  I would NEVER mock another person whose brokenness led them to Christ.  That has got to be one of the quickest ways to discourage a new Christian, someone who needs the support of other Christians to help them grow in faith and wisdom.  And yet, here are fellow “Christians” ripping apart a new believer instead of coming alongside him and encouraging him.  Shame on them! Shame on them!   It's hard enough to be a Christian, even h...
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"But predestination!" (my comments 1-4: election)

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Okay, so here's my comments 1-4 on the pastor's predestination sermons ( in the post "When Calvinists say 'But predestination!'" ).  I'll have more posts with more comments coming up.  I don't cover all the sermons or go in order, but I do want to address some of the more important points. This series was written mainly for my ex-church, so they could see the Calvinist pastor's own words, and why I think he's wrong.  In the posts following this one, I will examine in more depth some of the things he preached. Here's the posts in the whole series:  the pastor's sermons  ("When Calvinists say 'But predestination!'"), and my comments  1-4 (election)  and  5-6 (Romans and sovereignty)  and  7-9 (depravity, Book of Life, predestine)  and  10-11 (shaming tactics, Feb. 2015)  and  12-14 (dead, regeneration, born again)  and  15 (total depravity, manipulation)   and  16A (God's Will, babies)  and...
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The Importance of Brokenness

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Such a great sermon, one we can all learn a lot from and be encouraged by: "Encountering God's Process"   by Tony Evans (And here's a great 10-minute video from his daughter, Priscilla Shirer:  "We're Desensitized to our Blessings."   It just seemed to speak so well to the crazy world we're living in right now, maybe because now seems like the perfect time to dig through all the distractions around us to find Jesus.)  And it's funny because just the other day, I was updating and typing up a "Bible Study/workbook" thing I wrote years ago, called  "Through the Refining Fire: Your 'Sweetly Broken' Journey,"  and the stuff Dr. Evans was saying in the beginning was almost exactly the stuff I had just typed up, about how God usually has to break us to rebuild us, how it's part of the process of spiritual growth.   I am sending this "Through the Refining Fire" workbook to my relative  who's in jail  because ...
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Is The ESV (English Standard Version) a Calvinist Bible?

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Just in case anyone missed this post (the longer title made it easy to miss the "ESV" part) ... "A Random Verse That Destroys Calvinism (And "Is The ESV a Calvinist Bible?") In that post, I write about a bunch of verses that I believe were intentionally translated to be more Calvinistic or based on manuscripts that are too corrupt to be trusted.  (Click on it to see the verses.)   And why would I think that the translators of this Bible version would do that? (From that post...) The ESV and ESV Study Bible are majorly preferred by Calvinists.  In fact, it's often considered "The Calvinist Bible."   Why?  And why would translators of a Bible make these kinds of Calvinist tweaks to Scripture? Wayne Grudem and J.I. Packer were editors on the  ESV Study Bible   (this is for the ESV Global Study Bible).  Grudem and Packer are both popular, strong, dogmatic Calvinists.  Very Big Names in the world of Calvinism.  Grudem in the General...
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Calvinist Ascol Defends Calvinist Dishonesty

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I recently added this section to my post  "9 Marks of a Calvinist Cult #2 (hidden agendas)"  about a Calvinist article I just read and wanted to highlight:   Now here's a Founder's Ministries article by Calvinist Tom Ascol that really irks me - and alarms me.  And it should alarm the Church as well.  It's called  "Dishonest Calvinists (?) and the call for integrity,"  and it's basically just a defense of Calvinist pastors hiding their Calvinism, and it pushes the blame on us - not the Calvinism - for any disturbance that Calvinism causes in a church.  Here are some things from that article  [my comments are in italics and brackets] : " Does anyone else find it troubling to hear what sounds like a growing chorus of criticism directed toward Calvinistic pastors who run into difficulties when trying to shepherd their congregations toward greater spiritual health?    [The "difficulty" comes because Calvinists are stealthily and str...
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Late Summer for Gardeners

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I don't know about you, but all this heat and humidity has made my garden go crazy.  And consequently, I've been so busy shredding and freezing zucchini (or making zucchini bread and zucchini fritters) and canning homemade pickles and tomato sauce and crushed tomatoes and pickled peppers... and then busy cleaning up all the zucchini-pickle-tomato-pepper messes all over the kitchen... not to mention, giving away bags of fresh cucumbers and green beans because we're getting too many and can't possibly eat them all (I find it crazy that three of my kids hate fresh green beans - where'd I go wrong?😕)... and then doing it all over again just a little while later.   It's been like the movie  Groundhog Day , endlessly repeating the same day over and over again, except with vegetables!   And so, just for fun (and because I've been too busy to write real posts), here's something that all you gardeners out there might enjoy right about now.  I feel this one:
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Review of "Once an Insider, Now Without A Church Home" - A Look At How Churches Go Wrong

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I was recently asked to review this book – Once an Insider, Now Without A Church Home: One Couple’s Faith Crisis Due to the Infiltration and Spread of Authoritarianism, Calvinism, Complementarianism, and Covenants in the Am Evangelical Church, written by Amanda Farmer.   (Click here to go to the author’s website or click here to order her book on Amazon .) I am not getting paid or reimbursed in any way for this review.   But after reading it, I am happy to do it because I think it’s a message that needs to get out there as much as possible. For me, I will focus particularly on the “Calvinism” part of it, seeing as how it’s also recently taking over the church my family has attended for almost 20 years. I found this review of the book online by another blog-owner.   And since that blog owner did a great job of giving a thorough synopsis of the book, I will focus more on giving my impressions of it, how it affected me, and what it made me think. For starters,...
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When Sunday Comes

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First: The last scene of the Passion of the Christ (7 minutes long)  Today, let's remember why Jesus came to earth, died, and rose again: “… ‘Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the whole world.”  ( John 1:29 ) "For what I received I passed onto you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day, according to the Scriptures,"  ( 1 Cor. 15:3-4 ) “Consequently, just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men, so also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men.”  ( Romans 5:18 ) "Jesus said to her, 'I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies,"  ( John 11:25 ) “In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace.”  ( Ephesians 1:7 ) “Jesus answered, ‘I am the way and the t...
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"Ohio Sheriff Offers to Help Celebrities Leave The U.S. If Trump Wins, On One Condition ..."

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I love this! Ohio Sheriff Offers to Help Celebrities Leave the U.S. If Trump Wins - On One Condition: "You Can't Come Back"  (from cnsnews, but I took the link down because it doesn't lead to the article anymore) Thank you, Sheriff Rick Jones, for saying what a lot of us have wanted to say to those celebrities who threaten to leave the U.S. if Trump wins (and who threatened last election).   I applaud you, and I add my message to those celebrities (and anyone else) who think they have the right to demand that everything be their way or who threaten to move from the country if they don't get their way:  "Good ... leave!  We don't want your snotty, cry-baby whining here anyway!  We don't want your arrogant attitudes where you think you're better than all of us lowly, common folk.  We don't want you preaching to us about how we should think, how we should vote, what our values should be, etc., especially when you contribute to some of the most wr...
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