"Leaving Without You"

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After watching this, I can never quite hear U2's With or Without You the same way again.  

He does a pretty good Bono, I gotta say.

Most Popular Posts of the Week:

Updated: Alana L. 5M (conflations: cause vs. allow)

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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 :   M:  "Sovereign, sovereign, sovereign, sovereign."     In  5K  and  5L  (links to my other blog), I looked at Calvinism's incorrect belief that "sovereign" necessarily means that God preplans/causes all things.  In these next few posts, I want to further examine their misunderstanding of "sovereign" related to their erroneous conflations of "cause" and "allow"... and "foreknow" and "foreplan"... and "natural evils" and "moral evils"... and their deceptive use of the word "authors."   [There will be some redundancy in here and some review of things I said in the previous parts.  I tried making it shorter and more concise, but...
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What Real Encouragement Looks Like Sometimes!

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Who would've thought that "encouraging each other in the Lord" would take the form of two hours of telling each other, "Yep, that crap's hard!"? - A text I got from a friend after a long conversation about the trials we've been through, the heartaches we've known, and how difficult life can be sometimes.  It made me smile!
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What Will The Rapture Be Like? (repost)

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So what will the rapture be like? Answer: I don't know. There is no way to know exactly what the rapture will be like until it happens.  So this is only my opinion, based on Scripture, as best I understand it.   Here are some passages I believe refer to the rapture (though many others believe some of these refer to events during the tribulation) :   "For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.  After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air."   ( 1 Thess. 4:16-17 .  Definitely the rapture.) " Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep but we will all be changed - in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet.  For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed." ...
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Pause, breathe, smile

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(Happy New Year!)  Please, allow me to vent and to listen to myself rant.  And come along, if you want, on a trip through m y mind  (I apologize in advance for how the messy it is😉) : Are you exhausted?  I am.  I am sick and tired of all the craziness out there, all the chaos, fighting, hate, lies, fear-mongering, violence, increasing prices (for less product or services), natural disasters, wars, rumors of wars, AI this-and-that, Big Pharma, social deviance/immorality, efforts to force people to tolerate social deviance/immorality, political posturing and mudslinging and nonsense, etc.   I'm done with it.  I'm just so done with it all.  "You can stop the world now, God.  We wanna get off."   I am sick of both social media and the news - because everyone just wants to fight, scream their opinions, demand their way, calls names, make accusations, and force everyone else to agree with them and do things their way.  E veryt...
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What's the best way to take over a church with Calvinism?

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By manipulating people to agree with you, and by shaming, mocking, and silencing those who disagree, of course! (This post was called "What's the best way to make people agree with your Calvinist views?", but I update it because the new title fits better.) Allow me to daydream here, to tell you a little story, a "hypothetical" situation... Pretend you are part of a great church, where the pastor doesn't make a huge issue (or any issue) out of Calvinism.  He keeps it middle of the road, on the parts of doctrine we can all agree on.  And it's a great place to be, a place you love inviting people to.  You've been there for many years, and have no intention of ever leaving. And then, after that pastor retires, you get a new one.  At first, he seems just fine.  Lots of enthusiasm, powerful speaker, very intelligent.  But you notice something just a little ... off ... and you can't quite put your finger on it. O ne of the first things that caught your ...
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Comments Against Calvinism

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Graceadict (a non-Calvinist) made these comments in a Soteriology 101 post called 5 Reasons Why I Stayed Out of Calvinism (small edits made for clarity): A few things to remember when talking to a Calvinist: First off, don’t let yourself get overwhelmed.  They will take passages out of context and make it sound like something it is not.  Here is a summary statement by a popular Calvinist that sums up much of what they believe and are teaching in Calvinism's TULIP:  “When we say God is Sovereign in the exercise of His Love, we mean that He loves who he chooses and God does NOT love everybody.” (Arthur Pink, Calvinist)  (Notice how Sovereignty trumps God’s moral attribute of Love.  Notice how God is NOT loving all of His own creation, people.  He can choose to ignore His essential nature of Love when He creates most of His image-bearers.  This is key in Calvinism- and it distorts the true nature of GOD.) #1 First of all, “predestination” will ...
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The 9 Marks of a Calvinist Cult (tiny version)

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Here is the teeniest-tiniest version of my  "9 Marks of a Calvinist Cult"  post, the bare bones.  (For the shortened version,  click here .  And h ere are links to the individual long chapters:  #1 deception  ...  #2 hidden agendas  ...  #3 multiple layers  ...  #4 strategic tactics  ...  #5 isolation/control  ...  #6 fear/coercion  ...  #7 mind-control/thought-reform  ...  #8 gaslighting  ...  #9 authoritarian narcissists  ...  conclusion and links ) A  Psychology Today   article -  Understanding Cults: The Basics  - shares some characteristics of cults and how they operate (I've condensed some of them here to three main points):  1.  No one knowingly, voluntarily joins a cult, but they are "recruited" into it by cult leaders who take advantage of the vulnerabilities of the recruits, using deception and manipulation to suck them in. 2. ...
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"Why is the Old Testament God so angry?" is the wrong question

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Lately, there seems to be a lot of people asking the question, "Why is the God of the Old Testament so angry?"  And some preachers handle this by telling people to basically ignore the God of the Old Testament and just stick with Jesus. But I say ... we are asking the wrong questions.  And the God of the Old Testament is the same God of today.  And Jesus is God in the flesh, the bodily manifestation of God, one of the three - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit - which are all the same in spirit. You can't ignore the God of the Old Testament without seriously harming theology - the truth of who God is and how He acts and how He relates to us and who Jesus is and what He came here to do. Instead of ignoring Him or packing Him away in a little box somewhere, we need to seek to understand Him.  And we need to ask the right questions. Instead of asking "Why is the Old Testament God so angry," we should be asking ...               ...
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Matherhood Matters To The Ones Who Matter Most!

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Motherhood: It's not just something to do while you wait for a "real job" to come along. Motherhood IS the job - the job that matters most. Pour your heart into it.  Give it your all, your best.  "Just a mom" is an incredible privilege and a blessed responsibility.  Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Y ou might feel like you don't mean much to the world, but you can bet that you mean the world to your children! Make choices that honor that love, that show how much you value your children and your role as the only mother they have. I am proud to be a mother!
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