That's The Worst!

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If you think you're having a bad day, listen to what Tim Hawkins' daughter had to face in "That's The Worst" (with a bonus of "Potty Train"). 

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Spiritual Warfare: Satan's Schemes #9 (bitterness, unforgiveness)

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This is the next-to-last of the "Satan's Schemes" posts in the Spiritual Warfare series (and it's a repost from something I wrote elsewhere)... and then I'll  move on. John 10:10 :  "Jesus said, ‘The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy...'" To steal our peace, joy, and contentment.  To kill our hopes, passion, and Christian witness.  And to destroy our friendships, family, faith, and futures.  Among many other things.   And I think one of Satan's biggest tools for this is the snare of unforgiveness and bitterness.  If he can get us to focus on - and constantly ruminate on -  all our hurts, all the ways we’ve been cheated in life, the ways people let us down or treated us poorly, the ways God let us down, the ways we let ourselves down, all the things that've gone wrong, etc., then we'll grow more and more  bitter, discouraged, defeated, and closed-off... and farther and farther from God, His truth, other people, and any hope f...
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Calvinism: False Gospel or True (but warped) Gospel?

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Here are some new comments  which were recently added to the Soteriology 101 post  Calvinism Obscures the Simple Gospel .  It's kinda a  friendly "debate" among non-Calvinists about if Calvinism is merely a warped version of the true gospel or if it's a false gospel.   (These are lightly edited for clarity.) Kay made this comment: In my opinion, Calvinism is a  different  gospel, not [merely] obscuring the gospel.   How can [Calvinists] believe what they do and still be considered the true gospel?      Brian   (non-Calvinist) replied: Welcome Kay!  Thank you for the question.  Here is my take for what it is worth.  Calvinism, imo, has a deformed view of the true gospel, but still the true gospel. Calvinism’s Gospel – God has provided salvation sufficiently for all and planned for it to be “freely” and irresistibly accepted by some. NT Gospel – God has provided salvation sufficiently for all and pla...
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White horses and a cup of tea (part 1)

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I generally don't make New Year's Resolutions.  I mean I do sometimes, but I don't really see the point because they never last.  It's often more fun making the resolution than keeping the resolution, isn't it?  And so what started out as a grand idea on January 1st becomes a grand flop by January 31st.  We can waste more time planning and daydreaming about our resolutions than actually doing them, am I right?😁   (Besides, if it's important enough, we'll do whatever it is when we're motivated enough to do it, regardless of the time of year.)   And so instead of any grand resolutions these past several years, I've been trying to think of more light-hearted things to "resolve" to do throughout the year, relaxing things.   Who says resolutions have to be lofty or serious anyway? Such as these resolutions from the past several years: 1.  In 2024, my resolution was to wa tch lots of  sourdough videos , s tart growing my own sourdou...
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#1 Wrestling With God, 2015 (repost)

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[ I wrote this post in August of 2015.  But I am reposting it because I need to read it again.  I guess I need to read it again because life sometimes feels like one big "wrestling with God" match.  Wrestling with faith.  With life.   As I look back on these past several years, I am kinda amazed at how things turn out.  Or ... how they don't, I should say.  How real and raw and messy life can be sometimes.  These next numbered posts are taken from over these last few years, showing the progression of life, of the unexpected, of the "wrestling with God, faith, and life" moments.  This one goes up to August 2015, how beaten up I've felt over the years up till then.  And then comes the post about the hope I had that 2016 would be better.  And then comes 2016 - the worst summer of my life.  A life-changer for me.  And then, well, I'm not sure yet what I am putting after that.  But I'm reposting these because it's fasci...
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Prayer, Faith, and God's Will

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(repost, summary of “Understanding God’s Will,” Question 9, Q9a -Q9i)             “‘Have faith in God,’ Jesus answered.   ‘I tell you the truth, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart but believes that what he says will happen, it will be done for him.   Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.’” ( Mark 11:22-24 )                    I have to be honest.   I struggle with this verse more than any other.   I really do.   I mean, it sounds pretty straightforward to me: believe that you’ll get what you ask for and you’ll get it.   Name it and claim it!   Sounds great!               But there’s a problem.            ...
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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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God is love, but love is NOT a god!

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Our society doesn’t get this.   We have it backwards.   We have turned love into its own god, even redefining who God is, according to how we think love should look, act, and believe.   Just today, I found a "Christian" blog that emphasized how the most important factor of being a Christian is that we love everyone and do harm to no one.   However, this wasn't a "treat people kindly, take care of widows and orphans" kind of thing.   It was a "support the LGBTQ-movement, defend the LGBTQ-people who are oppressed (I'm sorry, but how can you call that massive mob of loud, demanding people who are steamrolling everyone into doing what they want and tearing down anyone who doesn't support them "oppressed"?), and defend the living children, not the unborn babies" kind of thing. She twisted Scripture to make it sound like a loving God wants us to show our love for others by approving of everything they do and everything they ...
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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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We Left Our Church Because of Calvinism (Things My Calvinist Pastor Said)

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[Yes, I know this is sarcastic, a little spicy and snarky, but I'm okay with that.  Someone's gotta say it.  For the text-only version, no memes,  click here .   For the memes only,  click here .  For the links only,  click here .  Also,  I broke this long post down into smaller posts, so click here for all the links to the individual posts in the  "Things My Calvinist Pastor Said" series .  All memes were created with  imgflip .  (This was updated in July 2020 , and it's being updated again in late 2025, early 2026.)] The inevitable has finally happened, the day we hoped would never come: The day we officially resigned from our church because of our pastor's dogmatic Calvinist preaching (May 20, 2019).   (From now on, I will try to call him our "ex-pastor."  And for the record, it was an Evangelical Free Church, which are being  taken over by Calvinism  all over the place.  So be wary an...
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