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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Hardest Spiritual Lesson #7: Accepting Love and Forgiveness

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Another lesson that's really hard for many of us:  Letting Yourself Be Loved or Forgiven (note: there's a bonus section at the end of this post). Not everyone will face this lesson, but those with broken pasts will know what I’m talking about.    One of the hardest lessons I have had to learn in my spiritual life (and in my earthly life) is to let myself be loved by someone ... by Someone.   I come from a very dysfunctional home.    Three dads by the time I was 8.    And then another dad (after a  very messy  divorce) when I was in my late-20's/early-30’s.    I didn’t grow up with my bio-dad or his family.    I didn’t even really meet them until my teens.    And then after that, I’d see them about once or twice a year, sometimes less.    I never really felt like I belonged to a dad or had a place in my extended families (or that my mom was an emotionally-safe person, so I never went to her for enco...
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If They Mated ...

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I think I stumbled upon the perfect "If They Mated ..." scenario for who I look like and how I act.  (You know, when they take two people and morph their faces into one to show what their offspring would look like if they mated.)  I wasn't trying to figure this out or anything; it just came to me as I was watching The Hobbit recently.  And once I saw it in my mind, I couldn't unsee it.  Then after I thought about possibly sharing it with all of you, my mind won't let it go until I do.  And so here it is, much to my chagrin... I kid you not, if you mixed these three characters - their looks and their personalities - you would totally have me.   Frankie Heck from The Middle (Someone once told me I looked like her, when I was a lot younger.  Actually, it was when she was in Everybody Loves Raymond , but we're both a lot older now.  And I was told once I looked like Winona Ryder, for a split second.  Ah, to be young again!) Bard...
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Why Is It So Hard For Calvinists To Get Free From Calvinism?

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This was originally on the end of my post "If Calvinism is true, then God is a liar."   But I think it deserves its own post (I recently updated it a little bit, March 2021): I read something once about how very few people end up freeing themselves from the clutches of Calvinism because of the strong hold it has on people.  I think this is partly because ... 1.   We (I am talking as if I were a Calvinist here) would have to admit that we were misunderstanding Scripture this whole time, and no one wants to admit they could be wrong. 2.   Calvinism appeals to us prideful intellectuals.  (And prideful intellectuals have the greatest aversion to admitting we could be wrong.)  It makes us feel special, like we alone understand the "deeper, hidden meanings of Scripture," while the simple-minded Christians can't understand it.  Calvinism (with all of its contradictions, word play, round-about reasoning, and multiple layers of meaning for verses) gives u...
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Spiritual Warfare: Resources

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I'm not done with the Spiritual Warfare series yet.  Not even close.  (I totally intended it to be short and sweet, but ... oh well).  But I figured I'd share some resources now, in the middle of it.   I told a friend (whose young child recently experienced a probable demonic attack in the middle of the night: The child woke up screaming and thrashing around wildly, screaming that she couldn't control her body, and she continued doing this for an hour.  Nothing could sooth or stop her until the mom commanded demons to leave in Jesus's name, which caused the girl to calm down immediately and fall asleep.  The girl couldn't remember any of this in the morning.)... anyway, I told my friend that it can be overwhelming to search "Spiritual Warfare" online (or in books) because you get all sorts of different websites, and you're not sure who you can trust.  And so I thought I'd share some resources I like.  (Just because I recommend something doesn...
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Thank you, reddit/reformed. I'm honored!

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[I'm sneaking this post in between the regular bi-weekly (every other week) posts on both this blog and my Anti-Calvinist Rant blog.  (Did you know that bi-weekly can mean both "every other week" and "twice a week"?  What the heck, those are like total opposites!)] Commenter Senior-Emergency-944   started a thread  on Reddit/Reformed   called  Part of me wants to affirm it. But how do you refute this?!  which linked to my post  "But Calvinists don't say God causes sin and evil!" , asking for advice on how to refute the Calvinist quotes I shared about God causing evil.  If I was able to reply to Senior (I don't have a reddit account), I would've said this... That's awesome!  Thank you.  I'm honored that you brought up this post for discussion among reformed Christians.  And I think it's great that you're willing to examine this issue and think deeper about it, to face the dark, uncomfortable truth of what Calvinists really be...
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Genuine Faith is Messy!

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You know, if there’s one thing I’ve learned over these past depressing years, it’s that faith is messy sometimes.   Faith hurts sometimes.   It’s not as easy and predictable and “magic-wandy” as I used to think it was.   And I think a critical part of strengthening and purifying your faith – of learning humility - is going through the trials and learning to praise Him in the pain, regardless of what’s going on in our lives. Because it’s in the trials and the hurt and the messiness that I have learned to see God for who He really is and myself for who I really am.   It’s where I learned more about His love, grace, faithfulness, forgiveness, all-sufficiency, etc.   It’s where my faith grew (after much confusion and pain) and where my trust in Him was purified. I think many of us have faith in God at first because we think it will fix every problem, or because it’s fun and gives us an emotional high, or because we think it will make life the way we want. ...
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Why I Hate Calvinism So Much!

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  Wanna know why I hate Calvinism so much? Watch a few of these songs.  Listen to the words.  Think about how much Jesus sacrificed for us.  The incredible price He paid.  The love, grace, forgiveness, help, healing, and salvation He died to give us.  How true hope and life is found  only  in Him. Oh, What Love  by The City Harmonic I Am  by Crowder Hallelujah Christmas   by Cloverton Sweetly Broken  by Jeremy Riddle  (God draws  everyone  to Him.  He calls  everyone  to come out of death and into life!  Will we listen?  Will we respond?) Secret Ambition  by Michael W. Smith Fell Apart  by The City Harmonic Confession (Agnus Dei)  by The City Harmonic  (Calvi-Jesus did  not  take away the sins  of the world , but of just a few people.  But the Jesus of the Bible did!  And that's why I love Him!) Healing Begins  by Tenth Avenue North A...
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UGW #9b: Help For The Journey

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Understanding God's Will #9b: (No Calvinism information added to this post.) So, as seen in the point 9a, faith in God isn’t “claiming” something that He hasn’t promised, believing that He’ll do it just because we believe in His ability to do it.    Godly faith is trusting that He is the God that He claims to be in the Bible and that He will do what’s best, in His time and in His way.    And our job is to follow in obedience, not to lead.                And contrary to the “name it and claim” way, I believe that we are off-base when we are “claiming” a particular answer to prayer before He reveals it, when we tell Him the answer that we expect and that we are going to wait for.    I think we need to not be claiming specific answers or blessings as much as “instructions” or “help along the way.”              While we can and should pray what's in our h...
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John Calvin Adds Things That Aren't In The Bible

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This is a section from my post "Problems in John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion."   I wanted to break that long post up into smaller sections long ago, but I never got around to it, until now. This is Point #4 from the original post: Calvin adds things that aren't in the Bible (at least not in our translations of the Bible). Such as (these are just a couple examples), in Book 1, Chapter 16, section 5, he refers to Matthew 10:29 by saying, "Not a sparrow falls to the ground without the will of his Father."   However, he basically added the word "will," which makes it sound more like God willed the sparrow to die, that every time anything happens it's because God actively willed it to happen.  But there is only one translation I can find that has the word "Father's will" in it, the World English translation.  Every other one just says something like "apart from the Father" or "the Father...
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How to Tell if a Church, Pastor, or Website is Calvinist (extended version)

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(For the simplified version, click here .   And feel free to copy  this and share it with others, to help them learn to identify Calvinism when they see it.  Just make sure to share the link to this post so that they can find the original one if they want it.  Thank you.   New :  For the super-short version,   click here .   And FYI:  I found a couple times when the Calvinist author of an article I linked to changed the article after I linked to it.  So if an article doesn't seem to match what I said about it, it may be because they altered it. ) We just left our church of almost 20 years because of the dogmatic Calvinist pastor who recently came on board.   Unfortunately, our church was one of the best around, with some of the most biblical teaching.  WAS!  And so now we are struggling with where to go next.   (I just heard that, apparently, the elders were aware of how dogmatic he was before they ...
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