My Crazy Faith

(Reposted from my another blog of mine, and retold in various other posts.) In “honor” of Halloween (a day that deserves no honor), I’m gonna share with you why we don’t celebrate Halloween.   (We take our kids to a movie instead, or buy a movie they’ve been wanting and have a “family movie night” with candy and popcorn.   So no need to feel sorry for them; they are not deprived.)   I don’t expect anyone to believe me, but I’m going to share my story.    (And for the longer version of this story on my other blog, click here .)  It’s my story about how I came to fully trust in Jesus’s name and to passionately cling to Him, to never be able to doubt the existence of a spirit world, to place such a high priority on prayer and God’s Word, and to always remember my need for spiritual armor.   And once again, you don’t have to believe me.   (But don’t say I never warned you.   And if you are a skeptic and get nothing from this whole sect...

Yes, these are older songs and a bit campy, but they are fun and full of truth.  And they're blasts from the past for me, taking me back to my youth!  (I didn't mean to make it rhyme.)   A Witch's Invitation  - Love this one! No Monsters  - See, Carman knows the power of Jesus's name! Satan, Bite The Dust   - I wouldn't go around challenging Satan, but Carman's making a good, important point here about the power of God compared to the power of the devil. God's Got An Army  - with a little Narnia thrown in Revival in the land   - Are you on your knees in prayer for our country?  The Courtroom  - I just watched this one for the first time.  Interesting. The Champion  - this will always be one of his best! Radically Saved (Live)  - the whole hour-plus show.  This is one of the first albums I got of his.  And it's still one of my favorites. Radically Saved  - just the song This Blood is for You  - A powerfu...

What's a Christian to do when a family member is worshipping the devil? I have a first cousin who moved back to the States several years ago.  He and his family lived in another country for years.  But one day, out of the blue, my mom got a text from him, begging for money to get a flight out of the country he was living in.  He claimed that the mafia there was going to "take his hands."  He is a brilliant artist, but he had gotten involved with "the wrong people" ... and now they were coming after him to take his hands.  He wanted money to fly out that night with his wife and two young children, leaving everything behind.  He said he'd pay her back. My mom wasn't sure if she should give them the money.  She didn't know if she believed him.  But she felt she had no choice, so she wired him the money. And they flew back to the USA with only the clothes on their backs. And he paid her back. This convinced her that he was telling the truth....

My all-time favorite Christian band is The City Harmonic.  And this is one of my favorite songs from them:  Praise the Lord . When you've learned to praise the Lord - even when it doesn't come out easily, even when you're heart is still broken and you're afraid and things look dark - then you've entered a whole new level of faith.  And it's a beautiful thing.  Painfully beautiful and beautifully painful.  But it's good! And I will keep reposting this one, over and over again:  Oh, What Love!   It doesn't get any better than that!

There have been articles coming out recently about a rise in witchcraft in America.  One article says that witchcraft is growing astronomically and that witches now outnumber Presbyterians in the United States.  And another article (along with this one ) says that witches gathered the other day to hex Brett Kavanaugh, to take back the country, and to support abortion rights.  And they've been trying to hex President Trump, too, according to other articles.   This makes me wonder ... How much power do witches really have? Answer:  I don't know. I don't know, and I'm not about to google it because I can only imagine what kind of sites that would dredge up. But I will say this:  Witchcraft is about trying to control the spirit world - demons.  And demons answer to the devil (and ultimately to God), not to people.  So I don't think witches have any real power over demons.  Not like they think they do. But I do think demons are more th...

I visited a Christian blog recently where the author shared a list of her favorite scary movies to watch on Halloween.  And they were some of the worst of the worst.  Violent, demonic, evil.  And she said that she's happy her kids are old enough to watch them now so that they can watch the movies together.  (I'm not sure how old her kids are, but she is not an old, grandma-aged mom.) I was horrified.  And I told her in the comment section that I was shocked that a Christian website would encourage those kinds of movies.  I told her that I didn't think it's right to encourage things that are clearly contrary to God.  (For the record, I used to love scary movies ... until I found myself home alone, remembering the terrifying images of these movies.)   In response, she told me that she knows Christians like me who believe in staying away from movies like that ... but that's just not who she is.  (But she did edit out the horror movies from h...

Halloween is coming up.  And of course the question for Christians is "How much should we participate in Halloween, if at all"? Truthfully, I don't know. My personal choice would be to have nothing to do with Halloween, except for eating candy.  (Thankfully, my boys never wanted to dress up in costumes.)  I don't feel comfortable participating in anything that "celebrates" death, violence, demons, witches, the occult, etc.  Those kinds of things are very real in the world and shouldn't be encouraged, laughed at, or glorified at all . But I also don't think there's anything wrong with meeting with friends, having some good clean fun, eating candy, enjoying God's wonderful Autumn blessings, etc.  Even dressing up just for fun isn't inherently wrong.     But is that too close to "celebrating Halloween"?   (I will admit that I am uncomfortable with the idea of "dressing up" for Halloween.  To me that seems to be ...

(Today's four posts are the long, unbroken-up versions of my "predestination vs. free-will" series.  If you want the smaller posts, find them, along with other links, in "Links To Other Anti-Calvinism Posts."   They contain most of what you find in these four posts, just in smaller, easier-to-digest pieces.) (Slightly updated August 2020) I looked at Romans in the last post.    This time, I want to specifically consider Ephesians, the other book that is most used to support predestination.    Once again, while there is a lot in this book that can sound like predestination, I do not think it actually teaches that God decides who to send to heaven and who to send to hell. The first chapter of Ephesians gives us what seems like the strongest support for predestination. Ephesians 1:4,5, 11 :    “For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight.    In love he predestined us to b...