Praise The Lord

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How I'm feeling today:  Praise The Lord by City Harmonic and Blessed Be Your Name by Newsboys.

A hard lesson to learn  - learning to praise in the pain.  I still stink at it sometimes.

Most Popular Posts of the Week:

When Calvinists say "But predestination!" (tiny, bare-bones version)

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[Here's the tiniest version of my "But predestination!" post.  The short version with more memes and quotes and information can be  found here , and t he longest version (a series of posts full of many more Calvinist comments, my Calvinist ex-pastor's sermons, and my replies to them, written for my own amusement and for my ex-church) can be found by  starting here .  But this tiny version includes only the most basic parts you need to know, with a few memes and quotes thrown in to spice it up and prove my points.  (I know this could be much tinier, but Calvinism has so many bunny trails, so many interlocking ideas, that it's hard to address one part without addressing more.  So this is as comprehensively tiny as I dared to make it.) ] At the heart of Calvinism is predestination and God's sovereignty (among other things, like "total depravity"), which according to Calvinism essentially amounts to:  "God preplans and controls everything, even sin ...
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Hardest Spiritual Lesson #1: Let Go

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I wrote about some of the "hardest spiritual lessons" years ago on another blog of mine, but I am updating and reposting it here.   These are normal, typical (often painful) lessons that we will all eventually struggle with (it's okay to struggle) if we continue to walk with God and to chase after a deeper relationship with Him.    (And I know there are more than I've listed here.)   In no particular order (and broken up into individual posts), here are some of the hardest lessons I've learned over the years when it comes to faith and walking with God: 1.    Let Go or Hold on? Imagine you fell over the side of a cliff and are hanging onto a tiny root sticking out the side of the cliff with one hand, and God throws a rope down to save you.  But in your other hand, you're holding onto a water bottle you think you need.  You need both hands to grab the rope and climb, but you're afraid to let go of the water bottle.   After all, w...
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Get Comfortable

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       In our country, we are told over and over again things like:        “Follow your heart.”        “Make your own way.”        “Never take ‘no’ for an answer.”        “You can be anything you want or do anything you want.”        “Apply yourself and all your dreams will come true.”        (How else could we have so many reality shows where people want to be singers?)        We are told that anything is possible.   We can make it happen by dreaming big and reaching high and wanting it badly enough.   In fact, look at all the commercials and advertisements that tell us that “We deserve it.”   It doesn’t matter what it is – a luxury car, a vacation, a break, a new phone . . . “We deserve it.”   And it doesn’t matter how little effort or hard work we put in . . . “We deserve it.”      ...
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Feminism Nonsense (repost)

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(Oh, how we love nonsense in our country!) We women are fighting so hard to be like men, to downplay femininity, to be perceived as more masculine, to overtake any "men's realm" we find.   Because it’s “cool” and “progressive” and “strong.” But do we not realize that we are not “leveling the playing field” so much as we are destroying ourselves , the things that make women special? Women can be strong, too.   And they don’t have to be like men to do it.   Trust me, I know.  I've had four children, one by c-section and three by natural, drug-free homebirth (with over 15 hours of labor for each one).  And then I work in the home every day, all day long.  No pay.  No vacation time.  No weekends off.  No bonuses.  No overtime pay. But I do it because my family and I value my position, my role.  Even if the world doesn't. W e women can be strong and capable and accomplished in our...
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Greeting Card Headaches

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Finding the right greeting card can be so frustrating.   Like, where is the "I'm sorry you got arrested and will probably spend the rest of your life in prison ... but even though this terribly affected our family and friends forever, I love you anyway and hope you have as merry of a Christmas as you can, under these circumstances" kind of card? Oh, the headaches of trying to find the perfect card! (And, no, I'm not joking.  I mean, yes I am, to a degree.  But in a "if I don't laugh about it, then I'll cry" kind of way.)
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Spiritual Warfare: Satan's Schemes #1 (unbelief, sin, fear)

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Ephesians 6:11 :  "Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes." Satan and demons can cause a lot of trouble (just look at the world!).  They can hurt people's bodies, minds, relationships, futures, etc.  They delight in causing people to hurt others, self-destruct, commit crimes, or engage in any of  "the acts of the sinful nature ... sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissentions, factions, and envy, drunkenness, orgies, and the like" ( Gal. 5:19-23 ).   They incite  "wickedness, evil, greed, and depravity ... murder, strife and malice,"  and tempt people to become godless, truth-suppressors, thankless, foolish, dark-hearted, idol/nature-worshippers, perverted, depraved, gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of new ways to do evil, disobedient, senseless, faithless, heartless...
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"But predestination!" (16B: sin, evil, suffering)

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In this series, I'm examining some things that Calvinists (especially my ex-pastor) say about predestination.   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  16B (sin, evil, suffering)  and  17 (double-speak and the gospel) . For the shorter "for everyone" version which has a lot less quotes and a lot less of my thoughts,  click here . Sixteen B (I broke #16 up into two halves, so picking up where we left off in the last post...) And now, moving on from the bulk of my comments to the bulk of the Calvinist quotes, showing you Calvinism in its ...
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Calvinism: Using unclear to interpret clear

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I just found and watched this video against Calvinism yesterday (I have no idea who this pastor is or what else he teaches, but this video was good and on-track, very simplified):  Trojan Horses in the Church Today, part 1: Calvinism I particularly like something he says near the beginning which neatly sums up the fundamental problem of Calvinism: "Calvinism is a man-made philosophy that is contradictory to Scripture.  It is built on the classic error - now listen carefully to this - of interpreting clear passages of Scripture by unclear passages of Scripture.  That is a violation of the ABC's of Bible interpretation.  One of the most basic rules of [Bible] interpretation is you interpret unclear passages by clear ones.  Not the other way around.  But Calvinism is  built on  the idea of interpreting clear, simple passages by unclear ones.  Therefore, if you start with the unclear and you start with a false idea, then you start looking at the ...
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Support for Jesus and the Bible

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Although almost every other major religion out there acknowledges that Jesus really did live, there are still people who insist He is a fairy tale, like a mythological legend from ancient history.  Or they believe that He was a real man but never claimed to be God, that His followers made it up after He died.  And many believe that the Bible, though a good book, was written just from men’s minds and wasn’t really God-inspired. When trying to reason with people like this, many Christians quote Bible verses to try to win the argument, thinking it should convince everyone of God’s Truth.  But since many people, including atheists, don’t believe the Bible is true, they don’t want to hear the Bible being used to try to prove the validity of the Bible.  That’s “circular reasoning,” using the Bible to validate the Bible.  This is why it’s important to have sources outside the Bible that confirm that Jesus really did live and that Scripture is really reli...
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Why is Calvinism so dangerous? #7 (Hard hearts)

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  [In this series, I'm breaking the long post   "Why is Calvinism so dangerous?"   into bite-sized pieces.] 7. The Bible (and the concordance) says ...  That when God "hardens" hearts, it is retribution for first hardening your own heart, for  resisting God for so long even after He's been patient and long-suffering with you. But Calvinism says ...  God arbitrarily chooses whose hearts to harden against Him (non-elect)  and  whose to turn to Him (elect), with no in put/responsibility on our parts. Romans 9:18:   "Therefore, God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden."   [Calvinists say "See, God hardens whomever He wants.  We have nothing to do with His choice of whom to harden and whom to elect."  But in the concordance, "hardens" is retribution for first hardening your own heart, for resisting God.  And so, yes, we do have something to do with whether we are hardened or not....
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