A Broken Hallelujah

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The song that's making me wipe tears from my eyes this morning...

 I don't know what all the lyrics mean, but I do understand that life is often a broken Hallelujah.   

Most Popular Posts of the Week:

List of Calvinist Preachers, Authors, Theologians, Websites, etc.

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I  found a lot more names to add to my list of known Calvinists (found in my various  "How to Tell if a Church, Pastor, or Website is Calvinist"  posts).  But instead of adding this huge list to all those posts, I am going to put it here, and I'll just provide a link on those posts to this one.  [FYI: I added a note at the bottom of this post on May 5, 2021.] So here it is, a "master list" of known Calvinists to help you be careful and discerning about who you listen to and where you get your theology from.  There are plenty more Calvinists out there, but these are just the names that I ran across the most.   These are either definite, self-professed Calvinists or "most likely Calvinist," in my estimation.  (I haven't heard of most of them, but it's good to know their theology before I do.)   After finding these names in various places online, I looked up each person to see if they are Calvinist.  If they did not self-identify ...
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Help for Anxiety, Depression, and Suicidal Thoughts

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It's so sad to hear about all the celebrities who have recently committed suicide (or about anyone who has committed suicide, for that matter).  My heart breaks for them, for the pain they went through, and for the ones who love them, for the pain they are now going through.  It is truly a tragedy. To anyone who is hurting really badly, who is struggling with overwhelming anxiety or depression, who is considering taking their own lives ... I dedicate this post.  Please, take some time to look through some of the links here.  This is a round-up of some on-line resources or posts about dealing with anxiety or depression, particularly as a Christian. But first: Quick tips for help: If you are desperate for some immediate help and don't want to look through the links I have below, try some of these (or if it's really bad and you think you might hurt yourself, call 911 or go to the emergency room): 1.   Put on a worship song right now.  Or sin...
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God's Greatest Priority (and why there's a hell)

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Calvinists believe that God's greatest priority - His primary reason for making people - is to get more glory for Himself, and that He gets it through ordaining sin and predestining people to hell.  They think that this is why people are in hell: for God's glory, that He gets glory when He shows off His justice by punishing sin and evil.  And so He needed sin and evil and non-elect people to punish or else He couldn't fully display all His attributes to get praise and glory for them.   [But remember that - in Calvinism - people don't actually get to choose whether or not they want to believe in Jesus.  God decides for them.  He decides who won't believe and prevents them from being able to believe, and then He punishes them for not believing, even though they never had the chance or ability to believe, by God's decree.  This is a  far different  kind of "justice" than punishing people who actually deserve it, who had a choice.  In fact, ...
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This One's For You! (A Christmas Sermon)

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Did you ever listen to a sermon where you felt as if God was saying "This one's for you"?  I've never looked up Willow Creek sermons before, but for some reason I decided to watch one yesterday.  And you know what?  This one was meant for me.  It really hit me in the heart.  Watch it; it's good.  In fact, I couldn't stop thinking about it all day and into the night.  (Skip to the 35-minute mark to start the sermon.) "Christmas at the movies: How the Grinch Stole Christmas (December 18, 2022)" (Willow Creek Huntley YouTube channel) Merry Christmas, Everyone! [FYI: I've written before about how I disagree with woman being head pastors.  And it seems that, at Willow, the head pastor is a man but there are several teaching pastors under him, including women.  To me, that's a gray area.  And I'm not sure yet what I think of it.  But  since it doesn't break my hardline, definitive "no woman head pastor" rule , I've decided to ...
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Calvinism's Heart-Breaking Destruction

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Wanna see some of the real-life destruction that Calvinism does to hearts, souls, and faith?   Here are some comments (warning: bad language ahead) from a Reddit post called  "Calvinism is disgusting" , showing how people - who don't realize that Calvinism is NOT biblical - have been hurt by Calvinism and have ended up rejecting God altogether instead of just rejecting Calvinism.  Sadly, it's because they don't know that there's a  big difference  between the God of the Bible and the god of Calvinism, between the Bible's hope-filled gospel and Calvinism's sick, hopeless, twisted half-gospel. The reddit post starts out with this comment (I added punctuation to make it easier to read):  "I had a discussion with a Calvinist last night and it's more gross than I thought.  After questioning him for over an hour, it basically boiled down to the dude admitting that god predestined innocent children to a life of suffering and then hell, and that same ...
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A Coronavirus "Plandemic"? A 26-minute video you need to see

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Everyone should watch this 26-minute video: Plandemic Part 1 by Dr. Mikovits .  (FYI: I watched this video yesterday on a different YouTube link.  It had something like a million views.  And it's already been removed today.  Big surprise!  This is why I watched it right away and wrote up a short summary of my thoughts on it.  Because I figured it would be silenced!  So watch it soon, before this is removed too.) A friend found it yesterday and shared it with me.   While it’s scary stuff, it didn’t shock me because it coincides with what I’ve already thought about this whole virus situation, among other things: ... That there’s something fishy about it and it’s not natural … ... That there are unhealthy and dangerous connections between Bill Gates and Dr. Fauci and government health agencies (CDC, FDA, WHO, etc.), among others … ... That there are shady coronavirus reporting practices in the hospitals, such as financial incentives for doctors ...
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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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Is God Drawing Lines in the Sand (repost)

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(R eposted from a few years ago, updated slightly.  Part of the "End Times" series.) It’s amazing and disturbing how brazen our society is in attacking everything about God and everything He created:  marriage, monogamy, sex, family, sexuality, the scientific reality of gender, morality, modesty, the value of a person, the right to life, the existence of "right and wrong," the Bible, Jesus, and Absolute Truth.  Not to mention God Himself, His very existence. We are destroying everything associated with Him (except nature – we worship that), and then we call ourselves "progressive." But you know what I think about it all?   I think that God is letting it happen because He is drawing lines in the sand.  Through all these divisive issues and all the immorality, God is saying “Pick a side!  I am forcing you to decide which side you want to be on ... because I am coming back soon to take My people out of here.  So I need you all to decide: ...
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Giggle Translate #7: How Would You Spend Your Last Day?

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I ran my post  "How Would You Spend Your Last Day?"  (click it if you want to read the original version) through Google Translate many times, and this is what came up  [any comments I want to make about the translated version will be in brackets and in blue] : According to Christian geologist today (released on September 23, 2017) is the beginning of the end of the world.  When I went to bed yesterday: "What if the world really falls tomorrow?"  I was wondering how we broke up the day before.'' One night while I was sleeping, my wife and kids watched the show together in another room and saw Gilmon's daughters for the 82nd time.  I found that my partner (homemade chicken pizza) and my wife - me, mom and dad - who were helpful, had the usual way of eating some chocolate.   [Wow, so I have a partner  and  a wife!  And my partner is homemade chicken pizza!?!  And is it that "me, mom and dad" are what constitutes "my wife"?  I...
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