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.   

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Two Timely Billy Graham Sermons: Will Our World End? And Who Is Jesus?

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This message was spoken decades ago, but it is so timely right now ... Billy Graham's  "Will Our World End?"  (36 min)  Anything here sound familiar? What have you put your faith in? We all have faith in something.   What's yours in?  What are you counting on to save you? Also, if you're interested, here's a second Billy Graham sermon:   "Who Is Jesus?"    (24 min)   (And s ee my posts  "Why I Could Never Be An Atheist" ,   "Support for Jesus and the Bible"  and, for comparison,  "An Overview of World Religions." ) Come on, you can spare an hour of your life to figure out where you're going in the end, which seems to be getting closer and closer every day!
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Three Guidelines For Christians Regarding Halloween (repost)

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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 the ...
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"The Candid Calvinist"

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  My husband just found this "satirical" 6-minute video about what Calvinists say vs. what they hide.  It's called  "The Candid Calvinist"  and it's brilliant.  This guy does a great job covering some of the confusing contradictions and deceptive word-choices of Calvinism.  I hope he does more videos like this.  (And does he not remind you of a young Ben Shapiro?)
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9 Marks of a Calvinist Cult #2 (hidden agendas)

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[This series is  "The 9 Marks of a Calvinist Cult"  split up into smaller, individual posts.]   (Happy Thanksgiving tomorrow!) 2.  Hidden Agendas Not only do Stealth Calvinist pastors get into churches using deception, but they come in with the hidden agenda to reform the church, to slowly drag it into Calvinism without the awareness of the people. A post called  "The Church Infected with Calvinism"  shares this:  " This third scenario [of how Calvinism infects a church] is all too common.  There are websites that instruct Calvinistic preachers who accept calls to non-Calvinistic churches on how to gradually 'acclimate' the church to Calvinism.  I saw one website with a two-year, month-by-month plan for the stealth Calvinist to take a non-Calvinistic church into 'Reformed Theology' land.  It's almost cult-like and certainly deceptive...  While the Calvinistic pastor is crafting pulpit content to fortify his philosophical argume...
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Spiritual Warfare: Be Strong in the Lord (Eph. 6:10)

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I remember one dream I had during those five months of demonic harassment  (s ee  this post )  that really stuck out to me.  (I actually think it was more of a vision than a dream).   I was “dreaming” that I was sleeping in bed just like I was actually lying there sleeping in real life, and there was a demon in the room, hovering about a foot over me in a cloud of black smoke as I slept.   (Honestly, it felt as if my spirit was watching my body sleep and could see the demon hovering over me.)   And in my dream, I could literally feel - through my whole body and deep down in my soul - this intense hatred radiating from the demon, as though he wanted to reach out and violently slash me to pieces.    I could tell that he was incredibly strong and could cause  fatal damage, but that he was prevented from doing so by an invisible force, a n invisible wall of protection around me.    But I had no doubt about his incredible ...
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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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Spiritual Warfare: Sword of the Spirit 4 (the sword)

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Okay now, onto the list of verses I shared with my family member for her to use in spiritual battles, when Satan's got us down and cowering in fear.  These were specifically chosen for comfort, encouragement, and strength (and I added a few extra here for different kinds of temptations or trials).  I suggest p rinting them out, reading them over and over again, writing them out, mem orizing some, taking a list with you wherever you go, etc.  Whatever it takes to get through the hard times. And when the attacks, temptations, or hard times come, turn them into prayers  (I'll share my own personal Scripture-based prayers in the next post)  or simply s peak out loud the ones that fit your particular struggle, trial, temptation, or fear.   Declare to yourself, to the struggle/temptation, and to the spirit world/the Enemy that "It is written ..." and then quote a verse that fits.  A nd let God's Word comfort and still your soul as the sword of the Spiri...
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Spiritual Warfare: Overestimating Ourselves, Underestimating Satan

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In the last post  of this series, we looked at the danger of underestimating ourselves and overestimating Satan.  Today let's look at the reverse: overestimating ourselves and underestimating Satan.  (This will be a little scattered because there's several angles I want to look at this from.)   While we shouldn't think Satan has more power than he does, we also shouldn't think he has less.  He  is the ruler, the "prince," of this world right now and has been given a lot of leeway (by God's permission) to move around and cause trouble.  Yes, God is still in control over Satan and has him on a leash, but he's still allowed to cause an enormous amount of pain and damage (just look at the world around us, maybe even your own lives).  So may we never be flippant about him or ignorant of his schemes and power.    Here are a handful of verses about Satan/demons (what he's called, what he does, what he's capable of): Satan is called "the pr...
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Spiritual Warfare: If you don't believe in the devil ...

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I just found a great warning in an article ( "'Nefarious': From strange ailments to car accidents, the spiritual warfare that occurred while filming" )  from the director of a spiritual-thriller movie who knew that filming a movie about demonic possession would lead to opposition from unseen forces (my paraphrase):  If you don't believe in the devil - if you don't think you need to take him seriously -  then just start opposing him and see what happens.   Start praying more.  Start reading your Bible more.  Start memorizing Bible verses more and speaking them out loud as needed.  Start saying "no" to temptations.  Start confessing sins to God, asking for forgiveness.  Start forgiving other people.  Start thanking God for things, out loud.  Start cleaning up your lives, homes, and habits, getting rid of things that glorify evil.  Start listening to praise music.  Start obeying God in something, no matter how small....
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My Testimony

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I've scattered bits of my story all over my blogs, but I’m gonna pull it all together here, about how I became a believer and some things I’ve gone through and how my faith has been affected.  (I’ll include links to posts where I explain things more fully.) Starting the journey:    I became a believer when I was eleven years old.    (I am now getting close to 50.   I don't know how that happened. )    At a Christian camp, on one of the last nights, they gave an altar call.    I wanted to go up but was nervous about standing up in front of everyone.    But being more nervous about the window of opportunity closing, I felt myself stand up and walk to the front.    I knew exactly what I was doing, that I was making a commitment for life.    And I meant it.    I really meant it.    I knelt down, asked Jesus into my heart, and have never turned back.    It hasn’t been an easy, carefr...
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