Pray For Tony Evans' Wife

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Please say a prayer for Tony Evans' wife, who is battling cancer.  This is my favorite preacher, and it makes me sad to know they're going through this.


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Calvinist Comments: A God of Love?

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I will be posting some interactions between Calvinists and non-Calvinists from the comment sections of various Soteriology 101 posts.  It's interesting and informative to see the actual things that Calvinists themselves say about the Gospel and God, and to see how non-Calvinists respond.  (I made minor edits for clarity.  And for those who are not aware of my position on this: I am a strong anti-Calvinist.  I believe Calvinism distorts the Gospel horribly.  We recently left our home church of almost 20 years because of the newish, dogmatic Calvinist pastor who came on board.  And I have been researching it deeply and writing against it ever since he started preaching.) This interaction is from "5 Reasons Why I Stayed Out of Calvinism" : A non-Calvinist, Graceadict, made this comment: "Calvinism creates a god that is NOT a god of love….” And Calvinist Jtleosala responds:  1. Then, your claim that God loves all humanity is a “...
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Broken

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(Another post from my other blog.  It fits nicely after the previous post, "Are Tragedies 'Gifts From God'?" )    It hurts to be broken. It’s being vulnerable, taking a risk with our hearts . . . sometimes winning, sometimes losing. It’s leaning on others and opening ourselves up to them, to trust, to hope - sometimes finding support and acceptance and help, being caught before we hit the ground, but sometimes being let down and battered, falling flat on our faces when others pull back and fail to catch us. Sometimes, it’s just a minor annoyance, a pain that we absorb with relative ease, realizing that we are better for it.  And sometimes, it’s more pain than we can bear, feeling like we’ll never be whole again, wanting to curl up in a ball in a dark, lonely corner and fall asleep forever. Being broken hurts! And it leaves us different, changed.  It leaves tear-stains on our cheeks.  Scars on our hearts.  Bruises on our souls.  A limp in our ...
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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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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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Using God's Word In Emotional Struggles

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Do you ever feel like Satan is beating you down with negative thoughts, temptations, trials, struggles, fears? I do.  Daily.  I regularly wake up with anxiety already pressing down on me, trying to worm its way into my mind.  Or more accurately, anxiety has been living in my mind, and every morning before I even get out of bed, it tries to burst its way out, to explode all over me and paralyze me with fear.  I struggle nearly daily with trying to keep it in check, to keep it from running my life.  I've had enough unpleasant things happen in life to make me always anxious for when the next bad moment happens, always waiting for the next shoe to drop, even when things are going okay.  And I had a horrible panic attack once, and I think I live in great fear that I'll lose control over my emotions again someday.  The anxiety can be so bad sometimes that even my own heartbeat can scare me. Can anyone else understand? I want you to know that when I talk ab...
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Leaving Calvinism: Steve Jones

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Another long look into Calvinism from a former Calvinist.  But a very good one with lots of biblical points that throw Calvinism into doubt. Calvinism Critiqued By A Former Calvinist I really appreciate people taking the time to write out their stories.  We can learn a lot from them and find encouragement through them. I like this, but do not agree with the "II. Unconditional Election" point.  I do believe that God did indeed foreknow those who would choose Him, and He chose those whom He knew would choose Him.   It's similar to how God chose a remnant in  Romans 11:4-5  when He says that in the past He chose seven thousand people who did not bow the knee to Baal, and that He likewise chose a remnant at the present time.  The people made their choice about worshipping Baal or not, and then God chose those who did not turn to false gods.  He chose those who chose Him.  (But what did He choose the 7000 for?  If you go to  1 K...
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A Tale of Two Sermons: Calvinist vs Non-Calvinist

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The other day, I watched a Willow Creek sermon again, and it happened to be Megan preaching again.  (I talked about her once before, see at the end of this post).  It was about heaven.  And it was good.  Very good.   But after that sermon, I decided to watch the sermon at the Calvinist church we left (I won't identify the church, or link to it), just to see what they were preaching.  And I wanted to compare these two sermons, to give you a taste of what sermons are like at a non-Calvinist church versus a Calvinist church.  I'm going to paraphrase what each pastor said, for space and to sum it up quickly.  And interestingly, both of them gave their version of the gospel, the call to salvation.  Notice how different they are.   And I want you to imagine what it would be like to be in the audience listening to these different sermons, especially if you were a broken, hurting, lost person who was aching for help and healing and hop...
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Giggle Translate #18: Yes, I am a Christian, but...

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Here's the original stuff I wrote on my blogs (and then I'll Giggle Translate it) : Yes, I am a rock-solid Christian, but sometimes I just want to do bad things.    I want to say bad words and watch bad movies and listen to bad music and drink bad things and be all mean and cranky toward annoying people. But what I usually end up doing is just watching my 80’s movies, listening to my 80’s music really loudly, drinking no more than an ounce-and-a-half of mildly-alcoholic hard cider (because I really don’t like alcohol ... honestly, I drink no more than one bottle of hard cider a year!), muttering bad words under my breath, and telling my husband all of the whip-smart, snarky things I wanted to tell others but didn’t think of till it was too late. And it’s a good thing that I don’t think of all the smart-mouthed things until it’s too late or else I might end up saying them out loud.    Because while I am a buttoned-up, walk-the-line, stoic, straight-arrow kind of...
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