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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I So Needed This Today - "Strength In Your Struggles"

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I desperately needed this sermon today: Tony Evans Speaks on Strength in Your Struggles .  Such a great one!  [Update 8/11/2026: That video has been removed, so here are some other options from Dr. Evans' YouTube channel .] Last week sometime, I made a very deliberate effort to decide to not believe that everything goes wrong all the time, to have hope that things were going to be okay and that I'd make it through the crushing trials .  Generally, I wake up with a feeling of anxiety (and I have for over 3 years now), but that morning I had decided "No more!  I can't keep living like this.  I'm just going to trust that God's got it in His hands and that it's going to be okay.  I am just too tired to be anxious anymore."  And I felt rather relaxed for the day, in a way I hadn't in a long time.  And it felt good! And then ... that very night ... the night I felt like I had finally turned a new leaf ... one of my young sons comes to me sobbin...
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Updated: Alana L. 5M (conflations: cause vs. allow)

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[I redid Point #5 and #6 in the Alana L. series on my other blog (and re-lettered the posts).  But instead of going back and changing the already-posted points on this blog, I'll just add the posts in their own little "series."]    Point #5 still :   M:  "Sovereign, sovereign, sovereign, sovereign."     In  5K  and  5L  (links to my other blog), I looked at Calvinism's incorrect belief that "sovereign" necessarily means that God preplans/causes all things.  In these next few posts, I want to further examine their misunderstanding of "sovereign" related to their erroneous conflations of "cause" and "allow"... and "foreknow" and "foreplan"... and "natural evils" and "moral evils"... and their deceptive use of the word "authors."   [There will be some redundancy in here and some review of things I said in the previous parts.  I tried making it shorter and more concise, but...
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Updated: Alana L. 5N (conflations: foreknow vs foreplan)

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[I redid Point #5 and #6 in the Alana L. series on my other blog (and re-lettered the posts).  But instead of going back and changing the already-posted points on this blog, I'll just add the posts in their own little "series."]  Point #5 still: N:  "Sovereign, sovereign, sovereign, sovereign."     Foreknow vs Foreplan "Oh," the Calvinist replies, "but God needed Assyria (or anybody, for that matter) to be/do evil for His plans, and so He foreplanned they would be/do evil.  They had no ability to do anything else or to choose to be good because God planned to use their evilness.  And so it had to be that way."   My reply to them: "No, I think God foreplanned to  use  Assyria's self-chosen evilness to discipline Israel, but He did not foreplan them to be/do evil.  Assyria had a choice in who they were and what they did.   And God foreknew they would be/chose evil, and so He found a way to work their evil into His plans...
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What About Those Who've Never Heard of Jesus?

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(Part of the "Predestination vs. Free-Will" series) In the previous "predestination" posts, I have been making the case that anyone can be saved, that God didn't predetermine who goes to hell and who goes to heaven.             “But,” you might wonder, “how can it be possible for all people to come to Jesus if some people have never even heard of Him, such as those who live in the jungles of a primitive island or those who grew up in another religion and only heard the name of other gods?   How can they be saved if the Bible says that only those who call on the name of Jesus will be saved, and yet they have never even heard of Him?   You can’t call on a name you never knew about.”             I have always been interested in sorting this question out in my mind – how (and if) salvation can come to those who never heard about Jesus.   When I was Ca...
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Scripture-Based Prayers For The Hardest Times (updated)

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As some of you may know, a close relative of mine is in jail right now awaiting trial for ... well ... for something serious.  She is maintaining her innocence, while the rest of us think there's more to the story than what she's saying.  There will be a trial coming up sometime in 2021, and I will have to testify against her.  I'm really not looking forward to that.   Anyway, I know I can't fix her situation for her.  I can't make it all better.  All I can do is offer whatever support I can, even though I have to testify against her eventually.  And even if I think she's not being totally honest with the authorities right now, I know that, deep down, she is a Christian.  A Christian who, I believe, is running from the Holy Spirit's conviction right now. One of the ways I decided to support and encourage her is to keep sending her Scripture-based things.  Quotes.  Bible verses.  Bible studies.  Articles.  Etc.  ...
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Updated: Alana L.: 5O (author vs author)

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[I redid Point #5 and #6 in the Alana L. series on my other blog (and re-lettered the posts).  But instead of going back and changing the already-posted points on this blog, I'll just add the posts in their own little "series."]   Point #5 still :   O:  "Sovereign, sovereign, sovereign, sovereign."       This is not technically a conflation (or maybe it is), but it's a sidenote triggered by this sentence in the last post: "[Calvinism]  truly makes God the author*/cause of all sin and evil, despite a Calvinist's insistence that it doesn't." *Bonus Note: Author vs Author When confronted by the fact that their theology makes God the author of all evil, the cause of all sin, Calvinists will inevitably refer to the Westminster Confession:  " God from all eternity, did, by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will, freely, and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass:  yet so, as thereby neither is God the author of sin ." [...
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Is God Drawing Lines in the Sand?

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(reposted from a few years ago, updated slightly) 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:  Me or the world?  Which do ...
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When Forgiveness is Hard

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(This is a continuation of point #10 in "Getting through the 'broken' times." )  10.   Forgive.             Going through painful trials often gives us tunnel-vision.   All we see is how everyone else is treating us wrong and how life is being unfair.   And we make the pain worse by dwelling on all the ways we’ve been cheated in life.   We catalog our hurts, the ways people let us down, the ways they treated us poorly, the ways God let us down, etc.   And we grow bitter and more discouraged and more closed-off.                 Bitterness is a poison.   And it will slowly destroy our relationship with others, our faith, our emotional health, and our physical well-being.   Good never comes from carrying around giant chains of unforgiveness and bitterness.   It only weighs us down, making our futures as pathetic as...
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"My Corona Blend": An Essential Oil Blend for Diffusers

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(Great, now I'll be singing "My Sharona" all day!) This is an essential oil blend I made to put in our diffusers at night while we are facing this coronavirus pandemic.  I picked oils that are known for their powerful anti-viral properties, that are good against colds/flu/fever/infectious diseases, that are good for lung/respiratory health, and that help stimulate the immune system.  (I call it "My Corona Blend" for my own reference, but I make no promises about its ability to defeat the Coronavirus.) The smell of oregano and thyme really come through in this.  It smells a bit strong, but pleasant, like a lemon thyme herb plant.  If you want a less oregano/thyme smell, add about half of both of those oils. (Check out safety recommendations for each essential oil to see if they are safe in a diffuser for your family, depending on the age of everyone in your house and whether they have compromised immune systems or not.  And then adjust accordingly, a...
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"Are Calvinists Saved?"

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(I added some new notes to the end of this post, August 23, 2020.) Here's a video from  Beyond the Fundamentals  that's well-worth watching:   Are Calvinists Saved? The most thought-provoking part (for me) was when he asks (paraphrased) "How do Calvinists know they're saved, that Jesus died for them?" You see, I would say that I trust in the truths of the Bible.  I trust that when God says He loves all people and wants all people to be saved, He means He loves  all  people and wants  all  people to be saved.  I trust that when He says Jesus died for all people and all sins, He means that Jesus died for  all  people and  all  sins.  I trust that when He says that we will find Him if we seek Him with all our hearts, He means that we can seek Him and find Him.  I trust that when He commands us to choose whom we will serve, He means that we have to choose whom we will serve.  I trust that when He ...
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