Weight of the World

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(Reposted from my other blog)

Most Popular Posts of the Week:

Things My Calvinist Pastor Said #15: No Altar Calls, And Replacing "Believe" With "Repent"

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(This "Things My Calvinist Pastor Said" series is a breakdown on this much longer post:  "We Left Our Church Because of Calvinism,"  which was written last year but updated July 2020.  All memes were created with  imgflip .) 15.    Our pastor never does altar calls and never asks people if they want to ask Jesus in their heart or choose Jesus as their Lord and Savior.  Instead, Calvinists emphasize the need to "repent."             As I mentioned in the last point, w ith Calvinism in general, there are no altar calls, no "Do you want to ask Jesus into your heart, to choose Him as your Lord and Savior?"                They say it's because they don't want people thinking they're saved just because they "walked the aisle" or "prayed a prayer."  But I know it's because they don't want people thinking they have a choice.  Because that would contradict their whol...
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Things My Calvinist Pastor Said #14: Babies Die As Unrepentant Sinners

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(This "Things My Calvinist Pastor Said" series is a breakdown on this much longer post:  "We Left Our Church Because of Calvinism,"  which was written last year but updated July 2020.  All memes were created with  imgflip .) 14.   (And most recently, on Mother's Day, this is what he said, practically word for word ...)  "Christians love to believe that there is an age of accountability.   (My note: This is when someone becomes old enough to understand the difference between right and wrong.  And most Christians believe that children who die before this "age/condition of accountability" and mentally-handicapped people who can't understand the Gospel are covered by God's grace when they die, and so they go to heaven.  They were mentally incapable of being able to make a choice about accepting or rejecting Jesus, so they are not held accountable for being unable to make a choice.)   But  nowhere  in the Bible does it say th...
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A great sermon to start 2026

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I watched  this online Willow Creek sermon  yesterday from a new series called The Jesus Way, about the Sermon on the Mount... and I just gotta share it because I haven't heard a sermon this good in awhile.  In fact, it's one of the best I've heard in a long time.  A great way to start 2026!   Maybe it just said what I needed to hear at this point in my life.  Maybe it won't speak to you the same way.  But, who knows, maybe it will.  Give it a try.  What've you got to lose?  
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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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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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Is Calvinism's TULIP Biblical? (the complete post)

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[This is based on a post I found online:   What's wrong with Five-Point Calvinism?   I was going to send a copy of that post to my relative who is in jail awaiting trial, but I ended up adding so many of my own notes that it became a whole new post.  (But there are still some very similar parts, and I give credit to the author of that post for what he wrote.  Read it.  It's short and good and worth reading.)  My relative (who dabbled in, if not embraced, Calvinism, at least back in the day) shares what I send with the women on her floor, doing their own little Bible study.  And so I figured, "Why not send them my thoughts on Calvinism since I know they will read it?"  And as a bonus, the cops have to read every letter that passes between us, and so they will have to read it too!  A captive audience!  (Ha Ha!  Bad joke.  But if I don't laugh, I'll cry.)  Anyway, this is what I sent to her, a "brief" look into Calvinism's TU...
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Review of "Once an Insider, Now Without A Church Home" - A Look At How Churches Go Wrong

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I was recently asked to review this book – Once an Insider, Now Without A Church Home: One Couple’s Faith Crisis Due to the Infiltration and Spread of Authoritarianism, Calvinism, Complementarianism, and Covenants in the Am Evangelical Church, written by Amanda Farmer.   (Click here to go to the author’s website or click here to order her book on Amazon .) I am not getting paid or reimbursed in any way for this review.   But after reading it, I am happy to do it because I think it’s a message that needs to get out there as much as possible. For me, I will focus particularly on the “Calvinism” part of it, seeing as how it’s also recently taking over the church my family has attended for almost 20 years. I found this review of the book online by another blog-owner.   And since that blog owner did a great job of giving a thorough synopsis of the book, I will focus more on giving my impressions of it, how it affected me, and what it made me think. For starters,...
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Anyone Else Worn Out?

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(Reposted from a year ago, but still so fitting.  Updated.) Can anyone else relate to the idea of being exhausted from the energy it takes to just keep breathing (the song  Worn , linked below)?   I've been there, too.  For a long time now.   [It dawned on me last night - after talking with one of my sons about anxiety issues - just how many big things we've been hit with in the last 5-10 years (most of them in the last 5 years): - getting out of a moldy rental that made us sick and buying this house that we thought was such a great answer to prayer - finding one big house problem after the next - depression over an abandoned, moldy, neighbor's garage which is 10 feet from our yard and blows all over us  (they've only just now - the fall of 2019 - started cleaning it up, after about 5 years of me being severely depressed over it) - several years ago, my only close friend at the time stopped calling me and it crushed me - I went into a long and deep depressi...
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Things My Calvinist Pastor Said #1: We Can't Choose

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(This "Things My Calvinist Pastor Said" series is a breakdown on this much longer post:  "We Left Our Church Because of Calvinism,"  which was written in 2019 but updated July 2020 and again in late 2025.  All memes were created with  imgflip .) The inevitable has finally happened, the day we hoped would never come: The day we officially resigned from our church because of our pastor's dogmatic Calvinist preaching (May 20, 2019).   (From now on, I will try to call him our "ex-pastor."  And for the record, it was an Evangelical Free Church, which are being  taken over by Calvinism  all over the place.  So be wary and educated.) It's been a long road.  He came on board about 6 years ago, and began introducing his Calvinist views here and there.  Just a little bit at a time, never really exposing the ugly parts of Calvinism.  Just subtle points that didn't really alarm us.  (If I had known then what I know now, I would'v...
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"Bring me pain, Lord, if it brings You glory!"

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(Reposted from a couple years ago, but updated for me for today.  Because I need it.  Note to self: Remember 10/2/19, the day the "tsunami" hit.)  I’ve always found the statements of “I want the Lord to do whatever He wants in my life to bring Him the most glory possible, even if it means bringing me pain” to be inspirational … and a bit “off.” Wh en I was 21 (half my lifetime ago), I went to Papua New Guinea for a summer on a mission trip.   And I told my mom that I picked PNG over any other place because it was so remote and primitive.   I said that I wanted to have everything taken away to really challenge me, to grow my faith in new ways.   And I meant it.   I really did.   My heart was in the right place. But my mom said something wise, something that stuck.   She said, “Don’t ask for that!   Never ask for that!   Because He could take away everything – your legs, your eyesight, your health, your home, etc.” Wow! ...
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