And Finally, Little Drummer Boy #4

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And finally, this is Bob Seger's version of Little Drummer Boy.  I love this song.  And I love how he pours himself into it.  (But my favorite version will always be For King and Country.  I'm addicted to it!)

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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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Turn it up even LOUDER!

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(Just for fun, slipped in between the spiritual warfare posts, and a week earlier than normal.)  You know those songs that you always have to play as loud as possible, and even louder if you could? I've got some of those.  [To name only five, there's  Numb from U2 and  Chlorine,   Downstairs,   Choker , and Jumpsuit from Twenty One Pilots.  I'm addicted to Twenty One Pilots (musical geniuses)!  And so are my husband and sons.]    And the only place I can play them as loud as I want is when I'm driving alone in the car.  That's MY time.  An introvert's dream vacation.  I can play my music as loud as I want and sing along... and there's no one to interrupt or complain.  (But I do worry that I might've butt-dialed someone and that they're listening to me sing loud and proud.) And this reminds me: You parents know what we're supposed to do when kids complain about our music, right? Yeah, that's right: TURN IT UP EVEN LO...
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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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Pre-Chosen People? Is God's Call Irresistible?

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(Part of the "Predestination vs. Free-Will" series) John 6:37 :   “All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away.”              This one confused me for awhile.   It sounded like Jesus is saying that all the people that God has pre-chosen to be believers are destined to come to faith in Him.   And that only those who are chosen by God will come to faith.              But I’m not sure if that’s what this is really saying.  
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Giggle Translate #11: Praying Mantises (A.K.A. Prayer Helicopters)

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Here is my new Giggle Translate.  I ran a post I wrote about hatching praying mantises through many different languages with Google Translate, and here is how it came out: Original paragraph: Several years back, I bought some praying mantis egg cases to put in my garden.    But we wanted to watch them hatch (and raise one in a tank on our counter), and so we kept the egg cases in the kitchen suspended from a stick over a bowl.    For weeks they did nothing.    They just sat there, like dried-up walnuts.    I was beginning to wonder if we had a couple of duds.
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Ever Wonder About Jesus?

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Did you ever wonder about Jesus?  Was He real?  Who was He?  Does it really matter what you think about Him? Here is a good, hour-long video from a former journalist who sought to disprove Jesus but ended up believing in Him as Lord and Savior: The Case For Christ by Lee Strobel [Also see my post "Support for Jesus and the Bible" ]
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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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Is God Only Concerned about His Glory and Being Famous?

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In a couple posts I wrote ( "Are We Only Here For God's Glory?  What About God's Love?" and "Calvinists, Altar Calls, and Evangelism" ), I looked at my Calvi-pastor's ( ex -pastor) reasons for evangelism. He (and maybe Calvinists in general) believes that God's main goal (and basically only goal) is to be famous and to get as much glory as He can for Himself. T his pastor reminds us often about God's glory being His biggest concern.  And he wrote an article about "making God famous" being the main goal of evangelism, instead of something more like "sharing God's love and forgiveness with people, helping them find healing and hope in Jesus and leading them into a personal relationship with Him."  (Yes, he does believe in calling people to repent, but he doesn't do altar calls or ask people if they want to accept Jesus as Lord and Savior, if they want to have a personal relationship with Jesus.  Challenging people ...
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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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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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