Greeting Card Headaches

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Finding the right greeting card can be so frustrating.  

 Like, where is the "I'm sorry you got arrested and will probably spend the rest of your life in prison ... but even though this terribly affected our family and friends forever, I love you anyway and hope you have as merry of a Christmas as you can, under these circumstances" kind of card?

 Oh, the headaches of trying to find the perfect card!
(And, no, I'm not joking.  I mean, yes I am, to a degree.  But in a "if I don't laugh about it, then I'll cry" kind of way.)

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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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Why is Calvinism so dangerous? #7 (Hard hearts)

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  [In this series, I'm breaking the long post   "Why is Calvinism so dangerous?"   into bite-sized pieces.] 7. The Bible (and the concordance) says ...  That when God "hardens" hearts, it is retribution for first hardening your own heart, for  resisting God for so long even after He's been patient and long-suffering with you. But Calvinism says ...  God arbitrarily chooses whose hearts to harden against Him (non-elect)  and  whose to turn to Him (elect), with no in put/responsibility on our parts. Romans 9:18:   "Therefore, God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden."   [Calvinists say "See, God hardens whomever He wants.  We have nothing to do with His choice of whom to harden and whom to elect."  But in the concordance, "hardens" is retribution for first hardening your own heart, for resisting God.  And so, yes, we do have something to do with whether we are hardened or not....
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Is Our Eternity Decided For Us?

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Since we've been talking about the End Times and heaven and hell, the next logical question might be ... "But do we even have a choice about our eternal 'destinies'?  Do we have the free-will to choose Jesus and heaven, or does God predestine us to heaven or hell?" Maybe this question won't cross the minds of many of you.  But it's one I have studied and thought about a lot ... mostly because we have a pastor who hammers the idea of predestination, acting like anyone who disagrees with him is disagreeing with the Bible and dishonoring God.  Like his view is the only way to read the Bible! He even goes so far as to say things like God wanted people in hell - for His glory.  That He planned Adam and Eve's Fall - for His purposes.  That if we sin, it's because God caused it.  And that everything that happens in our lives is caused by God - even childhood abuse - for His glory and our good, and so we just have to trust Him.   [Oh, my goodness, I c...
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"Predestination vs. Free-Will" Overview

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(Part of the "Predestination Vs. Free-Will" series) I was listening to a speaker recently (our "new" pastor that I told you about earlier) who  strongly believes in predestination, that God decides who to save and who to condemn to hell and that He causes everything we do, even our sins, for His glory and purposes. And I . . . well . . . I couldn’t disagree more! Imagine that I walk into your church and say, “I am taking a group of people on a trip with me.   We are leaving sometime soon, and you have to decide which group you’ll be part of: the one that goes or the rest that stay behind.   I have a destination picked out, a way to get there, I’ve already paid the price to take a group with me, and I’m now asking for those who want to go.   It’s up to you if you want to come or be left behind.   But if you do not deliberately choose to come with me, you will be left behind.”   This, in essence, is the way I view the whole “predestin...
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Help for Anxiety, Depression, and Suicidal Thoughts (repost)

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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're afraid you might hurt yourself, call 911 or go to the emergency room): 1.   Put on a worship song right now.  Or sing a...
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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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We Left Our Church Because of Calvinism (text only, no memes)

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[Also called "Things My Calvinist Pastor Said."  And yes, I know this is sarcastic, a little spicy and snarky, but I'm okay with that.  Someone's gotta say it.  Also,  I broke this long post down into smaller posts, so click here for all the links to the individual posts in the  "Things My Calvinist Pastor Said" series .    All memes were created with  imgflip .  (This was updated in July 2020 , and again in late 2025.)] 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 her...
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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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