Little Drummer Boy #2

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This is a very different version than Little Drummer Boy #1, but it's very beautiful.  Serene. 

Little Drummer Boy #2 by Lauren Daigle

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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! 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 sobbing for the first time ever about the anxiety he feels about life.  I had no idea that was going on inside of him....
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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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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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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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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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In "honor" of Halloween: My Story of Demonic Harassment

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(Reposted from my another blog of mine, and retold in various other posts.) In “honor” of Halloween (a day that deserves no honor), I’m gonna share with you why we don’t celebrate Halloween.   (We take our kids to a movie instead, or buy a movie they’ve been wanting and have a “family movie night” with candy and popcorn.   So no need to feel sorry for them; they are not deprived.)   I don’t expect anyone to believe me, but I’m going to share my story.    (And for the longer version of this story on my other blog, click here .)  It’s my story about how I came to fully trust in Jesus’s name and to passionately cling to Him, to never be able to doubt the existence of a spirit world, to place such a high priority on prayer and God’s Word, and to always remember my need for spiritual armor.   And once again, you don’t have to believe me.   (But don’t say I never warned you.   And if you are a skeptic and get nothing from this whole sect...
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Calvinist Bad Logic #12 and #13: "Repent?" and "Free-Will Equals Same Choice"

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Bad Logic #12 :  People ask Calvinists "How can God call all people to repent and to believe in Him if He predestines most people to hell, knowing that they can NEVER repent or believe in Him because He won't cause them to?   How can He call us to do things He knows we can’t do?" To trap people with this one, they will say "Well, God calls us to be holy too, knowing that we can never reach holiness." Yes, it's true that He calls us to be holy knowing we can never actually be holy, but that is the goal we are aiming for, that we can and should aim for, constantly pursuing holiness, even if we fall short. But Calvinist predestination is a whole different ballgame!  Once again, it's Calvi-god calling people to repent and believe, but then actively preventing them from repenting and believing, creating them from the very beginning to be unrepentant non-believers who can NEVER repent or believe because he made it impossible for them, because Calvi-Je...
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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 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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Afraid to Pray?

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Have you ever been afraid to pray? I’m in this place a bit right now.   Don’t get me wrong, I do believe that prayer matters.   That it’s crucial.   I do pray about things.   Prayers of thanksgiving.   Prayers about immediate concerns.   Prayers of “I’m sorry.”   But more and more, I find that the words don’t come easily.   I guess I am afraid because it seems that every time I pray for something, the thing I pray about gets attacked.   Or I feel like my request gets denied, just to teach me a lesson.   Or I feel like the request will be granted, but it will cost me and I will have to pay in some other area. Or I feel like the answers have been coming so slowly and that I have to pray about things for years … so “Why bother starting now when it will just lead to years of anguish?”   Or I think “I’ve already prayed about that for years.   Why ask again?”   Or it feels like when the answer...
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