Our Precious Lord and Savior

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(I posted this one last month, but Easter is a great time to repost it, slightly edited.)

Our wonderful, amazing, gracious heavenly Father dearly loves all people and wants all people to be saved.  And Jesus - my beautiful, loving, precious Lord and Savior - died for everyone so that everyone has the opportunity to be saved.  No one is beyond the reach of God's amazing grace and love.  No one is unforgiveable.  No one is hopeless.  Eternal life can be yours, and all you have to do is believe. 

Titus 2:11: "For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men."

John 1:29: "Here is the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world!"

1 Timothy 2:4-6: "[God our Savior] wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.  For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all men..."

John 3:16: "For God so loved the world that he sent his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life."

2 Peter 3:9: "... He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance."

Romans 10:9, 13: "If you confess with your mouth that 'Jesus is Lord,' and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.... Whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved."


This Easter, watch some of these favorite songs of mine.  This is my Jesus.  It's why I love Him so much.  And He can be your Jesus, too.  If you want Him to be.

Oh, What Love by The City Harmonic

I Am by Crowder

Hallelujah Christmas by Cloverton

Sweetly Broken by Jeremy Riddle  (God draws everyone to Him.  He calls everyone to come out of death and into life!  Will we listen?  Will we respond?)

Secret Ambition by Michael W. Smith

And this one doesn't make me cry, but I love, love, love it!  It's about offering Jesus the only gift we can really give Him, in gratitude for what He's done for us: Ourselves!  Little Drummer Boy 
And here's the Easter sermon my family sat down to watch today, after eating homemade cinnamon rolls: The Purpose of Pain by Tony Evans (it's several years old, but a good one).  All six of us piled around the TV and watched together.  I thought it was really delightful.  Even better than going to church and scattering off to our own classes.  

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List of Calvinist Preachers, Authors, Theologians, Websites, etc.

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Calvinism doesn't rescue anyone

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Calvinism doesn’t rescue any sinner from hell.  Because the elect were never on their way to hell, never at risk of going to hell at any point in time ... and the non-elect can never be rescued from hell because Calvi-Jesus never died for them and because Calvi-god made it impossible for them to believe. All Calvinism does is convince some people that they’ve always been saved without ever having to do anything about it, not even choosing to believe in Jesus (because in Calvinism, we  can't  choose to believe), while convincing others that they can never be saved, that God doesn’t love them, that Jesus didn’t die for them, and that there’s no hope for them. A lie from the pit of hell.  Destroying the evangelical church from the inside out.  And it will cost people their souls. [A comment I left on the Soteriology 101 post  "(Re)Thinking through Romans 9" , with a few small alterations.  And of course, not all Calvinists will word things this way.  They will try to soften
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As I was listening to a Christian radio station, they interviewed a random woman on the street who said, “I think the writers of the Bible just made it up to get people to follow them.” And I laughed out loud at the thought of that.  I wanted to ask her if she ever really read the Bible, if she knew what it teaches.  Because if she did, she would have to wonder why anyone would make up some of the things we find in the Bible and think it would cause people to go, "Oh yeah, that sounds great to me!" If you were going to make up a religion and try to get followers, you certainly wouldn’t tell us that ... 1.   We are sinful and cannot rescue ourselves. (How judgmental, discouraging and helpless sounding is that?) 2.   We need a Savior to rescue us. (How humbling!) 3.   Some of the early leaders of the faith were persecuted and killed for it, and we also should expect to be persecuted and hated by the world. ( Who in their right mind would want that?  Stephen wa
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