Totally worth watching: "Why we left Calvinism" with Jordan, Joshua, and Tyler

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This is such a great interview from Jordan Hatfield (Great Light Studios) with Joshua Davidson and Tyler Fowler:  Why We Left Calvinism, Part 1 (1 hour 35 minutes)

So many great insights about so many things, not just Calvinism.  So many nuggets of wisdom to be found.  These guys are deep thinkers, and I loved hearing their stories.  It's totally worth watching.

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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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Is The ESV (English Standard Version) a Calvinist Bible?

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Just in case anyone missed this post (the longer title made it easy to miss the "ESV" part) ... "A Random Verse That Destroys Calvinism (And "Is The ESV a Calvinist Bible?") In that post, I write about a bunch of verses that I believe were intentionally translated to be more Calvinistic or based on manuscripts that are too corrupt to be trusted.  (Click on it to see the verses.)   And why would I think that the translators of this Bible version would do that? (From that post...) The ESV and ESV Study Bible are majorly preferred by Calvinists.  In fact, it's often considered "The Calvinist Bible."   Why?  And why would translators of a Bible make these kinds of Calvinist tweaks to Scripture? Wayne Grudem and J.I. Packer were editors on the  ESV Study Bible   (this is for the ESV Global Study Bible).  Grudem and Packer are both popular, strong, dogmatic Calvinists.  Very Big Names in the world of Calvinism.  Grudem in the General...
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Pray for Kanye and Kim

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First off, let me say that I have never been a fan of the Kardashians or of Kanye.  I have never watched an episode of the Kardashians, nor could I identify even one Kanye song.  So this isn’t coming from a super-fan of either of these people.  This is coming from the heart of a Christian who knows how strong the spiritual battle is and how much we need prayer. I am asking other Christians out there to pray for Kanye and Kim. I know that there are a lot of Christians who mock Kanye’s conversion.  But I don’t.  I would NEVER mock another person whose brokenness led them to Christ.  That has got to be one of the quickest ways to discourage a new Christian, someone who needs the support of other Christians to help them grow in faith and wisdom.  And yet, here are fellow “Christians” ripping apart a new believer instead of coming alongside him and encouraging him.  Shame on them! Shame on them!   It's hard enough to be a Christian, even h...
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"But predestination!" (my comments 1-4: election)

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Okay, so here's my comments 1-4 on the pastor's predestination sermons ( in the post "When Calvinists say 'But predestination!'" ).  I'll have more posts with more comments coming up.  I don't cover all the sermons or go in order, but I do want to address some of the more important points. This series was written mainly for my ex-church, so they could see the Calvinist pastor's own words, and why I think he's wrong.  In the posts following this one, I will examine in more depth some of the things he preached. Here's the posts in the whole series:  the pastor's sermons  ("When Calvinists say 'But predestination!'"), and my comments  1-4 (election)  and  5-6 (Romans and sovereignty)  and  7-9 (depravity, Book of Life, predestine)  and  10-11 (shaming tactics, Feb. 2015)  and  12-14 (dead, regeneration, born again)  and  15 (total depravity, manipulation)   and  16A (God's Will, babies)  and...
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The Importance of Brokenness

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Such a great sermon, one we can all learn a lot from and be encouraged by: "Encountering God's Process"   by Tony Evans (And here's a great 10-minute video from his daughter, Priscilla Shirer:  "We're Desensitized to our Blessings."   It just seemed to speak so well to the crazy world we're living in right now, maybe because now seems like the perfect time to dig through all the distractions around us to find Jesus.)  And it's funny because just the other day, I was updating and typing up a "Bible Study/workbook" thing I wrote years ago, called  "Through the Refining Fire: Your 'Sweetly Broken' Journey,"  and the stuff Dr. Evans was saying in the beginning was almost exactly the stuff I had just typed up, about how God usually has to break us to rebuild us, how it's part of the process of spiritual growth.   I am sending this "Through the Refining Fire" workbook to my relative  who's in jail  because ...
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Tony Evans Sermon: Freedom From Fear

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Such a good sermon from Tony Evans about learning to walk on the problem instead of just trying to get out of it.  About sinking but being pulled up again. Freedom from fear   I need these kinds of sermons regularly, the kind that remind me that we might be surrounded by problems, but that God is still faithful.  That we might sink from time to time, but we won't drown.  Not when God's there to reach His hand down and pull us out. I especially need this today, after spending the past couple days (just as we were on our way home from vacation) trying to help my alcoholic mother  - calling paramedics to check on her when she wasn't acting right and couldn't remember what year it was or what her address was, listening to her sob about how she wanted her (deceased) mother, being pulled back into bed with her every time I got up as she begged me not leave her alone, then eventually forcing her to get out of bed and to get dressed and to get in my car so that I...
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Late Summer for Gardeners

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I don't know about you, but all this heat and humidity has made my garden go crazy.  And consequently, I've been so busy shredding and freezing zucchini (or making zucchini bread and zucchini fritters) and canning homemade pickles and tomato sauce and crushed tomatoes and pickled peppers... and then busy cleaning up all the zucchini-pickle-tomato-pepper messes all over the kitchen... not to mention, giving away bags of fresh cucumbers and green beans because we're getting too many and can't possibly eat them all (I find it crazy that three of my kids hate fresh green beans - where'd I go wrong?😕)... and then doing it all over again just a little while later.   It's been like the movie  Groundhog Day , endlessly repeating the same day over and over again, except with vegetables!   And so, just for fun (and because I've been too busy to write real posts), here's something that all you gardeners out there might enjoy right about now.  I feel this one:
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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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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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