A great sermon to start 2026

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I watched this online Willow Creek sermon yesterday from a new series called The Jesus Way, about the Sermon on the Mount... and I just gotta share it because I haven't heard a sermon this good in awhile.  In fact, it's one of the best I've heard in a long time.  A great way to start 2026!  

Maybe it just said what I needed to hear at this point in my life.  Maybe it won't speak to you the same way.  But, who knows, maybe it will.  Give it a try.  What've you got to lose?  

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When clowns run the circus

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So get this:  An Arizona elementary school should not hire teachers with Christian values because it doesn't feel "safe"... so says the self-proclaimed "queer" schoolboard member  wearing cat ears .  ( See here .)  
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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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Updated: Alana L. 5L (misunderstood sovereignty)

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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 :   L : "Sovereign, sovereign, sovereign, sovereign."   Misunderstood "sovereignty" You see, the thing is (and what most people fail to realize is) that Calvinists  incorrectly  make sovereignty about how God must  use  His authority and power, believing that He  must   always  be  using  His all-powerful authority  all the time  to  preplan ,  cause ,  contro l   everything , even sin and evil and unbelief,  "or else He's not a sovereign, omnipotent, in-control God." As  John MacArthur  says :  "... [God]  makes every decision that’s ever been made,   essentially, about everything....  He is the decider and ...
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Pause, breathe, smile

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(Happy New Year!)  Please, allow me to vent and to listen to myself rant.  And come along, if you want, on a trip through m y mind  (I apologize in advance for how the messy it is😉) : Are you exhausted?  I am.  I am sick and tired of all the craziness out there, all the chaos, fighting, hate, lies, fear-mongering, violence, increasing prices (for less product or services), natural disasters, wars, rumors of wars, AI this-and-that, Big Pharma, social deviance/immorality, efforts to force people to tolerate social deviance/immorality, political posturing and mudslinging and nonsense, etc.   I'm done with it.  I'm just so done with it all.  "You can stop the world now, God.  We wanna get off."   I am sick of both social media and the news - because everyone just wants to fight, scream their opinions, demand their way, calls names, make accusations, and force everyone else to agree with them and do things their way.  E veryt...
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Why Is It So Hard For Calvinists To Get Free From Calvinism?

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This was originally on the end of my post "If Calvinism is true, then God is a liar."   But I think it deserves its own post (I recently updated it a little bit, March 2021): I read something once about how very few people end up freeing themselves from the clutches of Calvinism because of the strong hold it has on people.  I think this is partly because ... 1.   We (I am talking as if I were a Calvinist here) would have to admit that we were misunderstanding Scripture this whole time, and no one wants to admit they could be wrong. 2.   Calvinism appeals to us prideful intellectuals.  (And prideful intellectuals have the greatest aversion to admitting we could be wrong.)  It makes us feel special, like we alone understand the "deeper, hidden meanings of Scripture," while the simple-minded Christians can't understand it.  Calvinism (with all of its contradictions, word play, round-about reasoning, and multiple layers of meaning for verses) gives u...
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White horses and a cup of tea (part 3)

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[I'm working my way through this slowly.  Click here for part 1 and part 2 of this series.]  First, here's The White Horse Parable again (my version): A man and his son owned a field that they farmed for a living.  And one day, they found a white horse in the field. "Oh, what a blessing," said the farmer.  "A free horse." But then the horse started tearing up their plants.   "Oh, this is terrible.  What a curse!" cried the farmer.   But then they caught the horse and tamed it and were able to use it to farm the field. "Oh, what a blessing," said the farmer. But then the son was thrown off the horse, broke both arms, and couldn't farm for months, reducing their sales and income. "Oh, what a curse," said the farmer. "I wish this horse never came to us.  Why, God?  Why!?!" But then a war started, and the army issued a draft.  But because the son had broken arms, he was excused from the draft and didn't have to f...
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Another one bites the dust

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[Happy Easter, y'all!] I just found this (sad!) on Reddit Reformed:  What happened to my conviction and love for God? Reformedhabeshagirl  said: Hello brothers and sisters I have always been a Christian and grew up fearing the Lord. I remember being convicted about my sins as young as 7 or 8 years old. I became Reformed around age 17 and I am 23 now. I have always been a repentant believer. My heart used to break when I sinned, and I love the Lord. I studied my Bible a lot, prayed often, and was very interested in theology, sermons, and everything related to faith. The problem is that my heart has lost all desire for the things I used to love. I stopped listening to sermons and I don’t want to study my Bible anymore. Any interest I had in Bible study or discussions about the Lord only came when my ex-boyfriend shared things with me every day or when it came from my pastor every Sunday. Now my heart feels hard. I am not convicted about the things I used to mourn over. I distanc...
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A Coronavirus "Plandemic"? A 26-minute video you need to see

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Everyone should watch this 26-minute video: Plandemic Part 1 by Dr. Mikovits .  (FYI: I watched this video yesterday on a different YouTube link.  It had something like a million views.  And it's already been removed today.  Big surprise!  This is why I watched it right away and wrote up a short summary of my thoughts on it.  Because I figured it would be silenced!  So watch it soon, before this is removed too.) A friend found it yesterday and shared it with me.   While it’s scary stuff, it didn’t shock me because it coincides with what I’ve already thought about this whole virus situation, among other things: ... That there’s something fishy about it and it’s not natural … ... That there are unhealthy and dangerous connections between Bill Gates and Dr. Fauci and government health agencies (CDC, FDA, WHO, etc.), among others … ... That there are shady coronavirus reporting practices in the hospitals, such as financial incentives for doctors ...
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9 Marks of a Calvinist Cult #5 (isolation, control)

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[This series is  "The 9 Marks of a Calvinist Cult"  split up into smaller, individual posts.]   Cults use isolation, control, fear, coercion, mind-control, and thought-reform to enslave the members to the cult.  The members' "inner voices" are suppressed. 5. Information Isolation and Control Of course, Calvinists don't physically isolate members in a commune or anything like that, as more extreme cults have.  But Calvinist pastors do practice various forms of "mental" isolation by controlling the information and resources.   From the very beginning,  Calvinist pastors set out to carefully control the information we get, the resources we have access to, the verses we hear, who's in charge,  etc. Verses:  Calvinists will  ignore verses that contradict or disprove Calvinism , but highly favor those that can be twisted/interpreted to support it.   For example: Calvinist pastors fill their sermons with verses that appear to fit...
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