My Crazy Faith

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 ...

A favorite song of mine from Newsboys: We Believe "He's coming back again!" This song also plays at the end of my all-time favorite Christian movie, "Do You Believe?"   Watch it, with tissues nearby.

  To make it easier to find, I compiled the links to all the posts in the "Things My Calvinist Pastor Said: We Left Our Church Because of Calvinism" series.  (That's right ... I'm not letting him or Calvinism off easy, not with the damage they do to God's Truth!)  We Left Our Church Because Of Calvinism (Things My Calvinist Pastor Said)  - the whole series in one post (these links will take you to my anti-Calvinism blog) Now broken down into smaller posts,  "Things My Calvinist Pastor Said" ... #1: We Can't Choose #2: You're Like A Dead Body #3: Even Babies Are Wicked #4: God's Love Saves Some But Not Others #5: God Ordains Wickedness #6: God Has No Problem With These "Truths" But We Do #7: You Have To Accept Predestination #8: Man is Oblivious to Sin, Lydia wasn't a Believer #9: God Shows His Justice By Predestining People To Hell #10: God Only Really Cares About His Glory #11: God Ordains Child Abuse #12: Depression is a Sin, ...

Okay, so we all know that Grandma got run over by a reindeer ...  but guess what happened next? Grandpa's gonna sue the pants off of Santa Who knew!?!  I sure didn't, not till just a few years ago. (I'm warning you now: This one will get stuck in your head.)

Understanding God's Will #22 (final post in series): So what is the Will of God, according to the Bible?    And how do I find the next step in His plan for me?                  Well, I’m glad you asked.    But do you really want to know?    Because once you know then you have a decision to make: obey or disobey.    And doing God's Will is not a simple, quick thing.    It’s a life-long, life-altering discipline.    And that’s part of the problem because we want simple jobs with quick and massive rewards.    We want to put in the least amount of effort and get the most benefits possible.    We want Him to open the doors, but we don’t want any responsibilities.    We want freedom, but no consequences.                But that is not God’s way.  ...

   2020 Version of Things Here's hoping 2021 is better! [Update: And now here's the  new one for 2021 .  That didn't take long.  But I'm glad to see we're trying to laugh about it.] [And another update from February 15, 2021: I am adding this note here because I don't know where else to put it.  I just wanted to share this story which I believe confirms my idea that our online devices are indeed listening to us all the time, even when we don't know it.   Our online service is used for our few tablets, phones, and laptops, but we  don't have smart TV's or one of those always-on units that listens and responds when you ask it questions.  Well, yesterday we had some friends over, and we got to talking about the movie "Return to Oz" from 1985, about how creepy it was.  We talked about it for just a couple minutes, maybe 2-3.  Well, a couple hours after they left, I turned on a tablet, looked at the home "news page" (through the sea...

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