Linkathon!
Holiday gatherings and the Phillipians 2 challenge…
Christianity Today’s 2020 Book Awards…
Communion is more than a spiritual pep rally…
What if Christians did what Jesus did?
Advent, the four last things: Judgment…
Christmas is for those who hate it most…
Christmas guide to buying a Bible…
What Ever Happened to the Christian Principle of “Love Paternalism?
What does it mean to believe in the communion of saints?
Gospel Coalition thinks Kanye was the biggest story of 2019…
How the Purity Movement created a sense of shame in evangelical women…
My friend Dee is a force to be reckoned with…
Georgia state approved Bible classes flop…
Nobodies were the first to know…
Thanks to EricL and Reader Hill as always!
RIP Reinhart … Sometimes God speaks to.man through unexpected means
The purity movement demand(s/ed) pretty much absolute perfection from believers, women and men.
That is insanity in itself.
The issue described in “Income and church attendance” is a big missiological issue for the Church in this era (in the white US population and in my country). This issue has been one of my hobby horses over the years.
“Your God is too big” is excellent. Wow.
JoelG, God IS too big – we cannot get our minds around Him. This reminds me of an illustration (lame?) i heard years ago… If you had a message for the ant world, you’d have to become an ant to reach them with it…. ?
I like the illustration, Em.
The Eternal Majestic Creator as a helpless baby in the womb. I’m not sure I can get my mind around that, either. What a beautiful Mystery.
Ants isn’t still even close. I’ve thought about it: from the infinitesimal and small (The Standard Model of physics with leptons, quarks, bosons…. just what humans have been able to observe) to how small I am (a myriad of biological complexity! Even minus “the ghost in the machine) in my town, continent, planet, and galaxy… which is small compared to the known universe (and what’s beyond that?!). I am unable to comprehend how anyone could be an atheist, believing that all we can perceive, small (fundamental), and large (the realm of astrophysics) is the result of a quantum vacuum fluctuation.
I’ve “seen” atomic structure in an electron microscope, and diffraction patterns, and that’s not even close to what particle physicists have observed on a much smaller level.
And yet humans have trouble doing the simple desires of God for us small creatures, as in the Sermon on the Mount after The Beatitudes, or The Parable of the Unforgiving Servant. In the image of God, we are big, but also small. Significant spiritually, but insignificant physically. Yet the insignificant in sin rules over the significant created in the image of God until the most Significant of all redeems us, by becoming insignificant Himself.
some good thoughts posted here…. i recently read that scientists (astronomers? dunno) are now suspecting/theorizing that all we can see or speculate in space is actually a sphere inside of which all that we know resides (and more)… they think that outside this “ball” there is more… well …. duh 🙂
Yes. That’s where astrophysics and metaphysics collide.
God Bless you Reinhard Bonnke, you preached Jesus & breathed SOULS and encouraged so many to go into the mission field like no other Evangelist since the NT.
I’m so tired of “challenges” and acronyms capped with crap. Whoever is pretty and writes pretty songs gets to give the challenge or publish some forgettable acronym. Vomit. Ba humbug
https://thefederalist.com/2019/11/08/whats-incredibly-damaging-to-the-gospel-joshua-harris-are-your-lies-about-it/
Here’s a voice that has my attention
BD,
I think I agree with her conclusion, but her reasoning is almost pathetic.
Marriage is tied to parenting, but there is no mandate in Scripture that says it’s the primary reason for marriage.
Further, there is little that I find more offensive than the idea that God given feelings and emotions don’t matter.
https://issuesetc.org/2019/11/13/3171-progressive-christianity-and-the-rights-of-children-katy-faust-11-13-19/
Katy is the child of two moms and has an organization called Them Before Us she’s not going to win an award for nice.
BD,
I think this is a very important issue both for society in general and in particular those of us teaching young people how to live in it after we’re gone.
I’m really wrestling with what I say to Trey about these issues.
I’m all for advocating for kids and traditional marriage, but she needs to speak so people will listen.
We’re on the same team, but that article was atrocious…only the already convinced will receive it.
Of course, this is a refection of my own opinion…that believes the entirety of the Christian message has to be repackaged and revalidated for the new generations.
Just invoking the Bible as the authority doesn’t hold the water it once did and the lives observed of Christians means a great deal more than before.
We have not performed well in our own marriages too often…
“Whats ‘Incredibly Damaging To The Gospel,’ Joshua Harris Are Your Lies About It”
I appreciate many of the things Katy Faust wrote in the article. However, I found some of the things she wrote also damaging to the Gospel. Notably the following statements:
“The goal of Christianity is not heterosexuality, it’s holiness.”
Isn’t the goal of Christianity, as Paul wrote in Philippians, “that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ”?
“When we fully understand the transformative nature of the gospel, adults have the power to conform their lives to God’s good design, and children are the primary beneficiaries.”
This sort of glory theology is what pushes Christians into secret lives of sin and hypocrisy. Others are deceived by promises of transformation, only to fall away when they find out there is no transformation. I won’t bore you with the Scripture on this topic.
The article deals with the application of God’s Law to the Christian life in the spheres of marriage and sexuality. So far, so good. But, the author casts the Gospel as the power (or God’s fix) that enables one to keep the Law. However, the Bible teaches that the Gospel frees one from the Law, and that Christ is the end of the Law for righteousness for everyone who believes.
The author wants to keep the Law (or as she said, “holiness”) as the goal of the Christian life, rather than proclaim the death of the old Adam, tied to the Law, and birth of a new creation in Christ, by faith apart from the Law. It is freedom from the Law and our need to justify ourselves before both God and our neighbors which creates the good fruit bearing tree. We live by faith, trusting that God favors us, because of Christ, and will use us in this world until He finally puts our flesh to death.
Marriage? Hmmm…. I don’t seem to recall that God said that Adam needed children…. Didn’t He say a helpmate? A companion? Sorry ’bout our failure back there, gentlemen.. but then you did believe Eve when she said that the fruit was tasty.. ?
Interesting that God knew what was coming, when He pulled out that rib….. Suppose He has a plan?
Em, Didn’t God command Adam and Eve to have children? You know as well as I do a man needs a helpmate to fulfill that command.
So Adam needed a helpmate, he did not need children — but he did need to obey the “be fruitful and multiply” deal.
MLD, i guess one could infer that birthing babies was the main reason woman was created…. ?
Michael
Where’s the line between “God-given” feelings and feelings that have simply gained momentum in our minds by their own weight?
Jerod,
You need to change your monicker.
As for your question…
Emotions are part of the imprint of the image of God in man.
I have no way of knowing when someone else is out of balance because we’re all different.
I’m often intensely emotional and utterly dispassionate at the same time…I consider neither sin.