Blogging Events

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New Year's Resolutions for the year...

Health and fitness:

Weight Watchers for 3 solid months, to see if the plan will work (as opposed to hard core Atkins)
Exercise 3 days per week

Blogging:

6 book/movie/music etc. reviews each month
blog daily, giving myself 2 days each month "grace"
once blog post on sermon notes
participate in photo scavenger hunt one time per month
comment on another blog 5 time per week.

Christianity:

Finally getting through the "Bible in a Year"
Finishing 12 theology books in the year (one for each month)
Finishing 12 "Christian living" books in the year

Misc. Read a little each day.

OH...and Fly Lady...

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I don't want to diminish at all, even one bit, the horror and grief over the crime committed at Sandy Hook. But there is another aspect...how spoiled and protected we are, that we are ABLE to feel that horror.

Imagine a life where there is no shock at 20 children being killed.

Or worse, those children being forced to become the killer:

Faces

Did you know that often in Africa, children suffer a fate far worse than being gunned down by a crazy person; instead they are handed a gun, forced to murder their own parents, and then conscripted into an army to kill their own neighbors and friends?

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Protecting a Gospel-Centered Culture in Your Church

Including a "three tier chart"

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Given a current debate, this is a wonderful way of putting it. (MUST REMEMBER)

"Sufficiency vs. Necessity"

Evangelicalism broadly believes in an insufficient Jesus whose love is conditional, that is, that we must first meet a condition if He will help/love us. Can you imagine a parent who saw their toddler run out into traffic and first required them to meet a condition before the parent would run out to save them from oncoming traffic? No, no, no... parental love is unconditional and would run out at the risk of their life to save the child regardless of the child's will at the time because the parent loves his child and knows better than the child what is good for him/her. If this is true about love in everyday life, how much more is it true of God. No person would say that the parent who required the child to first meet a condition was more loving. That is why the argument about the necessity of free will to have true love is fallacious. In the Bible, God gives conditions, but in Jesus He meets all the conditions for us.

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“God knows we have nothing of ourselves, therefore in the covenant of grace he requires no more than he gives, but gives what he requires, and accepts what he gives.”― Richard Sibbes, The Bruised Reed

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Did Moses Write the Pentateuch?

A list of Scriptures that name Moses as the author from True Paradigm

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Bringing Marriage Back to Earth

by Brian Tallman, Ligonier Ministries

Common critiques of contemporary marriage in the West often include the recognition that marriage has become too sentimentalized. In light of Calvin’s comments, I wonder if the church isn’t guilty of making marriage too spiritual.

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50 Things the Holy Spirit Does

What follows are 50 things the Holy Spirit does according to the New Testament. If you find this list helpful, share it on Facebook, Twitter, etc.

Via Adrian Warnock

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Why aren't we calling it the "royal fetus"? by Denny Burk

What is the difference between this “royal baby” and the unborn child in the womb of a mother in the waiting room of an abortion clinic? There’s no intrinsic difference in terms of their humanity. The only difference is that one is wanted and the other is not. Thus, the one gets the status of “baby” and the other is euphemized as a fetus, blastocyst, or blob of cells.

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Microwave Suffering by Mike Leake (Borrowed Light)

It seems to me that some believers—myself included—think that suffering is like the second type of microwave meal. When we are put into the furnace of suffering for a season we assume that we will come through the other end chiseled and no longer in need of suffering. It confuses us when the Master has to toss us around and then put us back into the kiln.

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We owe as much to God the Holy Spirit as we do to God the Son - Charles Spurgeon Quote, via "of First Importance:

Let us ever remember that Christ on the cross is of no value to us, apart from the Holy Spirit in us.

In vain that blood is flowing, unless the finger of the Spirit applies the blood to our conscience; in vain is that garment of righteousness wrought out, unless the Holy Spirit wraps it around us and arrays us in its costly folds.

The river of the water of life cannot quench our thirst, till the Spirit presents the goblet and lifts it to our lips.

All the things which are in the paradise of God could never be blissful to us, so long as we are dead souls — and dead we are, until that heavenly wind comes and breathes upon us, that we may live.

We do not hesitate to say that we owe as much to God the Holy Spirit as we do to God the Son.

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Tim Keller on Evangelism Best Practices...

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R.C.Sproul - What is the Rapture?

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On the "crime" of circumcision:

This is a bearing on another conversation I'm listening in on about infant baptism...this paragraph:

Along with many other religious people, they regard children as members of a community that precedes individual decisions and outlasts them — a community created by a covenant, not a choice. Circumcision is the outward sign of this spiritual reality.

Denny Burk adds:

Modern liberalism is upside down. On the one hand, it supports the right of a woman to kill her unborn child in utero for whatever reason or no reason at all. On the other hand, it opposes a parent’s prerogative to have their baby undergo a safe procedure that incorporates them into a community of faith. Does that make sense to you? Me either.

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Women as "Kingdom Warriors, Too..."

If Adam must think, decide, protect, and provide for the woman, she actually becomes a burden on him – not much help when you think about it. The kind of help the man needs demands full deployment of her strength, her gifts, and the best she has to offer. His life will change for the better because of what she contributes to his life. Together they will daily prove in countless and surprising ways that two are better than one. (pg 114-115).

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What Does Your Church’s Statement of Faith Protect?

 As we discussed the statement Saturday, the conversation turned to the importance of the statement of faith in protecting various aspects of the church and its ministry.  As I’ve noodled on that conversation, it seems to me that a local church’s statement of faith should protect five important things...

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"We Are at a Turning Point" by Judge Andrew Napolitano

Hence, we have laws that force us to be charitable to those whom the government designates as worthy of our charity, that limit the amount of salt that restaurants can put into our food, that permit the government to watch us on street corners and subways and in the lobbies of buildings, that let the president fight wars of opportunity, that permit the Federal Reserve to print money with no value and inflate prices and destroy savings, that allow the government to listen to us on our cellphones and use those phones to follow us wherever we go, and, according to CIA Director David Petraeus, that let the government anticipate our movements inside our homes.

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UK: Creator of children's character "Fireman Sam" detained at airport for noting that a veiled Muslim woman passed through security without showing her face

Nuff said.

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Ultrasounds Already Part of VA Planned Parenthood Abortion Procedure

Excuse me.  If a woman already has her feet in the stirrups, waiting for all the instruments that are used doing an abortion - is she really (REALLY????) going to equate an ultrasound with "rape"?  What a slap in the face to all of the women who have truly gone through the trauma of rape.

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Ouroboros: "Hate Speech" Worse Than Infanticide?

my favorite line?

[Cough] If I knew at the beginning it was this easy to take his family jewels and put them in a thimble, I wouldn’t have bothered reading his defense.

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Trashing Tricare - because our military doesn't sacrifice enough already.

The Obama administration’s proposed defense budget calls for military families and retirees to pay sharply more for their healthcare, while leaving unionized civilian defense workers’ benefits untouched. The proposal is causing a major rift within the Pentagon, according to U.S. officials. Several congressional aides suggested the move is designed to increase the enrollment in Obamacare’s state-run insurance exchanges.

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The ‘Taxpayer Subsidized Clean Energy Company Losing Money and Laying Off Workers While Execs Get Raises’ Story of the Day.

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The $4 Billion Obamacare Slush Fund for Progressives

To appease liberal Democrats pushing for the so-called “public option” (the full frontal government takeover of our health care system), the White House settled for the creation of a $6 billion network of nonprofit “CO-OPs” that will “compete” with private insurers. It’s socialized medicine through the side door. House Republicans sliced about $2 billion from the slush fund in last spring’s budget deal and proclaimed the program dead. Hardly.

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Disciplined for gossiping.  I'm guessing that there's more to this than is covered.  Probably not politically correct, even in church politics, saying that the pastor has "narcissistic personality disorder."

Roy Ortland on "the legitimacy of a church plant" (or any church, I'd guess)

 

President Obama's "God Factor" interview.

On Gingrich on Obama and gas prices.

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Two lesbians charged with a "hate crime" for beating up a gay guy.

PETA kills more than 95% of the pets in its care.

 

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this Resurgence post, "You Are Not Jesus" nails it.

the more I hear fake gospels, the more I long for the real one.

The gospel is the good news that God sent his perfect Son Jesus Christ to live, die, and resurrect on behalf of sinners, to save their souls and reconcile them to God.

As important as it is to do good works, care for the poor, nobody becomes a Christian and enters into eternal life because we gave somebody a sandwich; They get saved because they hear the preaching of the news of Jesus.

I love the way Paul explains it in Titus 2:10-11.  He gives the "law" (to do list) and then gives us the "done list"

"...but showing all good faith, so that in everything they may adorn the doctrine of God our Savior. For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people..."

It is because we have Christ, that we do good works.  But our good works are not the good news.