What is “The Joy of the Lord?”
Rather than being a command to Israel, it is a motive for OUR joy. In Christ, God’s anger is taken away. He rejoices over us. He even sings over us. He delights in us.
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But according to scripture, even though it teaches that “all have sinned and have come short of the glory of God”, sin is not the essence of who men and women are. Essentially, they are image-bearers of God. Therefore, they are redeemable, for when sin is taken away, the image of God remains and is restored.
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Over the years, many things have been labeled as occultic or pagan by certain sects within Christianity. Holidays such as Halloween, Christmas, and Easter, as well as certain kinds of stretches and personality tests, have been condemned as "pagan." What is less evident in these condemnations is what the condemners actually believe paganism is. So let's discuss that.
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In a world, and sadly also a Church, obsessed with power, one of the most striking and beautiful things about the Gospel is how it turns worldly authority dynamics on its head.
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Yes, let's have a conversation about history and ethics. However, when we begin these historical and ethical conversations, our standard must always be the firm and the objective truth of God's Word. History is not our standard.
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The Kingdom of God is best served when we are most abiding in Christ and relying fully on his grace.
I would have rolled my eyes at the simplicity of this three years ago, but sometimes the most beautiful and powerful truths are also the most simple.
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In a clear display of this sort of “tough guy” persona employing subjective and self-serving ethics, slavery is fine because Columbus is an Italian hero, or, to apply things to today, slavery isn’t a big deal because we have to react to those “woke” people. Either way, we are dealing with reactionary and autonomous ethics. Further, not only will we minimize and shrug off slavery, we will do so with faux-masculine aggression and caustic smugness.
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No matter how well informed one is on a well-rounded and systematic basis, no matter the breadth of knowledge one has from real world experience with human behavior, no matter the timeless biblical wisdom that is wielded and applied, you will still hear the refrain: “It’s amazing, I didn’t know there were so many (insert credentialed expert xyz) on my timeline.”
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The snarky "gotcha" tweets or the "spicy" memes alienates you and your opinions from the undecided and the moderates. If it is your goal to persuade and influence, we must do better. If your goal is to get virtual back slaps from your internet buddies, you already have your reward.
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Do we gloat when our hearts should be breaking? Do we mock when we should be loving? Have we built nations to the detriment of building the Kingdom? Do we long after the power of carnal weapons when the true hope for the people of Afghanistan is Jesus?
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Tom Ascol and Jared Longshore of The Founders Ministries’ The Sword and The Trowel podcast interviewed Voddie Baucham regarding Joel McDurmon’s charges of misquoting, mischaracterization, and plagiarism in Voddie’s bestselling book, Fault Lines.
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Are we going to define our opponents in the best possible way and then refute them, or will we take the all-too-easy path of addressing and refuting the worst possible definitions?
Needless to say, when Neil Shenvi and Richard Delgado agree, we should probably pay attention.
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Either Salem Books Publishing is unaware of Chicago standards and is still using them as an excuse, or he doesn't care that Voddie's book includes these severe ethical problems. It would have been better to admit to a severe formatting mistake (as best), but now the publisher is left with defending a version of the Chicago style that doesn't exist.
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But what’s the response of the right-wing? Instead of saying, “you know, being compassionate is a good thing, but this is how to really care for people well,” the right-wing has instead decided to market themselves as the assholes who don’t care about anything but the “facts” and “statistics.”
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There’s a high statistical likelihood that at least some of the calloused, shock-jock, far-right commentators who dismiss, minimize, or outright mock the importance of mental health are suffering greatly and silently with their own mental health problems.
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I have seen as many nutcase leaders in small churches as I’ve seen in mega churches. We need to stop our culture of treating these pastors like the Kingdom of God depends chiefly on them. Pastors need to do away with the doctrine that conflates the kingdom of Christ and the institutional church as one and the same.
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The proposition that CRT is Marxist in substance might seem obvious to many conservatives today, but the reasons frequently adduced to support this belief are, frankly, lacking.
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Christ has one kingdom and one people and total authority over everything in his Kingdom (which is everything on heaven and on earth). It's a Heavenly Kingdom, not an earthly one, but the Heavenly Kingdom's rule doesn't stop at the pearly gates (Matthew 28:18).
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