- \'rant\ : to talk in a noisy, excited, or declamatory manner, And Then I Met Jesus, Exposing Legalism, God Ponderings
Clickbait, Disagreement, and Choosing What is Right
This week I got into an online discussion over on Jefferson Bethke’s (author of Jesus>Religion and It’s Not What You Think) Facebook page. He posted an article called “9 Sins the Church Is Surprisingly OK With as Long as You Love Jesus” and asked what we thought. I thought it was a stupid clickbait title with a clickbait image. (Definition of clickbait – content on the internet of a sensational or provocative nature, whose main purpose is to attract attention and draw visitors to a particular website.) But I perused the article anyway. I didn’t get further than their supposed nine sins: fear, apathy, gluttony, worry, flattery, comfort, consumerism, patriotism,…
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An Identity Crisis Pt.2 (What Does God Think of Me?)
What does God think about us? Does He like us better when we behave? Is He disappointed when we screw up? I think the real answer might surprise you. Contrary to how we may have been raised, or to what we may have been taught in church, God’s love for us is not conditional. It is definitely NOT based on how we perform. God’s love is passionate and ridiculous, intense and crazy! And it’s ALL about Him! Do you believe that God loves you because of who you are? And I’m not talking about the good parts. God loves you because of who you are including your messes… What do you…
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An Identity Crisis Pt. 1 (What Makes Me ME?)
Is anyone really as confident as they seem? Or if we are honest, do we all struggle with insecurity to some degree? Most of the time I come across very confident…bold, outgoing, friendly, enthusiastic…sometimes I even fool myself. But thanks to my rough summer and subsequent counseling sessions, I am discovering just how much I struggle with insecurity. If I feel safe with you, you might already know this about me: Despite the fact that I am typically pretty friendly, my modus operandi is to assume that I’m not good enough and that therefore people don’t like me. I often feel “not good enough” and maybe you do too. It was…
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Rejecting Perfection…We are All Broken!
It was a beautiful spring day, the warm sun was shining, there was a gentle breeze blowing, and the grass was turning green. I was winding my way down a familiar road, feeling each curve, radio playing, singing along. All of the sudden, I realized with a jolt that I was WAY too close to the road’s edge. The cold winter and spring rains had produced wheel-swallowing-potholes in this particular stretch. Breath caught, heart stopped, I knew that I couldn’t correct in time. “Whump!” My front wheel fell into a small canyon. “Bam!” My tire blew. A sinking feeling filled my stomach. I was going to have to call my employer…
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Peace that Doesn’t Make Sense
Peace that doesn’t make any sense. This is the kind of thing that proves God’s existence to me. There I am in a situation where I feel powerless, emotional, empty, stressed, worried, etc. But as I chose to give it to God, He supernaturally gives me “peace that surpasses understanding”… It was my second miscarriage. It was also Valentines Day and I had to spend it in the hospital delivering my tiny, dead son. We had no living children at this point and had just experienced two late-term miscarriages all while being newly married and living eighteen hours from family. The nurse came in to ask me what I wanted…
