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Celebrities for Jesus and Fred Rogers
In a time when large swaths of the America church have merely mimicked worldly concepts of power, going for bigger, louder, glitzier, we have to return to the small, the quiet, the uncool, and the ordinary. Obscurity may very well be the spiritual discipline the American church needs to practice the most in the coming century. Katelyn Beaty, Celebrities for Jesus My husband and I finally watched It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, the Tom Hanks movie from 2019 about Fred Rogers. Wow. I had instant childhood flashbacks–sitting in my grandma’s den on her little couch, drinking my glass of orange juice, and watching Mr. Rogers calmly explain things…
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Social Media and a Polarized World
I just finished the Netflix documentary called “the social dilemma” this morning. It feels fitting considering that we are all waiting the results of a very polarized and passionate election. Have you every wondered, “What happened to our world? When did it get so crazy?” I have. Often. And thanks to this documentary now I have some insight. I’d encourage all of you to watch it. Unless you cancelled your Netflix account because of the online drama over the “Cuties” movie. (Which ironically is a perfect example of what the documentary is talking about.) Did you know that fake news travels six times as fast on social media as real…
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Surrendering to the Lordship of Christ
“I’ll heal you if you’ll let Me.” I heard the Spirit’s whisper clearly in my heart. Fear and worry had wrapped themselves around my body threatening to strangle me. Again. Some of my earliest memories include freaking out because someone was sick in my family, or in my Sunday School class, or at the grocery store. I worried about many things as a kid but sickness was one of my biggest. As an adult, I’ve been able to work through many of my fears. And while I no longer fear my own illness, I hate my kids or husband being sick. Because I feel helpless. Because I’m out of control.…
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When God Unexpectedly Heals
A few weeks ago my little family went camping in my old stomping grounds, and something unexpectedly beautiful happened. 🙂 But first some background. CLICK HERE TO JOIN THE SEARCH AND RECEIVE RANDOM NEWSLETTERS WITH EXCLUSIVE CONTENT. 😁 I was raised in an old farmhouse, near a small town, in the middle of Michigan’s “Thumb.” For anyone reading this who is not from my state, Michigan is shaped like a mitten and the Thumb is a peninsula that sticks out into Lake Huron. It’s mostly flat farm fields with a speckling of tiny towns thrown in. We had to drive twenty minutes to get to a Walmart and almost an hour to…
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Mental Illness, Possessed Baby Dolls, and the Church
I’m going to tell you an embarrassing story. When I was a teenager, in the middle of religious cultic craziness, I thought I’d been given the gift of spiritual discernment. I truly believed that I could discern whether or not people’s toys, specifically baby dolls, were possessed. Parents in my church brought me their children’s dolls so that I could stare into their eyes and tell them if there was a demon inside or not. Yes, I now recognize that this is absolutely nuts. Yikes!! But at the time, it seemed very real. We had all heard anecdotal stories of people’s experiences with possessed toys. We had heard stories about…
