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Rediscovering Jesus – Rediscovering the Bible (Part 1)
When people of other religions become Christians, they leave behind their old religious books, the Quran, the Book of Mormon, etc. and start reading the Bible. It seems obvious. But, how do you leave behind the Bible and then start reading the Bible? How do you locate the truth when it’s supposedly found in the book that was used to tell you lies? How do you unravel lies about the God of Christianity without leaving Christianity altogether? These are legitimate and difficult questions. Unfortunately, the Bible can be used to say just about anything. Grab a verse here and a verse there, or just half of a verse, and you…
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The Start of Something New
“How does one get back to Jesus…truly? I would take that. Blog soon?” I’ve been pondering this question for the last few days. The question was inspired by a discussion on a Facebook group for former Bill Gothard students. I had asked these precious people to tell me why they chose to walk away from Christianity and/or the church…or why they chose to stay. They opened their hearts to me…so very honestly. Many of them left Gothard’s organization just to be re-injured by a normal church where they thought they were safe. The hurt is real. And so are the questions, frustration, confusion, anger, and sadness. After all the talk,…
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An Uncomfortable, Awkward Topic – Spiritual Abuse
This book, “The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse,” that I am reading…wow, it’s eye opening! I resonate with so much of it from my own life experiences. When I started this blog just over four years ago, I thought I was writing to people hurt by legalistic systems like Bill Gothard’s Institute in Basic Principles (the place that wounded me). But as I wrote and heard back from my readers, I realized that many of you had never heard of Bill Gothard. And yet, we still struggled with similar false ideas about God and performance based faith. At first I thought maybe Gothard had subtly influenced more of Evangelical Christianity that…
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A God to Fear
Why are we so quick to stuff God into our little “god boxes”? Explain Him, minimize Him, dismiss Him… Too often we act like we have God all figured out. What if we are wrong? What if we are terrifyingly wrong? I’m sitting here feeling inadequate to even write this. But, I am SO passionate about Christians, believers in Jesus, really meeting God, really experiencing who He is, that I have to say something. In youth group last Wednesday we watched a short video with Francis Chan. The topic was fearing God. I used to hate that phrase… Growing up in my Christian cult, we had a fear of God,…
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Would We Recognize Him?
This is re-blogged from last year with some changes and updates. 🙂 If Jesus came and visited my church would I recognize him? Would you? Most of the religious people missed him last time. The Pharisees were some of the religious elite. They looked good on the outside. They were filled with zealous passion. They not only followed the rules in the Law, they made up more rules and followed them too. They read and taught the Scriptures. But when God showed up, the promised Savior of the world, these same religious people missed him. In fact they didn’t just miss him, they claimed that he was a drunkard, a sinner,…
