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discipleship Recent Posts

3 Ways God Works In Our Lives

Sometimes God works fast in my life.  Sometimes slow.  Sometimes God works like fire.  Sometimes like a mountain. Sometimes like an ocean.  Like a Fire Growing up in California I knew all about forest fires—like the ones that blazed last summer.  They would come fast and furious, overwhelming whatever was before them, consuming everything. Sometimes […]

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Bible discipleship

Map Your Victory and Defeat to the Geography of Discipleship

Can we live in victory and defeat while following Jesus?Can we live in power and in weakness?In success and in suffering? When we start to follow Jesus we are so full of the Spirit, optimism, and hope for radical change in our life.  And that might last for awhile, but in a month or a […]

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Neuroscience Recent Posts

The Brain Is Not For Thinking

Why do you have a brain?  To think with.  That would be the common and simple answer.  But Lisa Feldman Barrett says this is all wrong.   Actually, she says we have a bunch of things wrong about how we think about our brain.   And she lays it all out in her new book, […]

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ecclesiology evangelical evangelicalism Gospel politics Recent Posts

Why Conservative Christianity Should (and Shouldn’t Be) Charged in the Capitol Assault; or, Why the Folk Religion of Christian Nationalism is a Major Problem for the Church

Should conservative Christianity be charged as partially responsible for inciting violence in the past Capitol Assault and possibly in the near future at Biden’s inauguration? Arrests are still being made as responsibility is being assessed for the destruction and death on January 6th. Should Conservative American Christianity be added to the list? How do we […]

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Love Recent Posts theology

Should Love Change Us, or Accept Us?

People, groups, and churches proclaim they will love us just as we are, no strings attached.  “You don’t have to change to be here. You are accepted,” they say.  Others will say, “Come as you are.  But don’t stay that way.”  Which is the more loving thing to say? Love is hard to pin down.  […]

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Epiphany

Why Epiphany Matters in the Days of Ideology

Today people are waking to the probability that the Senate flipped toward the Democrats.  And they are having an epiphany. Some are responding with celebration. Others in consternation.   Some fear the chaos coming with the Biden administration.  Others feared the chaos of the Trump administration.   Some speak of the chaos of white supremacy.  Others […]

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Recent Posts

Can We Live Outside the Online?

We live in an INVERTED reality now.  Digital reality has switched places with physical reality — and we are the worse for it. The question now is, “Can we live OUTSIDE the ONLINE?” Because we are losing touch with, losing our grip on, reality.  We no longer surf the web.  We no long “go” online. […]

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Neuroscience Recent Posts

On Being Yourself with Others (with a little talk of the Trinity)

Learning to be yourself while still engaging with others is hard word. Acting like myself at all times, in all situations, with all kinds of people is hard work. Absorbed or Against Sometimes we are ABSORBED by others and their interests, desires, power, or fantasies. Maybe we are defeated. Maybe we just defer to others […]

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Advent Recent Posts

Expectancy or Expectations? Ready Or Not For God’s Work

I was fully of expectancy when our first son was born.  I had expectations when our second son was born.  With our first I had no idea what was going to happen, how it was going to be, or what he would be like.  I just knew I needed to be ready—for anything.  Because the […]

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Advent Recent Posts

Rupture in Our Relationship (Advent with Isaiah)

Holiday parties are the times when you run into people you haven’t seen in a while.  Maybe people you have been avoiding, people that just rub you the wrong way.  And parties also have unexpected guests.  Those uninvited intrusions that just throw everything off.  While Christmas is something people look forward to, Advent reminds us […]