Grace Blogs

10. “Yappy”, the Shunned Wise Man”

9. “Finding God’s Facebook: A Teen’s Christmas Journey”

8. “My 30 Year Post Traumatic Stress: A Shepherd’s Story after the Announcement of the Birth”

7. “Either take the Room by the ice machine, or it’s the Stable. That’s all I got: The Innkeeper’s story”

6. “You Pick the Right Manger!” Interactive dinner theater

5. “King Herod’s Kid’s Christmas Cantata”

4. “Biblical Billy Bass tells the story of Christmas”

3. “A pregnant stranger, her husband, a blizzard, car trouble, a kindly old couple, a baby boy born, house foreclosure averted Christmas!

2. “Mimes Keeping their Flocks by Night”

1. “The Night the Animals Texted”

Copyright 2008 Dave Tippett (djtippHA@yahoo.com).

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Chelsea Schilling of WorldNetDaily is reporting that a certain Hindu extremist groups are seeking to blot out Christianity from the state of Orissa in India. The extremist groups are offering money, food and alcohol to anyone who murders Christians and destroys their homes. Faiz Rahman, chairman of Good News India, said Hindu militants are targeting Christian leaders and “The going price to kill a pastor is $250.”

Questions
How do you approach this as a Christian living thousands of miles away? Do you feel good that you don’t have to face treatment like this? Do you wonder why God would allow this? Do you get angry?

In I Peter 3:9-16 we find help in sorting through …

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An Interview with Scott Klusendorf, President of Life Training Institute.

Read the entire interview by Justin Taylor
Scott’s forthcoming book, The Case for Life: Equipping Christians to Engage Culture, will be published by Crossway in March 2009.

JT: Just how bad was this election for pro-lifers? Give us the big picture.

SK: There’s no doubt we’ve experienced a crushing defeat in the current political cycle. The executive and legislative branches of the federal government are now firmly in the hands of those deeply committed to the proposition that an entire class of human beings can be set aside to be killed simply because they are in the way of something we want. In the weeks ahead, even before the …

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A number of questions regarding the current teaching was submitted last week. I’d like to address one here:

Does the Roman Catholic church today believe in taking money to in exchange for forgiveness of sins?

In my understanding, this is not an overt doctrine of the RCC. However, given their system of salvation (process justification—as Dan has pointed out), almsgiving is seen as one of many “bricks” in one’s road toward justification. Whereas we believe that the Bible teaches that one’s forgiveness of sins is a one-time event (forensic justification), we would hold that giving money to the church or to the poor would be as a RESPONSE to forgiveness. Not as a means of forgiveness.

To make it more simple, the …

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Today, as part of our teaching regarding the Reformation, begun in 1517, we took up the broad question of Church authority: “How did the Roman Catholic Church come to wield the level of authority it did in the day of Martin Luther?” Related to this issue there were other questions as well: “When and where did the early church go wrong?” Also, “Why is the Church called the “Roman Catholic Church?” Etc.

Since a majority of the questions I received related to the authority of the Roman Catholic Church, I thought it would be helpful to take a run at the answering this issue over several posts. The following is an overview of spiritual concentration of power …

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In her new book, “Love Your Life,” Victoria Osteen tells the following story. When she and her husband, Joel, were courting, he came over to her house for dinner. She knew he was the son of a prominent Houston pastor and she, a nice Christian girl, was hoping they could talk about Scripture while she prepared the meal. “Joel began flipping through the pages, but before long, he put the Bible down,” she wrote. Victoria was disappointed and complained, “I thought you’d be a spiritual giant.”

“Joel said nothing and just grinned at me as we carried on with the evening.”

Victoria defines her Christian belief this way. Religion “is about appreciating what God’s given us. He’s given us this …

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In preparation for Sunday’s message, in which we will examine the reasons for the Reformation, I stumbled across a blog that Pastor Eric posted in Nov. of 07.

Enjoy

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This is the single most powerful argument I have seen to date on why there should not be dancing in church! I would even support that this dance routine never happen again on the planet earth. It’s like the Bible meets Disco with a splash of Tony Orlando and Dawn!

For those of you who like to watch traffic accidents…

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Listen as J.I. Packer draws to a tight focus the central issue in regard to homosexuality, the Gospel itself. Dr. Packer makes a very lucid argument for why it is the very Gospel of Christ that is at stake when it comes to the issue of same-sex relationships.

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We have been weaving our way through a teaching series called ChurchWorks . In digging through how a church functions we have been taking a look at expressions of the Spirit (a.k.a spiritual gifts). In doing research for this aspect of the teaching, I was turned onto a person claiming to be a powerful conduit of God’s Spirit. So, I thought it would be good to try and apply the teaching points we have unearthed in this study thus far (I Corinthians, Ephesians 4, etc.) directly to a Mr. Todd Bentley.

Here’s a general introduction from an Nightline special focusing on Mr. Bentley. BTW. I understand the people conducting the “investigation” are bent …

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