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Suicide Has Hit Our Family
Last week our beloved 44-year-old son Curt took his life. He had struggled with severe suicidal depression for 26 years, hating almost every day of his adult life and wanting God to take him home to join his sister Rebecca. His depression and anxiety crippled him to the point of moving back in with my husband and me in 2008. He often shared with us his anguish at life in a fallen world, living in a broken body. Curt eventually lost most of his hearing as the result of serving on the flight line in the Air Force, but when he was honorably discharged he was told it wasn’t bad…
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How Can I Make God Answer My Prayers My Way?
How can I get God to give me what I want? That’s often at the root of our interest in prayer. If we’re honest, that’s the question we want answered when we read books on prayer, listen to a message or podcast on prayer, or talk to people known as prayer warriors.
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What Difference Does the Resurrection Make?
What difference does the resurrection make in our lives? It’s the most important event in all of human history. Where’s the “so what” for today? I meditated on this question for weeks, eventually creating a list too long for this blog post. So let me share my favorites. All pain and suffering will be redeemed and resolved. I’ve lived in a body with a disability since I got polio at eight months old and was paralyzed from the waist down. I got some use of my left leg and hip back, but I had to wear a steel and leather brace for the first several years of my life. Every…
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The Eclipse Declares the Glory of God, v. 2024
“The heavens declare the glory of God,” Psalm 19 tells us. On April 8, 2024, millions of Americans will have an incredible opportunity to see His heavenly glory in a way most of us never have: through a total solar eclipse. On a path running from Texas to Maine, observers on the ground will see the moon slip in front of the sun, blocking out all its light and dropping the temperature drastically (about 10 to 15 degrees Fahrenheit) and suddenly. I am thrilled beyond words that by the grace of God, our home in Dallas, Texas is in the path of totality. All I have to do is go…
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Why I Love to Learn I’m Wrong
As the webmistress for Probe.org, I love getting emails alerting me to typos, either in the content of our articles or the coding that keeps people from seeing or hearing what they are looking for. I love being able to fix mistakes; there’s a deeply satisfying sense of, “Ohhhh that’s better!” I want to get things right. I want to set things right. I want to BE right. That could certainly be about sinful pride, but there’s another side to it. I love truth, that which corresponds to reality. If I am mistaken—or worse, misled—about something, I love learning about it so I can shift, bringing my beliefs or my…
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When You Can’t Forgive Yourself
“I know that God forgives me, but I can’t forgive myself.” Lots of people find themselves trapped in self-recriminations, overwhelmed by regret and sorrow for things they have done (or not done). They beat themselves up, often secretly hoping this will make up for their sin. But they can’t get past it. You can read the Bible from cover to cover and not find a single instruction on forgiving oneself. That’s because it’s not there. We don’t have the power to forgive ourselves. It’s like trying to separate ourselves from our shadow. As I understand it, this idea comes from humanistic psychology. For millennia, people have recognized the freedom and…
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Sticks and Stones…
I’m not sure when it began, but the last several years we have seen an explosion of name-calling. Social media is probably the main culprit in giving people freedom to chunk labels and names like snowballs at people they don’t even know, with no concern of consequences. It’s no longer a matter of normal human interactions to disagree with someone; now it’s about demonizing them. And dragging them through the mud. And judging their character and reputation. Refuse to subscribe to progressive ideologies? You are hateful. Dare to criticize someone’s position? You’re a bigot. Talk about God’s plan for marriage as only between one man and one woman? You’re homophobic.…
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Be WHAT?
During a recent sermon, our pastor was teaching through Jesus’ healing of a leper, who threw himself on Jesus’ mercy and implored Him: “Lord, if You are willing, You can make me clean.” And He stretched out His hand and touched him, saying, “I am willing; be cleansed.” And immediately the leprosy left him. (Luke 5:13) I was struck by Jesus’ command, “Be cleansed.” Huh? How does a leper, afflicted by an incurable disease that isolated him so terribly, just . . . “be cleansed”? How does one obey a command like that? Further, how does one obey similar seemingly impossible commands, such as: Be not afraid. Be strong. Be…
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Is Comparison Always Bad?
“Comparison is the thief of joy.” I’ve been hearing that for decades. But is it, always? Examples of how true that is, most certainly abound. I recently read my friend Amy’s Facebook account of her college experience. A gifted singer, she was a jazz vocalist major at a university known for its excellent music program. The only problem was that she had a friend and classmate who was so much better than Amy. She used to go home on weekends and bemoan the difference to her parents, asking why they couldn’t be jazz musicians like her friend’s parents. She eventually changed her major to pre-med, which was easier in comparison.…
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Trusting God on the Other Side of Bizarre
In my last blog post, “Trusting God in the Bizarre,” I shared how a diagnosis of tongue cancer had blown up my world and how I was wrestling with my fear—again—of pain and suffering. It has now been 11 weeks since a surgeon removed a third of my tongue. I am still healing, both my tongue and my neck, from which he removed 20 lymph nodes—which were cancer free. I still thank the Lord for that graciousness. My speech is no longer impaired although it is affected. I sound like I have a cough drop in my mouth when I talk, and the “s” sound is still a challenge. Let…