You Are My Hiding Place


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Revival, Revival, Revival

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I didn't think I would regain strength of faith after true hell this Christmas season. But this Sunday morning, following Christmas day, I've gotten up again to hear faith. And while I feel unwell, I'm not destroyed. I feel set back, but not lost; unsure, but somewhat prepared for tomorrow. I can do all things within God's will. With God , all things He intends, are possible. This morning, partly before dawn, I was able to listen to three messages. Each message was not perfect, but breathed a kind of revival into my heart. The same goes for New Years Eve morning. In each message, I've also heard bits of what MEN err in feeling, right in the midst of God speaking! So while this day has yielded revival, I want to correct, in gentleness, two errors - while others care enough to correct me. The following are two of three revival messages, joy in the morning sermons I'm thanking the God of Heaven for holding in store as medicine; but also simple corrections, from my ...
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An Adoptive Apron String to Jesus

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  We do not have any way to know what ethnic roots the Bible's Rahab (Raah-hob) carried. We only know she was a Caananite : living in a multicultural part of the ancient Middle East . Her Caanan was similar to Egypt in being a cultural crossroads and steeped in sin, but, geographically, was close to today's  Turkey , which was the  Asia Minor of ancient times. ...  We also know her to have been redeemed by  believing God , and redeemed by t he fact that God  weaved her ancient faithfulness into the unfolding of Jesus' adoptive birth . (Illustration a product at Etsy ) It's Advent, the season when we anticipate Christmas, the celebration of Jesus' birth. It's an odd time for a sermon that reminds us of some of ancient Israel's gruesome history; but some pastors - past and present - have turned to the story of Rahab, the Caananite, to remind us that the family history leading up to Jesus' earthly adoption was not an easy history. Rahab, in ancient Caanan,...
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A Racist Rant (for Jesus's Sake)

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   A carving in a pharaoh's tomb depicts his kingdom's conquest of a people. (Wikimedia.org photo) The Persian diaspora is not God's gift to the world. We do not know what ethnic appearance Heaven gave Himself, living among peoples in Egypt as a baby and walking as an older child and adult among the Hebrew people (people chosen for longsuffering with faithfulness among them).  But we do know the Hebrew people were taken into slavery more than once, as were people of the African diaspora for longer than anyone may ever know. And we know that "fruit of the Spirit" includes our capacity to endure suffering with patience, or includes our longsuffering. We know that we as peoples who have long endured a world that leans to its own understanding, are peoples who have grown in faith. And we know that we, in Jesus today, have not had trouble-free lives, and that we are not in agreement with peoples who sacrifice children, who disparage or corrupt elders, who deny home as...
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