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You Can’t Read God’s Mind
Featured image: AI generated (does not depict real people) Judge Mike Lynch, former Texas state district court judge described the harrowing personal experience of issuing the death penalty: In my first death penalty trial, in 1998, the defendant had sexually assaulted and brutally slashed and stabbed a woman who had befriended him. The jury found…
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Does God Feel Love or Wrath? (Part 3)
God so loved the world… (John 3:16) Yet, it sounds like the opposite: …the wrath of God remains on him. (John 3:36) In Part 1, we saw that John 3 creates a real tension: God loves the world—and yet his wrath remains. In Part 2, we saw that this isn’t a contradiction, because “love” and…
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Does God Feel Love or Wrath? (Part 2)
How on earth can it be that: God so loved the world… (John 3:16) And yet: …the wrath of God remains on him. (John 3:36) In part 1 we heard how people explain this tension away by denying one side or the other… or simply redefining what the Bible’s words mean. The problem comes when…
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Does God Feel Love or Wrath? (Part 1)
John chapter 3 sounds like a flat contradiction. Verse 16 says: For God so loved the world… But by verse 36 we hear: …the wrath of God remains on him. Something we say here at Manchester Lutheran Church is: “God is in a good mood with you!And you see that when you look at Jesus.” But…
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Your Work Doesn’t Count—That’s Why It Matters
Everything you do has value. All of us have “vocations” which are our roles and states in life. Any aspect of your life where you have opportunity to relate to others, serve others, make the world a better place are your vocations: being a son, daughter, father, mother, husband, wife, friend, neighbour, and (of course)…
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You Should Worry (If It’s On You)
If everything depends on you—then you should worry. It means every decision you make today must be perfectly calculated.You must account for every outcome.You must calibrate to set up the perfect consequences. There is no technique that can be taught to remove this pressure. Sure, there are many books, blogs, videos that will help you…
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You Can’t Stop God’s Word
You can scatter Christians.You can shut down the church.You can try to silence the preacher. But you can’t stop God’s Word: …the word of God increased and multiplied. (Acts 12:24) Persecuting the church doesn’t slow the Word. It’s one of the ways God spreads it. You can ban the Bible.You can censor Biblical ideas.You can…
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Does Allah Love the Wicked?
Muslims and Christians both speak about God—the one who created us.(Allah is simply the Arabic word for “God”.)But what they say about him is very different. We see that very clearly in what their holy books claim is God’s attitude to the wicked. The Qur’an (Surah 3:57):* وَأَمَّا ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوا۟ وَعَمِلُوا۟ ٱلصَّـٰلِحَـٰتِ فَيُوَفِّيهِمْ أُجُورَهُمْ ۗ…
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When Love Must Refuse Communion
Sincere Christians, who genuinely love Jesus and one another, but sincerely believe God is saying different things when they read the Bible should not take the Lord’s Supper with one another. Perhaps, reading that sentence, you want to respond with one of these very common replies: The heart of the matter is this: What does…
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God Is Not Angry with You
You assume God is angry with you and that you need to do something about it. That assumption is the problem. It’s understandable why you think that way: We often feel like God is angry with us.The world often looks as though he’s angry with us.And the Bible often sounds like he’s angry with us.…