Friday, July 31, 2009
Quilt Giveaway!
Marie Madeline Studio is giving away a beautiful quilt!
Be sure to head over and sign up!
EDITED TO ADD: You must head over to Marie Madeline Studio to enter the giveaway!
Measures 66 3/4" x 90". This happy-scrappy (our official title for the
pattern we invented!) was made with new fabrics and freshly laundered when we
brought it home from our quilting lady. The fabrics featured in the
giveaway quilt are from ModGirls, Bellbottom, Basics, Flower Power, Dance With Me, and Pretty Please!
Be sure to head over and sign up!
EDITED TO ADD: You must head over to Marie Madeline Studio to enter the giveaway!
Thursday, July 30, 2009
After a thorough examination....
After a thorough examination by Arminian church officials, Bob was found to be only “slightly dead” in trespasses and sins.
What If This Guy Came to Your Church?
This video really shows the shallowness of so many churches today. Who are we worshiping here? Man or God?
Re-imagining God in The Shack
by Mary Kassian
This week, Christians around the world will commemorate Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Sunday. It was at a Maundy Thursday service at the Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the Divine in Manhattan, in 1984, that a four-foot bronze statue of Jesus on the cross was unveiled. But to the shock of the congregation, the image of Christ on the cross was, in fact, an image of Christa. It portrayed Christ as a woman, complete with undraped breasts and rounded hips.
Betty Friedan, the main force behind modern day feminism, predicted that the question of the eighties would be: "Is God HE?" The Christa sculpture was the liberal church's response to the question. And although Evangelical Christians have been much slower to consider female gendered God imagery, the recent phenomenon of the multi-million best-seller, "The Shack," indicates that Evangelicals, too, are succumbing to the feminist pressure to image God in feminine ways. It's a scenario that I predicted almost 25 years ago.
If you haven't read it yet, and are amongst the un-Shacked evangelical minority, here's the story in a nutshell. Mack's youngest daughter Missy is kidnapped and murdered in a remote mountain shack by a serial slime, called the Ladybug Killer. Mack goes through a denial-grief-anger-bitterness cycle until he receives a letter in his mailbox from God who tells him to go back to the shack to confront his point of pain and suffering. When Mack gets to the shack he blacks out and awakens to find himself in a cabin complete with a manifestation of the Godhead. But this is no ordinary Godhead.
read more...
This week, Christians around the world will commemorate Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Sunday. It was at a Maundy Thursday service at the Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the Divine in Manhattan, in 1984, that a four-foot bronze statue of Jesus on the cross was unveiled. But to the shock of the congregation, the image of Christ on the cross was, in fact, an image of Christa. It portrayed Christ as a woman, complete with undraped breasts and rounded hips.
Betty Friedan, the main force behind modern day feminism, predicted that the question of the eighties would be: "Is God HE?" The Christa sculpture was the liberal church's response to the question. And although Evangelical Christians have been much slower to consider female gendered God imagery, the recent phenomenon of the multi-million best-seller, "The Shack," indicates that Evangelicals, too, are succumbing to the feminist pressure to image God in feminine ways. It's a scenario that I predicted almost 25 years ago.
If you haven't read it yet, and are amongst the un-Shacked evangelical minority, here's the story in a nutshell. Mack's youngest daughter Missy is kidnapped and murdered in a remote mountain shack by a serial slime, called the Ladybug Killer. Mack goes through a denial-grief-anger-bitterness cycle until he receives a letter in his mailbox from God who tells him to go back to the shack to confront his point of pain and suffering. When Mack gets to the shack he blacks out and awakens to find himself in a cabin complete with a manifestation of the Godhead. But this is no ordinary Godhead.
read more...
A quote
If God had perceived that our greatest need was economic, he would have sent an economist. If he had perceived that our greatest need was entertainment, he would have sent us a comedian or an artist. If God had perceived that our greatest need was political stability, he would have sent us a politician. If he had perceived that our greatest need was health, he would have sent us a doctor. But he perceived that our greatest need involved our sin, our alienation from him, our profound rebellion, our death; and he sent us a Savior. --D.A. Carson
A quote
Let us learn that God does not intend there to be churches as places for people to make merry and laugh in, as if a comedy were being acted here. But there must be majesty in His Word, by which we may be moved and affected.
--John Calvin
A quote
Bad doctrine is tolerable, but a long sermon most certainly is not. … In today’s church, long-windedness has become a greater sin than heresy.
-John MacArthur
Idolatry? Mary worship? You tell me....
As Jay Adams puts it:
The futility of idol worship, as it is pictured in the Scriptures is plain. The foolishness of it is exhibited in places where the same man who carves an idol, then takes the wood left over and burns it in order to warm himself (Isaiah 44:15). Then, having finished his work, he bows down to it, as if it were a god. The “Dagon reference in the website presentation is to the Canaanite fish god that the Lord toppled in Old Testament times. It would be interesting to know something of the reason why, in His providence, God again toppled an image of this particular church in our day.
Monday, July 6, 2009
Death is Not Dying
Rachel Barkey (nee Sawer) went home to her Lord on July 2, 2009 at 37 years of age. Rachel is survived by her husband Neil and her children Quinn and Kate, parents Ben and Cathy Sawer, brother David (Johanna) Sawer and sister Andrea Sawer.
Death is Not Dying
Death is Not Dying
Rachel's story is not unlike what thousands of women around the world have experienced. A diagnosis that changes a woman's life and inevitably takes from her what we consider to be most precious.
After four and a half years of vigilantly fighting breast cancer, the 37 year old wife and mother of two was diagnosed with terminal cancer.
But for Rachel the essence of life is found in her relationship with God through Jesus. And that's why Rachel is convinced that death is not dying.