When God Breaks You To Remake You: Encountering God Through the Hard Times

A little bit of encouragement during this stressful time...

A great sermon by Tony Evans:  "Encountering God's Process," about how God breaks us of our self-sufficiency to remake us stronger in Him.  I've been there before.  I totally understand. 


And here are some more "Encountering God ..." sermons worth watching.  (Come on, now, I know you've got the time, stuck at home, "social distancing."  You've got plenty of time for a "God encounter"!):






Most Popular Posts Of The Month:

List of Calvinist Preachers, Authors, Theologians, Websites, etc.

I  found a lot more names to add to my list of known Calvinists (found in my various "How to Tell if a Church, Pastor, or Website is Calvinist" posts).  [FYI: I added a note at the bottom of this post on May 5, 2021.]    And so here it is, a "master list" of known Calvinists to help you be careful and discerning about who you listen to and where you get your theology from.  There are plenty more Calvinists out there, but these are just the names that I ran across the most.   These are either definite, self-professed Calvinists or "most likely Calvinists," in my estimation.  (I haven't heard of most of them, but it's good to know their theology before I do.)   After finding these names in various places online, I looked up each person to see if they are Calvinist.  If they did not self-identify as a Calvinist, I tried to figure it out based on the statements of faith of the groups/churches they belong to, the books they write, the t...
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Why Is Calvinism So Dangerous? (re-updated)

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Because it  appears  to teach biblical truth while actually teaching  the opposite  - while using  manipulation and cult-like tactics to suck you in!  And it's spreading.  Stealthily, fast, aggressively. (We watched it happen firsthand in our church, which is why I wrote this blog.  See  "What's the best way to make people agree with your Calvinist views?"    Sadly, we ended up  leaving that church , a place we attended almost 20 years.) [ I updated this November 2022 to try to shorten it.  I failed.  But I hope it's more readable and streamlined at least.   If you only read one anti-Calvinism post of mine, I think it should be this one.  But I'm warning you, this post is long.  Very long.  So pack a lunch and bring a sleeping bag.  But it has to be long because Calvinism is so deceptively convoluted that it takes time to peel off the layers so that you can see it for what it really is.  ...
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Leaving Calvinism: Comments from Ex-Calvinists #11

Here is the last of the ex-Calvinist testimonies.  The first one is from this post:  X-Calvinist Corner .   (It's an Arminian website, but I am not Arminian.)  I am going to highlight some of the comments that stood out to me the most.  If you want to read everything that everyone said, click on the link above: Dana Steele writes: I grew up in a Calvinistic Baptist church from age 11.  The 5-points of Calvinism (TULIP) were taught regularly with great enthusiasm ... But it wasn’t until college that I began to understand and embrace the “Doctrines of Grace” and TULIP more fully....  I also learned to love the doctrine of election because it meant that God loved me personally and specifically in a unique way.  Though it made me a little embarrassed to think that God did not love everyone this way, I was content to leave this as a mystery.  Who am I to question God?  I was just glad I was one of the lucky (I mean chosen) ones. ... [As ...
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"But Calvinists don't say God causes sin and evil!"

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If you point out to Calvinists that Calvinism's view of sovereignty - that God fore-ordains and orchestrates everything that happens and we had no ability to do anything differently - makes God the cause (and truly the only  voluntary cause) of all sin and evil, they'll probably respond with something like "That's not what we're saying.  You're putting words in our mouths.  And you don't understand Calvinism."   When they do that, show them a few of these quotes -  Ca lvinists' own words about their beliefs of God's sovereignty and how He preplans, will, ordains, orchestrates, directs (code words for "causes")  everything  that happens.  And then ask them if they still think you're really misunderstanding them.  (Bold emphasis added) [And before reading the quotes, here's a great, satirical 4-minute video that I think everyone should see:  Hitler and Calvinism .  Awesome!] 1. R.C. Sproul Jr.  ( Almighty Over All) :  ...
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Series by Andy Woods: "Neo-Calvinism vs. the Bible"

I've been listening through this series by Dr. and Pastor Andy Woods called Neo-Calvinism vs. The Bible, and I'm finding it really good and informative, covering a lot of aspects of Calvinism, from historical to practical to present-day issues, etc.  [I even like his dry, monotone, and slightly-repetitive way of speaking.  It's calming to my over-active brain, helping me really hear him and absorb what he's saying.] He's still adding to this series (and I've only listened up to 13 so far), but here are the links to all the videos he's got in the series up to this point, with a little bit about each one.  They're great to listen to while you're doing something like cleaning or cooking or driving or whatever.   The following are links to his website (but here's the playlist on YouTube ): Video #1:   About the mixed blessings of Calvinism, including how it helped shaped our American government, and about some of the serious issues of Calvinism and o...
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How to Tell if a Church, Pastor, or Website is Calvinist (simplified version)

(For the extended version of this post, which I recommend, click here .  It is loaded with lots more information.  This simplified one is just the highlights.  And feel free to copy this and share it with others, to help them learn to identify Calvinism when they see it.  Just make sure to share the link to this blog so that they can find the original post.  Thank you.  New : For the super-short version, click here .  And FYI: I found a couple times when the Calvinist author of an article I linked to changed their article after I linked to it.  So if their article doesn't seem to match what I said about it, it may be because they altered it. ) We just left our church of almost 20 years because of the dogmatic Calvinist pastor who recently came on board.  ( Read my "Letter to Our Elders Regarding Calvinism Growing in Our Church" here.)   And I was thinking about what precautions I might take to make sure we didn't end up in another...
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Is The ESV (English Standard Version) a Calvinist Bible?

Just in case anyone missed this post (the longer title made it easy to miss the "ESV" part) ... "A Random Verse That Destroys Calvinism (And "Is The ESV a Calvinist Bible?") In that post, I write about a bunch of verses that I believe were intentionally translated to be more Calvinistic or based on manuscripts that were too corrupt to be trusted (click on it to see the verses).   And why would I think that the translators of this Bible version would do that? (From that post...) The ESV and ESV Study Bible are majorly preferred by Calvinists.  In fact, it's often considered "The Calvinist Bible."   Why?  And why would translators of a Bible make these kinds of Calvinist tweaks to Scripture? Wayne Grudem and J.I. Packer were editors on the  ESV Study Bible   (this is for the ESV Global Study Bible).  Grudem and Packer are both popular, strong, dogmatic Calvinists.  Very Big Names in the world of Calvinism.  Grudem in the General E...
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Things My Calvinist Pastor Said #15: No Altar Calls, And Replacing "Believe" With "Repent"

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(This "Things My Calvinist Pastor Said" series is a breakdown of this much longer post:  "We Left Our Church Because of Calvinism,"  which was written last year but updated July 2020.  They are almost exact quotes.  All memes were created with  imgflip .) Updated October 2023 15.    Our pastor never does altar calls and never asks people if they want to ask Jesus in their heart or choose Jesus as their Lord and Savior.  Instead, Calvinists emphasize the need to "repent."             As I mentioned in the last point, w ith Calvinism in general, there are no altar calls, no "Do you want to ask Jesus into your heart, to choose Him as your Lord and Savior?"                They say it's because they don't want people thinking they're saved just because they "walked the aisle" or "prayed a prayer."  But I know it's because they don't want people thinking they have a ch...
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Calvinism in the Evangelical Free Church

Before we left our church because of Calvinism, we sent a long letter to the elders , expressing our concerns.  However, none of the elders cared enough or were concerned enough to do anything about it.  And so we left our church home, the place we had been at and loved for almost 20 years, the church we raised our kids in. After awhile, I became concerned that maybe the Evangelical Free Church, in general, didn't realize that there were dogmatic Calvinist pastors taking over their churches, blocking other views, manipulating people into agreeing with them.  And I thought maybe they would want to know this, especially since it seemed to contradict their "official stance" about this issue, which I believed was supposed to be a middle-of-the-road approach, falling under the heading of "significance of silence" (where they don't let the small controversial issues become big divisive issues).  I figured that if a pastor in one of their churches was manipulat...
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When Calvinism Infiltrates Your Church

A note I recently added to my posts on "How to tell if a Church, Pastor, or Website is Calvinist" : On a personal note : After having seen firsthand how Calvinism stealthily infiltrates and takes over a church, I want to share with you something that Kevin from Beyond the Fundamentals said in the video   "Stealth Calvinism in Oklahoma"  (my paraphrase): "By the time you realize what's going on and start looking up information about Calvinism online, it's too late."   Calvinist pastors who set out to take over non-Calvinist churches are banking on the fact that most people don't know what Calvinism is, giving the pastors plenty of time to weave in Calvinism in sneaky, subtle, tricksy ways before people catch on to (and research) the red flags.  (*See note at bottom about deceptive pastors.)  By that time, too many people in the church have been suckered into Calvinism (without realizing it's called Calvinism), believing that they're just...
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