On Rejoicing
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“The places it [“rejoice”] shows up in the Scripture tell us something about what should press our buttons. These instances should help us evaluate the appropriateness of our affections.” - Olinger
How the News Disrupts Our Belonging
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“Today the Soviet Union is gone but newspeak and a thousand forms of disinformation thrive. I can do frontline reporting … and a reader will email to say I didn’t see what I saw because it doesn’t conform to a political narrative. She and the rest of us can fall prey to platform algorithms and manipulated content disgorged from a news cycle that never sleeps.
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Learning from History: Orwell’s (Prophetic) Proposed Preface to Animal Farm and Freedom in Society
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“At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is ‘not done’ to say it…” - Ben Edwards
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How the Gospel Should Shape Our Political Posture
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“This tendency to see contested public-policy issues—such as those concerning immigration, religious liberty, or economics—through the lens of modern political ideologies and party platforms before seeing them through the lens of the gospel is problematic.” - TGC
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Friendly Neighborhood Epidemiologist Deploys Expert Advice With Christian Love
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“Smith started Friendly Neighbor Epidemiologist, a Facebook page, in March 2020 … Since then, the page, written in Smith’s friendly, informational voice, has grown to more than 96,000 followers. About half are evangelical Christians, she said. But threats and pushback have also followed” - C.Today
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Loving God with Our Minds
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“…love is not an involuntary thing. It is something we do purposefully based on our knowledge of the person we love. Nothing can be in the heart that is not first in the mind. And if we want to have an experience of God directly where we bypass the mind, we’re on a fool’s errand.” - R.C. Sproul
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On the Fruit of the Spirit, Part 6: Kindness
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“How are such people thinking? They’re thinking outwardly; they’re focused not on what they want or need, but on what’s in the best interest of the people around them.” - Olinger
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Enjoying God Is a Command
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“Scripture shows that well-instructed believers develop a determination to rejoice. They will rejoice in the Lord. Habakkuk exemplified this in difficult days (see Hab. 3:17–18).” - Sinclair Ferguson
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On the Fruit of the Spirit, Part 3: Joy
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“If you scan through the uses of this word in the NT, you can’t help noticing something that you may find surprising—the frequent connection of joy with trials.” - Olinger
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We Weren't Afraid
For many of us it was never about fear. We wore masks. We social-distanced. We avoided gatherings. We encouraged people to consider participating in Sunday school and worship over Zoom or Facebook Live. We respected the officials who—for better or worse, correct or incorrect—made the tough calls and closed businesses, limited gatherings, and recommended or required masks.
We were not “afraid.”
We didn’t choose “fear instead of faith” and certainly didn’t choose “fear instead of science.”
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