Faith: November 2017 Archives

ACLU Threatens to Stamp Out Diversity by Shuttering Faith-Based Adoption Agencies

"Specifically, the American Civil Liberties Union is suing the state of Michigan over a 2015 law that allows religious adoption agencies to decline placing children with same-sex parents, in accordance with their religious convictions.

"If the ACLU prevails in court, it would overturn the Michigan law and force numerous faith-based adoption agencies to choose between following their beliefs about marriage and family, or going out of business, leaving thousands of foster children out in the cold without families.

"Despite the ACLU's attacks, Michigan's law is neither unconventional nor unprecedented. It simply preserves the status quo in which religious adoption agencies and foster families can serve children on equal terms with secular adoption agencies and foster families."

Christianity Is Just A Better Religion Than I | The Daily Caller

Allan Fimister writes: "This is the West's problem: in itself Christendom, armed with truth and right and freedom, has more than enough resources to resist and overcome any rival civilization. But the 'renaissance' injected into western man an absurd inferiority complex in regard to pagan antiquity and then the 'Enlightenment' insisted on eliminating from public policy and public law the very Christian revelation which defined and ennobled western man. The 'Enlightenment' is a parasite, it will not survive the death of its host. But it is strong enough to weaken the West to the point where its traditional external enemy the Islamic Ummah can strike the killer blow. Deep down the liberals know this is case, as they contracept and abort and legislate our civilisation into extinction, but in the end they don't care. Their ultimate motive was always less the love of 'liberty' and more the hatred of Christ."

What is a sheepdog? -- Sheepdog Seminars

This is an organization devoted to making churches aware of the need to take active measures to protect their congregations from predators and to provide the training to do so effectively.

"When we refer to a 'Sheepdog Seminar for Churches,' we are appealing to churches to form Eyes and Ears Teams at their houses of worship: men and women (sheepdogs) who's assignment on that particular day is to watch out for anyone and anything that threatens the safety of the congregation."

If love wins, we all lose | The Spectator Australia

"I was recently reading C.S. Lewis' classic, The Four Loves. In his introduction, he quotes M. Denis de Rougemont as saying, 'Love ceases to be a demon only when he ceases to be a god.' To clarify what that statement means Lewis re-states it by saying love 'begins to be a demon the moment he begins to be a god.'...

"For a community that identifies itself as being centred on 'love,' this is why their attitudes and actions are characterised by hatred to anyone who will not worship their god with them. The greatest irony of all is that as much as they champion a separation of church and state, they are seeking to impose their very own LGBTIQ theocracy. And if they win, then as we have already started to see, theirs will be a totalitarian regime of compliance."

Miranda Devine: Same-sex marriage debate ending with Christians vilified | Daily Telegraph

What does it take to get an event kicked out of a pub's beer garden? Speaking about the necessity of grace when vilified.

"The event which so antagonised Rose Hotel patrons was a talk last month by American nun Sister Mary Patrice Ahearn titled, ironically enough, Resilient Faith: How to Survive When Under Attack.

"The talk, organised by the University of Notre Dame's Catholic chaplaincy, was not about gay marriage, but how to cope with being attacked for your faith.

"Sister Patrice quoted the Gospels: 'If the world hates you know that it has hated me before it hated you.'

"She mentioned gay marriage as one issue, along with euthanasia, for which Christians would be persecuted.

"'Most of us are feeling... tension, conflict, disruption in relationships, because of these issues,' she said.

"She urged her audience to find 'common ground between the two sides... I'm sure most of us in this room know or love someone who's gay. Persons with same-sex attraction desire love, friendship and intimacy as much as you or I do.'"

On the Day They Shoot Me Down in My Pew | Lori Stanley Roeleveld . . . Disturber of Hobbits

"If you add anything to your day, days already filled with the work God has put before you as you follow Him in faith, if you add anything that day - pray for our young men. Check in with one you know. Get to know one you don't. Support a ministry reaching this struggling, searching, agonizing generation.

"If they reject you, pray and redouble your efforts. Try again. These young men are worth our love and every attempt to reach them in the moments of their pain and anger and sorrow.

"And then, on the day I am shot down in God's house in my hometown, I want you to gather in yours.

"Turn up the lights, throw open the windows and doors.

"Let the enemy know that where one is fallen more will rise. Where one light is sent on to glory, another will be set aglow.

"Where one heart that beats for Christ now sees Him face-to-face, another will begin to beat for Him anew."

Judgment According to Works- Reformed Style - The Calvinist InternationalThe Calvinist International

Important, Biblical distinctions in the current discussion about justification and final judgment. "God justifies apart from works, but he also will 'go demonstratively to work' and clearly distinguish between a true believer versus a spurious believer. God will 'justify his own acts of justification.' Or, to put the matter another way, God will justify the faith of the believer who has been justified - the judgment will prove we had a lively faith that worked through love. God is going to vindicate his people."

MORE: John Piper on justification and final judgment:

"Essential to the Christian life and necessary for final salvation is the killing of sin (Romans 8:13) and the pursuit of holiness (Hebrews 12:14). Mortification of sin, sanctification in holiness. But what makes that possible and pleasing to God? We put sin to death and we pursue holiness from a justified position where God is one hundred percent for us -- already -- by faith alone.

"Because if we try to put sin to death and to pursue holiness from a position where we are not fully accepted, not fully forgiven, not fully righteous in Christ, and where God is not one hundred percent for us, then we will be putting sin to death and pursuing holiness as a means of getting into a position where God is one hundred percent for us. And that is the Galatian heresy. "