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Category: Ephesians

When the world rejects your prayers, pray anyway

It didn’t take long after the tragedy in Las Vegas for the bloviating and hyperbole to begin. While many expressed shock and sadness for both the victims and for the city itself, sadly others took the massacre as a call to arms to press their political agendas. In the name of compassion, this latter group rejected the compassion of a country that was shocked into momentary paralysis as though they even had right to reject it in the first place.

Armed with the principle of never letting a crisis go to waste, they insist, “No! Only action is compassion.” And so, they shame, guilt, and demand action even before the blood is dry.

This has always bothered me. While the nation is still doubled-over in shock, using intense grief to promote an agenda—no matter how sincere—seems to amount to little more than emotional abuse. Any grief or pastoral counselor will tell you, decisions made in the heat of emotion almost never turn out well. In seminary, I had a professor tell his class, “Never resign on a Monday.” read more

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New life in the zombie apocalypse, part 4: Spiritual weapons and sustenance

Note: I love zombie apocalypse stories because they are a great metaphor for life crises. This blog series on the topic has four parts: 1) waking up in the crisis; 2) defining “alive”; 3) abandoning self-sufficiency; and 4) spiritual weapons and sustenance. All scriptures are NIV unless otherwise noted.

To conclude our journey through the zombie apocalypse, we’ll discuss the two most important keys to survival: What about weapons for self-defense? And what about sustenance (food and water)?

So, what about weapons?

ZSNTransparent3a3fd3-300x285Would I choose a projectile-type weapon (for example, a gun or crossbow), or a melee weapon (such as a hatchet, sword, or dagger) for close, hand-to-hand combat?

There is no better reassurance than having a gun hanging off one shoulder—the bigger, the better. However, a gun is loud (zombies can hear, you know!), bullets could be hard to find, and a lot could happen in the moment it takes to reload. In fact, in a 2013 television episode of Mythbusters, Jamie and Adam took on the question of weapons in the zombie apocalypse. They compared a melee weapon (an electronic axe that registered fatal hits) to a projectile weapon (a gun which did the same) and found that the former kept a person alive longer, because the latter took too much time to reload. So if they say so, it must be true. read more

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