Miley Cyrus Has Become the Poster Child for Consent Posted on June 19, 2015 by Adam Holz America’s sexual revolution has been underway for some time now. And at least as far back as 1967’s so-called “Summer of Love,” traditional and biblical understandings of the purpose and place of sexuality in our lives have been under open assault. But what began as a countercultural movement has in the ensuing decades become anything but countercultural. Those voices are now in the ascendant, to say the very least. And those of us who’ve continued to hold to a more conservative viewpoint are now the counterculture. I write all of that as a preamble of sorts to my topic today: Miley Cyrus. Plugged In has commented about Miley many times before, of course, as the 22-year-old entertainer’s words and choices have provided plenty of fodder for discussion about mass entertainment, cultural influence and moral values since her arrival on Disney’s Hannah Montana in 2006. Today it’s abou...
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12 Fitness Tips Every Pastor Needs To Hear, From A Pastor June 01, 2015 1. Repent For years I tried to lose weight. My motives were all over the place. Fear of dying prematurely, guilt, shame, vanity, even glimpses of spiritual conviction. None of those motives sustained real life-change. It wasn't until 148 days ago that I truly began to walk in repentance regarding addiction to food, laziness, lack of self-control, and my lack of discipline. I didn't struggle with dark hidden sins, my sin was visible for all to see. Spiritual brokenness was the difference. When I saw my lifestyle as sin, I repented. My success is obedience to the Lord and running to Him and not food. It's time to repent, not try harder. 2. Involve your church I confessed my sin to my church. I let them know what God said to me. I acknowledged that I had previously been asking them to repent from sin, but I was still walking in mine. I let them know that I was broken and that things were changing no...
10 Suggestions for Raising Godly Children By Ron Edmondson
10 Suggestions for Raising Godly Children By Ron Edmondson EmailEmail FacebookShare On Facebook TwitterTwitter Like Us Most of the believers I know have a strong desire to raise their children to be godly; to be passionate followers of Christ. Years ago, before I even had children, God laid on my heart to develop a plan for my fathering. Though at the time I didn’t put this on paper, over the years I have begun to write it down in an effort to encourage other parents to have a plan for their parenting in the area of spiritual development. That plan was covered in previous posts—this is an expansion of that—but in addition to having a plan, we thought through as a couple actions which could help attain our plan for parenting. You can have the best plan in the world, but with no steps to implement them they will just be pretty words on paper. That’s true in every area of our life, including parenting. One of the things we wanted to see was our children following after Christ. W...
Short and sweet or long and salty? A sugar donut or some oatmeal? Out of respect for you and your efforts in getting your degree, I thought long and hard about what I could share with you tonight. Did I want to stand at a podium and read you your rights? Did I want to come up here and just share some really funny stories? I thought about what you would WANT. I thought about what you might NEED. I also thought about what I WANT to say. What I NEED to say… Hopefully, we’ll both be happy on both accounts… And as the saying goes, take what you like, leave the rest. Thank you for having me. So, before I share with you some “what I do knows,” let’s talk about a “what I don’t know.” I have 2 older brothers. One was in high school in the early 1970s — a time when a high school GED got you a job and college degree was exemplary. My other brother was in HS in the early 1980s, and by this time the GED wasn’t enough to guarantee employment, you needed a college degree, and if you got one, you ...
Lust is more than looking. It is different from feeling attraction or involuntary sexual arousal. Lust entails seeing another’s body as an object for self-gratification. It defines the person not as a human, created in the image of God, but as a means of carnal pleasure. We get it wrong when limiting our discussions of modesty to sexuality. Shechem’s lust led him to sexually assault Dinah in Genesis 34. Scholar and pastor Ron Clark explains, “Shechem has violated the rights of Dinah as well as the covenant with the Jacobites.” Clearly men do not rape women because of how they dress. “But each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death” (James 1:14-15). True modesty comes from dressing in the spirit of Jesus. “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them...