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blogging, books, controversy, faith, insanitybytes22, lies, Paul Young, truth
“Lies We Believe About God, “ Paul Young.
Oh boy, if you thought “The Shack” was fun, this book is a veritable smorgasbord, an entire taco bar of offense just waiting the be had. With guacamole, sour cream, and olives too! I’m just salivating over all those juicy tidbits of theological wrongness just waiting to be gloriously consumed. Praise the Lord too, because I’m absolutely starving! Where’s the fresh meat? Who’s the fresh meat this week? Quite delicious, I tell ya.
So Paul Young himself says, “This book exposes 28 commonly uttered things we say about God as lies that keep us from having a full, loving relationship with our Creator…” He does this by telling anecdotes, tales of his own walk in faith, some of the lies and deceptions he once believed about God that he has since unwrapped.
I myself call this “peeling the layers off the onion.” It can be painful work. No one ever wants to admit to having been deceived, to have taken on faulty thinking, and this is especially true when there has been abuse. We live in a world full of deception, but often struggle to ever admit we can be deceived. Father of all lies is not my problem, I’m one of those rare people who see through the glass clearly….
Uh yeah, about that….
Back to the taco bar of great offense however, I was in complete agreement with 20 of the 28 lies we tell about God. Totally with Paul Young on all of those. He has woven some beautiful tales around these anecdotes. Let’s take a look at one, the lie that says, “God is disappointed in me.” As Young says so artfully, “God is never disillusioned by you; God never had any illusions about you in the first place.”
Oh, ouch! Is that not offensive to the pride? Here I’ve been dressing up for church, putting my best face on for God, checking “like” on all the right things on facebook, and come to find out, I’m actually not fooling God at all! Wut?! He can already see beyond the mask, beyond the illusion I attempt to create? Say it isn’t so….
It’s an exposed lie that is quite biblically sound, however. We are already known by God. He can actually predict our behavior better than we can. He knew Peter would deny Him three times, He knew Judas would betray Him, and He knew that every time you tell Jonah to take a right, he just goes left. The darker aspects of ourselves are not unknown to God. We cannot disappoint God, He already sees us. Most of our defects He’s just waiting for us to recognize in ourselves and place in His hands.
People have inflicted a lot of misery on themselves by falsely believing we can disappoint God, like one might disappoint an earthly father. Forgiddaboutit. Confess all, He already knows the worse and “the worse” placed in His hands, can be molded into something quite beautiful.
The eight things I objected to, are not really objections at all, but things I call green wine. If you’ve ever made wine, you start with juice and sugar, allow it to ferment, and then you get what we call green wine. It just hasn’t aged properly, it is not yet refined. There’s nothing wrong with green wine, in fact, we used to sip it quite happily. It tends to have a lower alcohol content and is still a bit sweet.
Yep, even the parts of what I call Paul Young’s unrefined wine are still sweet…
We all have unrefined wine in our faith. The areas that I am strong in, those are the places God tossed me in the fire, kind of like the way you purify gold. The other parts, the unrefined wine, those are the places God has not gone so deeply for whatever reason. That is why fellowship and leadership can be so beneficial. We are all specialists in our own areas. It’s like when building a house. I know a bit about drywall, but I know a guy who can do it five times as fast, for half the price. It’s what he does, it’s his thing, it’s his area of expertise.
Fellowship and leadership allows us to refine the wine or build the house. “Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend.” Proverbs 27:17 If any of us were capable of attaining a perfect faith all on our own, we’d have no need of a Savior……or other people, for that matter.
In my opinion, those 8 things that gave me pause, Paul Young is still responding and reacting to misappropriated and abusive authority. That’s completely understandable given his experiences. I don’t think he would disagree. In his analogy of Papa, a black woman, she is transformed, she does become a Father, once his spirit is prepared to receive that. He, like a lot of writers is working out his faith with fear and trembling. The good kind of fear and trembling, as in, these personal journeys are kind of scary. My God is scarier and He’s on my side.
I think I can see these things in Paul Young because my story is the reverse of his. I don’t come from abusive authority, I come from no authority at all, some vehement atheism. There is no God, there are no hierarchies, there are no rules, we are all just free-falling through the universe, doing whatever we please. It was the 1960’s, so free love, drugs, peace, cults and communes. Abuse too, yes, but from the perspective of you belong to no one and there is no standard or mandate that says anything different. As a child, I went searching for protection, provision, the power to keep me safe, and ran quite happily and enthusiastically into the authority of God. It was the authority of God that protected me from the lack of authority of men.
So, totally different perspective, different histories. I have no qualms about submission, I’ve written about 30 posts praising submission in all it’s forms. I don’t have the same struggles, fearing the Fatherhood of God, what I sometime jokingly refer to as the “Divine patriarchy.” I don’t have to walk that same path, attempting to reconcile abuse and exploitation, with love and authority. God as Father, if “father” has been experienced as a dark thing, is a tough path to tread.
I’m not going to complain about this book, I’m not going to label it heresy, and I’m not going to accuse it of leading anyone astray. It’s simply not that kind of book, and while there may be some theological bits I don’t agree with fully, it is theology shared by a lot of other great men I really do admire, CS Lewis for example.
atimetoshare.me said:
Need a little more hot salsa with that taco😃
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insanitybytes22 said:
Ha! You can never have too much salsa. 🙂
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Debbie L said:
Your tasty morsels are killing me today! We don’t eat much on our travel days. Since I’m now also on the heart healthy food plan (diet has negative connotations), we’re off all sweets (pies, cakes, cookies, candy) and tacos! We can make a healthy taco salad with our Beanitos! Lol
Anyway, I’m again with ya! Love hearing about your wild childhood and how it prepared you for the submission to the authority of our Heavenly Father!
That gives me hope for this very lost generation coming behind the millineals….and maybe some millineal ms seeking truth!
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Debbie L said:
Typo-hit a bump! The ms was supposed to make millineal plural!
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Brandon Adams said:
Take the good, renounce the bad.
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Rebecca LuElla Miller said:
So this is what I found interesting—as so many do, they introduce one idea and then argue another. Here’s the part of your post I’m replying to, and I think it’s really Paul Young’s line of thought: ‘Let’s take a look at one, the lie that says, “God is disappointed in me.” As Young says so artfully, “God is never disillusioned by you; God never had any illusions about you in the first place.” ‘
So “disappointment” magically becomes “disillusioned.”
The reason I make this point is that Scripture would seem to indicate we can disappoint God. For one thing, we can please Him, so it seems logical that the opposite would also be true. But perhaps I’m doing what I just said above—disappoint becomes displease.
But secondly, if we look at Biblical history we can see that people failed to live the way God wanted them to—and He wasn’t happy with them for it. Think Adam and Eve. Or David when he committed adultery and conspired to have a man killed. Think Jonah. Think Peter when he denied he knew Christ. Sure God knew these people would do all these things—He is omniscient. But that doesn’t mean He’s OK with it. That doesn’t mean He shrugs it off and says, No big deal, I knew you were going to do that.
I mean all the books of prophecy are God pleading with people to repent, to return to Him, to do the right thing, to stop doing the wrong thing. Was He sending them this message because He was fine with their behavior since He already knew they would be like that?
In fact, I think God’s reaction to sin is much stronger than disappointment. After all, He required death as payment for it. So how can we say God isn’t disappointed? He reacts so strongly against it that He sent Israel, who He described as the apple of His eye, into exile because of it.
OK, climbing off my soapbox now. Heheh. I do get carried away.
Becky
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Mel Wild said:
Becky, I would agree with you if we were under the Old Covenant. That covenant was made between God and Israel. There were blessings and curses attached and it was all performance-based, even though it didn’t reveal God’s heart. David would be a case in point: he was an adulterer and murderer, yet he was “a man after God’s own heart.”
The New Covenant was made between God and Christ (with Abraham as a proxy – Gal.3:15-18). We cannot break it because we didn’t make it. We can only agree with it by faith. Our life is now Christ’s life (Gal.2:20; Col.3:3), so to say that we can disappoint God is to say that Christ disappointed God and failed to perform the covenant in full.
On the other hand, all sin is because of very insidious deception, what Jesus came to free us from. So, while God is not disappointed with us (because HE knows our frame), WE certainly can allow the enemy (and wrong thinking) to dis-appoint US, for we were “appointed” to bear fruit and that this fruit should remain (John 15:15-16). This is why the writer of Hebrews told us to “draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.” (Heb.10:22). It’s our conscience that needs to change, not God’s assessment of us. He already made His assessment of us on the Cross (John 3:16).
Something for you to consider anyway.:) Blessings.
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insanitybytes22 said:
“It’s our conscience that needs to change, not God’s assessment of us. He already made His assessment of us on the Cross”
Yes,that’s it precisely! God is steadfast, the same yesterday, today, and forever. So He cannot change His mind based on our behavior. He said we were worth saving, worth giving His very life for. And He did that, “while we were yet sinners.” We can certainly disappoint ourselves, we can fail to live up to the worth and value God has placed on us, we can pursue sin, but we cannot cause His assessment of us to change. To believe that is to actually believe that God can make mistakes,that His assessments can be wrong.
Kind of ironic, before I understood grace that way, I was just breaking rules, they had no meaning. You’re forever trying to control and influence God’s assessment of you, and often failing miserably. Once I understood God was not disappointed in me, suddenly my whole world began to revolve around pleasing Him.
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Mel Wild said:
Very true. We will always respond to how we see ourselves from the assessment of the people we look up to. This is ultimately true of God’s assessment of us. If we think He’s disappointed with us, we move from faith to performance. I was on that hamster wheel for over 20 years. I traded it in for a life of real freedom, peace, and fullness of joy in His constant embrace. 🙂
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Rebecca LuElla Miller said:
Mel, I understand what you’re saying, but I don’t think this is a matter of the old covenant vs. the new. I know that we are forgiven, that the devil who is the accuser of the brethren can bring no charge against us. I know there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. But there is still something we Christians in contemporary western society have set aside, I think.
Paul says it best in 1 Thess. 4. So pardon me for the quote. It just seems clearer than if I tried to rephrase it: “Finally then, brethren, we request and exhort you in the Lord Jesus, that as you received from us instruction as to how you ought to walk and please God (just as you actually do walk), that you excel still more. 2 For you know what commandments we gave you by the authority of the Lord Jesus. 3 For this is the will of God, your sanctification; that is, that you abstain from sexual immorality; 4 that each of you know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor, 5 not in lustful passion, like the Gentiles who do not know God; 6 and that no man transgress and defraud his brother in the matter because the Lord is the avenger in all these things, just as we also told you before and solemnly warned you. 7 For God has not called us for the purpose of impurity, but in sanctification. 8 So, he who rejects this is not rejecting man but the God who gives His Holy Spirit to you.” (Emphasis is mine).
Is the Lord avenging things He’s not displeased with or disappointed about? My point is, we are too comfortable with sin. After all, we are forgiven, so why get hot and bothered by it. And we are forgiven! I don’t mean to make light of that. But I see a growing attitude that seems to say, how we live isn’t really a big deal because “God can handle it” or “God already knows my heart.”
Paul also said in Colossians we are to “walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, to please Him in all respects, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God” (1:10).
Here’s the deal. There’s this really cool verse in Romans 7 that says now that we walk in the Spirit, not in the flesh, we serve “in newness of the Spirit and not in oldness of the letter.” In other words, we don’t live godly lives because we have to measure up to the Law. But we serve and bear fruit for God through the newness of the Spirit.
But we can quench the Spirit. We can grieve the Spirit. I think we do so when we act as if God is fine with whatever sin we commit because He knew about it already anyway.
Becky
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Mel Wild said:
Becky, we’re pretty much in agreement there. Grace is never a license to sin; it’s the empowerment not to sin.
God hates sin because of what it does to us, not because of what it does to Him. His “grief” is like that of a parent who loves their wayward child and longs for them to come to their senses (Prodigal).
So, as long as we don’t making God like Santa Clause…makin’ a list, checkin’ it twice, gonna find out who’s naughty and nice…” we’re on the same page. 🙂
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Mel Wild said:
Correction on last line: as long as we’re not making… 🙂
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Rebecca LuElla Miller said:
IB, with all respect—because I hope ya know, I DO respect you and love your persistent, godly approach to all these topics—I have trouble with the idea that God saved us because we were worth saving. God saved us because of who He is, not because of who we are. Just like Israel was the least among the nations, we bring nothing to commend ourselves to the table to warrant God’s mercy. He is love, so He loved us.
The worth that we have is because we have obtained and are obtaining “the reward of the inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled, reserved in heaven for us.” It’s because we have been justified, are being sanctified, and will one day be glorified. In other words, it’s all because of Christ. In short, we’re only “worth saving” because Christ saved us.
Becky
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Mel Wild said:
Jumping in here again…I would respectfully disagree with your statements here. It sounds rather sterile and stoic.
If the value of something is what one is willing to pay for it, what value does God place on us by sending Jesus to die for us? (what value does Jesus have with the Father?)
Second, in the parable of the Pearl of Great Price (Matt.13:45-46), the Kingdom of heaven is the “merchant” and we are the “pearl of great price.” Again, that speaks of great value.
But I agree with you, it has nothing to do with our worthiness, it has to do with how precious we are to God (Psalm 139:17-18). Children are loved by their parents, and cherished, while they’re still a noise at one end and a stink on the other! 🙂 It has nothing to do with worthiness; it has everything to with value and love.
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insanitybytes22 said:
“I have trouble with the idea that God saved us because we were worth saving. God saved us because of who He is, not because of who we are.”
I hear you, Becky, and that’s something I say all the time. It is the goodness of God that saved us.
There’s a flipside to that however, once He gave His very life for us, once He claimed us and we accepted Him, we are now called into a higher relationship, we are called to perceive ourselves as He does, as creatures worth saving,and then we are called to try to live up to His sacrifice. So where we were once sinners, we are now saints. Claimed, redeemed, people God made a huge investment in. We are not allowed to forever remain in that state of unworthiness, because we are now sons and daugthters, a royal priesthood, people who will judge the angels some day. The process of sanctification, of metanoia, is to mold us into something more pleasing to God.
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Rebecca LuElla Miller said:
Mel, you said, “God hates sin because of what it does to us, not because of what it does to Him.” Agreed. God is self-sufficient, so He doesn’t need anything we give Him and He isn’t diminished by anything we withhold. So I think the conclusion that He is grieved because of what sin does to us seems logical. But I think there’s also something here that involves His Church and His name.
Remember when Moses pleaded for the people of Israel in the wilderness, that God would not wipe them out. His Name was at stake, he said. The nations would say God couldn’t bring them out so He killed them instead. God relented (and we don’t really know what that means) because His Name was at stake. In the same way, I think we can grieve the Holy Spirit—because we are giving occasion for those who reject God to lie about Him and to besmirch His name.
I don’t know, Scripture says the prayers of the saints are like incense and out thanks is an offering. In other words, what we do matters to God. Like a parent, I suppose. I made some pretty horrible drawings and at least one clay figure that was beyond recognition, yet my parents loved that I gave them those meager efforts. Why? Because they needed something ugly to put on their desk? No. My gifts added nothing to them, and yet they were pleased. Perhaps they were pleased for my sake, but I think expressions of love are pleasing. So with God, expressions of worship or service or obedience please Him.
Is He disappointed if we don’t give Him those things? I think so. For us, for His name, for the Church, for our witness to the watching world.
Becky
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Mel Wild said:
We may be talking about different aspects of the same thing here. We are most certainly to glorify God. One of the best ways to do that is to abide in Christ and bear fruit (John 15:5-8).
But my experience as a pastor has been that Christians tend to keep their distance, relationally, with God because they think He’s disappointed with them. And that’s a performance hamster wheel that never ends! They will study about Him but they resist intimacy.
What it probably comes down to is the old saying: Jesus came to comfort to afflicted, and afflict the comfortable. 🙂
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Rebecca LuElla Miller said:
Mel, I appreciate all your comments. They helped clarify my thinking, which I consider to be a good thing. And I think we agree more than we disagree.
Interestingly my post yesterday was about abiding in Christ, but I didn’t broach the purpose for that (apart from a brief mention about bearing fruit). It was more about what “abide” means.
At any rate, I appreciate thinking through this issue with you and IB.
Becky
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Citizen Tom said:
Hello Becky
I doubt I can much improve upon Mel’s comments, but I do have an observation. I think debates of this sort are over word definitions. We can displease someone who already knows what we are going to do, but we cannot disappoint them.
I also have found a passage from the Bible you may find relevant. Here is my reason for citing it. As Christians I think we must strive for the attitude that Paul developed. Even though he thought himself the worst of men because he had murdered some of the saints, he joyfully accepted the forgiveness of God. Then he set about doing what God had called him to do.
Imagine someone who was a murderer seeing himself as God’s holy temple. That is the power of God’s forgiveness, and that is what Paul seized upon. We can do the same.
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Rebecca LuElla Miller said:
Tom, I completely agree. But we’re talking about two different things. We are forgiven by grace and justified, so that God essentially wipes the slate clean. But more than that. He throws the slate away. No accuser can bring a charge against God’s elect. We will never stand guilty in God’s eyes again.
And yet, we are in the process of being sanctified, which as I understand it, means we are in process. We don’t always live as we should. We are free from the power of sin and still choose to sin anyway. We do not obey God as we should. We do not always walk worthy of our calling.
I don’t think God is neutral to that behavior. We are His children. He wants one thing for us and we do something altogether different. When we act in such a way, I believe these are the things that grieve the Holy Spirit. He tells us we are to be holy for He is holy, so when we fall short, we haven’t met His “hopes” or “expectations” for us.
Yes, He knew we wouldn’t because He’s omniscient, but I don’t think that gets us off the hook. I think our sin “causes great distress” to God.
At the same time it doesn’t diminish Him in any way because He doesn’t need us to do what He wants us to do. But God has emotions. I don’t know why we would assume disappointment isn’t one of them.
BTW, I wrote a post on this subject because I think we’re moving in the wrong direction in our view of God and of ourselves. Wasn’t going to repeat so much of it to you, but got carried away. LOL
Becky
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Citizen Tom said:
Becky, I concede your point. We were made in God’s image. If we can feel disappointment, it is a cinch God can manifest disappointment too.
Still, I think I think it best to focus on what we can control. That is primarily, I think, our attitude.
Check out Luke 7:36-50 (=> https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+7%3A36-50&version=NKJV). I am sure you are familiar with that passage. Until we understand we are like that sinful woman, we cannot be as grateful as she was or Paul was.
Sound absurd? Think about how Jesus described sin in the Sermon on the Mount. We may think it a small thing to call someone worthless, but God equates it to murder.
I am sure you have heard this before, but it bears repeating (for my benefit too). We don’t avoid sin or avoid disappointing God by trying not to sin. We do God’s will because we are grateful and love Him. Of course, we worry about disappointing those we love, but there is no fear in love (1 John 4:18).
I will have to check out your post. Thank you for mentioning it.
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Rebecca LuElla Miller said:
“We do God’s will because we are grateful and love Him.” Tom, I so, so agree! That’s why I was so excited when I came to understand (like two days ago or last week or something) Romans 7:6. I’ll share 5 and 6 because the contrast makes it even better, I think. “For while we were in the flesh, the sinful passions, which were aroused by the Law, were at work in the members of our body to bear fruit for death. 6 But now we have been released from the Law, having died to that by which we were bound, so that we serve in newness of the Spirit and not in oldness of the letter” (emphasis mine).
“Newness of the Spirit.” I love that. Love. That.
There is no condemnation for us because the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set us free from the law of sin and of death.
So, you’re absolutely right, we don’t fear God’s disappointment. We know it’s a sign of His love. And we don’t try to live up to what we imagine holiness looks like. That is what Mel calls a hamster wheel. It really is, as you said earlier, all about Christ and us abiding in Him.
Becky
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anitvan said:
“God is disappointed in me.”
Sigh.
Yes, that is a lie, but not because God has no illusions about me. God is pleased with me *for the sake of Christ* who made His righteousness as my own.
Please tell me he gives at least that much?!?
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insanitybytes22 said:
Hmm…… LOL! I’m trying to figure out how to answer that. You haven’t read the book, and if I remember right, you have a Lutheran perspective. Your wording has tripped me up, too. Probably a Canadian thing 🙂
Is Jesus Christ our Advocate?Yes. Does God look at us and see the righteousness of Christ? Yes. Does Christ plead our case for us? Yes.
“Is God pleased with me for the sake of Christ,” doesn’t quite resonate however, because I’m thinking salvation needs to be personal, we need to know that Jesus Christ died for each one of us personally. “For the sake of Christ” sounds to me a bit like saying it is Christ’s feelings that will be hurt if God doesn’t accept us or that God owes us something because of Christ. I tend to lean pretty heavily into the Sovereignty of God,so God owes us nothing.
Again however, it’s probably just the language. Anyone who wants to get a peek at Paul Young’s book, I think there may be a few chapters available on the internet.
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anitvan said:
Well, the Gospel is clear that salvation is personal – “for you” – but not because we have personally added anything to the work of Christ. It is on account of Christ (or, for Christ’s sake) who pleads for us before the Father, that we are declared righteous. Christ’s own perfect righteousness is given to us in faith.
That is the only sure way to know that God is disappointed with me. God is pleased with Christ, and when I, in faith trust that, he is pleased with me as well.
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Mel Wild said:
IB, all I can say is, we must have the same mother. 🙂 I SO resonate with what you say here (probably because we ARE brother and sister.)
I loved how you put your response to God not actually being disappointed with us (which, sadly, is one the top answers Christians give about their honest assessment about how God sees them):
“Oh, ouch! Is that not offensive to the pride? Here I’ve been dressing up for church, putting my best face on for God, checking “like” on all the right things on facebook, and come to find out, I’m actually not fooling God at all! Wut?!”
I would’ve clicked on “like” twice…no, three times on that point alone!
I also agree with this assessment:
“In my opinion, those 8 things that gave me pause, Paul Young is still responding and reacting to misappropriated and abusive authority. That’s completely understandable given his experiences.”
I also find myself disagreeing with Young when he talks about authority and the viability of the church. But like you said, we all have some refining to do.
I’m still waiting for the damnable heresy” to be specifically laid out here. All I’ve seen so far is differences in doctrinal beliefs. In the meantime, we call all wait for the wine to fully age. 🙂
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Prosper Anang said:
Honestly, Paul thanks for this great post. Just yesterday I told some of my colleagues that anytime you hear something about me, don’t just draw a conclusion about me by allowing what you have heard to exert a negative impact on our relationship. What you should do is to look for me and get my own version of the story before you draw your lines.
The reason why I had to say this is because a lot of people have a wrong impression about God just because they have been lied to, they have been made to believe something about God which is not true. I think we should learn to investigate what we’re told about God in the light of His Word before we ever draw our lines on Him.
Thanks again Paul, you’re deeply loved, highly favoured and greatly blessed, because you’re a life-giving spirit.
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Tricia said:
Hmmmm, tacos 🌮 yum….Oh about your post, I appreciate you writing this as I did not know Paul Young had a new book out. I don’t agree entirely with his line of thinking, either but the areas I do resonate strongly with my beliefs so I think I will pick up a copy.
And you are so right that each believer has something different and specific to bring to the table. We should relish and appreciate this more but to often it turns in to a giant food fight. 😀
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The Isaiah 53:5 Project said:
I like this post IB and am inclined now to read this book just to learn a little more about the author’s perspective.
From what you wrote here, there doesn’t seem to be an awful lot of damn damnable heresy.
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Tiribulus said:
Rebecca is on the right track.
THIS ONE’S kinda long.
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