Love is not sex. If we believe the gospel, those we are united with in Christ have a deeper familial connection to us than those we are united with through blood. How can we who are married better love brothers and sisters in Christ who are at a different stage in life than we are so they can feel at home in our churches?
Just as Adam and Eve, we tend to cover our shame with something we can do instead of through Christ. Following are five types of masks humanity tends to wear without even realizing it:
I’ve noticed the church tends to isolate singles by giving married people more voice in decisions–even when they’re younger than some others–and by lumping them in with youth. In this post, I address a few underlying beliefs that cause this to happen.
The problem most of us face in figuring out what to do in life and where our place is in the world is that we haven’t first understood what has been happening in life all along.
We have been invited into a movement of people coming from diverse types of backgrounds and ethnicities. We’ve been called to join a people whose hearts and generational narratives are getting completely rewritten as God unites us all as one family in Jesus Christ.
If the hope of the gospel of Jesus was merely that everything bad would be made right, it would get depressing because everything bad doesn’t necessarily get made right.
How can Anabaptists spread the gospel of Christ without making others think they need to become like us? Should their new disciples become Anabaptist? What’s the balance? Is what we do really important?
I have learned that even if I am living in greater victory than ever before, Satan will continue throwing accusations at me. Finding lasting freedom means dealing with those accusations so they don’t become the terms of life I agree to. In this post, I look at how I have personally dealt with three specific lies I have faced.
Forgiveness is almost like a swearword in Christianity. We spit it at people as the solution for any kind of relational problem. And probably because it is. However, those of us who have had that word spat at us likely resent it because we don’t really know what forgiveness means. When we remember how God forgives us, we can find it in our hearts to forgive others. And that releases us from bitterness, and bitterness drives lust.
People often quote Romans 8:28 when tragedy strikes. And while we can look at other parts of the Bible and see that God can work tragedy for His glory and use it for good, I do not believe we are being fair to the message God is speaking through Paul here in Romans. In fact, I will go so far as to say what Paul is talking about has nothing to do with tragedy. It might actually have more to do with porn.
What happened that causes us to wrestle with lust and pornography? Why is it that we experience pain and sometimes hurt others, ourselves? Because we have chosen to listen to another person’s voice instead of God’s.
But instead of giving us what we deserve (death), God has taken personal responsibility for restoring us back to His original design. He’s done something reckless, in our human way of looking at it. Without it, we have no hope.
Most people who have commented on this series so far have strong opinions one way or the other. There is a wide vacuum of people who are silent. People who don’t want to cause conflict. People who, like me, have had a good experience in their Mennonite upbringing, but also see areas of weakness that need radical change. Only, they’re at a loss for how to change it because either they’re written off as a rebel, or their questions and comments are hijacked by people with an agenda for the opposite of the Mennonite tradition.
Allow me, if for a moment, to wrestle aloud with the questions of someone who identifies with his friends who are leaving, but is concerned with whether we’re finding anything better.
Author Asher Witmer knows what it’s like to want freedom from sexual sin only to continually fail. We’re often told we need more personal discipline, that we need to think godly things instead of fleshly things.
What if I told you that discipline won’t solve your problem with lust?
Our male sexuality is given by God for advancing beauty and goodness. But somewhere along the line it becomes something that causes devastation and guilt. The good news is we don’t have to live with guilt. In Live Free, Asher Witmer shows us how we can find freedom from sexual sin, live with nothing to hide, and be able to fight for others.
