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ARE WE REALLY FREE TO MARRY THE ONE WE “LOVE”?

Some do not know what to do with homosexual marriage because we do not know how to think about love and marriage. For the last sixty years or so we have underwritten romantic accounts of marriage-if we “fall in love we get married” – if we “fall out of love” we get a divorce or at least feel real sorry …

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TAKE THE GRAFFITI DOWN-LIFT UP THE CRUCIFED

Within Galatians Paul lists works of the flesh – works coming from our emptiness and not from the Spirit’s fullness. Seven of these are context specific social sins– hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions and factions .(5:20-21) Paul is writing to a specific Church with a big conflict going on about law and grace. Circumcision was the …

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ENVY’S FAULT LINE- FROM CAIN TO THE TEXAS HIT MAN

Though unrestrained consumerism creates an enduring ecology for envy and humanistic psychology just tries to moderate envies excesses Jesus places envyings (plural) in the broken world of self rule and isolated competitiveness—where people cannot find anything in common, fight a lot, are chronically discontented , rage, separate into parties and such like. (Galatians 5:19-21). Envyings starts off in scripture capturing …

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ON RELATIONSHIP BUSTING- WHISPERERS AND THEIR FEATHERS

In many lists of relationship busting behaviors the Greek word translated whisperers appears. Whispering often hangs out with quarrels, jealousy, flaring tempers, taking sides, angry words, swelled heads and general bedlam, according to the Message.(See 2 Corinthians 12:10.) Whispering speaks quietly of another person, always absent, savoring their sins, weaknesses and such like. Whisperers often trick themselves into believing that …

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JEALOUSY-THE DESIRE TO BE WHO YOU ARE AND HAVE WHAT YOU HAVE

In Galatians 5:19-21 Paul lists the works of the flesh- sexual sins (3), misdirected worships (2), breakdown in relationships (8) and excesses (2). Broken relationships dominate his concerns. The flesh here is not a reference to the body or to sex but rather to an unredeemed, alienated body- a body that is not filled with the Spirit of God. Such …

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HERE WE GO ALL OVER AGAIN-2016

The seemingly endless cycle of the years -Spring-Summer-Fall and Winter brings us to what we call a new year-2016. Sometimes the passages of time begin weighing on us. We quietly mutter, “Here we go all over again.” Do we dare ask, “Are we just going round and round or what? “ The ancient Greeks and Romans as well as the …