The church is infected with a deadly disease. Symptoms include burdensome to-do lists, conformity to arbitrary rules, and sickeningly sweet self-righteousness. Left untreated, the infection will ultimately lead to the death of faith. The good news is that the cure is free! Join Marci Preheim on SBE for a discussion of her book, ‘Grace Is Free: One Woman’s Journey From Fundamentalism to Failure to Faith.’
Our own personal wisdom tells us to protect ourselves at all costs.
Submitted for your approval, it’s the SBE Independence Day program! The movie ‘Independence Day: Resurgence’ got the crew thinking about aliens, so they invited astrophysicist Dr. Hugh Ross to talk about his experience investigating UFO sightings. Are alien encounters actually experiences of malevolent interdimensional beings?
When someone asks you to share your testimony, the initial reaction is to dig deep down, share all the bad things you’ve been through, and then figure out how God had a hand in you getting through it. Well, the truth is, most of the time it’s hard to see God’s hand when you’re actually going through something hard, unless you’re super-spiritual, which I’m not.
A friend of mine recently told me he had stopped going to church. “I suppose I’m still a Christian,” he said, “but I went to Christ because I felt so ashamed and condemned. When I go to church, I feel even more condemned and ashamed than I did before I met Christ.” My friend was saying he had moved from dead to “deader.”
I struggled for years with the loud and persistent message of God against sinners. The idea was that if you were a smoker, a drinker, a skimming-off-the-top candlestick maker, God despised you and your evil ways and you might as well stay away. His salvation, they implied, was for the good; for those who had it all together. He only gave his gift to the worthy. You didn’t have to be perfect, of course, but you had to be trying.
There was only one way to do it right, and that one way is never easy. But it does pay off.
Father’s Day is almost here, and you’re wondering what to get the man who has everything. Have you considered one more sermon on how he’s letting America down? Maybe then he’ll finally “man up” and be the spiritual leader God called him to be. Well, if that’s what you’re shopping for, we ain’t selling. Listen to SBE for Father’s Day without the guilt trip.