Should a Christian man pursuing a woman in a Biblically way, find out about her being single (not dating, boyfriend or fiancee/husband-assuming no ring is visible on the left ring finger) by asking her friends/coworkers/others who know her well before he asks her out so as to not have to go through unnecessary rejection and awkardness if she is not available or should he just risk unncessary rejection by asking her out without finding out her status beforehand?

Born and raised in Alabama to a pastor and a homemaker. Have the call to become a minister and will be working on my credentials after my Army contract is completed.

Looking forward to connecting with others who share the same faith and learn about those different from mine.

She’s under a lot of personal stress right now. Last weekend she was arrested for hitting her ex boyfriend. She’s currently being charged with a level 6 (lowest felony in Indiana) felony for domestic battery with a minor present (her 14 year old daughter called). Her daughter has been having a lot of trouble herself (she’s cutting herself and more). We are praying that because she’s never been in trouble before that she can get it reduced to a misdemeanor or just get probation. Please pray for her!

Now, if you're thinking "wow...it sure took a while to find this voter fraud" you're correct. It did.

Why? Because at a glance... it appears no voter fraud occurred. Registered voters voted through mail in ballots....as I'm sure everyone knows is legal and easy....but in this case, voters who were registered but had no intentions of voting were identified by the defendant, and votes were then cast by the defendant's organization in the names of these registered voters.

In other words....this is in many ways the exact sort of mail-in ballot harvesting scheme that Republicans have alleged happens all too often, ever since the 2020 election. The only way to be certain this isn't happening more often would be to call each and every mail-in voter and receive their verification of voting and whom they voted for. In this case, it appears voters were bribed for their votes....so it's unclear if they would honestly admit to being part of an election fraud scheme.

Republicans have been trying to fix this obvious legal loophole by demanding in person voting. Democrats have of course, attempted to not only prevent any attempts at stopping this sort of voter fraud from succeeding....they attempted to pass legislation early in the Biden administration that would have made voter fraud easier.

Feel free to discuss, but leave out the longtime racist trope of black people being unable to acquire proper ID unless you can provide some empirical data to prove this is true.

I guess that says the main stuff. Hi. Hello. How are you? G'day, mate? I am clearly not used to doing this whole online thing, but I thought I would give it a shot. My name is Harry, I live in Scandinavia, where I was a teacher until I retired a few years back. I live in the countryside with some animals and like the quiet life, not really one of those big online extroverts, as you may have guessed. Matters of faith are a big deal to me but not the source of big drama or worries, I take things a day at a time and see what bounty I may or may not find. Lots of hobbies, the most commonly practiced being repairs to the (ooooold) house and taking care of the animals. I mainly joined because some youngsters in my circle of family and friends started asking some questions that made my mind wander, and I thought this might be a place to talk about those things. People here are not very religious, or spiritual, so it is hard getting a good talk going on the matter. Hope to find someone here that can fill my head with good, creative thoughts!

Wish you blessings!

When can we truly say a person is no longer a Christian? Is it few months of unrepentant sin or few years of repentant sin or when they say they don’t believe anymore ?

I use the term evolution biologically and technically. It describes the process by which populations of organisms change over time through successive generations. It is driven by natural selection, genetic drift, mutation, and gene flow.

Can you be Christian and believe in evolution?

Sure, but you don't have to. You can assume evolution without believing in it. Let's talk about the utility of the theory of Evolution.

I am a Christian. I used the evolution model to implement AI programs. They are called evolutionary algorithms. You don't have to believe in evolution to work with it. If you search US patents in the last ten years, you will find many applications of evolution models. The theory of evolution has practical values. The US economy benefits from it. You cannot deny its utility.

Unlike other branches of hard science, evolution has less mathematical support. Nevertheless, it is a useful paradigm.

The Cheating Cell: How Evolution Helps Us Understand and Treat Cancer

If the theory works in daily practical life, there is no need to reject it. There is no need to believe in it either in the sense of spiritual faith.

See also

• Adam, Eve, and evolution
• How old is the earth?.

A Texas man was putting Cyrux (an abortion inducing drug) into his wife's drink to induce an abortion which (as far as I can tell, she did NOT want to have done).

Man accused of putting abortion-inducing drug in wife's water takes deal, to serve 180 days in jail
180 days he gets. Mom wanted the baby. She was WILLING to keep and raise the baby. She was willing to ALLOW HER BODY TO BE USED TO GROW THIS BABY; despite the tumultuousness of her situation. Her and her circumstance are like the POSTER CHILD for the pro-life movement.

But, she ALSO doesn't get what she wants when her husband does this.

A DOCTOR who would be performing an abortion AT the patient's REQUEST....can receive a life time in prison.

Please convince me these rules are not really just rules in place to control women. It's not even a matter of consistency; this ruling just appears to make it blatant. And I'm sure the judge in this case ruled as harshly as he saw fit. Isn't it nice that they were willing to negotiate a plea deal with this.....man.

The number of cattle in America has plummeted to its lowest point in decades, sparking concerns among ranchers about the fate of the U.S. beef industry.

"This is a bad situation for America's cattle farmers and America because we're producing 1 billion pounds less beef than we were in this country, just a year ago," John Boyd, Jr., president of the National Black Farmers Association, said Thursday on "Fox & Friends First."

"We're not investing in America's beef and cattle farmers, and Biden policies are hurting America's cattlemen, such as myself. They should be invested in America's cattle farmers and making sure that we have the tools needed to stay on the farm.

Now, if we want to understand this passage of Scripture in its correct context, it is very helpful if we can look at the Greek word for love, which is agape, and see what this love is all about. For this is not human love which is based in our emotions or that is based in the one we are loving, but this is love which comes from God and which prefers what God prefers, which is all that is holy, righteous, godly, upright, morally pure, honest, faithful, and obedient to our Lord and to his commandments under the New Covenant.

For this love engages doing for others what God prefers that we do whether or not our emotions feel the love. For we can even love those who hate us and who mistreat us and who do evil against us. We can do for them and to them what is loving and kind and godly even if our emotions are hurting from how they treated us. For this love centers in moral preference and it comes from God and so it will love like God loves us. For even when we were the Lord’s enemies, Jesus Christ died for us on that cross.

Now there are people who are misinterpreting this passage of Scripture because they are interpreting “love” with human understanding and not with biblical understanding. So they might end up condemning those who are living righteously and who are loving biblically because they are thinking humanly and not biblically. For they want the kind of love that just makes other people feel good about themselves, even if it requires lying to them and withholding the truth from them in order to make them feel good.

But in reality, a lot of that kind of “love” is selfish, and so it only says to others what makes them feel good because they want others to like them and to not turn against them. So they are not really loving like God loves, thinking about what is truly best for us, for what we need, but it is a very fleshly “love” that is often more about pleasing self than acting in true biblical love towards others. And so some of these people will condemn those who are loving biblically if that requires speaking the truth in love.

So, we need to understand this love from a biblical and godly perspective and realize that this isn’t all just about making other people feel good. Now are we to be encouragers? Absolutely! Are we to be those who make it a point to thank others and to acknowledge them and their accomplishments and who do acts of kindness towards others? Absolutely! But we are not to neglect agape love which considers other people’s true needs and which reaches out to meet those needs, even if it engages confronting sin.

So this agape love is not all about making everyone feel good about themselves all the time. There has to be a balance. For when God loves us, sometimes he encourages us in ways that bring us joy and happiness and that feel good to our emotions. And other times he encourages us more in a way of exhortation or urging where he may even have to correct us and warn us and convict us of wrongdoing in order to get us to turn about, to turn away from what is evil, and to follow the ways of righteousness.

So, my point here is that if someone is truly exercising spiritual gifts of the Spirit of God in biblical ways, then this is going to involve the kind of love which feels good to our emotions but also the kind of love that may not feel good, at the moment, but what is needed, and what is necessary, and what is truly loving and kind. For it is thinking about what the other person truly needs and not just about how it is going to make them feel at the moment. And this involves laying our lives down for others for their ultimate good.

But there is a balance to be required here. We can be overly harsh, and that is not good, and we can be overly soft, and that is not good. Jesus is a wonderful example for us in how he dealt with other people and in the words that he spoke to them and in the things that he did for them. He had the right balance, but then he is God. But he was still man, too, when he walked this earth. So just because someone is called of God to speak the truth of the Scriptures, in love, that is not to be taken as being unloving or unkind.

For, again, agape love prefers what God prefers which is all that is honest, faithful, upright, and morally pure, etc. And so agape love is not going to compromise the truth of the gospel and the teachings of the Scriptures in order to make people feel good. For we can encourage other humans in ways that do not compromise truth and righteousness and godliness and still be loving and kind. Again, balance! But balance is not compromise when it comes to biblical truth and righteousness and obedience to our Lord.

Yet it is true that if we have spiritual gifts, but we do not exercise them in agape love, then we have gained nothing. And this doesn’t require that everyone else see that what we are doing is “love,” but that we are truly doing for others what is in preference to what God prefers, which is all that is righteous, godly, morally pure, and honest, etc. and which does not compromise truth and righteousness just to make people feel good so that they will like us and not think evil of us. Again, Jesus is our example.

You Loved Me

An Original Work / December 3, 2019
A song based off the poem by the same name

When I was lonely and afflicted,
You were there to pick me up.
You took me in Your arms,
And You held me tenderly.

Your love embraced me.
Your grace sustained me.

When my heart cried out to You
In my fear and my despair,
You never turned away,
But You let me know You loved me.

Your grace forgave me.
You did not shame me.

Then, when I answered the call,
“Here, Lord, send me.”
You sent me to where I must be.
Your mercy held me, did not fail me.
All this, You had planned, to use me.

And, when all trials and scorn
Came to test me.
You gave me all that I would need.
You strengthened me so I’d not fail You.
Your kindness blessed me, it touched me.

And, when I needed the church
To lift up me,
To hearten me so I’d not fail,
You blessed me with folks who would love me.
Their presence with me, Your praise hailed!

And, when I walked through the valley
Of the shadow of the death,
And tears flowed from my eyes,
Still Your kindness was there for me.

Your touch, it healed me.
For I believed You.

When now I think about the ways,
Of the many, many ways
That You in Your great love
Show me that You’ll always care for me,

My heart, it thanks You,
And gladness fills me, fills me.

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I believe that this article is very well balanced, and I agree with it's author.
Justice and Mercy can indeed walk together, even on this issue of immigration.

I was thinking about how I use the gift of tongues, and working out when I am speaking in genuine tongues and when I may not be. I came to the conclusion that the intended purpose of tongues for me is during my private prayer time with God where He is the sole listener to the language I am praying. In answer to my question whether the tongues would be genuine if I submitted an example to a linguist, I concluded that doing that would be outside of its intended purpose and it would be gibberish instead of tongues. This is why every example of tongues submitted to linguists has turned out not to be identified as a genuine language, It is not the intended purpose of tongues to be tested by linguists, therefore it would be gibberish spoken in the flesh and not the Spirit.

Also, for me, speaking audibly in the hearing of others would be outside of its intended purpose, therefore it would probably be in the flesh because Paul did not recommend that tongues be used in public gatherings without interpretation. But through the sovereignty of God, there is the exception to the rule, where, in my case, I was praying quietly in tongues during a church service and my NZ Maori friend sitting beside me told me that I was speaking in fluent Maori language and what I was saying was encouragement to her. In a church prayer meeting where there was a visitor from Ghana, my friend was praying in tongues (in that Pentecostal prayer meeting they all did), and Badu, the Ghanaian stopped the prayer meeting and told my friend that he was praising God in his own rural village dialect. There was no way my friend could have known that dialect. Therefore, God, through His sovereign will, caused those tongues to be understandable languages for the express purpose of encouraging those select people.

It is the same with healing. We know that divine healing is not guaranteed by demand, but God can and does heal through His sovereign will, even though He might not bestow the actual gift of healing on anyone these days.

So when I pray to God in tongues privately according to 1 Corinthians 14:2 where in that environment I am speaking mysteries in the Spirit, then my prayer language is genuine; but if I use the gift outside of its intended purpose for me it would be through the flesh and not the spirit, and so it would be meaningless syllables and words. So my advice is for those who are unsure about whether their prayer language is genuine or not, to seek the Lord and find out from Him what the intended purpose is for them in how they are to exercise the gift of tongues.

THE HAGUE -- Dries van Agt, the Christian Democrat prime minister of the Netherlands from 1977 until 1982, has died by euthanasia, “hand in hand” together with his wife, according to the human rights organization he founded. They both were 93.

It seems I alredy introduced myself, but it seems the post got lost somewhere, this is a pasted version of my intro.
Christian Chat Forum

Hello Christian Chat dwellers
I am a messianic Jew.
Also a student of the bible.

Many Christian Forums do not accept questions or comments that do not strictly conforms to their favourite belief structure, and do not consider such ones to be Christians.
I do understand that to some extent, there are subjects that I avoid as well.

My belief is built upon only one precept taken from the bible.

"If you believe anything make sure you have the scriptural statement to back it up".

If you can put up with that, perhaps I will be allowed to stay a while.

Shalom

So, ive been talking to this friend of mine. She and I have been getting much closer recently, and we've discussed actually getting together as a couple. Suddenly, out of nowhere, I get this thought, telling me if I start dating her I will die. Now I wouldnt have thought anything of this, but this thought really seemed to be coming from somewhere BIGGER then me. Like it came out of gut? If that makes sense? Not a normal thought, more of a voice or an inner feeling. Is this God warning me? What is happening?? I feel crazy for even asking this.

Please Pray that I Never Ever be like the Unforgiving servant in the Matthew 18:21-35 Unforgiving servant parable

Report released that proves Biden mishandled classified information as a citizen. Of course, there is no expectation of charges filed because he's a Democrat and only Republicans face jail time for that sort of thing. But then Biden proceeds to make a press conference and lie about the details. Well...maybe he just forgot because his memory is that bad. Either way, another case where a Democrat commits a crime and everyone shrugs their shoulders while demanding severe punishment for a Republican.

...but what about the Christian left?

There are many videos on Youtube criticising ministries that don't dot all the Is and cross all the Ts in their doctrine. For example, a well known healing evangelist who in later years had a vision of a 90ft Jesus telling him to raise the finance to build a hospital in his city. Yet this evangelist has preached the Gospel involving Jesus dying on the Cross for us. Another one is a new deceased world-wide evangelist who was well known for preaching the Gospel and winning thousands to Christ, and yet he was on friendly terms with the pope, Mormon and Muslim leaders. And a 19th Century pastor and evangelist whose sermons have blessed multitudes of people from then until now, but was a mason. As a result of the faults and failings of these preachers, they are condemned as false teachers. But is this condemnation fair? I don't think so.

The Scripture says that we have the treasure in earthen vessels, and that we have partial knowledge and those who prophesy do it partially. Also, there were OT saints who had grievous faults (Moses having fits of anger, David committing adultery and murder, Solomon marrying pagan wives, Samson having affairs with different women; yet all these were seen by God as having good hearts, One king of Israel is reported as being right with God in his heart, but not all his actions were right.

There is a major difference between a preacher or pastor whose heart is right with God, and whose desire is to glorify God but through his faults and failings sometimes gets it wrong and makes a hash of things; and the man or woman whose heart is not right with God, who is self seeking, greedy for money, and a deliberate heretic. I think we are going to have some surprises at the judgment, where the preachers we think are false turn out to be true, and those we think are true turn out to be false. How are we to know? God looks on the heart. We have seen in church history that both Arminians, who believe we can be saved today and lost tomorrow, and Calvinists who believe in once saved always saved, had very successful soul winning ministries because they preached the Gospel of Christ.

The trouble is that we tend, because of our sinful nature, to mark our own faults with a road marker, and the faults of others with a drafting pencil. When we look at a ministry those who are perfectionists, see the glass as half empty instead of half full.

A good indication is what Paul said: "If anyone comes preaching another gospel than the one we preached to you, let him be accursed." When the disciples complained about someone casting out demons who was not part of their own party, Jesus said, "Leave them alone because who is for us is not against us." Paul spoke of those who preached the Gospel out of envy and jealousy, but at least they preached the Gospel so they shouldn't be rejected as false and heretical.

So the test of a ministry is not whether they have faults or failings, but whether they are preaching the Gospel of Christ - Jesus and Him crucified and risen again., or if they are preaching another gospel and presenting another Jesus not of the Jesus of the Bible. For example, Post-Modern Liberalists don't believe in an historical Jesus, nor do they see God as a real person, but as a concept. They are preaching a gospel, not as Paul preached it, and therefore they are false and Paul said that if they come teaching a doctrine that is contrary to the doctrine of Christ, then they should be totally rejected, not greeted, or welcomed into our homes, otherwise we are being partakers of their heresies.

But a healing evangelist who preached the Gospel, did what he could to get sick people healed, but had continual battles with alcoholism, should be condemn and reject him because of his struggle with the flesh, a struggle that we all have? Or the other healing evangelist who had a gluttony problem that eventually caused his death, and yet he faithfully preached the Gospel, do we condemn him as well?

According to the Biblical evidence and church history, we see that God has used very imperfect vessels to bring the Gospel to the unconverted. This is the miracle, that vessels with sometimes serious faults and failings can bring many to Christ. This shows that it is the Song and not the singer.

Attorney who secretly slipped abortion pills in wife’s drink 7 times because pregnancy would ‘ruin his plans’ sentenced to 6 months​

A 39-year-old attorney in Texas will spend less than six months behind bars after admitting to sneaking abortion-inducing drugs into his soon-to-be ex-wife’s beverages for weeks after learning about her pregnancy.

Mason Herring had previously pleaded guilty to one count of assault of a pregnant person and one count of injury to a child under age 15. In exchange for his plea, prosecutors with the Harris County District Attorney’s Office dismissed one count of assault — forcing an individual to have an abortion.

[I guess it's fortunate for him that this was before the Dobbs decision.]

In the wake of additional allegations against its founder Mike Bickle, the International House of Prayer Kansas City (IHOPKC) cut off the livestream feed for the 24-7 prayer room that has defined its movement.

On Thursday night, the display read, “IHOPKC is entering a season of prayer and repentance.” The day before, the Kansas City Star ran a story on a woman who said Bickle abused her as a 14-year-old in the ’80s, when she was his family’s babysitter and he was a pastor in St. Louis.

IHOPKC released a statement condemning Bickle’s “predatory and abusive” actions, standing by his victims, and apologizing for its initial response of allowing him to defend himself when accusations surfaced last fall.

As various individuals from different perspectives have tried so hard to let me know, I'm not in with the status quo with how I perceive and evaluate the world. in which we live. Apparently, and according to others, I have a few major deficiencies in my mental logic circuits. This is the evaluation I've been given by more than one person because I refuse to instantly and completely jump on board with the currently favored political, religious (or irreligious), and/or scientific angle of entry that I am expected to conform to in order to be considered 'sane.'

Or maybe I'm discordant with what others expect of me because my own existential starting point isn't and has never been (and can't be) the same one that they have found themselves starting with. We all begin our experiences and our appraisals of the world in which we live at different places and what a few folks don't seem to realize is that their chosen criterion by which to measure aspects of the Reality isn't necessarily the 'sure, absolute' thing that they've assume their criterion to be. It also just might be that their criterion (or criteria if there's more than one) for what constitutes knowledge isn't quite as clear, simple, straightforward, objective or as well defined idea as they'd like to think it is.

And in essential accordance with the topics and statements made in the following video, here's why I disagree and am at odds with my critics ...

3 Paradoxes That Will Change the Way You Think About Everything​

State can set some rules about elections.