Christian Carnival #336

Another week, another edition of the Christian Blog Carnival. The 336th week, to be precise —that’s 6 years, 6 months worth of Christian Blog Carnivals, for those of you interested in such things. In other words, a lot of blog carnivals. Forthwith, many interesting things to read.

What are my thoughts? Ache. Disappointment. Sadness. Confusion. I had many questions: Should I listen to her music? How can I listen to her music? Is my buying her music condoning sinful behavior? Am I sinning while listening to it? How can a person who has written some of the most passionate music ever written about God’s mercy and love, turn her back on His Word? -On Jennifer Knapp’s Coming Out, at Sister’s Weblog

I hadn’t planned on reading or writing anything about Christian community, but several posts on the subject popped up in my feed reader in the last couple days. Each one of them got me thinking about the subject from a slightly different angle. The first post made me think about how easy (and how disastrously wrong) it is to make Christian community community-centered. True Christian community is always and only gospel-centered. -Christian Community, at Who Am I?

You see the man staggering down the sidewalk. He stumbles, falls, gets up and meanders haphazardly before falling over the curb into the street. As you extend a helping hand you realize that he is nearly naked, his tattered clothing leaving little to the imagination. Turning your head, you say, “Grab my hand and I will help you up.” -Four Lessons From Some Wealthy Beggars, at Personal Finance by the Book

God is all powerful, all knowing, all encompassing. Nothing gets by Him, nothing surprises Him and nothing catches Him off guard. While there are things that disappoint Him, we must never forget even when He’s disappointed, He’s not surprised. -Finding God in Tough Times —7 Biblical Facts to Lean on When Things Get Tough, at Live2Worship

If you are sick, these are some great bible scriptures to meditate on for healing. Remember God’s word is the truth. It should be more real to us than our present circumstances. Bible Scripture Used in Prayers of Healing, at The Healing Verses

If you’ve been around me for the last few months, I’ve pressured you to pick up some Flotbots. A few months ago I started listening to their 2008 release, Fight with Tools, after encountering Handlebars through Pandora. They knew how to cast a mean flow and their songs were a mix of vision and resistance. Airplane Mode, at the Pomo Xian

The calling of this era throughout the world is for more confident Judeo-Christian leadership. Not necessarily from men or women of the clergy—who generally seem timid, and perpetually confused and undermined by the confusion of love and compassion with truth and principle–but from men and women of the American heartland, the people with a clarity of mind and heart that shows in the lives they lead. -Toward a Resurgent Christian Nation, at Brushfires of Freedom

Last weekend we went to the Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia. It’s a national landmark; it’s the first penitentiary in our country. Before the Pennsylvania System of Inmate Reform began, prisons and jails were all about punishment. They were about beating people, causing pain and discomfort, with the hope that it would somehow create a reformed spirit in the criminal’s life. The Eastern State Penitentiary was all about penitence, about being repentant. -What Does it Mean to be Penitent, at the American Missionary Fellowship

What do you ‘look for’ and ‘look at’ when visiting a church for the first time or the umpteenth time come to that? This is just a quick list of some of the items you may want to consider on your next visit. -Visiting Churches: Things to Consider, at Yorkshire: God’s Own Country

Christian Entrepreneur provides a list of seven things you should do when building a web site if you want to be successful, in an entry titled, Building Blocks for a Christian Entrepreneur.

Heart, Mind, Soul, and Strength has a list of ideas on how to stretch your charity dollars. My favorite is keeping restaurant gift cards on hand and giving those to beggars rather than cash; Getting the Most Bang for Your Charity Buck.

If you want to know about large churches with loyal followings, Christian Colleges and Universities has a list of ten churches in the US with large congregations; 10 Megachurches with the Most Loyal Congregations.

Parableman discusses the concept of God having two desires, or wills; this involves untangling the idea of God permitting something from God causing it, and stating that Arminian theology needs the same sort of construction to explain the existence of evil.

Traditionally Christianity has affirmed both that the second member of the Trinity is the word of God and that Scripture is the word of God. My guess is that RJS is working under the assumption that we mean something different when we make each of those affirmations (hence why Jesus but not Scripture is the foundation of her faith), even though they have the same predicate. I often find that in Evangelicalism that we haven’t thought much about the fact that we use the same predicate in each sentence. -Does the word of God == the “Word of God?”, at Seeking the Truth

All children will be subjected to temptations in their lives. The duty of parents is to bring up in the children ability to resist to them. They must to teach them to look at the world with conformity with the God’s rules. To have an internal standard. To reconcile with this their actions .This standard – the Word of God. -Family Values

My earliest memories of sifting are from when I was a little girl and learning to bake. Mom taught me to make sure I always sifted the flour before putting it into anything. That was because beetles sometimes got into the large kitchen bin where we kept the 100 lb. quantities of flour we bought. I’m sure if I found beetles in my flour now, I’d throw out the whole lot. But not then. We’d simply remove the wriggling black interlopers and carry on, mixing the bread, cookies or whatever. -Sifted, at Other Food

One of the great things about blog carnivals is that you get to read things that may be a little outside your normal line of thinking, or even that get you thinking about something in a new way. In fact, there are two posts in the group above I’ve put on my list to talk about in the coming weeks. If you would like to submit an entry to the Christian Blog Carnival, please fill out this submission form. It’s a great way to build cross links, and maybe pick up some regular readers.