Author Archives: salooper57

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About salooper57

Husband, father, pastor, follower. I am a disciple of Jesus, learning how to do life from him. I read, write, walk, play a little guitar, enjoy my family.

Can People Really Change?

Posted on May 19, 2021 by salooper57

I know alcoholics who have stayed sober for decades, but they stayed sober by changing and continuing to change – by growing. But staying sober is not the only thing that requires change; staying Christian does too. It requires progressive changes, one leading to another, across the span of a lifetime. Continue reading →

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Bury Your Idols

Posted on May 16, 2021 by salooper57

Idolatry is the root cause of all of the symptoms of sin.  The envy, the deceit, the lust, the anger, the gossip—they all have their source in “the one great sin that all others come from”—idolatry (Idleman).  That is why the very first of the Ten Commandments is “you shall not have any other gods before me.”  As Martin Luther says, “We never break the other commandments without breaking the first one.” Continue reading →

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Feeling Misunderstood? You’re Not Alone

Posted on May 15, 2021 by salooper57

According to a Pew Research Center survey from 2020, nearly 6 out of 10 Americans feel misunderstood. This figure holds across racial and ethnic lines, with 58 percent of black, 55 percent of Hispanic, and 61 percent of white Americans … Continue reading →

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Handling Anger: Tapping into the potential of the spiritual life.

Posted on May 14, 2021 by salooper57

Most of us haven’t learned to use a tenth of the potential embedded in our Office 365 software or our phones. There is so much more that could be done with them than we are doing. But that’s nothing compared to the mind-boggling potential God has placed in the new self. Continue reading →

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Anger: Part of an Integrated Package

Posted on May 13, 2021 by salooper57

So, here is one thing we need to understand. Anger is integrated into the system – your system. You can’t go and pull it out while leaving everything else in place. When I was a kid, TVs had vacuum tubes. On Thursday, when your TV stopped working, you took off the back, pulled the tubes, went down to the drug store (where they had a tube tester), found the bad one, replaced it, and were watching My Three Sons that evening.

We might think that we can do the same thing with anger: just pull it out of our lives like one of those tubes. We want to stop being angry but we don’t want anything else to change. But that won’t work. Here’s why
Continue reading →

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Handling Anger: The Beachhead

Posted on May 12, 2021 by salooper57

(This is part 2 in a short series of posts on handling anger responsibly.) Anger has a wide blast radius. All of us are affected by it and some of us are controlled by it. It causes us to do … Continue reading →

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Handling Anger: The Begotten Consumes the Begetter

Posted on May 11, 2021 by salooper57

(This is the first of several posts regarding anger and what to do with it.) I believe we were living through a pandemic before any of us had heard of COVID-19. Like COVID, this malady is communicated from person to … Continue reading →

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You Can’t Argue with That

Posted on May 8, 2021 by salooper57

We are the most argumentative people in generations. We now have technological pillboxes from which we, unseen, can send a volley of argumentation at our opponents while remaining shielded from their counterarguments. At the same time, there are fewer listening posts than ever before—and most of those we do have are abandoned. We simply never have to hear what our opponents are saying.

Contrast that with the Emperor Antonius, adoptive father to the philosopher-emperor Marcus Aurelius. He was said not only to tolerate frank opposition, but to be “pleased if somebody could point to a better course of action.” Such openness to reason has always been uncommon. In today’s climate, it is astonishing.
Continue reading →

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My Sheep Follow My Voice

Posted on May 6, 2021 by salooper57

In John 10:6, Jesus uses a “figure of speech” (Greek, ) one that requires insight to understand the point. We may miss that point, perhaps not from lack of insight, but from lack of cultural familiarity. Jesus’ teaching here is clothed … Continue reading →

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The Biggest of the Big Three: Love

Posted on May 2, 2021 by salooper57

Here is the sermon, The Love of Your Life, from 1 John 4:7-12.

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