Tag Archives: conversion

One Woman’s Journey to Faith

Posted on January 31, 2022 by salooper57

I am excited to share Jenny Wickey’s story with you. She told our church family about the journey she has been on from her atheist upbringing to faith in Jesus Christ. It’s a great story that you will want to … Continue reading →

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Things I’m Glad My Dad Didn’t Teach Me

Posted on June 16, 2021 by salooper57

(For Father’s Day I am posting a piece first published in 2015 by Gatehouse Media.) After reading an article by Peter Scholl, a forty-something married man with kids, living in Australia, I find myself grateful for the things my dad … Continue reading →

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Doormat Faith: There Is Something Better

Posted on September 26, 2020 by salooper57

By “doormat faith” I (following Dickson) do not mean faith that turns people into doormats but faith that gets people to the doormat and leaves them there. They remain outside of the kind of life that apprenticeship to Jesus makes possible.

Doormat faith is not the obedience-producing, righteousness-accompanying, love-expressing faith about which St. Paul so frequently wrote. Doormat faith brings no assurance. It falls short of being transformational.

This is not to say that doormat faith is a bad thing. It is certainly no substitute for the faith that connects a person to God, but it can be a precursor to it. Its strength is that it leads people to the doorstep of a richly satisfying life with God. Its weakness is that it cannot bring people through the door. It is good, but it is not enough.
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Life Is the Result of a Long Choosing

Posted on January 7, 2017 by salooper57

It used to be common to hear a new convert described as someone who had “got religion.” Occasionally one hears that phrase still. It makes religion sound like a disease. One gets religion like one gets a cold or a … Continue reading →

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Confessing Jesus Is a Revolutionary Thing to Do

Posted on November 12, 2016 by salooper57

A paradigm is a mental model about how things are or how they work. Until recently (in historical terms), almost all humans held a mental model in which the earth was the center of the cosmos and around it the … Continue reading →

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