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Crowdsourcing a Complicated Emotional Situation – Stream Stories
Listen to “Stream Story” Podcast Episodes here: It came out of nowhere, completely unplanned. We were in the middle of playing NieR:Automata—a game full of philosophical questions and complex moral choices—when a viewer named “Kit the Dragon” started pouring out a complicated and emotional situation: “My housemate admitted they have feelings for me, and…
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A Police Officer’s Struggle with Taking Lives: Overcoming Moral Injury
During one of my recent live streams, I had the profound opportunity to speak with a female military police officer from Turkey who is also Muslim. She shared her deeply personal struggle with guilt after taking lives in the line of duty. This courageous officer opened up about the immense weight she carried and…
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Where is God Anyway?
Each day on stream we take time to go through a Verse of the Day, explain its meaning, and find an application. This verse is a very encouraging one on the surface, but what does it mean, really? Podcast Version: https://anchor.fm/xtianninja/episodes/Where-is-God-Anyway–And-What-Does-it-Mean-that-God-is-With-You-e1kikto I Need Your Support I’m doing this full-time and the only way I…
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Why Someone Like You Matters to God
If God is so good and perfect, why would He care for messed up, violent, sinful people like us? What motivates Him to talk to us or to care for us? The answer might surprise you! Podcast Version: https://anchor.fm/xtianninja/episodes/Why-Someone-Like-You-Matters-to-God-e1fcv8i If you’d like to help me stay full-time please consider supporting me on Patreon. Every…
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I Forgot To Tell You About So Many YouTube Videos!
I’ve been working so hard on making new and better content lately that I’ve been completely forgetting to post all of my videos to my blog! I’m so sorry to all of the subscribers who have been missing out on my latest videos and I will try to do better. Here’s a list of…
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Where to Turn When Everything is Going Against You – Daily Devo – Psalm 119:114
Where can you turn when everything seems to be going against you? Where can you hide when you need peace and security? How do you recover when you’ve been lied to and hurt? Your Hiding Place and Shield. Every day on my Twitch channel’s we start the stream with a devotional from Logos’ Verse…
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Christians Doing Weird Stuff, Can You Know if God Loves You or Not? & Slipping Into Humiliation (P.P. 7.0)
In this week’s episode, I share an interesting article about Christians doing weird stuff, continue our interesting study of Pilgrim’s Progress with the beginning of the seventh chapter when Christian descends into the Valley of Humiliation, and finish off with a new Bible-Study segment where I talk about how you can know whether or…
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Empathy as Fuel: The Story of Timothy (Devos & Chill Ep.2 – Phil 1:1)
When Timothy’s concern for others caused him to hurt so much it was crippling – he didn’t run away. Instead, he leaned into it and used that concern to drive him to action because he loved Jesus, loved Paul, and loved the church more than he loved himself. This message is from my Twitch…
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Who Should Christians Love? (Jesus & The Samaritan Woman – Gospel of John Series)
**Sorry, no video or audio this week!** Please open up to John 4, the story of Jesus and the Samaritan Woman. We start where we left off last week: Jews and Samaritans “Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John (although Jesus himself…
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The Persistent Love of God (A Mother’s Day Sermon)
Podcast Audio: “Before I was a Mom” By Suzana Haertzen Before I was a Mom…I made and ate hot meals. I had unstained clothing. I had quiet conversations on the phone. Before I was a Mom… I slept as late as I wanted and never worried about how late I got into…
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What Do You Seek? (Gospel of John Series)
“The next day again John was standing with two of his disciples, and he looked at Jesus as he walked by and said, ‘Behold, the Lamb of God!’ The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. Jesus turned and saw them following and said to them, ‘What are you seeking?’ And…
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Jesus of the Advent Candles
Over the past while our church has been going through a study of the Heidelberg Catechism, a 400-year-old summary of the basic doctrines of the Christian faith. When we paused for Christmas a couple weeks ago we were only on Day 8, but we’ve already covered a LOT of material. We covered the bad…
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Love
Audio: Text: Have you ever had the experience where you look at a word too often and it suddenly loses its meaning? You read it, try to spell it, sound it out, and then suddenly that word looks really weird, you don’t recognize it, the letters all look misspelled, and you’re not even sure…
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Spiritual Gifts, The Body of Christ, and The Weakest Members
Audio: Text: Christmas is coming and I’m very excited already. I went to the Christmas store at the Carleton Place nursery and officially got myself in the mood. There was free mulled cider, cookies, Christmas music playing in the background… I love the colours and lights and trees and everything. I’m a huge fan…
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Amazing Grace: The Motivation for Sharing Our Faith
Audio: Text: Last week we talked about how scary it can be to talk about our faith and some ways we can get over the fear of sharing what Jesus is doing in our life with the people around us. It essentially came down to four things: show people love before you stress about…
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Getting Over The Fear of Sharing Your Faith
Audio: Text: I walked into Walmart the other day and saw a bunch of Halloween candy, so I guess Halloween is coming up again. That seems a little early to me, but maybe it’s a piggy-back on things to stuff in kid’s school lunches – which also starts up soon. These two things, Halloween…
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Good Christian Sex
Audio: Text: A couple weeks ago I gave a sermon on the topic of sexual immorality which led to some pretty strong and varied reactions. Some people appreciated confronting the topic of pornography from the pulpit while others claimed it was. I want you to know that whenever I preach my intention is never…
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The Good News (Why The Resurrection Means Everything)
Audio: Text: The Gospel Truth Today I want to talk about the “Gospel”. That word has been hijacked a bit by our culture so I want, at the outset, to clarify what that word even means. The term “The Gospel Truth” has actually become an idiom in our culture – meaning a group of…
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Love: An Advent Reflection from Chad (Carnivore Theology: Ep. 83)
Chad gives us some Advent reflections the love of Jesus Christ. Podcast Audio:
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What Are Christians Allowed To Do? (or “Don’t Let Imaginary People Tell You What to Do”)
Sermon Audio: Handout / Small Group Questions: Own Your Why – What Are Christians Allowed To Do – Handout.PDF Sermon: Sin Ruins Everything Culture presents to us a whole lot of options for things to do, but as Christians who want to do all things to the glory of God we often struggle to…
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God’s Temple: The Church Needs To Stay United – OR ELSE!
Let’s start with a quick review and then close of the section of 1 Corinthians 3 that we’ve been studying for the past few weeks. If you recall, we’ve been looking at Paul’s threefold illustration to describe why the Christian church needs to ensure that they remain united. Remember that in this section Paul…
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Crabapple Christians
When I was growing up, my grandparents had a crab apple tree in their front yard, and every time we went to visit them, my brother and I would see the tree and hope the apples were ready to eat. It was actually quite frustrating for us because we found the readiness of crab…
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What Can We Do and What Must God Do Alone?
We like doing things ourselves, right? I think almost everyone here today takes pride in the skill and abilities they have, what they can accomplish, and how, for the most part, they don’t really need anyone’s help to get by. Sure – as I said last week – some of us are willing to…
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How to Confront a Sinning Friend (Carnivore Theology: Ep. 59)
Our “live and let live”/”everyone has their own truth” culture isn’t very good at calling out or confronting sin, but scripture is clear that Christians are supposed to be holding one another accountable to God’s Word. So, what should a believer do when we see a friend caught in sin? Podcast Audio: Behind the Scenes Video:…
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Sharing Our Faith Can be Scary (Kid’s Sermon)
We just had Halloween a couple weeks ago, and of course that strange season is one where people talk about scary things like ghosts and vampires and zombies. Who here went trick-or-treating? Did you see anything scary? Well, I went digging around on the internet to learn about some different things that people are…
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Love Does (AWANA Kid’s Talk)
When I was asked to speak here this evening, I grabbed onto a theme that I’d already spoke to another group about. They’re going through a book called “Love Does” and discussing what it means to love people in a real, hands-on, practical, concrete, expressive, applied way. I really appreciate that theme and was…
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Response to Buzzfeed’s “I’m Christian, But I’m Not…” (Carnivore Theology: Ep. 44)
What is a Christian Anyway? Our Response to Buzzfeed’s viral video: “I’m Christian, But I’m Not” answers some important questions: “What is a Christian?” “How do we respond to popular culture’s idea of what a Christian is and isn’t?” “Can a person be a Christian but not follow the Bible?” and “How can we minister…
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Answering Life’s Biggest Questions: Love, Purpose, & Priorities (Mark 12:28-34)
Our current mini-series has been covering the questions that Jesus was asked as He entered the Temple the day after He cleared the Temple courts by driving people out, overturning tables and releasing the animals. As He came up the stairs he was confronted by the Sanhedrin, the Jewish ruling council, who had some…
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Mother’s Day & The Persistent Love of God
“Before I was a Mom” By Suzana Haertzen (Hart-zen) Before I was a Mom…I made and ate hot meals. I had unstained clothing. I had quiet conversations on the phone. Before I was a Mom… I slept as late as I wanted and never worried about how late I got into bed. I brushed…
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The Parameters of Love
The Right Way vs The Bosses Way I remember listening to an old southern Baptist preacher that told the story of a time his daddy was driving him to his first job at the age of 7 years old. His father gave him this advice: “Son, there are three ways to do things in…
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Jesus of the Advent Candles
Podcast Audio: Over the past month many churches around the world have celebrated Advent using a special wreath of candles. It is a simple and beautiful way to remind us that the meaning of Christmas. Each week we light a different candle, read a special scripture, and are reminded of another meaning of what…
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Christian Integrity: “Stand Firm: Evaluating our Spiritual House”
Podcast Audio: This is the final week we will be spending on Psalm 15. We have been going through it for nine weeks now, and it has been a challenging, and hopefully encouraging, piece of scripture to study. I know it has been for me! And from the responses I’ve heard from some of…
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Why Should I Love My Enemies?
I gave a talk to a group of AWANA kids this week. It was “Heart Night” (celebrating Valentine’s Day) and I spoke on Love. I used some animated gifs in the powerpoint, which is where all the giggling at the beginning comes from. I linked to a few if you want a giggle too.…
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Integrity: Loving Your Neighbour & How to End Discrimination
For the past couple weeks, and the next few, we are looking at what it means to look like a Christian. Saying that it is controversial because a lot of people don’t understand, or want to talk about, the fact that there are standards of practice for all Christians. “God Loves Me The Way…
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5 Reminders For Christians that Need to Make Big Ministry Decisions
I took a little break from the Gospel of Mark series and preached a very difficult (yet hopefully timely) sermon this past Sunday. The background of the sermon was that our church needs to make some big decisions about its future together. I didn’t give my own opinions of the situation, but shared 5…
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Pastoral Prayer: Of Commitment
We shout for joy to You, God, joining the praises of all believers across the earth. We sing to the glory of Your name! We give to You our praise! How awesome are Your deeds, O God! We are in awe of Your power. So great is Your power that Your enemies cringe before…
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Pastoral Prayer: Love
Invocation “Lord God, with confidence we draw near to Your throne of Grace, that we might receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” (Hebrews 4:16) “We are yours, as you have said, O Lord of Hosts, and you have made us your treasured possession and have spared us.” (Malachi 3:17)…
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Growing at Church – Make Love Your Priority
(Click here for the video) I like learning and teaching theology. I have thoroughly enjoyed preaching this Foundations series because it has been full of deep, biblical, gospel truths – the very bedrock of what we should build our lives on. I love being able to help people know God better by answering questions…