Relationships and Community on Conscience

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Distance does not decide who is your brother and who is not. The church is going to have to become the conscience of the free market if it's to have any meaning in this world - and stop being its ...

Freedom of religion is one of the greatest gifts of God to man, without distinction of race and color. He is the author and lord of conscience, and no power on earth has a right to stand between God a...

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Adapted from Hebrews 10:19-25

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Hebrews 10:19-25

Leader: Therefore, brothers and sisters, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, All: by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, t...

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Hebrews 10:19-25 "Having therefore brothers boldness to enter into the holy place"

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Hebrews 10:19-25

Having therefore, brothers, boldness to enter into the holy place by the blood of Jesus, by the way which he dedicated for us, a new and living way, through the veil, that is to say, his flesh, and ha...

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Kindness flows from you, Lord, pure and

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Gregory of Nyssa

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Romans 5:8-11, Genesis 3:8-21, Isaiah 61:10, Ephesians 2:13-14, Revelation 22:14, Hebrews 10:19-22

Kindness flows from you, Lord, pure and continual. You had cast us off, as was only just, but mercifully you forgave us; you hated us and you were reconciled to us, you cursed us and you blessed us; y...

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Eleanor Roosevelt

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When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?

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Judged by A Different Set of Standards

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Craig Brian Larson

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In Words We Live By, Brian Burrell tells of an armed robber named Dennis Lee Curtis who was arrested in 1992 in Rapid City, South Dakota. Curtis apparently had scruples about his thievery. In his wal...

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In the early fifth century, even as Rome

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The Pastor's Workshop

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Exodus 23:2, Daniel 3:16-18, 2 Chronicles 24:20-21, Matthew 5:9-10, Romans 12:19-21 , Psalm 82:3-4

In the early fifth century, even as Rome had officially embraced Christianity, the brutal spectacle of gladiatorial combat continued in the Colosseum, drawing massive crowds. One day, a Christian herm...

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Alfred Nobel’s Big Turn

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Stuart R. Strachan, Jr.

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Do any of you know the name of the inventor of dynamite? It might sound familiar once you hear it, it’s Alfred Nobel. In 1867, Nobel, Alfred Nobel, who was a Swedish chemist invented a new high explos...

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Wear it As Long As You Can

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James Bryan Smith

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Romans 14:5, Galatians 5:18, John 16:13, Philippians 2:12-13, Psalm 150:, Isaiah 66:

George Fox (1624-1691) was the founder of the Quakers, a Christian movement, in seventeenth-century century England. Two of the great Quaker contributions are their teaching on pacifism (refusal to u...

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Martin Luther King, Jr.

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Popularity

There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right." A Testament of Hope: The Essential ...

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Anne Lamott

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It's funny: I always imagined when I was a kid that adults had some kind of inner toolbox full of shiny tools: the saw of discernment, the hammer of wisdom, the sandpaper of patience. But then whe...

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Many Christians know John Newton

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

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Isaiah 1:18, Ezekiel 36:26, Micah 6:8 , 2 Corinthians 5:17, Luke 15:24, Psalm 51:10

Many Christians know John Newton as the author of the hymn Amazing Grace and other beloved hymns. Fewer know that Newton’s own life matches the beauty of transformation written in Amazing Gra...

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We Will Still Love You

Author

Martin Luther King, Jr.

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Exodus 23:4-5, 2 Kings 6:22, Proverbs 25:21-22, Matthew 5:43-44, Romans 12:17-21, Psalm 37:8-9

The Sermon on the Mount contains some of the most difficult ethical injunctions in all of scripture. Many of us do not know how to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. Martin Luther K...

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A Jagged Symbol of Equality & Inequality

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Tony Evans

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Isaiah 59:1-3, Micah 6:6-8 , Ephesians 2:13-18 , Galatians 3:26-28, Romans 12:4-5 , Psalm 85:10

My friend Ray McMillan introduced me to the Liberty Bell as a perfect object lesson for America’s racial divide. In addressing why “the bell won’t ring,” Ray describes the crack as a perfect illustrat...

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Sacred Space: Lessons from Ethiopia’s Church Forests

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William Rowley

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Too Busy for God? American work culture is all-pervasive. For many members of your congregation, it can be a real fight to get actual time off—and cell phones and the internet has made it possible to...

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O God, we thank you that you have not

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William Barclay

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Micah 6:8, Colossians 3:23-24, Psalm 119:105, 1 Corinthians 12:12-14, Lamentations 3:22-23, 1 Samuel 1:24-28, Acts 2:42-47

O God, we thank you that you have not treated us as we deserve. We thank you that, though you are Creator, Judge and King, you are also Father, so that, though we are wandering children, there is alw...

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O my Savior, help me. I am slow to

Author

Arthur Bennett

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O my Savior, help me. I am slow to learn, prone to forget, and weak to climb; I am in the foothills when I should be on the heights; I am pained by my graceless heart, my prayerless days, my poverty o...

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Hebrews 10:21-25 "And having a high priest over

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Hebrews 10:21-25

And having a high priest over the house of God; Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pur...

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Dear Lord Jesus, we feel our sins. They

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Memorial Drive Presbyterian Church

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2 Corinthians 5:21, Psalm 103:12, Ephesians 2:8-9, Romans 8:1, John 6:40, Romans 10:9-10, 1 John 1:9

Dear Lord Jesus, we feel our sins. They bite and gnaw and terrify us. Where shall we go? We will look to You, Lord Jesus, and believe in You. Although our faith is often weak, we look to You and find ...

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The Reconciling Love of the Father

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Jen Pollock Michel

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John 1:12-13, Romans 8:15-17, Galatians 4:4-5, Ephesians 2:12-13, Colossians 1:21-22, 2 Corinthians 5:18-19

In her book Keeping Place: Reflections on the Meaning of Home , Jen Pollock Michel reflects on the nature of home in a transient age. In this short excerpt, Michel reflects on the Biblical doctrine...

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The Masters Of Suspicion

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Brian Zahnd

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Nietzsche belongs to a trinity of nineteenth-century thinkers that Paul Ricoeur called the “masters of suspicion.” These masters of suspicion—Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl Marx, and Sigmund Freud—were all...

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"I Don't Remember"

Author

Ron Lee Davis

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Romans 4:7-8, Ephesians 1:7, Jeremiah 31:34, 1 John 1:9, Hebrews 8:12, Micah 7:18-19

In A Forgiving God in an Unforgiving World , Ron Lee Davis shares a powerful story of forgiveness about a priest from the Philippines. The clergyman had carried the weight of one particular sin that ...

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The Essential Confession

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Paul David Tripp in John Piper & Justin Taylor

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James 3:5-10, Matthew 12:34-37, Psalm 141:3, Proverbs 15:1, Genesis 3:12-13, Isaiah 6:5

I actually want to believe that when it comes to communication, my biggest problem is outside of me, not inside of me. I want to think that it’s my kids, my wife, my neighbors, my boss. I want to thin...

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Matta al-Miskin

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It is clear that Christ himself was responsible for the drawing near of sinners who came to him and sat to eat with him. They came because in him they discovered themselves to be lost, and their torme...

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Author

Alexander MacLaren

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Ah, there is nothing more beautiful than the difference between the thought about sinful creatures which is natural to a holy being, and the thought about sinful creatures which is natural to a self-r...

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June Price Tangney

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One of the most hopeful and gratifying conclusions to come out of our 12 years of research on shame and guilt is that that notion of morality is wrong. Dead wrong. You don't have to feel really ba...

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See Something, Say Something

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The Pastor's Workshop

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Leviticus 19:18 , Micah 6:8, Ruth 2:, Luke 10:25–37, Galatians 6:2, Psalm 82:3–4

What is our responsibility to our neighbor? This is a question many have asked, including the Medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas. Meditating on the topic he observed, “To patiently endure wrongs done ...

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Elisabeth Elliot Gren

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The current popular notion that judging others is in itself a sin leads to such inappropriate maxims as 'I'm okay and you're okay.' It encourages a conspiracy of moral indifference whi...

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Taking Convictions Seriously

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Tim Muehlhoff and Richard Langer

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We might say that convictions are firmly held moral or religious beliefs that guide our beliefs, actions, or choices…[M]ost Christians attach their convictions to Christ personally. In other words, we...

relationships and community on Conscience

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